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Natural Being and a Coherent Society
To appear in Evolution, Order and Complexity (E.L. Khalil and
K.E. Boulding eds.), London: Routledge, 1996.
Abstract
Science is a system of concepts and tools for knowing and living with
nature. As such, it should be integral to any human society from the most
primitive prehistoric culture to the industrialized nations of to-day. But
whereas the primitive lived within nature by her knowledge which is the
totality of her personal and tribal experience, the civilized man is imprisoned
outside nature, of which, therefore, he can have no real knowledge.
Cartesian mind-matter dualism and Newtonian mechanics began a process of
the dissolution of our natural being; which Darwin completed by reducing
organisms (including humans) to objects, isolated from the environment, and
buffeted by blind selective forces. This deep alienation from nature and from
our own natural being is the human condition of the modern man. It is his
paradise lost. From then on, nature would be opaque to him, condemned as he is,
to a knowing from without, to a life alone and devoid of meaning.
In this paper, I wish to deconstruct the myth of the Darwinian man by
re-examining the biological roots of human nature to show how it is
inextricably bound up with the social. From studies on animal and plant
communities to 'primitive' human socieities, we see that sociality is at the
basis of life: it is the direct consequence and expression of the fundamental
unity and interconnectedness of all nature. The unity of nature is itself a
universal, intuitive insight that contemporary western science is validating in
every aspect, particularly in the new biophysics of coherence in living
systems. Authentic knowledge is premised on this coherence and
interconnectedness. Social and moral values arise explicitly and naturally in a
life coherent with authentic knowledge. From this perspective, culture is the
creation of meaning and knowledge in partnership with nature, in which every
social being participates. The coherent society is the society of natural
beings living in harmony with nature's creative process.
The Conference of the Birds
According to ancient legend in Persia, all manner of birds gathered for
a conference one fine day and were persuaded to disperse to the four corners of
the world in search of the meaning of life. After many long and arduous years,
they returned home only to discover that what they were seeking had been right
there all along. They were blind to it, and the journey away was necessary to
open their eyes1. This is in many
ways the parable of western science. After centuries of intellectual wanderings
that increasingly led away from nature, we are irresistably drawn back to her
in the realization that there is no authentic knowledge, and hence no meaning
in life, apart from nature.
Science is a system of concepts and tools for knowing and living with
nature. As such, it should be integral to any human society from the most
primitive prehistoric culture to the industrialized nations of to-day. But
whereas the primitive lived within nature by her knowledge which is the
totality of her personal and tribal experience, the civilized man is imprisoned
outside nature, of which therefore, he can have no real knowledge.
Perhaps the single most decisive factor in the evolution of the
knowledge system of the west (and it is a knowledge system rather than science
in isolation), is that it depends on severing our intimate, manifold
connections with nature at the outset. Cartesian mind-matter dualism is
simultaneously a division of mind from body as well as the isolation of
observer, as disembodied mind, from an 'objective' nature observed. Newton
clearly brought out the stark consequences of this dual separation when he
proferred reality as a desolate universe of absolute space and time, where
inert, indifferent bodies are acted on by the push and pull of extraneous
forces. Green grass and trees, fins and wings, are so many illusory 'secondary
qualities' added on by our senses. Human joys and pains, likewise, can have no
dominion; relegated as they are, to the realm of poetic fancy that hangs ever
like a veil over objective reality.
That was the beginning of the dissolution of the natural being; which
Darwin completed by reducing organisms (including humans) to objects, isolated
from the environment, and buffeted by blind selective forces2. This deep alienation from nature and
from our own natural being is the human condition of the modern man. It is his
paradise lost. From then on, nature would be opaque to him, condemned as he is,
to a knowing from without, to a life alone and devoid of meaning.
But this exile is entirely self-imposed; and is neither necessary nor
inevitable. Elsewhere, I try to show why this is the case, and how we may yet
find our way back, if not to paradise, then surely to a more fulfilling and
humane future through recovering our natural being, which is also the vehicle
to authentic knowledge3.
In this paper, I wish to deconstruct the myth of the Darwinian man by
re-examining the biological roots of human nature to show how it is
inextricably bound up with the social. Observations of animal and plant
communities as well as 'primitive' human societies place sociality firmly at
the basis of life: it is the direct consequence and expression of the
fundamental unity and interconnectedness of all nature. The unity of nature is
itself a universal, intuitive insight that contemporary western science is
validating in every aspect, especially in the new biophysics of coherence in
living systems. Authentic knowledge is premised on this coherence and
interconnectedness. Social and moral values arise explicitly and naturally in a
life coherent with authentic knowledge. From this perspective, culture is the
creation of meaning and knowledge in partnership with nature, in which every
social being participates. The coherent society is the society of natural
beings living in harmony with nature's creative process.
The Darwinian Metaphor and the Darwinian Man
He bought white ties, and he brought dress suits
He crammed his feet into bright tight boots -
And to start in life on a bran-new plan,
He christened himself Darwinian Man!
But it would not do,
The scheme fell through -
For the Maiden fair, whom the monkey craved,
Was a radiant Being,
With a brain far-seeing -
While Darwinian man, though well-behaved,
At best is only a monkey shaved!4
Darwin's theory states that organisms evolve on earth as the result of
the natural selection of random variations. There were three immediate sources
for the theory5. The first was
Paley's theological argument from design - how it is that organisms so
perfectly adapted to their way of life could be explained naturalistically,
without invoking, as Paley did, a supernatural 'Maker'. The second was
artificial selection, practised by plant and animal breeders who selectively
bred from organisms with the desired characteristics so as to create new
breeds. The problem was how selection could take place in nature where no
obvious selector exists. A chance reading of Malthus provided the third
ingredient, which was just the natural mechanism required. Malthus noted that
human beings, like all organisms, have the natural propensity to increase
exponentially, generally outstripping the rate at which food supply can
increase. Consequently, populations numbers are kept down by starvation,
famine, disease and war which now and again take their toll. In Malthus' theory
therefore, Darwin found the perfect solution to Paley's problem of how
adaptation could be explained. All organisms have a natural propensity for
exponential increase, outstripping the carrying capacity of the environment.
Thus, only those organisms with characteristics that favour them in the
struggle for existence will survive to reproduce. Heredity ensures that the
offspring of those organisms will have the same favourable, or adaptive
characteristics. In this manner, the population will become more and more
adapted to the environment in subsequent generations. This then, is how natural
selection is supposed to work.
As we shall see later, competition for scarce resources is hardly the
norm for natural animal or human populations; in general they do not increase
exponentially because many social and biological factors intervene (before
those associated with food supply) to keep the reproductive rate low so that
the Malthusian scenario is seldom realized. Nevertheless, the Darwinian
metaphor took hold in the western world, and became incarnated in the Darwinian
man, who proceeded to remake the world in his own image.
