The Nature Institute

“Is it, then, possible to imagine a new Natural Philosophy, continually conscious that the 'natural object' produced by analysis and abstraction is not reality but only a view, and always correcting the abstraction? I hardly know what I am asking for. I hear rumours that Goethe's approach to nature deserves fuller consideration—that even Dr Steiner may have seen something that orthodox researchers have missed. The regenerate science which I have in mind would not do even to minerals and vegetables what modern science threatens to do to man himself. When it explained it would not explain away. When it spoke of the parts it would remember the whole. ”
—C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

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In June I took a week-long course at The Nature Institute near the town of Harlemville in New York state and I thought I would give you a report (albeit greatly belated). My overall experience was very positive.

Encountering Goethean Science

The Nature Institute engages in science after the manner of Goethe. In a nutshell, one could describe Goethe's approach as Platonic without mathematical speculation, or one could describe it as phenomenological or qualitative. An article from their newsletter lists some synonyms of Goethean science:

• Holistic science
• Goethean science
• Phenomena-centered science
• Qualitative science
• Participative science
• Contextual science

The course was taught by Institute President Craig Holdrege and his wife Henrike. (The other principal of the Institute, Steve Talbott, was away for most of the time I was there.) We spent part of each day learning from Henrike about the "elements" of earth, water, air. In practice, these are equivalent to the three states of matter, but concretized in the conditions of the world, e.g., most liquid in the world is water and not quicksilver or ammonia. The other part of the day we spent with Craig "in the field" observing nature firsthand. Our usual venue was the wetland entrusted to the Institute's stewardship only a short walk away. But we also retreated to the Institute to pool our observations, to discuss, and to analyze.

What most impressed me was Craig Holdrege’s aversion to mystical explanatory invocations and his commitment to objective observation and explanation. Having now seen (and participated in) a solid example of the practice of Goethean science, I understand that it really is possible to do rigorous qualitative science, albeit very difficult because qualities are so much harder to pin down that quantities. Another article from their newsletter describes the challenge well:

A new kind of objectivity. Every scientist must learn to be rigorous and objective in his or her judgments. But this is not so easy once we have rediscovered our ties of kinship with, and responsibility for, nature. It is always tempting to yield to mere sentiment or wishful thinking, and to mistake one's own soul for the soul of nature. So the demands for clear judgment and knowledge of self are much greater for the holistic than for the conventional researcher. As Owen Barfield¹ once remarked, "Any reasonably honest fool can be objective about objects." But it's a different matter when, having experienced ourselves in the world and the world in ourselves, we must nevertheless distinguish our purely individual, subjective tendencies from the surrounding life of the world.

The last day Senior Researcher Steve Talbott returned to the area and stopped by the Institute. I got to talk to him for more than half an hour. You may have read some of Steve's articles in The New Atlantis; he also edits NetFuture, a periodical that explores the subtle ways our technology molds us. Steve comes from Oregon and attended Wheaton College. He was (and is still) a neighbor of Craig’s. From their conversations, Craig had him edit a manuscript. When Craig decided to start the Institute, he asked Steve on board.

Craig taught at the Hawthorne Valley Waldorf school for many years before starting the Institute. He lived in Germany a while and studied at the Goetheneum, the center of Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophical Movement. While in Germany he met and married Henrike. Henrike’s specialty is projective geometry.

The others attending the course were, as one might expect, “crunchy,” that is, interested in getting back to nature (I must admit strong sympathy, given the crass commercialization of culture and the industrialization of agriculture these days). As far as I could tell without forcing political conversations, they for the most part seemed to share the generally liberal opinions most people hold in the Northeast these days, but I was impressed by their outgoing, generous demeanors and their desire to engage the truth of the world. I picked up on no overt ideological agendas, such as feminism or communism. Almost everyone there came through some association with some work of Rudold Steiner, the great expositor of Goethean science. Steiner was the originator of the Waldorf School movement and many participants worked at Waldorf schools.

Impressions and Anaylsis

Goethe speaks of finding archetypes. Certainly he was of a Platonic mindset, which bodes well, but the great value of his science lies in its phenomenology. The human intellect has a unfortunate tendency to become satisfied with established notions and to contract within itself. Goethe’s phenomenology is a model for engaging the world and makes a superb complement to the Aristotelian philosophy of nature.

