“Varieties of organicism – a critical analysis”
Résumé
In earlier work I wrestled with the question of the “ontological status” of
organisms. It proved difficult to come to a clear decision, because there are many
candidates for what such a status is or would be and of course many definitions of
what organisms are. But what happens when we turn to theoretical projects “about”
organisms that fall under the heading “organicist”? I first suggest that organicist
projects have a problem: a combination of invoking Kant, or at least a Kantian
“regulative ideal,” usually presented as the epistemological component (or alternately,
the complete overall vision) of a vision of organism – as instantiating natural
purposes, as a type of “whole” distinct from a merely mechanistically specifiable set
of parts, etc. – and a more ontological statement about the inherent or essential features
of organisms, typically presented according to a combination of a “list of
heroes” or “laundry list” of properties of organisms. This amounts to a category
mistake. Other problems concern the too-strict oppositions between mechanism and
organi(ci)sm, and symmetrical tendencies to “ontologize” (thus objectifying) properties
of organisms and to “subjectify” them (turning them into philosophies of
subjectivity). I don’t mean to suggest that no one should be an organicist or that
Kant is a name that should be banished from civilized society. Rather, to borrow
awkwardly from Sade, “organicists, one more effort!” if one wants a naturalistic,
non-foundationalist concept of organicism, which is indeed quite active in recent
theoretical biology, and which arguably was already alive in the organismic and
even vitalist theories of thinkers like Goldstein and Canguilhem.