The full title of Darwin's epoch-making book of 1859 was, The Origin
of Species by Means of Natural Selection or The Preservation of Favoured Races
in the Struggle for Life. If Darwin liberated the Victorian era from the
domination of religion and superstition, he also delivered it well and truly to
a nature painted 'red in tooth and claw'. Our continuing disharmony with nature
derives ultimately from this unedifying image, which Darwin clothed with the
full dignity of a scientific theory. At the same time, the emphasis on
competition between individuals and the implied superiority of the 'favoured
races' in the 'struggle for life' were most easily taken to be justification -
on the basis of natural law - for the economic exploitation of the masses as
for the colonization and oppression of 'inferior' races6.
Thus, a metaphor borrowed from life in the Victorian English society,
steeped in ideas of progress arising from unbridled competition in the
free-market, of imperialist conquests and expansion, became enshrined as a
scientific truth, dictating how we should see reality, and ultimately shaping
reality in accordance to its dictate. The Darwinian man shall rule the world.
Huxley invented a birthplace for him in the primitive society, where,
'...the weakest and stupidest went to the wall, while the toughest and
shrewdest, those who were best fitted to cope with their circumstances, but not
the best in another way, survived. Life was a continuous free fight, and beyond
the limited and temporary relations of the family, the Hobbesian war of each
against all was the normal state of existence.'7
This picture was directly echoed by Freud, whose theory of the savage,
patricidal primal horde is so far-fetched and ridiculous that it hardly bears
repeating. The modern Freudian man, nonetheless, is the bulwark of the western
industrialized society. According to a summary given by a sympathetic
exponent,
'..Freud believed in the person as a social atom requiring community
only as a means to the satisfaction of his needs; in a primary hostility so
strong that only sheer necessity or common hatred directed elsewhere could join
people in love; in a certain biological inevitability of hereditary
constitution, anatomy, and development, which strictly limits human
possibilities; in an inner private existence which, although in part the result
of early personal relationships, seems in later life, to make only indirect
contact with external reality... and finally in civilization as the result of
thwarted libinous impulses which have been deflected to symbolic ends...'8
Such a view of human nature continues to validate the competitive,
profit-seeking consumerist society of the industrialized west that in turn
reaffirms and reinforces it until no alternative is conceivable. The Darwinian
man is the constant, unchangeable parameter that must enter into every social
equation. There can be no consideration other than cost and benefit, which
creates at best, an uneasy equilibrium poised between loveless, self-serving
individuals. 'Scratch an altruist, and watch a hypocrite bleed', so says a
staunch defender of neo-Darwinism9. A
more moderate, though no less revealing statement, is made in the opening pages
of E.O. Wilson's book, Sociobiology, which applys neo-Darwinist
principles to explain the evolution of social behaviour, thus creating the
discipline of the same name:
'...This brings us to the central
theoretical problem of sociobiology: how can altruism, which by definition
reduces personal fitness, possibly evolve by natural selection?'10
Why do sociobiologists find such common and commonplace human qualities
so difficult to accept, that they need to do their utmost to explain them away?
It has been suggested that part of the reason lies buried in their own
psychology, which reflects the warped society that has nurtured them.
The Natural Being
'We crave to be more kindly than we
are'11
In reacting to the claims of some sociobiolgists that competitiveness,
aggression, and worse, the propensity for rape and murder in males are
universal human characteristics, Clairborne points out that in reality, the
overwhelming majority of human beings readily engage in activities to help or
benefit others, whereas only a tiny minority have ever committed criminal acts.
Therefore it may be argued that altruism, rather than aggression is the
universal human characteristic. He does not regard altruism to be innate,
however. Rather, he sees it as a learned behaviour based on the universal human
capacity for empathy, that is, for deriving pleasure from other people's
pleasure and distress from their distress. And hence, 'satisfying the needs of
others, and thereby sharing their satisfaction, is intrinsically
rewarding.'12 This empathy, as I
shall try to show, comes from the experience of connectedness with kin, with
fellow creatures and ultimately with all nature.
Mutual aid versus mutual struggle
Kropotkin tells us that, under the influence of Darwin's Origin of
Species, he began to study animal life in Siberia in order to find evidence
of intraspecific competition. Two general features emerged from his
observations. First, that there was indeed extreme severity of struggle for
existence against inclement nature (as one would expect in Siberia); and
second, that even under the most abundant animal life, there was no struggle
for existence against one another13.
He went on to document at length numerous examples of mutual aid and
mutual support among animals throughout the animal kingdom, from ants and
termites to birds and mammals, quoting widely from published sources as well as
from his own experience.
Ants regularly regurgitate food to feed hungry comrades that they happen
to meet.
'If an ant which has its crop full has been selfish enough to refuse
feeding a comrade, it will be treated as an enemy...And if an ant has not
refused to feed another ant belonging to an enemy species, it will be treated
by the kinsfolk of the latter as a friend.'14
Pelicans always fish together, typically forming a wide half-circle
facing the shore, then narrowing it by paddling towards the shore, catching all
the fish that finally become enclosed in a circle. In South America, they
gather in flocks of 40-50,000, part of which enjoy sleep while others keep
watch and still others go fishing. Cooperation does not stop within species
boundaries. Species may combine together to repell attacks, as the gulls and
terns, who coooperate to drive away the sea-hen. The lapwings (Vanellus
cristatus) attack the birds of prey so bravely that they merit the
name 'good mother', given to them by the Greeks. Cranes live in excellent
relationships not only with their congeners but with most aquatic birds. Their
sentries keep watch around a mixed flock which is feeding or resting together.
A considerable body of present-day sociobiological theory is devoted to
explaining, or explaining away cooperation in terms of the selective advantage
that after all, must accrue to the cooperating individuals (see Bateson15 , for example). But this is a misreading
of nature. In many cases, help is freely given to others from whom no return
can ever be expected, and with whom the individual shares no genetic
relatedness. Among mammals, dolphins are well-renowned for their intelligence
and friendship towards humans. They will actually help fishermen drive fish
into their nets if, after a long day, the fishermen have netted nothing and
they call to the dolphins for help. However, if the fishermen are greedy and do
it too often, the dolphins will ignore their call16.
Goethe was once told by Eckerman that two little wren-fledgelings, who
had run away from him, were found the next day in the nest of robin redbreasts
who fed the littles ones together with their own. Goethe saw in this a
confirmation of his pantheistic views17. It is surely this universal neighbourly
tendency of birds to look after other's young that enables the cuckoos to
exploit their hosts18, and not
because the latter are too stupid or mesmerized to distinguish foundlings from
their own offsprings. In my experience, female and even male domestic cats,
too, will readily adopt and look after kittens that are not their own. The love
of young is such among the Indian langur monkeys that as soon as a newborn
arrives, the troop's females will cluster around the mother, all reaching out
gently to try and touch and lick the infant. During its first day of life, it
will have passed through the loving arms of up to eight females19.