That being said, I’m not sure what to make of Rudolf Steiner or anthroposophy (his "spiritual science"). Steiner, as you may know, was the driving force behind Goethean studies, and his influence extends to the present. The Institute lies in the Hawthorne Valley, which is a hotbed of Steiner activity, and is adjacent to a biodynamic farm (an example of another movement Steiner started) and down the road from a Waldorf school. My reservations stem from Steiner's one-time association with Madam Blavatsky (anthroposophy retains many of the same esoteric ideas of her theosophy) and his rejection of many essential elements of creedal Christianity, such as the Virgin Birth and Jesus’ bodily Resurrection, not to mention his embrace of karma and reincarnation.

Still, a friend I made at the course tells me that Steiner didn't insist on people accepting his ideas in toto, and was in fact opposed to blind invocations of his doctrines (he was consistently eclectic, so to speak). Some of Steiner’s terminology sounds mystical, but may be very reasonable, e.g., his “ethereal body” seems similar to Aristotle’s “vegetative soul.” In general I suspect there are many parallels and resonances between Steiner and Aristotle-Aquinas. My friend sent me copies of a couple of Steiner's talks. One was an excellent review of how modern thought went wrong (nothing original, but excellently written) in which he spoke favorably of St. Thomas. The other was rather mystical and invoked notions like a "Luciferian principle" opposed to a "Christ principle" that combine to constitute the human heart. Ugh.

Another reason for caution is the ambiguity of language. Among the many treasures, I've found terminological imprecision to be an occasional problem in some writings from the Nature Institute (will post more on this later). As far as Steiner is concerned, my suspicion is that he is wont to play a little loose with words, as we see in his redefining "Christianity" to make himself the model Christian. Unfortunately I haven't read enough of his writings to say anything definite.

Having read and reflected on some back issues of the Institute's newsletter, In Context, it strikes me that one big difference between the Nature Institute's Goethean approach, and the Thomistic approach with which I am more familiar is the relationship of knowledge to the senses and to reason. Goetheans dwell on sense information in all its ambiguity; they have an aversion to systematizing and reason in the modern rationalist sense, and perhaps a shyness to reason in the classical-medieval sense, which prevent them from rising much above the senses (both blessing and curse).² On the other hand, the perennial philosophic approach, while starting in the senses, emphasizes reason and "invisible" principles and uses them to critique the senses. The Goethean center of gravity is the visible, and Thomistic center of gravity is the "invisible."³

There are dangers in both approaches. A truth of faith—our fallen human nature—(but one we can also know without special revelation⁴) tells us our perceptions are never fully trustworthy because the way we interpret them depends on our natural inclinations, which are not what they should be. There is more to the world than what's visible, and we too easily imagine ourselves and our senses sufficient to everything. The danger of a more dogmatic approach is the mantra of our modern elites and needs hardly be reiterated here: an insensitivity to particulars, and a slothful tendency to rely on vacuous generalities.

To perceive truth most effectively, there must be a creative tension between the senses and reason. Thus there is a necessity for both approaches to the world, and especially to the natural world: the visible and the "invisible" complement each other.

In sum, I learned a lot during my time at The Nature Institute and it gave me much to think about. Like any organization, it has its imperfections, but it has a unique and valuable contribution to make to the study of the natural world: a contribution the like of which we can use much more of these days.

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Notes

1. Owen Barfield was one of the Inklings (along with Lewis and Tolkien) and studied (in what sense I do not know) anthroposophy; his book Saving the Appearances: a Study in Idolatry was recommended several times during the course.

2. Nevertheless, it seems Goetheans do allow sense impressions to critique "each other"—though to be precise this involves a form of reasoning, even if not abstract.

3. Here I'm concentrating wholly on Goethean science and ignoring the "spiritual" or esoteric side of Steiner. It must be admitted that Thomists do sometimes excessively dwell on the invisible, e.g., allowing an emphasis on primary matter to obscure the importance of secondary matter to Aristotle's thought.

4. Of course we also know our inclinations are not what they should be by the fact that human nature doesn't "work" as it should: witness the necessity to a healthy society of well-formed children, which require the parents' marital fidelity versus natural man's inability to fulfill this obligation.

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Steve Talbott, "Goethean Science?", In Context 1 (Spring, 1999), 4.

Steve Talbott, "A Way of Knowing as a Way of Healing," In Context 1 (Spring 1999), 3-5.

