A science of beings?
Posted: 14 Oct 2024, 18:00
Is a Science of Beings Possible ?
Craig Holdrege
forty years ago while I was in college. It gave me occasion
to reflect then, and it still does today. In one sense it is
a straightforward thought: wolves eat lambs (and much
else) and remain wolves; koalas eat almost exclusively
eucalyptus leaves and remain koalas; frogs eat slugs and
flies and remain frogs. All animals overcome their food to
maintain themselves. And think of plants. Poppies, asters,
and milkweeds, to name a few, all take in carbon dioxide,
water, and some minerals, and with the help of light create
their own living substance and form. But how different they
are from the water, air, and minerals they take in, and how
different they are from one another!
Knauer is pointing to the fact that organisms are
activities. It is not the substance of the food that makes
them what they are. It is the specific way of transforming
and forming that makes the wolf a wolf, the frog a frog, the
poppy a poppy.
We gain a most vivid sense of this creative activity
when we observe the development of an organism. When
a tadpole metamorphoses into a frog, virtually all tadpole
characteristics are broken down and disappear—for
instance, the long tail, the gills, and the long intestine
(see Holdrege 2015). New organs form—four legs, lungs,
stomach, teeth—while other organs reconfigure, such as
brain, eyes, kidneys, and skin. The developmental process
entails unceasing transformative activity. The resulting
adult is wholly other than the larval tadpole in its bodily
configuration, physiology, and behavior. What we in the end
call the adult frog works its way into appearance—becomes
flesh—through development.
The frog-as-activity does not cease to exist once it reaches
adulthood. Certainly, there is more stability of form and
substance in the adult. But the frog is always engaged in
maintaining its form and continually building up, breaking
down, and transforming its bodily substances, all in relation
to its needs and what it encounters in its surroundings. The
frog never “is” in a static sense. It is continually producing
and maintaining itself. Its body is at any moment the result
of ongoing creative activity.
But What About Genes?
I can imagine some readers are thinking: That is all fine
and good, but it is the genes that make both tadpole and
frog. The genes, after all, stay more or less the same during
the life of the animal, and, for that matter, remain relatively
stable for generations. They make the frog a frog. Just as we
can say that the frog-as-body moves, so we can say the frogas-its-genes makes the frog. There is always some “thing”
(body, DNA) that is the doer. The “thing” is primary and all
activity is simply the interaction of things (substances).
That is certainly our habitual way of thinking about how
life works, and it is precisely the habit that I want to move
beyond. I think that Knauer got it right: the organism-asactivity is something “real, something eminently real” and
yet it is not some “thing” we can place alongside DNA, cells,
organs, and limbs.
Yes, in an abstract sense the bare DNA sequence (the
sequence of nitrogenous bases) in a frog embryo, in a tadpole,
and in an adult frog is, generally speaking, the same. If we
begin by applying the widespread notion that genes consist of
portions of that sequence, then if the sequence stays the same,
genes must stay the same. They are the stable and unchanging
physical basis of the organism, while all other things may be
different in the different life phases of the frog.
But if the genes are the “same” in embryo, tadpole, and
adult frog, then can it be the genes that make these phases
of life different from one another? This is worth pondering.
The conventional response would be: well, there are
different genes that are acting at different times during
development. So there’s no problem; it’s just that we don’t
know yet the total activation sequence of the ever-present
DNA over time. But there is a problem, and it’s hidden in the
expression “genes acting.” How do genes act? By being woven
into the activity of the rest of the organism. There is a highly
complex and variable series of interactions that occur when
a gene “acts.” (See Steve Talbott’s article in this issue of In
Context and the much more detailed consideration in Talbott
2015.) DNA is chemically modified (for example, via DNA
methylation), brought into movement, repaired, re-arranged
and more during the developmental process. To say that
“DNA stays the same” is to say that certain sequential features
can be found to be stably produced and reproduced over time.
That is basically the same as saying: over generations the wood
frog stays a wood frog. When we say in biology something
“stays the same” we actually mean it continually becomes the
same out of activity; it is not an unchanging thing.
There are about 20,000 –25,000 protein-coding DNA
sequences, or genes, in the human genome, as geneticists
typically count them. But many more proteins are
synthesized than this static view of genes might suggest.
Over one million distinct proteins are thought to be formed
in the human body. The synthesis of these proteins does
require specific DNA sequences, but the relevant sequences
are not simply lined up, waiting to be utilized. Their final
specification occurs within the context of development and
through the activity of the organism under changing inner
and outer conditions. It has become clear, as stated in an
article by biologists on “How to Understand the Gene in the
Twenty-First Century?”, that genes need to be “conceived
as emerging as processes at the level of the systems through
which DNA sequences are interpreted, involving both the
cellular and the supracellular environment. Thus, genes are
not found in DNA itself, but built by the cell at a higher
systemic level” (Meyer et al. 2013).
At whatever level you consider—whether molecules
(DNA, proteins, etc.), cells, tissues, or organs —you find
interrelated activity. Surely the doings will always be
connected to “things,” but the “things” don’t explain the
doings. DNA acts “because” proteins interact with them
and act on them; proteins exist “because” DNA enables
their synthesis. Every “actor” in the biological drama
is also always an “acted upon.” All the mind-boggling
interactions molecular biologists discover make sense
within the context of the healthy organism. They are
part of the performance of the organism, to use Kurt
Goldstein’s phrase (Goldstein 1995, p. 282). All the genes
that “come into action” while the tail of a tadpole is
being reabsorbed, or in the formation of the new type of
hemoglobin in the nascent frog, are part of the unfolding
story of the frog’s coming into appearance.