What appears much more fundamental than cooperativeness or helpfulness
is that animals tend to seek out and enjoy the society of others. The crane is
in continual activity from morn till night, of which only a few hours are
devoted to finding food. All the remainder of the day is given over to society
life.
'It picks up small pieces of wood or small stones, throws them in the
air and tries to catch them; it bends its neck, opens its wings, dances, jumps,
runs about, and tries to manifest by all means its good disposition of mind,
and always it remains graceful and beautiful.'20
Parrots, likewise, live in numerous societies or bands, the members of
each of which remain faithfully together for good or bad. They also enjoy the
society of other birds. In India, the jays and crows come together from many
miles round to spend the night in company with the parrots in the bamboo
thickets.
Multispecies association of birds are so common that,
'it would be much easier to describe the species which live isolated
than to simply name those species which join the autumnal societies of young
birds - not for hunting or nesting purposes, but simply to enjoy life in
society and to spend their time in plays and sports, after having given a few
hours every day to find their daily food.'
'And finally, we have that immense
display of mutual aid among birds - their migrations...birds which have lived
for months in small bands scattered over a wide territory gather in thousands;
they come together at a given place, for several days in succession, before
they start,... Some species will indulge every afternoon in flights preparatory
to the long passage. All wait for their tardy congeners, and finally they start
in a well-chosen direction... the strongest flying at the head of the band, and
relieving one another in that difficult task. They cross the seas in large
bands consisting of both big and small birds. And when they return next spring,
they repair to the same spot, and, in most cases, each of them take possession
of the very same nest which it had built or repaired the previous
year.'21
Similarly, social mammals are highly successful and associate in large
numbers (until decimated by man). The numbers of solitary carnivores are
trifling in comparison with the social herds of wild horses, donkeys, camels,
and sheep that used to roam in central Asia; and elephants, rhinoceroses,
monkeys, reindeer, muskoxen and polar foxes in northern Asia and Southern
Africa.
'And how false, therefore, is the view of those who speak of the animal
world as if nothing were to be seen in it but lions and hyenas plunging their
bleeding teeth into the flesh of their victims! One might as well imagine that
the whole of human life is nothing but a succession of war massacres.'22
Most of all, animals derive pleasure and satisfaction from life in
society. Society was not created by 'man' as our anthropocentric view
would lead us to believe, but is antecedent to our own species. Sociability -
the love of society for society's sake - is at the very basis of animal life.
Not only do numerous species of birds assemble together habitually to indulge
in antics and dancing performances, but according to Hudson, nearly all mammals
and birds (probably there are really no exceptions) indulge frequently in more
or less regular or set performances with or without sound, or composed of sound
exclusively. One has only to listen to the chorus of birdsongs mornings and
evenings that happen regularly as clockwork during the warm seasons. The habit
of singing in concert is most strikingly developed with the chakar (Chauna
chavarria). Hudson described how he experienced this:
'Presently, one flock near me began singing and continued their
powerful chant for three to four minutes, when they ceased the next flock took
up the strains, and after it the next, and so on, until once more the notes of
the flocks on the opposite shore came floating strong and clear across the
water - then passed away, growing fainter and fainter, until once more the
sound approached me travelling round to my side again.'23
Many years later, Allee24was
stimulated to re-examine Kropotkin's thesis when, by chance, he discovered that
even such lowly animals as isopods aggreagate most eagerly to form social
clusters. From this, he was led to review abundant evidence of swarm formation
in the living world, starting with the single-celled photosynthetic organism
Euglena, through to insects, birds and mammals. He concluded that sociality is
indeed universal:
'The growing weight of evidence
indicates that animals are rarely solitary; that they are almost necessarily
members of loosely integrated racial and inter-racial communities, in part
woven together by environmental factors, and in part by mutual attraction
between the individual membrers of different communities, no one of which can
be affected without changing all the rest, at least to some slight
extent.'25
As an example, he referred to the grassland bison community of the Great
Plains in North America. The bison herds kept the grasslands closely cropped,
preventing the invasion of herbs and shrubs. This provided a rich habitat for
grasshoppers, crickets, mice and prarie dogs, all of whom converted the grass
into meat, on which the plain Indians, buffalo wolves, hawks, owls and prarie
chickens fed. The plants of the community,therefore, cannot be considered in
isolation from the animals. This is but the age-old wisdom of ecological
connectedness and interdependence of all living things that is universal to
indigenous cultures all over the world26. The dominant modernist culture of the
industrialized west is unique in its persistent denial of the unity of
nature.
Allee and his colleagues also carried out numerous experiments
demonstrating that society per se has important effects on the behaviour
and physiology of individuals in it, not all of which can be interpreted as
contributing to an increase in survival value. The ill-effects of crowding are
well-known and clearly documented for animals such as fruitflies and laboratory
mice. What is not so well-known is that under-crowding is also deleterious for
the survival of individuals. Goldfish and planarians, when isolated, succumbs
to poisoning more readily than when grouped27. Embryonic development in sea urchins is
significantly accelerated when the eggs are massed together28. And ciliate protozoa reproduce faster
in groups than when isolated, the reproductive rate being also dependent on the
density of bacteria on which they feed29.
Of especial interest is Allee's demonstration that goldfish learn faster
in groups than as individuals, through a combination of imitation and group
cohesion30. From this arises the
concept of 'social facilitation' of behaviour which may have important
implications for our own species that are as yet unexplored.
Having demonstrated that cooperativeness and sociality is for animals
the most natural state of being, Kropotkin went on to cite abundant evidence of
mutual aid, compassion and moral feelings among so-called primitive human
societies. The relative lack of competition and strife in most traditional
cultures have long impressed anthropologists. The point is not that competition
or rivalry never occurs. Competition, like cooperation, is a social phenomenon;
it does not follow that corresponding preformed human qualities of
competitiveness and cooperativeness actually exist. There is, at bottom, a
feeling of connectedness with other beings, a desire for society - sociality,
or love. According to Kropotkin, sociality not only offers the greatest
advantage in the struggle for life under any circumstances (as opposed
to competition, which is only advantageous under some circumstances), but it
also favours the growth of intelligence, language, social feelings and a
'certain sense of collective justice' akin to morality. Sociality, the desire,
or propensity for society, is the regulating and cohesive principle in both
animal and human society. It exists prior to any consideration of selective
advantage. In a sense, Kropotkin, and also Bateson31 (a strong advocate of cooperation among
contemporary neo-Darwinists), invert cause and effect in trying to explain why
cooperation or mutual aid could have evolved by natural selection. Qualities
such as compassion or empathy, based on the same experience of connectedness
with other beings, are also antecedent to life in organized society. Life in
society may of course, reinforce and enhance those qualities, but they would
never have arisen through any externally imposed social order were they not
already heartfelt and integral to the natural state of being.