Faith in Science

Paul Davies has an op-ed in today's New York Times on how today's science—cosmology in particular—involves a large dose of faith. He points out that the belief in ordered, rational laws governing the universe is a matter of faith. He rightly points out that this assumption originates in the Christian cultural matrix.

But from where do the laws themselves originate? The origin of physical law has a renewed salience because of the fine-tuning of the universe for life. The modern, secularist alternative to a Creator is a "multiverse" in which the laws of physics just happen to be suited to life in our part of the cosmos, but are different and inhospitable to life elsewhere. Davies rightly points out the problems in this "explanation":

The multiverse theory is increasingly popular, but it doesn’t so much explain the laws of physics as dodge the whole issue. There has to be a physical mechanism to make all those universes and bestow bylaws on them. This process will require its own laws, or meta-laws. Where do they come from? The problem has simply been shifted up a level from the laws of the universe to the meta-laws of the multiverse.

This comment is spot-on, but unfortunately he stops making sense near the end of the piece.

And just as Christians claim that the world depends utterly on God for its existence, while the converse is not the case, so physicists declare a similar asymmetry: the universe is governed by eternal laws (or meta-laws), but the laws are completely impervious to what happens in the universe.

It seems to me there is no hope of ever explaining why the physical universe is as it is so long as we are fixated on immutable laws or meta-laws that exist reasonlessly or are imposed by divine providence. The alternative is to regard the laws of physics and the universe they govern as part and parcel of a unitary system, and to be incorporated together within a common explanatory scheme.

In other words, the laws should have an explanation from within the universe and not involve appealing to an external agency. The specifics of that explanation are a matter for future research. But until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus.

The breakdown of Davies's argument shows that he is unaware of an additional level of faith inherent to science. As I've written here before, scientific knowledge is based on specialized experience; the rest of us take on faith what scientists report to us as the results of their experiments. Even scientists' "knowledge" requires faith in a web of others' results that no one could reproduce in a single lifetime. Philosophy on the other hand—natural philosophy especially—is (properly) based on experiences common to all healthy adults. We can go through the reasoning process ourselves based on our own experiences; there is no faith involved.¹ Philosophy is the "missing link" that should bridge the gap between science and religion.

Philosophy should provide the common language in the "science-religion" dialog, of which Davies is a noted participant. Until there is a common language, the only possible results are, on the one hand, shouting matches, such as Richard Dawkins inspires, and, on the other hand, religion servilely submitting to science's demonstrable domination of the sensible world. The latter is the form that this so-called dialog typically takes these days.

Were Davies philosophically educated, he would realize the nonsense of expecting physical laws to have an explanation within the universe. Nothing in the universe explains its own existence—this is a matter not of faith, but of philosophy; it requires no faith.

Furthermore he would realize that since the object of modern physics is the quantifiable aspect of natural, moving things, physics itself can never rise to the level of answering "why does anything exist?".² This and like questions are metaphysical; metaphysics properly rests on natural philosophy but transcends it to speak of immaterial things, things that do not change.

We can all eagerly hope that Davies takes some time to learn a little philosophy. But until he does, we can at least applaud Davies's assault on the "faithless" pretensions of scientists.

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Notes

1. Davies says in the opening paragraph, "In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue." Davies's piece rejects the notion that science requires no faith, but it is not clear that he sees any reason in religion, which would itself be a problem in his worldview. The idea that faith and reason stand in opposition is a caricature of the Protestant Christian conception of the relationship of revelation and reason.

2. Nothing becoming something is not a motion (motion involves already existing things), and is thus unquantifiable (not even zero or null captures "nothing", since those two concepts imply the possibility of something, and absolute "nothing" includes not even possibilities). Anything that exists necessarily is for that reason eternal and the eternal is outside the purview of modern science, as it cannot be experienced by finite beings like ourselves, either directly or with instruments.

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Paul Davies, "Taking Science on Faith," New York Times (November 24, 2007).

Nanogenerators—for Good or Ill

I'm rather late reporting on this, but it's such an important development, that it cannot go unnoted. Scientists have developed a way to power nanodevices off ambient vibrations. The device consists of zinc oxide nanowires whose movement generates a tiny electrical current via the piezoelectric effect.

