Chapter III. The origin of the organic world as a manifestation of the organic force,
or orgagenesis as a manifestation of orgábia
Life begins with man
The criterion of life according to V. Gubin. Against the background of the biologists’ and physicists’ approaches to the issue of the criterions of the definition of life, the views of the Soviet physicist-theoretician V. B. Gubin appear decidedly strange. In the preceding chapter, I already mentioned his name in the context of the entropy topic. He denies the second law of thermodynamics as objective reality, but accepts it in the link nature-observer. He could certainly be listed among Berkley’s followers, if it were not for his militant materialism that he manages to combine rather convincingly with double-dyed idealism, although he himself denies the latter. Nonetheless, his approach to the problem of life – non-life makes a lot of sense, which will become evident once I present the views of other philosophers.
Since Gubin rejects the existence of entropy “in general”, it looks quite natural when he claims that “one cannot separate the living objects from the non-living based on their entropy readings, as is often believed. … The entropy of a living organism is practically the same as the entropy of the same volume of ordinary water.”
Gubin is possibly unaware that when entropy is connected to criteria of the living, it is not about the temperature content of the organism-system – it is about the orderliness of the system. This is what the entropy specialists talk and write about, in the West at least. However, I am prepared to agree with his criticism of the conception of “useful development”, which is a variant of the “purposefulness” conceptions. Since this criterion exists on the subjective level, it is inherent not simply to the “living”, as Gubin writes, but only to man, or the observer. If so, it is precisely the observer who will determine what is living and what is not.
For starters, Gubin designates “the existing border”, or the criterion, which is “the minimal threshold of non-indifference” of the observer toward the phenomenon. Non-indifference means that good can be coming from something and bad from something else. “So the truly substantial, critical threshold is the presence or absence of the sense of the type ‘good-bad’. The presence of this sense distinguishes the feeling object from its environment, puts it in a special relation to it, different from the ‘relations’ of microscopic interactions. Without this sense the border between it and the environment does not emerge by itself, and it simply does not exist as a separate independent (by itself) object.”
But only one substratum of matter possesses that kind of sense: man. In other words, life begins with man. So what about bacteria, cells, proteins, plants and animals, which are listed as living organisms by practically everyone? They simply do not qualify as living. How so? Gubin writes: "What do they care how they are called! Inasmuch as they do not have senses of the “good-bad” type, they are indifferent not only to the names they are called, but to much stronger effects, up to a strength that destroys them completely – in perfect analogy to the attitude to all this of some senseless crystals. Hegel called sensation the specific difference, the absolute distinguishing trait of all that is animal. This criterion suffices for us here.”
In this connection, all talk of “growing complexity of the organic world” and of the non-social in general is obvious nonsense. Gubin writes, again quite justly: “But the notions of ‘complex’ or ‘many’ only appear in connection with the living, with its relation to objects of activity and to activity itself: the measure is directly linked to this. For the inanimate nature, complexity does not exist (and neither does information): it does not torment itself, struggling to accomplish something, does not celebrate victories, does not worry if something does not work out.”
Let us recall: Darwin described in approximately the same vein the struggle in the evolutionary world. Gould also used almost the same words to describe this world. But it was not by accident that Gubin remembered Hegel. What he described is directly related to Hegel, to his view of life. But for starters let me remind here the positions of Aristotle and Kant.
Aristotle’s Soul . To the great Greek, the dividing line between the living and the non-living was the soul, which, in turn, is "the first actuality of a natural body which has life potentially." In the spirit of materialist dialectics, Aristotle explains the interrelations between entelechy, soul and body: "And since the product of the two is an ensouled thing, the body is not the actuality of soul, but the latter is the actuality of a certain kind of body. And for this reason those have the right conception who believe that the soul does not exist without a body and yet is not itself a kind of body." In exactly the same key Gubin explains the “ideal sensations” in their relations to matter/body. In a similar fashion dialectical materialism explains the interrelations between brain and thought (detailed discussion of this is to follow).
Based on these criteria, whom does Aristotle regard as “living”? We read: "But life is so spoken of in many ways, and we say that a thing lives if but one of the following is present - intellect, perception of movement, and rest in respect of place, and furthermore the movement involved in nutrition, and both decay and growth." The presence of the indicated traits enabled Aristotle to designate as “living” the entire organic world known in his time, i.e. plants and animals. One can agree with this or disagree, but it is worth noting that Aristotle introduces a truly qualitative category – the soul – for distinguishing between the living and the non-living; he interprets it quite materialistically, by the way. It is another matter that it was believed in his time that plants and animals have souls (even today, though, there are quite a few mystics who still believe in these before-our-era notions). However, should we stand on the position of science, which forces us to exclude the presence of soul in plants and animals, then we will be compelled do admit that life begins with man – the only creature who realizes the concept of the soul through his own consciousness.
Life according to Kant. Kant’s above-mentioned work contains a small but very important fragment dedicated to “life”. I quote it here in its entirety: "Inertia of matter is and means nothing other than lifelessness of matter by itself. Life means the ability of the substance to determine itself for action, proceeding from an internal principle, the ability of the ultimate substance to determine itself for change, and the ability of material substance to determine itself for motion or rest as a change of its state. But we know no other internal principle of substance that would cause it to change its state except for desire, and in general no other internal activity except for thinking, tied to that which depends on it, [i.e.] the feeling of pleasure or displeasure and lust (Begierde) or will. These defining foundations and activity do not belong, however, to perceptions of our external senses, and therefore they do not belong to definitions of matter as matter. Therefore every matter as such is lifeless."