The Organism: Being-at-Work-Staying-Itself
Inasmuch as we become aware of this formative,
activity-nature of life, we also move beyond strictly spatial
conceptions. We are looking not only for mechanisms
(“this” causes “that”). Rather we seek to understand how
each “this” and “that” is connected within the coherent life
of the organism, a life that expresses itself in every form,
substance, and activity, from eating a fly to producing a
digestive enzyme.
Trying to adequately express the activity-nature
of organisms in one word, Aristotle coined the term
entelechia. This Greek word is usually transliterated into
“entelechy” in the English language. It is often interpreted
as indicating a kind of essence or life force that affects the
material workings of the organism as if from the outside.
But this is clearly not what I’ve been talking about and it
is also not what Aristotle intended. In recent translations
and commentaries on Aristotle’s works, Joe Sachs creates
unique English phrasings that he believes are more true
to Aristotle’s dynamic view of nature and creative use
of the Greek language. Sachs translates entelechia as
“being-at-work-staying-itself ”(Aristotle 1999). Every
organism is being-at-work-staying-itself. This phrasing
points to the fact that the organism is an active agency. It
indicates that we don’t have two things—a being that is
also active—but rather a single “being-at-work.” It is, only
inasmuch as it is active. And this being-at-work is also
coherence; it is continually “staying-itself ” as frog, wolf,
or poppy amid ever-changing circumstances. As awkward
as Sachs’ expression is, to my mind it accurately suggests
the reality we encounter in organisms. Moreover, through
its awkwardness we are challenged to actually think about
what we are saying, and becoming active in thinking brings
us closer to what we are actually trying to apprehend—the
active nature of the organism.
In the end it should not be so important what term we
use. In fact, it may be best to use different expressions,
depending on the specific context, in order to suggest our
meaning—organism-as-activity, agency, being-at-workstaying-itself or, simply, being. So, yes, a science of beings
is possible. But it demands moving beyond certain habits
of thought and a different way of looking at life than is
typical today.
Gaining a sense of the activity-nature of organisms is a
first step or a first opening into a science of beings. Many
pathways can then be taken. I want to suggest one here.
Wolves, frogs, and poppies are very different kinds of
organisms. Each is its own “being-at-work-staying itself.”
But what is the wolf ’s particular way of being itself at work,
what is the frog’s, what is the poppy’s? In other words,
can I engage in the specific way-of-being of a particular
species or group of organisms so that the living world in its
manifoldness and varied and unique expressions can show
itself? What follows is such an attempt.
Portraying a Frog
A tadpole lives fish-like, immersed in and bound to a
watery environment for the duration of its life before
metamorphosis. During metamorphosis a whole new body
form is created. As lung-breathing, four-legged animals,
most frogs seek the land. Some stay in close proximity
to their watery origin, others return to water only in the
mating season.
Figure 1. A green frog (Rana clamitans). (Photo: C. Holdrege)
With their moist, permeable skin, frogs are never
fully at home in a land environment with dry air and
strong sunlight. They prefer humid conditions, and most
are nocturnally active. Although the skin is a physical
boundary, it is porous with respect to water. As a result,
the water content of the frog’s body can fluctuate strongly
depending on outer conditions. A frog can lose over a third
of its body mass through evaporation and still survive as
long as it can replenish the lost fluid. Interestingly, frogs
cannot drink through their mouths. Rather, they drink
through their skin, especially their belly skin. A frog that
is dehydrated can simply lie in a puddle and drink through
its skin; or it can bury itself under leaves or in the soil and
slowly draw moisture into itself. Desert frogs spend most of
their lives in self-dug burrows (up to 90 cm deep—almost a
yard) and slowly draw water out of the soil. Frogs can store
large amounts of fluid in their bladders and distribute it as
needed.
Frogs are dependent on warmth from their environment
to maintain their body heat, so that body temperature
fluctuates with changes in ambient temperature. They are
generally sluggish in cool weather, and some frogs can
survive for a period of time in the frozen bottom of a pond.
They become active in warmer weather, but you generally
do not find amphibians basking in the sun like thick- and
dry-skinned reptiles (think of lizards and snakes) in order
to warm up. They avoid direct evaporation-causing sunlight.
So we see how the frog is very open to its environment.
Through its skin it is giving up fluid to the air and drawing
fluid in from the surroundings. Even though it has lungs,
a frog still inhales around 40 percent of its oxygen and
exhales more than two-thirds of its carbon dioxide through
the skin. And the frog’s body temperature oscillates with
the warming and cooling of its environment. In these
ways it lives in intimate connection, behaviorally and
physiologically, with the changing conditions. Or we could
also say the frog participates in these changing conditions
and is part of them. There is no clear boundary that
indicates here the “frog” ends and there the “environment”
begins. While we can say that the frog is a center of
formative activity, this activity is wholly embedded within
and dependent upon the larger fabric of interactions and
substances that we call its environment. We can as little
separate the frog from its environment as we can the center
of a circle from its circumference.
As the name amphibian implies, frogs are beings between
water and land. They are not wholly at home in water (as
are fish) and are not fully at home on dry land (as are many
reptiles). But they are not “homeless”; they are at home in
the in-between. They are aquatic for periods of time and,
when on land, retain an affinity to moisture. They are in
this sense “moist-earth” beings. This is even true of brightly
colored tropical frogs that live high up in tree canopies
(following a tendency of many tropical plants and animals to
raise their “ground” into the crowns of trees). These frogs lay
their eggs in little pools created in crevices or depressions of
a tree or in rosettes of epiphytes such as bromeliads, where
the eggs stay moist and largely hidden from direct sunlight.
The frog’s skin is moist and rich in glands. Some of the
most potent animal poisons are produced in the skin of
colorful tropical frogs. Poisons in reptiles or insects are
usually created in glands within the organism. In frogs the
external organ of the skin maintains some characteristics of
an internal organ—breathing, drinking, and secreting.
