Organism-Oriented Ontology

* Book: Organism-Oriented Ontology. By Audronė Žukauskaitė. Edinburgh University Press,

URL = https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-organism-oriented-ontology.html

Description

"RECONSIDERS THE NOTION OF ORGANISM AS CENTRAL TO CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY

• Extends and develops the thinking of the organic in terms of organism-oriented ontology

Discusses the notion of organism in terms of an autopoietic system and examines the tension between its closure and openness, teleology and contingency

• Assesses interactions between different species and also between living and non-living systems

• Argues that specific biological features, such as self-organization, potentiality, and plasticity, might be seen as a form of resistance to biopolitical power

• Discussing different aspects of the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon, Raymond Ruyer, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and including some contemporary thinkers, such as Catherine Malabou, Bernard Stiegler, Bruno Latour, and Donna J. Haraway, Audronė Žukauskaitė argues that all these threads can be seen as precursors to organism-oriented ontology."

Contents

• Introduction: Towards an Organism-Oriented Ontology

1. The Thinking of the Organic
2. Autopoietic Systems
3. Organism-Oriented Ontology

• Gilbert Simondon: From Ontology to Ontogenesis

1. Physical Individuation: Transduction
2. Biological Individuation: The Membrane
3. Psychical Individuation: The Transindividual

• Raymond Ruyer: Organic Consciousness

1. Morphogenesis: Between Preformationism and Finalism
2. Equipotentiality
3. Types of Forms, Types of Consciousnesses
4. Self-Survey without a Self

• Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s Philosophy of Life

1. Individuation as Differentiation
2. The Deconstruction of an Organism
3. The Brain: Between the Mental and the Cerebral

• Catherine Malabou: Plasticity of Reason

1. Plasticity and Potentiality
2. Damasio: From the Neuronal to the Mental
3. Malabou: Between the Neuronal and the Mental
4. Epigenesis and Reason

• General Organology: Between Organism and Machine

1. Simondon on Technical Objects
2. Stiegler’s General Organology
3. Hui’s Cosmotechnics

• Planetary Organism

1. The Gaia Hypothesis
2. Gaia and the Theory of Autopoiesis
3. Gaia and Actor-Network Theory
4. Gaia and the Theory of Sympoiesis

• Hybrid Organism

1. Sympoiesis as ‘Making-With’
2. Immunity and Contagion
3. Hybrids and Chimeras

• Conclusion: Organism-Oriented Ontology