The salutary uses are the most obvious, and of course the ones touted by the inventor:

But Wang believes the nano-generator could be ideal for powering tiny devices, including those that may be implanted inside the human body. "Imagine self-powered force-sensors implanted in blood vessel walls, taking your blood pressure. Or generators in your shoes that can charge devices while you walk," he says.

Almost any device that could use a wireless, mobile power source could potentially use the nanogenerator, Wang says: "I have full confidence that within three years we will have something that is useful commercially." (New Scientist)

Whether or not Wang's prediction proves true, the fact of this technology marks a decisive change in the possibilities for the kind of technology we can implant in the human body. No longer will machines in vivo be limited to bulky external power supplies or the chemical dangers of miniature batteries.

But imagine the harm that could be done if someone designed a malicious device that could be implanted in your body. Perhaps a self-replicating nanomachine—essentially a human-made micro-organism. As always, technological development expands the possibility not only for good, but also for unparalleled mischief.

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Kevin Bullis, "Nano-generator could power tiny devices," Technology Review (April 27, 2006).

Michael Reilly, "Free Electricity from Nano Generators," New Scientist (05 April 2007).

Politics and Morality

In the November issue of First Things, Richard John Neuhaus has a great article on "The Politics of Bioethics." He makes a number of points that those of us advocating an objective standard of morality should keep in mind in discussing bioethical issues.

First, how should we talk about human dignity?

For that purpose, then, is the concept of human dignity useful? The better phrase is “the dignity of the human person.” “Human dignity” may suggest the collective and include efforts such as taking technological charge of the evolution of the human species. “The dignity of the human person” places the accent on the individual—although, to be sure, the individual situated in community. The dignity of the human person may entail an important, although limited, measure of autonomy. Dignity as autonomy features strongly in, for instance, arguments for “death with dignity.” Morally, however, the dignity of the human person is affirmed most significantly not in the assertion of one’s own autonomy but in the protection of others who are most subject to having their dignity violated. Therefore, in bioethics as in medicine more generally, the first rule is “Do no harm.” That first rule enjoins us to protect and maintain something that is recognized as good simply in its being.

Second, that politics is inherently a moral undertaking.

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and his Politics are both discourses on morality. From them we can derive this definition of politics: Politics is free persons deliberating the question, How ought we to order our life together? The ought in that suggested definition clearly indicates that politics is (in its nature, if not always in its practice) a moral enterprise. Our political vocabulary—what is fair or unfair, what is just or unjust, what serves the common good—is inescapably a moral vocabulary. Contra David Hume and many others, it is not so obvious that an ought cannot be derived from an is. In the ordinary experience of individuals and communities, it is done with great regularity. Neither agreement nor consensus is required on all the details of “whatever it is about human beings that entitles them to basic human rights and freedoms.” People who explain the “whatever it is” in quite different ways can agree on what ought and ought not be done to human beings.

Third, that what poses as a debate is over the beginning of human life should be recognized for what it actually is: a debate over which humans the state will recognize the human rights of.

The moral question is not, as the court majority claimed, about when a human life begins. That is a biological and medical question on which there is no serious dispute. The moral question can be put this way: At what point in its existence ought we, and for what reasons ought we, to recognize that a human life should be protected in law?

On this issue, if no other, Peter Singer has it right. As the noted Princeton advocate of infanticide said in a June 20, 2005, letter to the New York Times rebuking Mario Cuomo for his confused thinking about abortion: “The crucial moral question is not when human life begins, but when human life reaches the point at which it merits protection. . . . Unless we separate these two questions—when does life begin, and when does it merit protection?—we are unlikely to achieve any clarity about the moral status of embryos.”

That moral question is also and unavoidably a political question. One might make the case that it is the most fundamental of political questions. If politics is deliberating how we ought to order our life together, there can hardly be a more basic question than this: Who belongs to the we? Although ostensibly removing it from politics, the abortion decisions forced into the political arena an issue that was thought to have been settled in the centuries of civilizational tradition of which our polity is part. Namely, that it is morally wrong and rightly made unlawful to deliberately kill unborn children.

I've only drawn out the three most outstanding points, but there's much, much more to recommend the article. The entire piece is well worth reading and is a valuable contribution to current discussions on bioethics and the right to life.

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Richard John Neuhaus, "The Politics of Bioethics" First Things (November 2007), 23-28.

Needless Invocations of Evolution

Fred Reed's column in the latest American Conservative is right on the money.