Figure 2. A leaping frog about to land (Rana esculenta). (Altered,
after Zisweiler 1976, p. 230.)
From this perspective we can see how the so-called
external environment of the frog in a sense belongs to or is
part of the frog. This attunement is something you can sense
almost viscerally in the early spring in the northeastern
United States, when the temperature rises and the first rains
fall. As part of this change, the enchanting and atmospherefilling chorus of spring peepers and wood frogs resounds.
Much of what I’ve discussed so far is true not only for
frogs but for the other two groups of amphibians as well:
salamanders and the little-known caecilians. What clearly
sets frogs apart from these other amphibians is their
form and the specific ways of behaving that are intimately
connected with their unique bodily configuration.
While a tadpole is reabsorbing its tail, it is also
developing its long and powerful rear legs. The long
intestine of the tadpole shortens dramatically, and the
compact body takes shape as the head and body flatten
and widen. The muscular rear legs are longer than the
body, as the drawing of a leaping frog vividly illustrates
(see Figure 2). A frog has a morphology and manner
of movement that is wholly different from that of its
amphibian relatives—salamanders and caecilians.
Figure 3 shows a selection of different amphibians.
Salamanders have a long body with relatively short legs.
In some species the body elongates dramatically while
the legs become shorter and, in some cases, the rear legs
do not develop at all. The caecilians, which are tropical
burrowing, worm-like amphibians, have no limbs and a
very long body. In contrast to salamanders, they have no
tails. Morphologically, amphibians form a spectrum, with
rich variation between the short-bodied, limb-dominated
frogs at one pole, and the long-bodied, limbless caecilians
at the other. And while the dominant sense in frogs is
sight, the caecilians are fully or almost blind.
The skeleton reveals in telling detail salient features of
frogs. Frogs have the least vertebrae of any vertebrate, and
the vertebral column (spine) is very short. Like all other
amphibians, frogs have only one short neck vertebra, so
that the head attaches almost without separation to the
body. But the frog has only eight other vertebra (some
species have fewer) in its spine (including one sacral bone),
while salamanders generally have 15 to 20 (63 in the longbodied siren). The skeleton of caecilians consists mostly of
vertebrae—between 95 and 285, depending on the species—
and they have no tail.
Interestingly, while externally a frog has no tail, it does
have one bone—the urostyle (or coccyx)—that corresponds
to a tail in salamanders. This long bone develops out
of three to four vertebrae that fuse together. It does not
extend, however, beyond the pelvis; rather, it is drawn up
into the pelvis and is a functional part of it (see Figure
4). Qualitatively this is a revealing characteristic: what
would be part of the tail extending behind the body in
salamanders or other animals is in the frog one long bone
that is incorporated into the pelvis and helps to support
and anchor the powerful rear legs. This detail expresses
the overall contracted morphology of the frog’s body—a
contraction correlated with the remarkable expansive
development of the rear legs.
Figure 3. Various amphibians; see text.
(Different sources; not to scale.)
stomach to examine it. You cannot describe it directly; it
is not a spatial entity. In this sense Goethe can say that it
is “fruitless” to try to express the being of a thing. But that
does not mean it does not exist, and it does not mean we
must resign ourselves to compiling facts.
The frog as being-at-work is at work in the formation
of all its organs, in the shape and proportions of its legs, in
the way it feeds. It is present in all its activities and in the
relations it engages in. It is in all of these, not as a thing
to be found but as effective agency. So how do I come to
perceive and present this “no thing” that is certainly not
nothing? While there are no simple “steps” in this process,
there are different facets that can be understood as a
scientific methodology for a “science of beings.”
Figure 4. Skeleton of a salamander (Salamandra) and a frog (Rana).
Now think of the way a frog moves. Sitting with its legs
folded close to its body, the frog suddenly and spring-like
extends its legs, propelling itself through the air. It cushions
its landing with its forelegs and then the rear legs contract
again at the sides of the body. Frog leaping is a radical kind
of expansion and contraction, morphologically mirrored
in the compact body and the long, strong rear legs. Rapid,
projectile-like movement also occurs in feeding when
frogs use their “well-developed tongues [that] they are able
to catapult from their mouths in order to pick up prey”
(Duellman and Treub 1994, p. 365).
And when frogs croak, the body wall around the airfilled lungs contracts and forces air through the larynx,
which suddenly relaxes and opens. The air streams over
the vocal cords and into the mouth, filling the air sack, the
skin of which vibrates. The surrounding environment fills
with sound. The active animal expands out into the larger
world. The chorus of many voices resounds in the spring
landscape.
Portrayal
Any attempt to directly express the being of a thing is
fruitless. What we perceive are its effects, and a complete
narrative of these effects would encompass its being. We
labor in vain to describe a person’s character; however,
when we draw together his actions, his deeds, a picture of
his character will emerge. (Goethe, 1995, p. 158)
Since every organism is a being-at-work, its being as
a wolf or frog is not given as a thing. You can’t place the
“frogness” of the frog next to its liver, brain, heart, and
Engaging: As a researcher I carefully study the organism
and work to gain an ever better sense of its specific way-ofbeing. I try to notice and observe: The frog leaping into the
pond when I come close; the frog floating with only its big
bulging eyes and wide mouth breaking the water’s surface;
the varied colors of individual wood frogs; the way tadpoles
swim. So I attend to the frog. And I do not rely only on my
own observations. I also read extensively in the scientific
literature about frogs. Many people have dedicated their
professional lives to studying myriad aspects of frog life and
I draw from their findings and insights.
Freeing: Because much research is dedicated to discovering
causes (“mechanisms”) and to embedding findings in
over-arching theories (for example, evolution through
“natural selection”) there is a good deal of thought-work
involved in trying to discern how findings are influenced
by frameworks. I work to free myself from the biases
and interpretations that constrict a more open-ended
consideration of the phenomena. I do not want to place the
facts in the context of a theoretical framework but discover
how they place themselves within the organism itself.