The origins of love and hate
In direct opposition to Freud and his many followers, for whom sex is
the single most important human instinct on a par with survival, the Scottish
psychologist Ian Suttie saw love as primary. The idea of love comes from the
ministrations of the mother or caretaker during infancy. From this arises an
emotion of tenderness which considers the whole world of people as possible
companions, who are to be enjoyed and loved, and from whom apreciation is
sought32. Hate or aggression has
precisely the same source: it arises when love is lost, or threatened with
loss, frustrated or thwarted. Thus, only the capacity to love predisposes us to
hate; the stronger the love, the deeper the hatred that comes into being should
love fail. Like Kropotkin, Ian Suttie came to his conclusions from studying
social behaviour among animals as well as primitive societies. Sociality is
congenital to human beings as much as it is to all animals (even those that are
not obviously social). And sociality is in turn, the root of culture and
creativity.
Just as play is universal among animal societies, it is an integral part
of human development. Play gives the individual reassuring contact with fellow
human beings which is lost when the mother's nurtural services are no longer
required or offered. From play arises creativity: play therefore, and not
necessity, is the mother of invention. Donald Winnicott, a contemporary of
Suttie, located play, and by extension, creativity and culture, in the
'potential space' that comes in being between mother and infant who, through
the realization of love, remain connected as they become separate33 What is it to live? he asked. It
is to live creatively. Thus, cultural and creative activities do not result
from the sublimation or suppression of the sexual instinct, as Freud supposed.
Instead, they are the raison d'etre of human existence, the very meaning
of life and a direct extension of the primal, irreducible feeling for love.
This is how I see the real original motive for gifts: they were not
solely nor primarily exchanges, even less so a primitive form of trade,
as most anthropologists seem to believe. The item given is above all a sign of
love. It refers to all other loves by association. 'A yam dug out from my
garden is the fruit of a labour of love by my own effort and the magic of
mother earth, who makes all things grow. I give you this yam because it is good
to eat, it nurtures you and makes you strong.' 'In return, I give you my
hand-axe that I have lovingly fashioned out of the beautiful stone that I came
upon one day during my walks. It must have been a gift from mother earth
herself, in order that I could make this axe for you.' The item given overflows
with meaning referring without bounds to all of nature which is fully
connected with, and accessible to the primitive consciousness. This meaning
is irretrievably lost when exchange is reduced finally to money: money which
changes hands impersonally and indifferently, obliterating all reference to
value, to labour, or to love, because it is itself valueless and formless.
Suttie began his book with some questions for his colleagues34:
'In our anxiety to avoid the intrusion of sentiment into our scientific
formulations, have we not gone to the length of excluding it altogether from
our field of observation? Is love a fiction, an illusion of a weak mind
shrinking from reality, and if so how and why should our minds...ever have
created the "idea" of love?'
Science, he argued, should be concerned with the whole range of our
experience. In its failure to deal with sentiment and human attachments,
mechanistic materialism is but a form of sublimated intellectual play. Suttie
himself demonstrated that it is possible to have a science of feeling,
but only with feeling. I suggest that the re-integration of intellect
with feeling is essential to a full experience and understanding of nature, in
other words, to an authentic knowledge of nature from within35.
What I propose is a knowledge system based explicitly and firmly on
natural human values, a knowledge system which is already implicit in many
aspects of contemporary western science, as I shall make clear in the next
Section. In claiming to be value-free and objective, western science has
systematically obliterated human values and divorced us from our feelings and
experiences, which however remain to haunt our dreams in hidden, subterranean
forms, making us strangers to ourselves. We are constantly being fragmented
into a rational thinking domain, opposed to an irrational domain of feeling: of
head versus heart, with a strong emphasis of head over heart. Science and
technology without value or purpose, that is, without heart, fall easy prey to
the artificial value system of vested interests whose only criteria for
validation are monetary cost and benefit; while cost to human life, plant and
animal life, takes second place at best. The present global environmental
crisis is a crisis of a materialistic lifestyle based on the ruthless
exploitation of nature and of our fellow human beings. An exploitation which
has been mediated, aided and abetted by the prevailing western science and
technology. In that respect, it is also a crisis for western science and
technology and a challenge to scientists to respond to the needs and sufferings
of peoples all over the world.
Nature from Within
To know nature from within is to recover the primitive natural wisdom
that is consistent with human life, that sees nature as she really is: the
evolving plenitude that affords the existence of things, the source and
sustenance of all life, and the ultimate inspiration for the human
consciousness striving to know and to create. In a culture that has lost none
of this feeling of real participation in nature's creative process, science, as
much as art, is a quest for greater intimacy with nature that involves our
whole being. The ideal state of true knowledge and inspiration is a state of
total coherence with nature in which the knower and the known are mutualy
transparent. In ancient China, this entails the spiritual union of the knower
with the tao, the creative principle that generates the
multiplicity of things. As the tao is eternal, the knower partakes of the
eternal in all things through the tao. Similarly, in ancient Greece, true
knowledge is unobscured participation in the divine mind36 from which all creation spring. In this
coherent state, one's actions are guided not by a disembodied objective
intellect, but on the contrary by a passionate total involvement and harmony of
mind and body in nature. Our desire merges with nature's desire, just as our
action is fully in step with hers.
The feeling for the unity and interconnectedness of nature is not just a
romantic notion entertained by poets and mystics and the so-called primitive
consciousness. It is an universal intuitive insight that contemporary science
is driven to validate in all aspects.
In biology, by far the most tenaciously held dogma for the whole of the
present century is that the genes of organisms are immune from environmental
exigencies and are therefore passed on practically unchanged to the next
generation. Within the past 20 years, as the tools of molecular genetics become
more and more precise, people begin to discover that the genes can change as
readily as many other characters of the organism in response to the external
environment. So much so that molecular geneticists have coined the term 'the
fluid genome' to describe the large variety of processes that can chop and
change the genes, expand or shrink different parts of the genetic material37. Recent experiments also indicate that
adaptive genetic mutations are non-random in that they are much more likely to
occur than non-adaptive ones38. All
the evidence indicates that organism and environment are intimately
interconnected, from the sociocultural domain right down to the genes. Stable
inheritance depends on this very interconnection, rather than on a
mythical, unchangeable genome. The process of heredity has a dynamic stability
which resides in the feedback interrelationships that can propagate from the
external environment through the physiological system to the genes. Organisms
and environment, like figure and ground, engage in ceaseless rounds of mutual
definition and transformation which is the essence of evolution39. Similar cycles of feedback between the
biosphere and the physicochemical environment are the basis of stability for
the global ecosystem.