This entire fragment consists of conceptual terms: desire, thinking, sense, longing and will. Ultimately, one has to possess these listed qualities in order to be able to define oneself as life. We return again to self-awareness. It was no accident that Hegel developed this idea dialectically.
Life according to Hegel. In Hegel’s writings, we fall once again in the embrace of soul and body. Hegel insists on clear distinction between “idea”, “concept” and “reality”. Otherwise "Wholes like the state and the church cease to exist when the unity of their Notion and their reality is dissolved; man, the living being, is dead when soul and body are parted in him; dead nature, the mechanical and chemical world - taking, that is, the dead world to mean the inorganic world, otherwise it would have no positive meaning at all - dead nature, then, if it is separated into its Notion and its reality, is nothing but the subjective abstraction of a thought form and a formless matter. Spirit that was not Idea, was not the unity of the Notion with its own self, or the Notion that did not have the Notion itself for its reality would be dead, spiritless spirit, a material object."
In addition, one should not only distinguish between notion and reality, but also understand the meaning of “subjective notion” and “objectivity”. Hegel needs all these notions and distinctions between them in order to avoid confusion as to what the discourse is about: life as the idea of the concept of life, or life as a subjective notion that does not coincide with its internal being, and so on. If these distinctions are left out, scientific analysis turns into empty talk.
So what is life? Hegel answers: "The Notion of life, or universal life, is the immediate Idea, the Notion whose objectivity corresponds to it." Inasmuch life is an idea, or concept, life can only be defined by the one who formulates this concept or idea. Therefore, there is need for this same tiresome observer, i.e. man – in Hegel’s words, "the living individual." "This is in the first place life as soul, as the Notion of itself that is completely determined within itself, the initiating, self-moving principle. The Notion in its simplicity contains determinate externality as a simple moment enclosed within it. But, further, this soul in its immediacy is immediately external and possesses an objective being of its own—a reality that is subjugated to the end, the immediate means, in the first instance, objectivity as predicate of the subject; but further, objectivity is also the middle term of the syllogism; the corporeality of the soul is that whereby the soul unites itself with external objectivity. The living being possesses corporeality in the first instance as reality that is immediately identical with the Notion; thus it has this corporeality in general by nature."
It follows from this passage that the concept of life is objective, and its source is nature. However, in order to single himself out from the indifferent being of nature, the living individual must possess the need to sense himself with relation to the “indifferent objectivity”. This difference unfolds through contradictions of different sort, in which such phenomena emerge as good, feeling, pain, etc. By the way, "Pain is therefore the prerogative of living natures," or, rather, real existence reveals itself in the pain experienced by a living being.
In his Phenomenology of the Spirit Hegel reflects, in a rather complicated manner, about life through the category of "self-consciousness." Namely, it "distinguishes as having a being distinct from itself, has in it too, so far as it is affirmed to be, not merely the aspect of sense-certainty and perception; it is a being reflected into itself, and the object of immediate desire is something living." Generally speaking, Hegel is hard to retell; he can only be studied. Nonetheless, the following conclusions suggest themselves, following from his reflections:
Life is a concept, and a concept can only be formulated by a self-awareness, which is only possessed by a living individual. At the same time life is objectivity, real being, but it is being that distinguishes itself from “indifferent objectivity” through reflection into the concept, which forms in the unity of soul and body that manifests itself through sensations “good-bad”, pain, longings, etc. All this together is none other than man. As a result, we see that life in its true meaning begins and ends in man, and its separating border is the soul/entelechy – according to Aristotle; self-awareness – according to Kant and Hegel; the sensations of “good-bad” – according to Gubin.
Thus, the simplest definition of life is this: life is man. This definition can be made to look more scientific: life is that form of organized matter that realizes its separateness from the surrounding world and is capable of influencing this world. This definition resolves many of the previously discussed problems: progress, complexity, purposefulness, etc. When I quoted above Engels’ expression that life is death, I did not object to it because Engels had in mind the organic nature, which is subject unequivocally to its laws, including the second law of thermodynamics. From my definition, a different consequence follows: life is the constant struggle against death, i.e. the struggle against the law of entropy growth. For the organic world, the word “struggle” has no meaning, since this word is tied inseparably to such concepts as will, goal and means. It is not struggle that takes place in the organic world, but adaptation, namely the natural, not artificial (i.e. meaningful) selection. Darwin guessed the perfectly correct expression for his theory of evolution.
Man remains a part of nature, of course – at least in the part called the body, which is subject to the laws of the organic world. However, in his head, i.e. in his consciousness and thinking, he is already in another world – the world that is called social. The joining of soul and body led to the emergence of man – a new integrity in the Universe. Man hatched out of the organic world, but as an integrity, he ceased to be a part of it, even though he consists of the elements of that world (proteins, chromosomes, etc.) Man created another world – the social one, qualitatively different from the organic world. In the same way the organic world, which hatched from the inorganic world, is qualitatively different from it, even though it consists of its elements (elementary particles, atoms, molecules, etc.) All this means that there is no life in the organic world, and thus biology – the name of the science suggested by Jean Baptiste Lamarck in 1802 – is incorrect in light of the view presented above. It should be called orgalogy – the science about the organic world (not to be confused with organology – the science about organs, which exists already). Hence, orgagenesis (the origin of the organic world) and orgábia – the organic force.
The above-said does not remove several of the above-mentioned problems connected directly to the organic world. This includes the same old question: where does the organic world begin, and what are its interrelations with the inorganic world? As well as this above-posed question: are there laws that govern this world? In order to answer these questions, we shall have to dip a little once again into philosophy.
(Philosophical-sociological Essay)