Oh, the hope-draining, soul-crushing tiresomeness of it. I find in Psychology Today a piece called "Ten Politically Incorrect Truths about Human Nature," explaining various aspects of behavior in Darwinian terms. The smugness of that "politically incorrect"¹ is characteristic of those who want a sense of adventure without risk. Nothing is more PC than an evolutionary explanation, unless it explains obvious racial differences that we aren't supposed to talk about.

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To force mating into the mold of reductionist fitness-shopping, it is necessary to connect beauty and sexual attractiveness with fitness. This is easily done by making up stories. I can do it by the hour: Wide-set eyes improve depth perception and prevent death when jumping about on rocks. Even teeth cut food more efficiently, avoiding the metabolic burden of inefficient chewing which, in time of famine, would lead to starvation. Ready laughter clears the lungs and avoids pneumonia. Shiny blonde hair reflects sunlight better and makes it easier for men to find fertile women at a distance.

But it reeks of improvisation, of beginning with a conclusion and putty-knifing the logic.

The point here is not that this article shows evolution to be necessarily false. The point is that invoking the theory for such tenuous reasons is another example of how mindless its use has become—even among Ph.D.'s, whom one would hope would know better (but almost never do—it takes a lot of education to be truly stupid). Perhaps having cranks glob onto a theory is simply the hazard for the reigning paradigm—but it makes one wonder, since explanatory power is a confirmation of a theory, if this low quality of confirmation is largely what Darwin's theory rests on.

Furthermore, it's not clear what "natural selection" means in terms of human beings. Recall that Darwin called it "natural selection" to contrast it with artificial selection humans use to breed animals.² The use of "natural selection" with regard to human mating patterns is completely illegitimate, unless we're going to claim that the human being who selects a mate for his dog is completely different from the human being who selects his own mate. Is the human soul utterly impotent against its "animal" urges? Is there truly no causal connection between a person's intellect and his actions, except in the case of dog breeding (and writing the theory of evolution)? These are all silly consequences of the Cartesian dualism that consummated its hold on our conception of natural world with Darwin's theory.

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Notes

1. Talk about politically incorrect: check out his latest column on James Watson's recent "Freudian slip-up."

2. Stove, Darwinian Fairytales—I highly recommend this book.

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Fred Reed, "Brown-Eyed Girl," The American Conservative (October 22, 2007), 35.

Alan S. Miller Ph.D., Satoshi Kanazawa Ph.D. "Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature," Psychology Today (July-August 2007).

David Stove, Darwinian Fairytales: Selfish Genes, Errors of Heredity, and Other Fables of Evolution (Encounter Books, 2007).

Jonas on Philosophical Biology

Lately I've been reading a great book a friend recommended. It's called The Phenomenon of Life by Hans Jonas. It really is surperb, so I'm using some of his insights in a paper I'm now busily preparing for next week's American Maritain Association meeting (which will probably prevent me from posting next week).

I've typed out some selections from the main line of the book's argument below. But before presenting those, I thought I'd summarize that argument for you first.

One big thrust of the book is establishing the continuity of man with living things, not in a materialistic sense, but to show how man is not in some utterly different ontological category from the rest of the world. The thinking is that unless we want to bracket living things as somehow subject to wholly different natural laws, we need to establish man’s continuity with the whole of the material world.

Jonas identifies the origin of the distinctly human parallel capacities to recognize truth and to act freely in the unique distance or mediacy of the human being from the world. He traces the mediacy that culminates in human beings through its development in the vegetative and animal powers of living things. The increase in organisms’ powers from vegetative to sensitive to rational comes from increasing separation between an organism and its environment in parallel with a novel and more intimate connection or dependence on the environment. Metabolism allows and requires the constituents of the living thing to be constantly renewed while preserving the identity of the organism they form. An organism, by living, asserts an independence of identity from the matter that constitutes it, in parallel with a dependence on the matter to maintain itself; thus the organism separates itself from the world while taking on a new dependence or outward directedness to the world. This is the beginning of internality that is yet open to the environment, and that even needs its environment.

Whereas in plants, the environment is immediately present, the transition to animal life brings distance between the organism and its needs, a distance which sentience, emotion, and mobility must bridge. Again we see the organism’s separation from the world along with a stronger connection to it. The internality of the organism increases, as does its dependence on its environment.

