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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'

mapping the way we understand life « Previous | |Next »
March 18, 2006

This article by J. Ronald Munson & Richard Charles York is quite good in mapping the ways in which life is understood philosophically--ie. , the metaphysics of life in the biological sciences.

They say that there are three basic ways regarding the biological nature of life: vitalism, mechanism, and organicism. They say that vitalism:

... holds that there exists in all living things an intrinsic factor - elusive, inestimable, and unmeasurable - that activates life. In its classic form, as espoused by many biologists at the turn of the 20th century - in particular, by Hans Driesch, a German biologist and philosopher - it has suffered severe criticism... And whereas most biologists concur in renouncing this so-called naïve vitalism, some continue to espouse a so-called critical vitalism, perhaps indistinguishable from organicism...

They say that mechanism, simply stated, is
the view of the mechanists is that organisms are no different from subtle machines: the whole is the sum of its parts, which are arranged in such a way that an internal energy source can move them in accordance with a built-in program of purposeful action. In the mechanist's view, advances in molecular biology corroborate this claim and demonstrate that in principle organisms are no more than complicated physical systems. This is, in essence, the reductionist position, which states that biological principles can be reduced to physical and chemical laws. Antireductionists, of course, contend that molecular biology cannot explain all aspects of living forms.

They say that basic claim of organicism:
...is that organisms must be interpreted as functioning wholes and cannot be understood by means of physics and chemistry alone. Few scientists today call themselves organismic biologists or endorse the doctrines put forward by such organismic theorists as Ludwig von Bertalanffy and Edward Stuart Russell. Nevertheless, most antireductionists subscribe at least to part of the organismic doctrine, in particular to its wholistic claim... In some special sense, then, an organism is regarded as being more than a simple sum of its parts; an additional “something” has accrued to it as a result of the unique arrangement of its components.

It is self-organising or self-directing. The holistic concept of an organism - i.e., the theory that the determining factors in biology are its irreducible wholes - owes much to a systems approach. It holds that the organic relationships between the different parts of an organism are wholly immanent in the physical structure of that
living organic system.


| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:13 PM | | Comments (0)
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