Rudolf Steiner's Vision for the Future - Anthroposophical Society in ...

XXXXXXX The Language of Organisms
intention and directed activity, of meaningful information
and timely communication, of aberrant actions and corrective
reactions, of healthy development leading to self-realization,
or ill-health leading to death. Yes, all this language
sits side-by-side with the familiar appeals to causal mechanisms.
But does it sit comfortably?
We will need to explore the use of this special language
of life — this decidedly non-corpselike language — much
further before we can answer that question.
* * *
A subject possessing a power of agency adequate to
regulate or coordinate at the level of the whole organism
looks for all the world like what has traditionally been called
a being. But you will not find biologists writing of beings.
It’s simply not allowed, presumably because it smells of
vitalism, spiritualism, the soul, or some other appeal to an
immaterial reality. We will see later what extraordinary
confusion bedevils this attitude, but I will leave the matter
at rest for the time being. That is, I will simply yield to the
biologist’s language of choice, provisionally defining “a
being” as “whatever makes sense as the subject of all those
terms of agency.” What, or who, is capable of the communicating,
coordinating, and regulating that seems to govern
the activity of cell and organism? We leave aside for now
any features of that agency other than ones for which the
life scientist has spoken (or mumbled).
To think of it positively: I am looking for a way to justify
the standard language of biological theory and description.
After all, a lot of experiment and observation has led
to this language; if we start with it, we will surely gain valuable
clues about the being of the organism. For example, it
tells us that every organism discriminates in many circum-
A subject possessing a power of
agency adequate to regulate or
coordinate at the level of the
whole organism looks for all the
world like what has traditionally
been called a being.
38 • being human
stances between health on the one hand and disease or injury
on the other, and acts flexibly — within its own limits
and based on the particulars of its disorder (which may
never have occurred before in the history of the species) —
to bring a restoration of health. More generally, it pursues
a coherent path of development and self-maintenance, and
manages to reproduce itself via intricate processes at the
molecular, cellular, and organismal levels.
The biologist’s “being” — the subject of those verbs of
agency — is also at home with meaning, or information,
continually transmitting and receiving it, extracting it from
or imposing it upon the environment, interpreting it in light
of its own needs, acting on it, distinguishing the relevant
from the irrelevant. If the literature is to be believed, organic
beings perceive, know, and respond appropriately to the
meanings of diverse stimuli.
This being is also in some sense a self — whatever the
self may be that we are told engages wholesale in “selforganization.”
It does so in part by sponsoring many partial
and subordinate “selves,” as when one speaks of selforganizing
neural networks, self-organizing chromosome
territories, self-organizing tissues, self-organizing protein
structures, and so on. And it may even participate in a
superordinate self: ants are sometimes said to be part of a
“self-organizing ant colony.”
Such, at least, is the being we are handed by biologists.
Not unanimously in all details, to be sure, and in need of
critical assessment without a doubt. But it’s a place to start.
Our aim is to locate this being of the organism a little more
comfortably within the landscape of an acceptable science
— locate it in a way that spares biologists any embarrassment
at their own language. It will require a considerable
journey.
Two Ways of Speaking
We commonly explain occurrences by saying one thing
happened because of — due to the cause of — something
else. But very different sorts of causes can be invoked in this
way. Philosophers have traditionally distinguished, for
example, between the because of reason (He laughed at me
because I made a mistake) and the because of physical law
(The ball rolled down the hill because of gravity). The