Picturing: By going into so many details I can also
increasingly lose any sense of the organism’s way-of-being
and its wholeness. I may lose the forest for the trees. So it
takes constant effort to make conscious the connections and
relations through which the organism reveals itself. To this
end I try to picture what I’m observing or the findings I’m
reading about as vividly as possible. I’m not focusing in a
narrow way on “why” the frog has this or that or does this
or that. I’m not trying to “explain” the frog. It was through
vividly picturing the development of a tadpole into the
adult frog that I first realized that in a very essential sense
it is not correct to say that the adult form develops “out of ”
a tadpole. Rather, this form is the result of creative activity
that wholly re-configures what was tadpole into adult frog.
By staying close to the observed phenomena and connecting
the separate observations into a unity that reflects the unity
that is at work in the organism, I get a glimpse in thought
of its way-of-being. The thought energy others put into
theorizing, I put into picturing.
Comparing: The particular way-of-being of an organism
stands out all the more when we compare its characteristics
with those of other organisms. What it means to be a
frog becomes clearer when we let it be illumined by other
amphibians (salamanders and caecilians) and then by
“neighboring” vertebrates such as bony fishes and reptiles. We
cannot understand the frog in isolation; it speaks its reality
through its relations to others. We let the different kinds of
beings and their characteristics illuminate each other.
Intuiting: When I was in college and dissected a frog, I learned
that it had a urostyle. At the time this bone made no big
impression on me; unfortunately, it was simply one more
part to memorize. In my recent study of the frog the urostyle
suddenly lit up. I no longer saw it as an anatomical part but as
a crucial member of this organism. I saw through it a quality
of the frog: what is in other animals the extensive tail becomes
in the tailless frog an internal bony structure that supports
the strong leaping legs. This is a form of perceiving meaning
in the organism—how the “parts” are truly revelatory of the
whole organism. This kind of intuiting is not something you
can make happen, as little as you can make a frog appear in
a pond. But you can prepare for such insights through all the
work described above, so that you are moving in the territory
in which connections can show themselves.
Portraying: In a visual portrait, the character of a person
shines through the whole presentation and composition—
through the way the parts are composed by the artist. He
or she has glimpsed this character and seeks to give it artful
expression. A scientific portrayal of an organism requires
something similar. In portraying, I attempt to depict specific
qualities, activities, and relations in such a way that the
being-at-work of the frog can show itself to the reader. I
can only suggest. As Owen Barfield points out, “meaning
itself can never be conveyed from one person to another;
words are not bottles; every individual must intuit meaning
for himself ” (Barfield 1973, p. 133; his emphasis). Since
meaning is concerned with relations, it can only speak
between the lines in the active mind of the reader. Of
course, much depends upon the felicity of expression and
composition. If I succeed in describing the characteristics
of an organism as vividly as possible, and if readers vividly
picture what they read, then an understanding of the
organism as a being can arise.
When I’ve completed a portrayal, I am not done and
my engagement with the frog is not something that I leave
behind. What I have noticed is that after the intense process
of working with a particular animal or plant, when I go
out and see it in the wild again, my perception is different.
A green frog swimming in the pond is much more of a
presence than it was before. The forceful and yet graceful
kick of the legs, the shimmering green of its head, its bulging
eyes—these details speak more strongly. My interest grows
and also a kind of elemental joy in moments when I am able
to participate in another being’s way-of-being. I am more
present, and the frog can present itself more fully.
I then experience the truth of Emerson’s statement: “It
seems as if the day was not wholly profane, in which we
have given heed to some natural object” (1983, p. 542).
The “natural object” loses its profanity when it becomes a
presence—when we have been touched by another being.
References
Aristotle (1999). Metaphysics, translated by Joe Sachs. Sante Fe
NM: Green Lion Press. (Sachs has also translated Aristotle’s
Physics and On the Soul. All his translations have important
introductions and glossaries describing how and why he
translates the way he does.)
Barfield, Owen (1973). Poetic Diction (3rd edition). Middletown
CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Duellman, W. E. and L. Trueb (1994). Biology of Amphibians.
Baltimore MD: The John Hopkins University Press.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1983). “Nature” (Essays, Second Series) in
Essays and Lectures. New York: Library of America, pp. 53555. (Originally published in 1844.)
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1995). The Scientific Studies.
Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Translation of quoted
passage was modified by C. Holdrege.)
Goldstein, Kurt (1995). The Organism. New York: Zone Books.
Holdrege, Craig (2015). “Do Tadpoles Come From Frogs?”
In Context # 33, pp. 13-15. Available online: http://
natureinstitute.org/pub/ic/ic33/frog.pdf.
Knauer, Vincenz (1892). Die Hauptprobleme der Philosophie.
Vienna: Wilhelm Braunmüller. (The quoted passage is on
p. 137 in a chapter concerned with Aristotle’s philosophy;
translation by Craig Holdrege.)
Meyer, Lia Midori Nascimento, Gilberto Cafezeiro Bomfim and
Charbel Niño El-Hani (2013). “How to Understand the Gene
in the Twenty-First Century?” Science and Education vol. 22,
pp. 345-74. doi:10.1007/s11191-011-9390-z.
Talbott, Stephen L. (2015). “From Genes to Evolution: The
Story You Haven’t Heard.” Available online: http://
RediscoveringLife.org/ar/2015/genes_29.htm.
Zisweiler, V. (1976). Spezielle Zoologie Wirbeltiere, Bd. I: Anamnia.
Stuttgart: Thieme Verlag.
