Organicism

Contextual Quote

"Kant’s Copernican Revolution says that in order to explain rational human cognition and authentic a priori knowledge, we must hold that necessarily, the manifestly real world structurally conforms to our minds, rather than the converse. The Organicist Revolution, in turn, says that the real possibility of human consciousness, cognition, caring, rationality, and free agency, and therefore also the “Copernican” necessary structural conformity of world -to-mind, provided that we actually do exist , is built essentially into the non-equilibrium thermodynamics of organismic life, and necessarily underdetermined by any and all naturally-mechanical processes and facts. Hence the Organicist Revolution in philosophy that’s implied by liberal naturalism and natural piety not only includes Kant’s Copernican Revolution, but also goes one full revolutionary cycle beyond it."

- Robert Hanna [1]

Description

Robert Hanna:

"Organicism is a liberally naturalistic and pro-scientific, but also anti-mechanistic and anti-scientistic conception of the world, including ourselves. Organicism is committed to the metaphysical doctrine of Liberal Naturalism. Liberal naturalism says that the irreducible but also non-dualistic mental properties of rational minded animals are as basic in nature as biological properties, and metaphysically continuous with them.

More precisely, according to liberal naturalism, rational human free agency is an immanent structure of essentially embodied conscious, intentional, caring human animal mind; essentially embodied conscious, intentional, caring human animal mind is an immanent structure of organismic life; and organismic life is an immanent structure of spatiotemporally asymmetric, non-equilibrium matter and/or energy flows. Each more complex structure is metaphysically continuous with, and embeds, all of the less complex structures.

Again: Human freedom is dynamically inherent in and dynamically emerges from essentially embodied conscious, intentional, caring human animal mind. And essentially embodied conscious, intentional, caring human animal mind is dynamically inherent in and dynamically emerges from life. Thus human freedom is dynamically inherent in and dynamically emerges from life. Moreover, life is dynamically inherent in and dynamically emerges from spatiotemporally asymmetric, non-equilibrium matter and/or energy flows. Therefore, human freedom, human mind, and life are all dynamically inherent in and dynamically emerge from spatiotemporally asymmetric, non-equilibrium matter and/or energy flows.

In view of liberal naturalism, to borrow an apt phrase from the later Wittgenstein, our rational human free agency is just our own “form of life,” and free agency, as such, grows naturally in certain minded animal species or life-forms. Correspondingly, freedom grows naturally and evolves in certain species of minded animals, including the human species, precisely because minds like ours grow naturally and evolve in certain species of animals, including the human species

Another name for liberal naturalism is “Objective Idealism.”

(https://www.academia.edu/41944911/The_Organicist_Conception_of_the_World_A_Manifesto_February_2020_version_)

History

Otto Paans:

"Surveyed from a bird’s-eye point of view, mainstream contemporary Western metaphysics has rejected any form of organicism as foundational principle of the cosmos, and consequently it has rejected this doctrine as a “root metaphor” (Pepper, 1942). A root metaphor is a fundamental explanatory model that is captured in a single complex image. Organicism takes the living organism (as processual, purposive, and self-organizing, in a homeostatic balance and symbiosis with its natural environment) as its root metaphor, as opposed to the mechanistic worldview, which takes the machine (for example, in different eras, the clock, the steam engine, or the digital computer) as its root metaphor.

The contemporary rejection of organicism is ironic, as this was precisely one of the working principles of many German idealists, a philosophical school that may well be regarded as one of the most inventive periods of Western modern philosophy, and moreover, a philosophical movement that still makes its influence felt, even in those areas where contemporary metaphysics reigns supreme. We could easily pursue the pedigree of philosophical organicism backwards in time, encountering earlier formulations of its core concepts in the thought of Spinoza and Duns Scotus; but equally, we might survey its pervasive influence in 18th, 19th, and early 20th century thought, notably in the philosophies of the later Kant, Goethe, Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Bergson, and A. N. Whitehead, although this is not the aim of this essay. Suffice it to say that the organicist worldview has a long history in Western philosophy, and under vastly different forms, also in various Eastern philosophies. However, with the rise of Anglo-American classical or post-classical Analytic philosophy, and its scientistic alliance with the formal and natural sciences, philosophical organicism has been explicitly or implicitly dismissed as anti-scientific."

(Source: Otto Paans, Reason, Subjectivity, Organicism. Borderless Philosophy 5 (2022): 161-212)

More information

* Article: Cold Reason, Creative Subjectivity: From Scientism and the Mechanistic Worldview To Expressive Organicism. Otto Paans. Borderless Philosophy 5 (2022): 161-212