The present global environmental crisis is the direct consequence of a
knowledge system based on a denial of the unity of nature. And nature responds
with a message that has become all too clear in recent years: she is one
indivisible ecosystem, and whatever insult is perpetrated in one part of the
globe will have repercussions, not only locally but globally as well.
Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis encapsulates the ancient ecological wisdom in a
contemporary form: the collective activities of the biosphere as a whole
maintain the earth's atmosphere and temperature far away from thermodynamic
equilibrium in conditions that are suitable for life40. In other words, instead of every
individual organism working for its own selfish ends as envisaged in
neo-Darwinian theory, it is the extent to which they effectively cooperate in
cycles of mutual feedback and interdependency that life for all is possible.
This is also a generalization of the principle of mutual aid among animals that
Kropotkin and Allee expounded on. More importantly, organisms are not so much
passively adapted to the environment by natural selection, as actively adapting
the environment to themselves41. That
is, they actively participate in shaping their own evolution. This
arises naturally from the interconnectedness not only of all life-forms, but
also between the biological and physical realms: each shapes the other in
successive cycles of mutual stabilization and transformation. Every species is
endowed with powers that are given by all the rest. In a very real sense, each
is implicated in every other by material and energy flow, and possibly also the
flow of information, as we shall see. There is an irreducible wholeness of
being and becoming on earth. This wholeness encompasses our relationship to
reality at the most fundamental physical level.
The inseparability of the observer and observed, or knower and the
known, and the universal wholeness of being, are nowhere as clearly brought
home to us as in quantum physics. Quantum physics is the culmination of a long
series of attempts to fragment reality into the smallest particle; only when
physicists got down to the infinitesimal, indivisible quantum, they find that
the whole exercise was futile: it cannot be done at all! It turns out that in
order to have a consistent representation or theory, it must be supposed that
observer and observed are one indivisible system, and that the very act of
observation transforms reality from an indefiniteness of multiply superimposed
states of being to a state of definiteness,which however, cannot be
predicted in advance. Moreover, the same act of observation can simultaneously
determine the state of a system which is widely separated from the one
observed, as though reality were indeed, an organic, universal whole.
This has prompted David Bohm and his colleagues to reformulate quantum
theory on the basis of universal wholeness: every particle or being is embedded
in a field, or quantum potential consisting of the influences from every other
being in the universe42. From this
perspective, wholeness and interconnectedness are actual and primary, just as
fragmentation and separation are illusory.
How then, can we think of reality at all? Nature has resisted all
attempts to describe her simplistically, in terms of a flat, comon sensible
literalness. The reductionist, atomistic science whose aim it was to do just
that, when pushed to the very limit, can only reaffirm that reality has
breadths and depths beyond our attempts at description and comprehension. As
our knowledge of nature deepens, so too the magic and the mystery; (the same
magic and mystery that were accessible to our ancestors). She is both wave and
particle, both here and everywhere at once. To know her requires not only the
analytic intellect of the scientist, but also the vision of the mystic, the
imagination of the poet, and the sensitivity of the artist. In other words, it
requires our whole undivided being participating fully in knowledge43.
The Coherence of Being
I hinted that organisms may be interconnected with one another and with
their physicochemical environment by information flow, as well as material and
energy flow. It is already generally accepted that physical parameters such as
day length and other seasonal variables are informational in that organisms
respond to them physiologically. There is a long standing debate concerning the
relationship between biological rhythms and periodicities in the environment.
One hypothesis, advanced by Brown44,
is that the biological rhythms are closely attuned to the rhythms of the earth
(which are in turn attuned to those of the sun and the moon). Many of these
natural rhythms are electromagnetic in nature. There is now a substantial
literature on the sensitivity of organisms to weak electric and magnetic fields
occurring either naturally, or close to power lines and other electrical
appliances; although the mechanisms involved in this sensitivity is not fully
understood45.
A possible clue comes from a consideration of the nature of biological
organization. There is a tendency for many molecular biologists to assume that
the answer to biological organization will come when all the molecules in
organisms are isolated and analyzed. But biolgical organization is a dynamic,
macroscopic order extending over astronomical numbers of molecules; spanning
distances at least millions of times the size of individual molecules. This
organization enables organisms to transform energy with the rapidity and
efficiency rarely achieved elsewhere, and to be extremely sensitive to specific
signals in the environment46. For
example, muscle contraction can be as efficient as 98% in converting chemical
energy to mechanical work; and it is estimated that our eye is sensitive to a
single light quantum falling on the retina.
Some thirty years ago, the nobel laureate biochemist, Albert
Szent-Györgyi47 already pointed
out that we can only begin to understand the characteristics of living systems
if we take into account the collective properties of molecules akin to
superconductivity and superfluidity. This idea was developed at around the same
time by solid-state physicist, Herbert Fröhlich48, who suggested that living systems may
have collective modes of activity somewhat similar to superconductors operating
at physiological temperatures. Metabolic energy, instead of being lost as heat,
is stored in the form of collective, or coherent electromechanical and
electromagnetic excitations. These coherent excitations could be responsible
for generating and maintaining long-range order. They also make possible highly
efficient energy transfer and transformation of energy and the detection of
very weak electromagnetic signals.
Evidence for the existence of coherent excitations in living organisms
come independently from the work of Fritz Popp and his coworkers49, who showed that practically all
organisms emit light at very weak intensities which can nonetheless be detected
with a sensitive photomultiplier placed with the organisms in a dark chamber.
The nature of this light (biophotons) can also be studied as rescattered
emission, or delayed luminescence, after brief illumination with an ordinary
light source. As the result of nearly 20 years of experimentation, Popp
advances the hypothesis that biophotons come from a coherent electrodynamical
field within the living system. This field has a wide range of frequencies that
are coupled together to give effectively a single degree of freedom, and that
may be the basis of biological organization. Living systems are thus both
emitters and receivers of electromagnetic signals originating from the
physicochemical environment as well as from other organisms. We have recently
demonstrated, for example, that synchronously developing fruitfly embryos can
interact nonlinearly to generate coherent light emission which are orders of
magnitude higher than the self-emission rate50. This adds a whole new dimension to the
interconnectedness in nature in terms of information flow as mentioned above.