In Context #34
fall 2015
Craig Holdrege
I read this passage from the nineteenth-century philosopher Vincenz Knauer (1892) for the first time aboutThe wolf does not become a lamb even if it eats nothing but
lambs all its life. Whatever it is that makes it wolf, therefore,
must obviously be something other than the “hyle,” the
sensory material, and that something, moreover, cannot
possibly be a mere “thought-thing” even though it is accessible
to thought alone, and not to the senses. It must be something
active, something real, something eminently real.
forty years ago while I was in college. It gave me occasion
to reflect then, and it still does today. In one sense it is
a straightforward thought: wolves eat lambs (and much
else) and remain wolves; koalas eat almost exclusively
eucalyptus leaves and remain koalas; frogs eat slugs and
flies and remain frogs. All animals overcome their food to
maintain themselves. And think of plants. Poppies, asters,
and milkweeds, to name a few, all take in carbon dioxide,
water, and some minerals, and with the help of light create
their own living substance and form. But how different they
are from the water, air, and minerals they take in, and how
different they are from one another!
Knauer is pointing to the fact that organisms are
activities. It is not the substance of the food that makes
them what they are. It is the specific way of transforming
and forming that makes the wolf a wolf, the frog a frog, the
poppy a poppy.
We gain a most vivid sense of this creative activity
when we observe the development of an organism. When
a tadpole metamorphoses into a frog, virtually all tadpole
characteristics are broken down and disappear—for
instance, the long tail, the gills, and the long intestine
(see Holdrege 2015). New organs form—four legs, lungs,
stomach, teeth—while other organs reconfigure, such as
brain, eyes, kidneys, and skin. The developmental process
entails unceasing transformative activity. The resulting
adult is wholly other than the larval tadpole in its bodily
configuration, physiology, and behavior. What we in the end
call the adult frog works its way into appearance—becomes
flesh—through development.
The frog-as-activity does not cease to exist once it reaches
adulthood. Certainly, there is more stability of form and
substance in the adult. But the frog is always engaged in
maintaining its form and continually building up, breaking
down, and transforming its bodily substances, all in relation
to its needs and what it encounters in its surroundings. The
frog never “is” in a static sense. It is continually producing
and maintaining itself. Its body is at any moment the result
of ongoing creative activity.
But What About Genes?
I can imagine some readers are thinking: That is all fine
and good, but it is the genes that make both tadpole and
frog. The genes, after all, stay more or less the same during
the life of the animal, and, for that matter, remain relatively
stable for generations. They make the frog a frog. Just as we
can say that the frog-as-body moves, so we can say the frogas-its-genes makes the frog. There is always some “thing”
(body, DNA) that is the doer. The “thing” is primary and all
activity is simply the interaction of things (substances).
That is certainly our habitual way of thinking about how
life works, and it is precisely the habit that I want to move
beyond. I think that Knauer got it right: the organism-asactivity is something “real, something eminently real” and
yet it is not some “thing” we can place alongside DNA, cells,
organs, and limbs.
Yes, in an abstract sense the bare DNA sequence (the
sequence of nitrogenous bases) in a frog embryo, in a tadpole,
and in an adult frog is, generally speaking, the same. If we
begin by applying the widespread notion that genes consist of
portions of that sequence, then if the sequence stays the same,
genes must stay the same. They are the stable and unchanging
physical basis of the organism, while all other things may be
different in the different life phases of the frog.
But if the genes are the “same” in embryo, tadpole, and
adult frog, then can it be the genes that make these phases
of life different from one another? This is worth pondering.
The conventional response would be: well, there are
different genes that are acting at different times during
development. So there’s no problem; it’s just that we don’t
know yet the total activation sequence of the ever-present
DNA over time. But there is a problem, and it’s hidden in the
expression “genes acting.” How do genes act? By being woven
into the activity of the rest of the organism. There is a highly
complex and variable series of interactions that occur when
a gene “acts.” (See Steve Talbott’s article in this issue of In
Context and the much more detailed consideration in Talbott
2015.) DNA is chemically modified (for example, via DNA
methylation), brought into movement, repaired, re-arranged
and more during the developmental process. To say that
“DNA stays the same” is to say that certain sequential features
can be found to be stably produced and reproduced over time.
That is basically the same as saying: over generations the wood
frog stays a wood frog. When we say in biology something
“stays the same” we actually mean it continually becomes the
same out of activity; it is not an unchanging thing.
There are about 20,000 –25,000 protein-coding DNA
sequences, or genes, in the human genome, as geneticists
typically count them. But many more proteins are
synthesized than this static view of genes might suggest.
Over one million distinct proteins are thought to be formed
in the human body. The synthesis of these proteins does
require specific DNA sequences, but the relevant sequences
are not simply lined up, waiting to be utilized. Their final
specification occurs within the context of development and
through the activity of the organism under changing inner
and outer conditions. It has become clear, as stated in an
article by biologists on “How to Understand the Gene in the
Twenty-First Century?”, that genes need to be “conceived
as emerging as processes at the level of the systems through
which DNA sequences are interpreted, involving both the
cellular and the supracellular environment. Thus, genes are
not found in DNA itself, but built by the cell at a higher
systemic level” (Meyer et al. 2013).
At whatever level you consider—whether molecules
(DNA, proteins, etc.), cells, tissues, or organs —you find
interrelated activity. Surely the doings will always be
connected to “things,” but the “things” don’t explain the
doings. DNA acts “because” proteins interact with them
and act on them; proteins exist “because” DNA enables
their synthesis. Every “actor” in the biological drama
is also always an “acted upon.” All the mind-boggling
interactions molecular biologists discover make sense
within the context of the healthy organism. They are
part of the performance of the organism, to use Kurt
Goldstein’s phrase (Goldstein 1995, p. 282). All the genes
that “come into action” while the tail of a tadpole is
being reabsorbed, or in the formation of the new type of
hemoglobin in the nascent frog, are part of the unfolding
story of the frog’s coming into appearance.