In man, emotional mediacy grows into rational mediacy through his image-making ability. Whereas animals “recognize” objects by merely comparing present sense impressions to past, humans actually form an image of every object they encounter and in fact do not see anything except through an image. The image is either adequate to its object or it is not—either true or false—and implicit in any affirmation of truth is rejection of falsehood, which requires the freedom to say “no.”

Below are the quotations I picked out. Believe me, there is much more to this book worth reading. I highly recommend it.

Committed to itself, put at the mercy of its own performance, life must depend for it on conditions over which it has no control, and which may deny themselves at any time. Thus dependent on propitiousness or unpropitiousness of outer reality, it is exposed to the world from which it has seceded, and by means of which it must yet maintain itself. Opposing in its internal autonomy the entropy rule of general causality, it is yet subject to it. Emancipated from the identity with matter, it is yet in need of it: free, yet under the whip of necessity; isolated, yet in indispensable contact; seeking contact, yet in danger of being destroyed by it, and threatened no less by its want: imperiled thus from both sides, by importunity and aloofness of the world, and balanced on the narrow ridge between the two; in its process, which must no cease, liable to interference; in the straining of its temporality always facing the imminent no-more” thus does the living form carry on its separatist existence in matter—paradoxical, unstable, precarious, finite, and in intimate company with death. The fear of death with thich the hazard of this existence is charged is a never-ending comment on the audacity of the original venture upon which substance embarked in turning organic. (5)

In this process of self-sustained being, the relation of the organism to its material substance is of a double nature: the materials are essential to it specifically, accidental individually; it coincides with their actual collection at the instant, but is not bound to any one collection in the succession of instants, “riding” their change like the crest of a wave and bound only to their form of collection which endures as its own feat. Dependent on their availability as materials, it is independent of their samenss as these; its own, functional identity, passingly incorporating theirs, is of a different order. In a word, the organic form stands in dialectial relation of needful freedom to matter. (80)

[I]n order to change matter, the living form must have matter at its disposal, and it finds it outside itself, in the foreign “world.” Thereby life is turned outward and toward the world in a peculiar relatedness of dependence and possibility…. It is important to se that this “spatial” self-transcendence, opening into an environment, is grounded in the fundamental transcendence of organic form relative to its matter, for it is this which constitutionally refers it beyond its given material composition to foreign matter as needed and potentially its own. In other words, the self-transcendence of life in having a world, with all its promise of higher and more comprehensive stages, springs from the primary antinomy of freedom and necessity inherent in organism as such. (84)

It then also follows that with respect to the organic sphere, the external linear time-pattern of antecedent and sequent, involving the causal dominance of the past, is inadequate: while mere externality is, at least can be presented as, wholly determined by what it was, life is essentially also what it is going to be and just becoming: in its case, the extensive order of past and future is intensively reversed. This is the root of the teleological or finalistic nature of life: finalism is in the first place a dynamic character of a certain mode of existence, coincident with the freedom and identity of form in relation to matter, and only in the second place a fact of structure or physical organization, as exemplified in the relation of organic parts to the whole and in the functional fitness of organism generally. With this Aristotelian reminder we may return from analysis to discussion. (86)

Where, then does that [cybernetic] model fall short? The answer can be compressed into cone statement: living things are creatures of need. Only living things have needs and act on needs. Need is based both on the necessity for the continuous self-renewal of the organism by the metabolic process, and on the organism’s elemental urge thus precariously to continue itself. This basic self-concern of all life, in which necessity and will are bound together, manifests itself on the level of animality as appetite, fear, and all the rest of the emotions. The pang of hunger, the passion of the chase, the fury of combat, the anguish of flight, the lure of love—these, and not the data transmitted by the receptors, imbue objects with the character of goals, negative or positive, and make behavior purposive. The mere element of effort lifts bodily activity out of the class of mechanical performance, and the fact that movement requires effort means that an animal will move only under the incentive of an interest. (126)

From this point of view we see wherein the real advance of developed animality lies. Its mediacy of world-relation is an increase of the mediacy which is already peculiar to organic existence on the first (metabolizing) level, as compared to the immediate self-identity of inorganic matter. This increase mediacy buys greater scope, internal and external, at the price of greater hazard, internal and external. A more pronounced self is set over against a more pronounced world. The progressive nervous centralization of the animal organism emphasizes the former, while correspondingly the environment becomes open space in which the free-moving sentient has to fend for itself. (107)