Another important aspect of coherence is that it suggests a relationship
between local and global (or individual and collective) that has previously
been deemed contradictory or impossible. It turns out that a coherent field
shows space-time correlations between different points; however, these
cross-correlations are precisely the products of the self-correlations at each
point. In other words, any number of points in a coherent field will behave
statistically as though independent of one another51. A coherent state is thus one of maximum
global cohesion and also maximum local freedom! The inevitable conflict between
the individual and the collective, which serves as the starting point for all
social (as well as biological) theories of western society, is not so
inevitable after all. Perhaps it is time for social theorists to adopt a new
set of premises.
The Coherent Society
Can we envisage a society that is consonant with our new, and hopefully,
more authentic knowledge? I shall call it the coherent society to
resonate with our knowledge of unity and coherence, in the hope that we can
ultimately live and act coherently with our knowledge. It also carries the
notion of a life coherent with nature, and with our own natural being.
Biological organization has long served as the metaphor of social
organization for utopians and other social theorists alike, for example,
Spencer, Comte, and St. Simon, to name but a few52. A mechanistic view of life thereby
visits on society a whole set of unfounded and mistaken assumptions of which
social Darwinism has had the most devastating influence53. Two unspoken, deeply ingrained beliefs,
encapsulated in Darwinism are that 'man' is above all, an isolated individual
motivated solely by self-interest, if not aggression; and that in the absence
of an externally imposed social and moral order, chaos will reign supreme.
From our vantage point of 'nature from within', all nature is a unity
which we ourselves participate in shaping. Connectedness and sociality are
primary, just as aggression and hate are the result of frustrated or failed
love. The Darwinian/Freudian man is the product of a patriarchal, repressive
society built upon the denial of love at every turn. It is neither the
universal nature of human beings, nor the ineluctible human condition54
A consciousness fully indigenous to nature is grounded in nature, and connected
to all being. She is never isolated nor alone; hence she roams freely and
without fear. She is kind and loving and ever in possession of the highest of
moral feelings; for morality itself is derivative of the experience of real
interconnectedness with kin, with fellow creatures and ultimately with all
nature. In this interconnectedness, the sufferings and joys of others are as
those of the self. Such is the natural, heartfelt morality that needs no
external schooling.
What do primitive, indigenous cultures tell us concerning human nature?
One of the most relevant studies is that conducted by Margaret Mead and her
colleagues on Cooperation and Competition Among Primitive Peoples55. They asked the question: what
does the literature on primitive peoples yield on the subject of competitive
and cooperative habits which throw light on the problem of culture and
personality? It is a monumental work, and probably the only of its kind.
Nevertheless, I cannot help noticing how the mere phrasing of the question is
itself problematic (which is to some extent recognized by Mead). When one has
more than a passing experience of other cultures, it becomes all too obvious
that categories, such as cooperation and competition, which have well-defined
meanings in one culture may have no relevance at all in another. In the book,
cooperation is defined as the act of working together to one end;
whereas competition is defined as the act of seeking or endeavouring to gain
what another is endeavouring to gain at the same time. The usual way to
define goal or end in the west is in terms of something accomplished, something
gained. What can it possibly mean in a culture that does not value material
gain per se? It is significant that in summarizing the studies, Mead
admitted that 'cooperative' and 'competitive' were not opposites, and that a
category of behaviour, 'individualistic' must be added, in the sense that
collective vs individual behaviour refer to overt behaviour, and not to goals.
Similarly, in summarizing the findings, one of the headings for character
formation is 'ego development'. She wrote:
'...I am using the ego in the sense in which Freud used it in his
earlier work, as the ego drives which he opposes to the sexual drives. A
satisfactory short definition for the purposes of this analysis has been given
by Dr. Kenworthy: "In the use of our term ego needs is implied the
self-protective, self-maximating tendencies so often described under the
caption of the self-preservative instinct."'56
This perpetrates the greatest confusion of all. 'Self-preservating' and
'self-maximating' are entirely different things. None of the cultures which she
has classified as 'weak' in ego development has any trouble in
self-preservation, though they often regard self-maximating behaviour as
socially abhorent. In the west, people seem quite unable to distinguish between
the 'sense of self' and 'selfishness'; and many indigenous peoples and
foreigners alike are said to lack a sense of self simply because they do not
value personal possessions and do not act selfishly. Significantly, Mead had to
conclude from the studies that strong ego development can occur in
individualist, competitive or cooperative societies.
The studies also suffer from incompleteness. The most notable - and this
is perhaps general to most anthropological studies - is the absence of a
description of the art (and sometimes also myths) of the cultures concerned.
One is thus left with the feeling that we are missing a most valuable insight
into the soul of the society. I hope that future studies will take this on
board.
Despite these limitations, a number of generalizations emerged from the
studies which are illuminating (though these are not necessarily the ones
recognized or emphasized by Mead). Of the thirteen cultures examined, six were
identified as cooperative, four, individualistic and only three were
competitive. Mead arranged them in the form of a triangular diagram; the
midpoint of each side representing the most intense development of that
emphasis (Fig. 1). Of especial interest are the cultures classified as
individualistic. The Arapesh, for example, are a peaceable good-natured people,
helpful to a fault. They minimize blood relations, fixed membership in any
given group or rigid association with any piece of land. There is complete
individual freedom of choice in association with any group, and the groups are
extremely fluid, changing freely with the particular collective task involved.
Their economic affiliations therefore cross-cut all boundaries of geography and
blood kinship, and are based upon personal ties and friendship between
individuals, which serve to tangle the members of each group into many other
groups.
The Arapesh are classified apart from the cooperative cultures as
'individualistic' (although they engage in collective tasks almost all of the
time!) simply because mere helpfulness without any personal gain or end in
sight is considered other than cooperation. As in many natural animal
societies, helpfulness is an expression of sociality for its own sake,
which is more fundamental than cooperation towards a common end. In many
respects, the Arapesh culture exhibits a coherent society where individual and
collective are maximally expressed, and there is no conflict between the two.
Mead attributed this to the elimination of the distinction between the self and
the good of others, which is also achieved in all the societies classified as
cooperative. To me, this is also a concrete demonstrationn of empathy:
satisfying the needs of others and thereby sharing their satisfaction is itself
intrinsically rewarding. No other 'pay-offs' is relevant or required.
The most suggestive generalizations from the studies are that
cooperative societies are all in which personal property is consistently
undervalued; there is a strong sense of security afforded by kin group and
other extension groups; there is no attempt to exercise power over other
persons and interestingly, all share a belief in an ordered universe.
Competitive societies on the other hand, place a high valuation on property for
individual ends, have a low sense of security correlated with a strong will to
power over others; and finally a belief in an arbitrary, disordered domain of
the supernatural which is prevailingly antagonistic to them.