The Organism: Being-at-Work-Staying-Itself
Inasmuch as we become aware of this formative,
activity-nature of life, we also move beyond strictly spatial
conceptions. We are looking not only for mechanisms
(“this” causes “that”). Rather we seek to understand how
each “this” and “that” is connected within the coherent life
of the organism, a life that expresses itself in every form,
substance, and activity, from eating a fly to producing a
digestive enzyme.
Trying to adequately express the activity-nature
of organisms in one word, Aristotle coined the term
entelechia. This Greek word is usually transliterated into
“entelechy” in the English language. It is often interpreted
as indicating a kind of essence or life force that affects the
material workings of the organism as if from the outside.
But this is clearly not what I’ve been talking about and it
is also not what Aristotle intended. In recent translations
and commentaries on Aristotle’s works, Joe Sachs creates
unique English phrasings that he believes are more true
to Aristotle’s dynamic view of nature and creative use
of the Greek language. Sachs translates entelechia as
“being-at-work-staying-itself ”(Aristotle 1999). Every
organism is being-at-work-staying-itself. This phrasing
points to the fact that the organism is an active agency. It
indicates that we don’t have two things—a being that is
also active—but rather a single “being-at-work.” It is, only
inasmuch as it is active. And this being-at-work is also
coherence; it is continually “staying-itself ” as frog, wolf,
or poppy amid ever-changing circumstances. As awkward
as Sachs’ expression is, to my mind it accurately suggests
the reality we encounter in organisms. Moreover, through
its awkwardness we are challenged to actually think about
what we are saying, and becoming active in thinking brings
us closer to what we are actually trying to apprehend—the
active nature of the organism.
In the end it should not be so important what term we
use. In fact, it may be best to use different expressions,
depending on the specific context, in order to suggest our
meaning—organism-as-activity, agency, being-at-workstaying-itself or, simply, being. So, yes, a science of beings
is possible. But it demands moving beyond certain habits
of thought and a different way of looking at life than is
typical today.
Gaining a sense of the activity-nature of organisms is a
first step or a first opening into a science of beings. Many
pathways can then be taken. I want to suggest one here.
Wolves, frogs, and poppies are very different kinds of
organisms. Each is its own “being-at-work-staying itself.”
But what is the wolf ’s particular way of being itself at work,
what is the frog’s, what is the poppy’s? In other words,
can I engage in the specific way-of-being of a particular
species or group of organisms so that the living world in its
manifoldness and varied and unique expressions can show
itself? What follows is such an attempt.
Portraying a Frog
A tadpole lives fish-like, immersed in and bound to a
watery environment for the duration of its life before
metamorphosis. During metamorphosis a whole new body
form is created. As lung-breathing, four-legged animals,
most frogs seek the land. Some stay in close proximity
to their watery origin, others return to water only in the
mating season.
Figure 1. A green frog (Rana clamitans). (Photo: C. Holdrege)
With their moist, permeable skin, frogs are never
fully at home in a land environment with dry air and
strong sunlight. They prefer humid conditions, and most
are nocturnally active. Although the skin is a physical
boundary, it is porous with respect to water. As a result,
the water content of the frog’s body can fluctuate strongly
depending on outer conditions. A frog can lose over a third
of its body mass through evaporation and still survive as
long as it can replenish the lost fluid. Interestingly, frogs
cannot drink through their mouths. Rather, they drink
through their skin, especially their belly skin. A frog that
is dehydrated can simply lie in a puddle and drink through
its skin; or it can bury itself under leaves or in the soil and
slowly draw moisture into itself. Desert frogs spend most of
their lives in self-dug burrows (up to 90 cm deep—almost a
yard) and slowly draw water out of the soil. Frogs can store
large amounts of fluid in their bladders and distribute it as
needed.
Frogs are dependent on warmth from their environment
to maintain their body heat, so that body temperature
fluctuates with changes in ambient temperature. They are
generally sluggish in cool weather, and some frogs can
survive for a period of time in the frozen bottom of a pond.
They become active in warmer weather, but you generally
do not find amphibians basking in the sun like thick- and
dry-skinned reptiles (think of lizards and snakes) in order
to warm up. They avoid direct evaporation-causing sunlight.
So we see how the frog is very open to its environment.
Through its skin it is giving up fluid to the air and drawing
fluid in from the surroundings. Even though it has lungs,
a frog still inhales around 40 percent of its oxygen and
exhales more than two-thirds of its carbon dioxide through
the skin. And the frog’s body temperature oscillates with
the warming and cooling of its environment. In these
ways it lives in intimate connection, behaviorally and
physiologically, with the changing conditions. Or we could
also say the frog participates in these changing conditions
and is part of them. There is no clear boundary that
indicates here the “frog” ends and there the “environment”
begins. While we can say that the frog is a center of
formative activity, this activity is wholly embedded within
and dependent upon the larger fabric of interactions and
substances that we call its environment. We can as little
separate the frog from its environment as we can the center
of a circle from its circumference.
As the name amphibian implies, frogs are beings between
water and land. They are not wholly at home in water (as
are fish) and are not fully at home on dry land (as are many
reptiles). But they are not “homeless”; they are at home in
the in-between. They are aquatic for periods of time and,
when on land, retain an affinity to moisture. They are in
this sense “moist-earth” beings. This is even true of brightly
colored tropical frogs that live high up in tree canopies
(following a tendency of many tropical plants and animals to
raise their “ground” into the crowns of trees). These frogs lay
their eggs in little pools created in crevices or depressions of
a tree or in rosettes of epiphytes such as bromeliads, where
the eggs stay moist and largely hidden from direct sunlight.
The frog’s skin is moist and rich in glands. Some of the
most potent animal poisons are produced in the skin of
colorful tropical frogs. Poisons in reptiles or insects are
usually created in glands within the organism. In frogs the
external organ of the skin maintains some characteristics of
an internal organ—breathing, drinking, and secreting.