The principle here involved on the part of the subject is the mental separation of form from matter. It is this that makes possible the vicarious presence of the physically absent at once with the self-effacement of the physically present. Here we have a specifically human fact, and the reason why we expect neither making nor understanding images from animals. The animal deals with the present object itself. If it is sufficiently like another object, it is an object of the same kind. The likeness aids the recognition of the object-kind, but is not itself the object of recognition. Recognized is the present object alone as “one such,” that is, as familiar in certain properties. These, spotlighted by activation of memory traces, call up in turn their former associates, which enter as expectations into the perceptual picture and , once recognition takes place, form part of the “presence” of the object. Nothing but this is present, standing entirely for itself, though imbued with past experience. Only reality counts, and reality knows no representation. In our search, there for, for the conditions of image-making we are referred from the faculty of perceiving likeness to the more fundamental one of separating eidos from concrete reality. (167)

For the animal mere similitude does not exist. Where we perceive it, the animal perceives either sameness or otherness, but not both in one, as we do in the apprehension of similitude. (166)

The sense in which one can speak of an experience of truth may be illustrated by the situation in which one feels moved to exclaim “So this is what it really is!”—such exclamation containing a submerged, if not explicit, “and not this!” The illustration is to convey the at once emphatic and antithetical character of the truth-experience, i.e., that it stands out from the normal flow of acceptance of phenomena and against the background of error and falsehood: this background being itself an “experience” only realized in the act of supersedure by its opposite. In short, we wish to indicate an element of negation. Hence follows, as a first proposition, that the capacity for truth presupposes the capacity to negate, and that therefore only a being that can entertain negativity, that can say “no,” can entertain truth. And since the power of negation is a part of freedom, indeed a defining ingredient of it, the proposition is that freedom is a prerequisite of truth, and that the experience of truth itself is the evidence and exercise of a certain kind of freedom. (175)

The distinction between truth and falsehood, and therefore the idea of knowledge, arises only where the “wrong” perception is not simply supplanted by the “right” one but survives to be confronted as falsified with the right one; or more generally, where two terms are available for comparison, and one of them is accepted as the standard by which the other is judged. (178)

But genuiness itself comes to be discovered only with the experience of its opposite, which furthermore must be retained in the mind for comparison and contrast: the mere “explosion” of an impression by a subsequent corrective impression is not enough. (180)

The new mediacy consists in the interposition of the abstracted and mentally manipulable eidos between sense and actual object, just as on the level of animal mediacy the perception of objects was interposed between the organism and its primary environment-relation. Imaging and speaking man ceases to see things directly: he sees them through the screen of representations of which he has become possessed by his own previous dealings with objects, and which are evoked by the present perceptual content, impregnating it with their symbolic charge, and added to by the new experience itself. (184–185)

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Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2001/1966). —

Greatness and History

I was talking to a friend the other day about the current trend among certain faithful Catholics to refer to the late Pope John Paul II as "John Paul the Great." There is even a "John Paul the Great University" that opened its doors this fall. It seems like an unwise trend to me and one characteristic of the narcissism of our society to pronounce on a matter better left to posterity.

Please don't get be wrong. I admire the late pontiff as much as anyone. Playing such a large role in bringing down communism might itself qualify someone as "great," but in addition John Paul II also left us with so many wonderful writings, not to mention the courageous example of his holy death.

The problem I see is that we really cannot fairly assess the value of a person's legacy for years—that is, until we really see the fruit of that legacy. To call someone "great" who is only a few years in the grave is to assume a power that lies beyond any single generation. But as self-involved as we are these days, we assume that anything that strikes us as great at this moment can only be great for all time. This is the same narcissistic age that arrogates to itself the power to name itself ("modern," "post-modern").

What's even more troubling is the undercurrent one senses among many "John Paul the Great" cheerleaders that faithful Catholics can only share their enthusiasm and that to do otherwise is to be less than faithful. It's almost as if they believe Christian orthodoxy requires the believer to surrender to the cult of personality that accreted around the late Pontiff (and that to a degree extends to his successor). Let's not take our eyes off the ball: the whole point of the Papacy is not the man who occupies the Chair of Peter, but the reverence due the office of Peter and its role in preserving the orthodoxy of the Catholic Faith.