[...] synthesis* in the anonymity of universal elements and movements
(for example) metamerism of fish: “fish do not lead their lives themselves, the river has made them lead it, they are *persons without personality* (<== strictly mechanistic use of the notion of environment [<-- Descartes beast machine])
Lamarck: the environment dominates and control the evolution of living beings through the intermediary of *need*(= a subjective notion entailing reference to a positive pole of vital values)
(for Lamarck:) life and environment (which is unaware of it ~(Lamarckian *vitalism*:) ‘there is an originality of life of which the environment takes no account’) are two series of asynchronous events ==>
[*]adaptation: life's renewed effort to “stick” to an indifferent environment
[*]being: the effect of an effort [--?--> striving]
(--> this asynchronicity ==> “us” and “place”)
==> environment does nothing for life --Bichat--> “life: set of functions that resist death” (~-> tales of survival in America sci-fi TV series)
life resists solely by changing its shape in order to survive


Darwin explaining the ‘appearance of new forms’ conjunction of two mechanisms:
1- mechanism of the production of differences ~ variation
2- mechanism of the reduction and criticism of these produced differences ~ vital competition and natural selection
(for Darwin the fundamental biological relationship:) the relationship of the living being to other living beings --> precedence over environment conceived as a set of physical forces
-competition of forces
-accidental morphological variation
(for Darwin:) ‘to live' = to submit an individual difference to the judgment of the set of living beings ~= *die or be part of the jury*
monstrosity: the rule
originality: provisional ordinariness


finalism --Darwin--> selection
***both Lamarck and Darwin denounce finalism and celebrate mechanism
(both, [complementary] biologists to whom) life appears as a datum which they seek to describe without being too concerned about accounting for it analytically [--> not accouting for the analyticallity of their objects?]
Lamarck --> (thinks of life in terms of) *duration*
Darwin --> (thinks of life in terms of) *interdependence*

Darwin's biogeographical environment =/=? Lamarck's environment


Humboldt (and Ritter) --> (19th century) geography: a science conscious of its method and its dignity
(naturalist traveler -->) *Humboldt's “Kosmos” [~ synthesis of knowledge, not aiming to be encyclopedic, but strives ***to arrive at an intuition of the universe***] combining:
•(“oikoumene” tradition of Greek geography:) *the science of the entire human world* [--> ajayeb]
•(“mathematical geography” founded by Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, Ptolemy:) *the science of coordination of human space in relation with the celectial configuration and movements* [--> Olearius]
}==> Earth [considered as a whole]: (stable support for the) *فراز و نشيب vicissitude of history* --> ‘terrestrial space + its configurations’ : object of geographical, geological, sociological, biological knowledge
(Humboldt) applied a whole system of barometric, thermometric in his investigation. *division of plants* according to different climates ==> “botanical geography” & “zoological geography”

history of the Weltanschauung

*****how Humboldt (and Ritter, [even Simondon does that too]) apply the *category of totality* to their object --> the relations between historical man and the environment ==> *determination of historical relationships*

the relations between the geographical environment and man ==> a spirit
(-->) *doing history*: reading a map, understanding by map the representation of a set of metrical, geodesic, geological, climatological, and descriptive biogeographical data


Loeb + Watson (phototropism in animals):
every movement of the organism in the environment = a movement into which the environment forces the organism ==> **animal = reflex** <-->{Darwinism + Cartesianism ==> behaviorist psychology*}
(Watson:) [*]psychology: program of the analytical investigation of the ‘stimulus-response couple'[= conditions of the living being's adaptation to the environment through the experimental production of relations between stimulation and response] (<-- one of physical determinism) ==> consciousness nullified as illusory
(the living being's situation:) “its being = a conditioning” (--> as artists we still have to deal with this idea or image, it is about the reality the artist receives and what they make of it)


process of reduction:
(ajayeb --to-->) biology --to--> behavior --to--> neurology --to--> energetics (--to--> electronics)

the perfect work of behaviorist psychology: construct man as a machine reacting to machines

Condillac's fable of the statue: in the rose's perfume, the statue is the rose's perfume ==> living organism = respond to sensory stimulation (the physical mileu, light and heat, carbon and oxygen, calcium and gravity)

(Canguilhem asking) where is the living being? <-- Kohn

==> subjects “taking action” =/= objects “in movement”

we see individuals --but--> these are objects
we see centers --but--> these are environments
we see machinists --but--> these are machines

environment of behavior --coincides-with--> geographical environment --coincides-with--> physical environment


“in a human environment, man is obviously subject to a form of determinism, but it is the determinism of artificial creations in which the spirit of invention which calls them into existence is alienated.”

*psycho-technique of engineers*

...to grasp the presence in man of his own originality --> @Maarten, Mobed
as an irreducible center of resistance

“man, even when subordinated to the machine, never manages to grasp himself as a machine. his efficiency is greater the more he is aware of his central situation with regard to the mechanisms intended to serve him” [<-- *a bad story (of The Terminator, The 100, The Magicians, etc.)]


(Darwin, Laeb's) pragmatism: generalization of the notion of adaptation to the theory of knowledge

reference of organis movement to the organims itself as essential

(prepared by Kantor, Tolmann's) teleological behaviorism: recognizing the sense and intention of animal movement


(where, for whom, the individuality of the living organism stops?)
•at its ectodermic borders
•at the cell
•

cell: an environment of infra-cellular elements, it lives in an internal environment which sometimes has the dimensions of an *organ* and sometimes of the *organism*


Uexküll --> Umwelt =/= Umgebung =/= Welt
•*Umwelt* distinguishes the environment of behavior specific to an organism
•*Umgebung*: the ordinary geographical environment
•*Welt*: the universe of science

Umwelt ~ the specific environment of behavior (for the living being): a set of excitations

to be effective it must be anticipated by an attitude of the subject ~ ‘if the living being is not seeking, it won't receive anything’

Buffon & Lamarck --> time and favorable circumstances gradually constitute the living
=/= Uexküll --> time and favorable circumstances are relative to such and such living beings

==> Umwelt: an elective sample in the Umgebung }--> milieu
environment: “man's Umwelt” ~ the ordinary world of his perspective and pragmatic experience

*human suject: creator of techniques and values
==> animal's Umwelt: a centered environment/milieu relative to this living being as essentially a subject of vital values

a subjectivity at the root of this organization --> شپش shepesh tick

Uexküll story of the tick --> *mechanical theory of the reflex*
...the animal may remain completely indifferent and insensitive for a considerable length of time to all the excitations of an environment like a forest, and that the only excitation that is capable of triggering its movement, to the exclusion of any other, is the odor of rancid butter.
--> *an organism is therefore never equal to the theoretical totality of its possibilities
organism =/= preferential behavior

reversal of organism-environment relationship:
•“the meaning of an organism is its being” (Goldstein)
•“the living being's acquis[...]