Figure 2. A leaping frog about to land (Rana esculenta). (Altered,
after Zisweiler 1976, p. 230.)
From this perspective we can see how the so-called
external environment of the frog in a sense belongs to or is
part of the frog. This attunement is something you can sense
almost viscerally in the early spring in the northeastern
United States, when the temperature rises and the first rains
fall. As part of this change, the enchanting and atmospherefilling chorus of spring peepers and wood frogs resounds.
Much of what I’ve discussed so far is true not only for
frogs but for the other two groups of amphibians as well:
salamanders and the little-known caecilians. What clearly
sets frogs apart from these other amphibians is their
form and the specific ways of behaving that are intimately
connected with their unique bodily configuration.
While a tadpole is reabsorbing its tail, it is also
developing its long and powerful rear legs. The long
intestine of the tadpole shortens dramatically, and the
compact body takes shape as the head and body flatten
and widen. The muscular rear legs are longer than the
body, as the drawing of a leaping frog vividly illustrates
(see Figure 2). A frog has a morphology and manner
of movement that is wholly different from that of its
amphibian relatives—salamanders and caecilians.
Figure 3 shows a selection of different amphibians.
Salamanders have a long body with relatively short legs.
In some species the body elongates dramatically while
the legs become shorter and, in some cases, the rear legs
do not develop at all. The caecilians, which are tropical
burrowing, worm-like amphibians, have no limbs and a
very long body. In contrast to salamanders, they have no
tails. Morphologically, amphibians form a spectrum, with
rich variation between the short-bodied, limb-dominated
frogs at one pole, and the long-bodied, limbless caecilians
at the other. And while the dominant sense in frogs is
sight, the caecilians are fully or almost blind.
The skeleton reveals in telling detail salient features of
frogs. Frogs have the least vertebrae of any vertebrate, and
the vertebral column (spine) is very short. Like all other
amphibians, frogs have only one short neck vertebra, so
that the head attaches almost without separation to the
body. But the frog has only eight other vertebra (some
species have fewer) in its spine (including one sacral bone),
while salamanders generally have 15 to 20 (63 in the longbodied siren). The skeleton of caecilians consists mostly of
vertebrae—between 95 and 285, depending on the species—
and they have no tail.
Interestingly, while externally a frog has no tail, it does
have one bone—the urostyle (or coccyx)—that corresponds
to a tail in salamanders. This long bone develops out
of three to four vertebrae that fuse together. It does not
extend, however, beyond the pelvis; rather, it is drawn up
into the pelvis and is a functional part of it (see Figure
4). Qualitatively this is a revealing characteristic: what
would be part of the tail extending behind the body in
salamanders or other animals is in the frog one long bone
that is incorporated into the pelvis and helps to support
and anchor the powerful rear legs. This detail expresses
the overall contracted morphology of the frog’s body—a
contraction correlated with the remarkable expansive
development of the rear legs.
Figure 3. Various amphibians; see text.
(Different sources; not to scale.)
stomach to examine it. You cannot describe it directly; it
is not a spatial entity. In this sense Goethe can say that it
is “fruitless” to try to express the being of a thing. But that
does not mean it does not exist, and it does not mean we
must resign ourselves to compiling facts.
The frog as being-at-work is at work in the formation
of all its organs, in the shape and proportions of its legs, in
the way it feeds. It is present in all its activities and in the
relations it engages in. It is in all of these, not as a thing
to be found but as effective agency. So how do I come to
perceive and present this “no thing” that is certainly not
nothing? While there are no simple “steps” in this process,
there are different facets that can be understood as a
scientific methodology for a “science of beings.”
Figure 4. Skeleton of a salamander (Salamandra) and a frog (Rana).
Now think of the way a frog moves. Sitting with its legs
folded close to its body, the frog suddenly and spring-like
extends its legs, propelling itself through the air. It cushions
its landing with its forelegs and then the rear legs contract
again at the sides of the body. Frog leaping is a radical kind
of expansion and contraction, morphologically mirrored
in the compact body and the long, strong rear legs. Rapid,
projectile-like movement also occurs in feeding when
frogs use their “well-developed tongues [that] they are able
to catapult from their mouths in order to pick up prey”
(Duellman and Treub 1994, p. 365).
And when frogs croak, the body wall around the airfilled lungs contracts and forces air through the larynx,
which suddenly relaxes and opens. The air streams over
the vocal cords and into the mouth, filling the air sack, the
skin of which vibrates. The surrounding environment fills
with sound. The active animal expands out into the larger
world. The chorus of many voices resounds in the spring
landscape.
Portrayal
Any attempt to directly express the being of a thing is
fruitless. What we perceive are its effects, and a complete
narrative of these effects would encompass its being. We
labor in vain to describe a person’s character; however,
when we draw together his actions, his deeds, a picture of
his character will emerge. (Goethe, 1995, p. 158)
Since every organism is a being-at-work, its being as
a wolf or frog is not given as a thing. You can’t place the
“frogness” of the frog next to its liver, brain, heart, and
Engaging: As a researcher I carefully study the organism
and work to gain an ever better sense of its specific way-ofbeing. I try to notice and observe: The frog leaping into the
pond when I come close; the frog floating with only its big
bulging eyes and wide mouth breaking the water’s surface;
the varied colors of individual wood frogs; the way tadpoles
swim. So I attend to the frog. And I do not rely only on my
own observations. I also read extensively in the scientific
literature about frogs. Many people have dedicated their
professional lives to studying myriad aspects of frog life and
I draw from their findings and insights.