Mead concluded that the social structure itself has an overriding
determinate influence on whether the culture is competitive or cooperative;
whereas there was no correlation with the means of subsistence (whether
food-gathering, hunting, agricultural or pastoral), nor with the state of
technologies, or with the dictates of the natural environment.
In social structure, she suggested that competition was prevented by (1)
a rigid hierarchical social system such that rank interposes between would-be
competitors; (2) a social system through which the desired end is converted
from an individual to a group end; and (3) cultural phrasing which displaces
the emphasis from the objective situation to some other sphere in which
competition is not so possible (for example, the Zuni and Arapesh transforms
the scarcity of land into a perception of the scarcity of labour and hence
encourages cooperative labour). Inherent in this suggestion is the widely-held
underlying assumption that competition is a pre-existing quality which must be
mitigated, or ameliorated by some means. Moreover, she oversimplified the
situation with regard to the structural differences between competitive and
cooperative social systems:
'..In the cooperative cultures,
there are real closed groups within which the individual's status is defined,
and within which he is given security in relation to his fellows, the society
depends upon the structure for its perpetuation, not upon the initiative and
ambition of individuals. In the competitive culture, there is no closed
society, fighting exists within the group of loosely integrated lineages, no
individual is secure in relation to his fellows because success is defined as
the maintenance of higher relative status; and the culture is organized around
the initiative of individuals.'57
One might easily gain the impression from the foregoing description that
cooperative societies are closed and hierarchical, and rigidly controlled by
rituals. This is not the case. Although the Maori have a system in which status
is inalienable, the Samoans have a system in which status is movable, the Zuni
have no status at all, and the Dakota are quite egalitarian. What is more
significant is that they all share an emphasis on natural kin relationship
which can be very extended; and hence, I believe, they are best able to
retain and express their natural sociality (and security) on which cooperation
depends. In this light, the so-called competitive societies may be such
because they have lost the means to express their natural sociality, resulting
in a pervading sense of insecurity and hence in competitiveness.
Perhaps the most significant feature of cooperative societies, for the
purpose of this essay, is that they all have a view of an ordered universe.
Inherent in this belief is that nature is knowable and hence it is possible to
live with her and within her. On the contrary, an antagonistic, disordered view
of nature such as pervades the western industrialized societies, gives rise to
the idea that nature is ultimately unknowable, being governed solely by chance,
and must hence be dominated or conquered.
Viktor Schauberger was an unusual Austrian scientist who lived at the
beginning of this century58. He was
fascinated by the natural properties of water and water flow, a subject totally
alien to the academic scientists of his day, who were still steeped in
Newtonian mechanics. One of his many insights is that water naturally flows in
a rolling and meandering fashion which has a coherence of its own, and that a
river has the greatest carrying capacity when it is allowed to flow naturally.
Under those conditions, it deepens its bed as it flows and does not silt up.
However, when people started to control floods by building straight concrete
banks along the river, the water, unable to roll and meander under its own
impetus, begins to silt up the river bed, and sooner or later overflows the
banks. Instead, he suggested that by installing flow-regulators on the river
bed which encourages the natural flow, such disasters could be averted. The
moral is in how to let nature take its course, to live creatively with
her, rather than to exert control by stopping her in her tracks. In the
same way, our coherent society must be such as to be mindful of our natural
social being, to give it full expression in partnership with nature.
Schauberger already noticed, in the very early days of logging in the
Austrian Alps, that there was an intimate relationship between water and
forest; and has predicted the loss of ground water and floods that would follow
when the forest covering is removed from the water-sheds. We are seeing the
disastrous confirmation of his theory to-day in the destruction of tropical
forests throughout the Third World. Vast areas have already turned into
wasteland. In the Mae Soi Valley in Thailand, we saw 70 sq. kms of such
wasteland; and in the midst of it, a mere acre of the primary forest left as
'sanctuary'59 It was not until we
entered this sanctuary that the impact of what had been lost struck home with
full force. The santuary is a copse of giant trees surrounded by a shallow
stream. Many of the trees are at least two persons armspan, standing perhaps a
hundred feet tall. Thick curtains of epiphytes drape over their tops and sides,
while below, the dappled sunlight catches now and then, the sheen of
broadleaves in the undergrowth, or the occaisonal fluttering wings of
butterflies. It must have been paradise. I came away with a distinct sense of
having taken my last leave of earth. We have yet to find the way to know nature
as she really is, to be mindful of her being, so that we can live with her. It
is in knowing her that we shall have the most intimate knowledge of
ourselves.
Nature has a spontaneous dynamic order which is the source of her
creativity. We too, can integrate ourselves into this natural order, to live
coherently with her and with ourselves; to create in the wake of ever-creating
nature.
Acknowledgment
I am grateful to the Elias Khalil and Kennth Boulding for comments and
suggestions to improve the manuscript. The shortcomings which remain are
entirely my own.
Notes
1 Heilpern, J.(1989). Conference of the Birds. The story of Peter
Brook in Africa, Methuen, London.
2 Ho, M.W. (1988). Genetic fitness and natural selection, myth or
metaphor?
3 Ho, M.W.(1993). Towards an indigenous western science. In
Re-assessing the Metaphysical Foundations of Science (W. Harman, ed.), Noetic Sciences
Institute Publications.
4 Gilbert, W.S. (1962). Princess Ida, In The Savoy Operas,
pp.321-322, Oxford University Press, London.
5 Young, R.M. (1985). Darwin's Metaphor, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge.
6 Barzun, J. (1958). Darwin, Marx, Wagner, Doubleday Anchor, New
York.
7 Huxley, T.H. (1888). Nineteenth Century, (Feb. issue), p.
165.
8 Brown, J.A.C. (1961). Freud and the Post-Freudians, Pelican,
Harmondsworth, pp.13-14
9 Ghiselin, M. (1974). The Economy of Nature and the Evolution of
Sex. University of California Press, Berkeley.
10 Wilson, E.O. (1975). Sociobiology, Belknap Press, Cambridge,
Mass., p.3.
11 Brecht, B., cited in Clairborne, R. (1974). How Homo sapiens
learned to be good. Horizon (Spring), 30-35.
12 Clairborne (1974). How Homo sapiens learned to be good.
Horizon (Spring), 30-35. See also Khalil, E.L. (1990) Beyond
self-interest and altruism. Economics and Philosophy 6, 255-273,
for a recent interpretation of Adam Smith's very similar, albeit frequently
misunderstood, thesis presented inThe Theory of Moral Sentiments.
13 Kropotkin, P. (1914). Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution,
Extending Horizon Books, Boston, Mass., p. x.
