We will be addressing the question how we understand what it actually means to be alive – for individual organisms, for cells, for communities of organisms, and for the whole of biosphere. It will be slightly experimental, connecting three authors that address very different aspects of this theme: the question about ‘intentionality’ of immune cells that sustain the integrity of the organism, by Alfred I. Tauber, the notion of ‘aliveness’ and the role of sensing and feeling in living organisms, by Andreas Weber, and finally, a text that addresses the ecological crisis as primarily a crisis of sensibility towards the living world, by Baptiste Morizot.
All three texts bring into light the limits of the dominant mechanistic, positivist, and reductionist paradigms of biology and, from different perspectives, examine their implications, while also offering alternative ways of understanding. However, they also raise important questions about our cultural assumptions, ideas, and practices – some of which we have touched upon in our previous discussions. We hope you will find these text stimulating, or perhaps even slightly provocative, and engage with them critically – as you have probably noticed by now, the aim of this course is not to provide answers, but rather to provide an opportunity to ask good questions!
readings
Alfred I. Tauber. Immunity. The Evolution of an Idea
Chapter 6. A New Biology? (191-218)
Epilogue (219-228)
Baptiste Morizot. Ways of Being Alive
Introduction: The Ecological crisis as a crisis of sensibility (1-24)
Epilogue: Adjusted Considerations (232-242)
Andreas Weber. Biology of Wonder. Aliveness, Feeling, and the Metamorphosis of Science
Introduction: Towards a Poetic Ecology (1-14)
Chapter 1. The Desire for Life (17-35)
Chapter 2. The Machine that can Die (37-70)
questions for discussion
How would you define what ‘aliveness’ means? Does the distinction between living and non-living nature makes any sense to you?
Would you say that individual cells (such as bacteria, but also immune cells) have intentionality?
In medicine, significant amount of knowledge about the structure and function of human body is based on studies of animals. What does this tell us about the kinship between humans and other forms of life?
Animal experimentation often involves pain, and even death. How does medicine legitimize these practices? Do you find these arguments convincing? Why or why not?
What are the possibilities and limitations of drawing distinction between ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’?
How do you perceive the distinction between ‘mechanistic’ and ‘organic’ understanding of nature?
Why do you think that our culture is so eager to understand humans – and the living world – through the objects we make, i.e. machines?
What does ‘subjectivity’ mean to you? And how do you perceive it ’emotionally’ as students of medicine, which makes us mainly exposed to ‘objective’ measurements and facts?
What organ systems or medical fields do you know of that might be interesting to be looked at from a subjective point of view?
According to Alfred Tauber, Elie Metchnikoff proposed that “evolution’s dynamics also occurs within the organism” (p. 2). How does this perspective relate to Lynn Margulis ideas about symbiosis?
Is homeostasis and existence of living multicellular life a result of balanced equal cellular coexistence, or a result of an evolutionary fight, where the stronger/better developed cells are controlling others?
If every cell has its natural purpose and function in our body, why there can be a cancer cell?
Can be a cancer cell just a cell free of control its surroundings, where other cells don’t tell her what to do, and under different signals and within other environments she may have different individual meaning and purpose that just doesn’t pursue the same goals as our body? What is the relationship between the parts and the whole in this instance?
Andreas Weber raises the question whether we can create artificial life. What are your thoughts on this?
Baptiste Morizot conceives of the ecological crisis as primarily a crisis of sensibility. How do you understand his perspective?
Would you think that our materialistic and mechanistic understanding of nature deprives of something essential in terms of how we understand ourselves, and in the ways in which we relate to the living world?
What ideas and practices might help us to rediscover the aliveness of the world?
additional resources
Emanuele Coccia. All Species Have the Same Life. Granta Magazine (essay)
David Abrams. The Mechanical and the Organic. On the Impact of Metaphor in Science (essay)
Daniel J. Nicholson. Is the cell really a machine? (text)
Emanuele Coccia. Metamorphoses (book)
Hans Jonas. The Phenomenon of Life (book)
Kurt Goldstein. The Organism. (book)
Daniel J. Nicholson, John Dupré (Eds). Everything flows: towards a processual philosophy of biology (book)