Freeing: Because much research is dedicated to discovering
causes (“mechanisms”) and to embedding findings in
over-arching theories (for example, evolution through
“natural selection”) there is a good deal of thought-work
involved in trying to discern how findings are influenced
by frameworks. I work to free myself from the biases
and interpretations that constrict a more open-ended
consideration of the phenomena. I do not want to place the
facts in the context of a theoretical framework but discover
how they place themselves within the organism itself.
Picturing: By going into so many details I can also
increasingly lose any sense of the organism’s way-of-being
and its wholeness. I may lose the forest for the trees. So it
takes constant effort to make conscious the connections and
relations through which the organism reveals itself. To this
end I try to picture what I’m observing or the findings I’m
reading about as vividly as possible. I’m not focusing in a
narrow way on “why” the frog has this or that or does this
or that. I’m not trying to “explain” the frog. It was through
vividly picturing the development of a tadpole into the
adult frog that I first realized that in a very essential sense
it is not correct to say that the adult form develops “out of ”
a tadpole. Rather, this form is the result of creative activity
that wholly re-configures what was tadpole into adult frog.
By staying close to the observed phenomena and connecting
the separate observations into a unity that reflects the unity
that is at work in the organism, I get a glimpse in thought
of its way-of-being. The thought energy others put into
theorizing, I put into picturing.
Comparing: The particular way-of-being of an organism
stands out all the more when we compare its characteristics
with those of other organisms. What it means to be a
frog becomes clearer when we let it be illumined by other
amphibians (salamanders and caecilians) and then by
“neighboring” vertebrates such as bony fishes and reptiles. We
cannot understand the frog in isolation; it speaks its reality
through its relations to others. We let the different kinds of
beings and their characteristics illuminate each other.
Intuiting: When I was in college and dissected a frog, I learned
that it had a urostyle. At the time this bone made no big
impression on me; unfortunately, it was simply one more
part to memorize. In my recent study of the frog the urostyle
suddenly lit up. I no longer saw it as an anatomical part but as
a crucial member of this organism. I saw through it a quality
of the frog: what is in other animals the extensive tail becomes
in the tailless frog an internal bony structure that supports
the strong leaping legs. This is a form of perceiving meaning
in the organism—how the “parts” are truly revelatory of the
whole organism. This kind of intuiting is not something you
can make happen, as little as you can make a frog appear in
a pond. But you can prepare for such insights through all the
work described above, so that you are moving in the territory
in which connections can show themselves.
Portraying: In a visual portrait, the character of a person
shines through the whole presentation and composition—
through the way the parts are composed by the artist. He
or she has glimpsed this character and seeks to give it artful
expression. A scientific portrayal of an organism requires
something similar. In portraying, I attempt to depict specific
qualities, activities, and relations in such a way that the
being-at-work of the frog can show itself to the reader. I
can only suggest. As Owen Barfield points out, “meaning
itself can never be conveyed from one person to another;
words are not bottles; every individual must intuit meaning
for himself ” (Barfield 1973, p. 133; his emphasis). Since
meaning is concerned with relations, it can only speak
between the lines in the active mind of the reader. Of
course, much depends upon the felicity of expression and
composition. If I succeed in describing the characteristics
of an organism as vividly as possible, and if readers vividly
picture what they read, then an understanding of the
organism as a being can arise.
When I’ve completed a portrayal, I am not done and
my engagement with the frog is not something that I leave
behind. What I have noticed is that after the intense process
of working with a particular animal or plant, when I go
out and see it in the wild again, my perception is different.
A green frog swimming in the pond is much more of a
presence than it was before. The forceful and yet graceful
kick of the legs, the shimmering green of its head, its bulging
eyes—these details speak more strongly. My interest grows
and also a kind of elemental joy in moments when I am able
to participate in another being’s way-of-being. I am more
present, and the frog can present itself more fully.
I then experience the truth of Emerson’s statement: “It
seems as if the day was not wholly profane, in which we
have given heed to some natural object” (1983, p. 542).
The “natural object” loses its profanity when it becomes a
presence—when we have been touched by another being.
References
Aristotle (1999). Metaphysics, translated by Joe Sachs. Sante Fe
NM: Green Lion Press. (Sachs has also translated Aristotle’s
Physics and On the Soul. All his translations have important
introductions and glossaries describing how and why he
translates the way he does.)
Barfield, Owen (1973). Poetic Diction (3rd edition). Middletown
CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Duellman, W. E. and L. Trueb (1994). Biology of Amphibians.
Baltimore MD: The John Hopkins University Press.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1983). “Nature” (Essays, Second Series) in
Essays and Lectures. New York: Library of America, pp. 53555. (Originally published in 1844.)
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1995). The Scientific Studies.
Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Translation of quoted
passage was modified by C. Holdrege.)
Goldstein, Kurt (1995). The Organism. New York: Zone Books.
Holdrege, Craig (2015). “Do Tadpoles Come From Frogs?”
In Context # 33, pp. 13-15. Available online: http://
natureinstitute.org/pub/ic/ic33/frog.pdf.
Knauer, Vincenz (1892). Die Hauptprobleme der Philosophie.
Vienna: Wilhelm Braunmüller. (The quoted passage is on
p. 137 in a chapter concerned with Aristotle’s philosophy;
translation by Craig Holdrege.)
Meyer, Lia Midori Nascimento, Gilberto Cafezeiro Bomfim and
Charbel Niño El-Hani (2013). “How to Understand the Gene
in the Twenty-First Century?” Science and Education vol. 22,
pp. 345-74. doi:10.1007/s11191-011-9390-z.
Talbott, Stephen L. (2015). “From Genes to Evolution: The
Story You Haven’t Heard.” Available online: http://
RediscoveringLife.org/ar/2015/genes_29.htm.
Zisweiler, V. (1976). Spezielle Zoologie Wirbeltiere, Bd. I: Anamnia.
Stuttgart: Thieme Verlag.
In Context #34
fall 2015