14 Kropotkin (1914). p.13.
15 See Bateson, P. in Gambetta, D. (1988). Trust: Making and Breaking
Cooperative Relations, pp. 14-30, Basil Blackwell, Ltd., Oxford.
16 Csanyi, V., personal communication.
17 cited in Kropotkin, 1914, p. xi.
18 I am indebted to P.T. Saunders for this suggestion.
19 Clairborne (1974).
20 Brehm, A., cited in Kropotkin, 1914, p.28.
21 Kropotkin, 1914, p. 36-37.
22 Kropotkin, 1914, p. 39-40.
23 cited in Kropotkin, 1914, p. 56.
24 Allee, W.C. (1951). The Social Life of Animals, The Book Club,
London.
25 Allee, W.C. (1951). p.23.
26 Prof. Khalil rightly points out to me that there is a distinction, at
least at first glance, between social connectedness and ecological
connectedness.However, to the truly indigenous (or ecological) consciousness
which perceives most intimately the interdepence of all nature, every species
of animal or plant is regarded as kin (brother or sister); hence the
distinction between the two kinds of connectedness is considerably blurred. I
have argued for just such a consciousness from a contemporary western
perspective in a recent paper, Ho (1993)
27Allee, W.C. (1951). pp.38-44.
28Allee, W.C. (1951). pp.55-56.
29Allee, W.C. (1951). pp.59-61.
30Allee, W.C. (1951). pp.138-147.
31Bateson, P. In Gambetta, D. (1988). pp.14-30.
32 Suttie, I. (1989). The Origins of Love and Hate, Penguin
Books, Harmondsworth.
33Winnicott, D.W. (1974). Playing and Reality, Pelican Books,
Harmondsworth..
34 Suttie, 1989, p.1.
35See Ho, M.W. (1989). Evolution in action and action in evolution. In
Gaia and Evolution: Implications of the Gaia Thesis. Proc. 2nd Camelford
Symp. (P. Bunyard and E. Goldsmith, eds.), pp. 14-28, Wadebridge Ecological
Press,Cornwall.
36 Barfield, O. (1956) Saving the Appearances, a Study in
Idolatory,
37 Ho, M.W. (1986). Heredity as process: towards a radical reformulation
of heredity. Rivista di Biologia 79, 407-44. 38 Cairns, J., Overbaugh, J. and Miller, S. The origin of mutants.
Nature 335, 142-145; also, Hall, B.G. (1990). Spontaneous point
mutations that occur more often when advantageous than when neutral.
Genetics 126, 3-16.
39 Ho, M.W. (1988). How rational can rational taxonomy be? A
post-Darwinian rational taxonomy based on a structuralism of process.
Rivista di Biologia 81, 11-55.
40 Lovelock, J.E. (1979). A New Look at Gaia, Oxford University
Press, Oxford.
41 Saunders, P.T. (1991). Evolution without natural selection: further
implications of the daisyworld parable. In Symbiosis, Cooperativity and
Coherence. Proc. 3rd Camelford Conference on the Implications of the Gaia
Thesis (P. Bunyard and E. Goldsmith, eds.), Wadebridge Ecological Press,
Cornwall.
42 Bohm, D., Hiley, B.J., Kaloyerou, P.N. (1987). An ontological basis
forquantum theory. Physics Report 144, 323-348; 349-375.This
thesis most certainly does not mean that everything is equally connected to
everything else at all times. On the contrary, every particle or being has a
different history of interactions and hence of degree of connectedness. 43 Ho, M.W. (1990) A quest for total understanding. Saros Seminar on
the Dilemma of Knowledge, Transcript, Saros Book Club, Bristol. See also
Ho, (1993a) and Ho (1993b) The Rainbow and the Worm: The Physics of
Organisms, World Scientific, Singapore.
44Brown, F.A. (1962). Extrinsic rhythmicality: a reference frame for
biological rhythms under so-called constant conditions.Annals New York
Academy of Sciences 98, 775-787.
45Shulman, S. (1990). Cancer risks seen in electro-magnetic fields.
Nature 345, (News and Views), 463. See also Ho, 1993b; Ho,
M.W., Popp, F.A. and Warnke, U. eds. (1994). Bioelectrodynamics and
Biocommunication, WorldScientific, Singapore.
46Ho, M.W. (1989). Coherent excitations and the physical foundations of
life. In Theoretical Biology: Epigenetic and Evolutionary Order from Complex
Systems (B.C. Goodwin and P. Saunders, eds.), Edinburgh University Press,
Edinburgh. See also Ho (1993b); Ho, M.W. ed. (1994). Bioenergetics, S327
Living Processes, Book 2, An Open University Course, Open University
Press, Milton Keynes.
47Szent Györgyi, A. (1960). Introduction to a Submolecular
Biology, Academic Press, New York.
48 Fröhlich, H. (1968). Long-range coherence and energy storage in
biological systems. Int. J. Quant. Chem. 2, 641-649.
49 Popp, F.-A., Li, K.H., Mei, W.P., Galle, M. and Neurohr, R.
(1988).Physical aspects of biophotons. Experientia 44,
576-585.
50 see Ho, M.W., Xu, X., Ross, S. and Saunders, P,.T. (1992). Light
emission and re-scattering in synchronously developing populations of early
Drosophila embryos - evidence for coherence of the embryonic field and
long range cooperativity. In Recent Advances in Biophotons Research
(F.A. Popp, K.H. Li, and Q. Gu, eds.), pp. 387-306, World Scientific ,
Singapore, 1992c.
51 Glauber, J. (1970). Quantum theory of coherence. In quantum
Optics (S.M. Kay and A. Maitland, eds.), PP. 53-125, Academic Press,
London. See also Ho (1993b).
52 Jones, A. K. (1990). Social symbiosis: a Gaian critique of
contemporary social theory. The Ecologist 20, 108-113.
53 see Barzun, 1958; also, Ho, M.W. (1988). On not holding nature still:
evolution by process not by consequence. In Evolutionary Processes and
Metaphors (M.W. Ho and S.W. Fox, eds.), Wiley, London.
54 see Ho, 1993a,b.
55 Mead, M., ed. (1961). Cooperation and Competition Among Primitive
Peoples, Beacon Press, Boston; I thank E. Goldsmith for directing me to
this book.
56 Mead, M., 1961, p. 485.
57 Mead, M., 1961, p.480.
58 see Alexanderson, O. (1976). Living Water: Viktor Schauberger and
the Secrets of Natural Energy (trans. K. and C. Zwigbergk), Gateway Books,
Bath, U.K.; I am grateful to Aimee Lecompte for drawing my attention to this
book.
59 This visit was part of the International Honours Programme on Global
Ecology, Integrating Nature and Culture, 1990-1991, organized from Bard
College, Boston.
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