Gernot Falkner (Author)
Renate Falkner (Author)
Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology
Volume: 14
Pages: 209-233
A theory of organisms can be derived from basic propositions of process philosophy, established predominantly by John Dewey and Alfred North Whitehead. This theory is based on the idea that the self-construction of organisms is related to their experience of environmental changes. Setting out from this idea, the following questions concerning the difference between the animate and the inanimate can be answered: (1) Which entities can be defined in physiological terms as parts of an organismic whole, such that a pervasive operative presence of the whole in the part and of the part in the whole constitutes sensitivity? (2) Is there a physiological basis for the psycho-physic dimension of living systems, reflected in an ontological difference between two manifestations of interrelated physiological events that share essential features with Whitehead's „actual entities“? (3) Which physiological processes are involved in information processing about environmental changes, resulting in a self-differentiation of an organism? (4) Is it possible to explain by process philosophy the anticipatory activity of organisms, revealed when an energetically favourable state is disturbed by an external influence and the organism modifies its environment in ways that react upon the organismic body, such that its characteristic pattern is restored by a new but different stationary state? (5) Is there any evidence for the regulatory influence of a cellular memory, acting upon the mutual adjustment of energy converting subsystems of a cell in order to attain an organism-specific stationary state of minimal entropy production under the prevailing environmental condition? (6) How can the historicity of evolutionary processes, revealed in the development of more complex organisms from less complex organisms, be explained by process philosophy? The presented theory of organisms departs from conventional objectivist and neo- Darwinian explanations of biological processes. The validity of this theory is tested using an example from aquatic ecology.
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