File spoon-archives/deleuze-guattari.archive/deleuze-guattari_1996/d-g_Mar.96, message 143


Date: Thu, 21 Mar 1996 11:19:27 +1000
From: P.Bains-AT-uws.EDU.AU (Paul Bains)
Subject: RE: The Ruyer Effect.


Howie writes,
>Why does the notion of autopoietic desiring machines (ADM) have to bring  
>us back to the 'egg' or to (embryo)Genesis? All we can say is that ADM  
>demonstrate that the "unity of mind and nature" is produced (inflected),  
>and produced differently in different ADMs. Isn't the unity a rhizhomic  
>integration of heterogeneous elements (a function of contingence, capture  
>and contagion) as much as it is a function of linear transcendance?

There is no linear transcendance involved (whatever that is). What is
involved is a novel conceptualisation of _=EDntegration_ or unicity. Absolute
overview is a kind of self-referential immanence. Obviously the word
overview appears as a problem but it is exactly this that Ruyer hones in on.
_Absolute_ overview is pure immanence without any transcendental whatever.
THERE IS NO BRAIN BEHIND OR ABOVE (OR IN ANY DIMENSION0 BEYOND THE BRAIN).
The brain, like concepts, is a 'true form' (rather than a non-integrated
'material' aggregate, partes extra partes) because it is in auto-overview
(this does not require that it 'sees' itself in the mode of perceptual
grasping - whether of 'representation' or 'presentation'). Ruyer uses the
example of visual awareness to demonstrate how we are not spectators in a
supplementary dimension to our visual awareness - altho we seem to be - and
of course Bergson (at the antipodes of Ruyer) thinks we see images 'out
there'.....and not 'in' our skulls. The brain _is_ a true form because it
has subjectivity or interiority or an 'inner-lining' 'I' _is_ seeing - not
'looking at' seeing. (This is pretty much Harding's 'On having no head').
This primary or proto subjectivity (proto doesn't mean 'vague') is
eliminated a priori by contemporary neurology which has to generate
subjectivity from 'purely physical' neuronal interactions. Others have to
generate it from a play of signs.......For d/g there is subjectivity (just
like turtles) 'all the way down'. 

As for the biology/embryogenesis bit, Ruyer is being ironic and having a go
at phenomenology, altho he certainly feels that a study of
morphogenesis/embryogenesis is extremely valuable for illustrating
auto-survol and 'primary organic consciousness', which is _not_ 'someone's'
'consciousness of'....
"But obviously this consciousness or cerebral morphogenesis is no more than
a particular case derived from organic consciousness and morphogenesis
(which is what the physicist sees as simply a relation of energy exchange
but which is rather an elementary field of consciousness". Ruyer, La Genese
des formes vivantes, 1958.

But of course I can't do justice here to the details of Ruyer's work which
are extraordinarily compelling and (as Deleuze says - good chap) as profound
as Bergson or Leibniz.
 
>>'Let us be careful not to get bogged down in this swamp and return to  
>the
>>solid ground of biology and embryogenesis.' (Ruyer, There is no  
>Subconscious).
>
>According to the notion of a fundamental unity of mind and nature, why  
>should we privilege the "solid ground of biology and embryogenesis"? What  
>makes it so "solid" and the imagination so flighty? And is solid better  
>than flighty, anyway?
>PS You mention Rupert Sheldrake. What's he up to lately? I participated  
>in an international experiment that he organized about 10 years ago. It  
>had very equivocal results as far as I could tell.

I don't know what Sheldrake is up to. I spoke to him in Sydney 4 yrs ago and
he continues to write. (Darwin btw never held a teaching position and spent
most of his life at his country home in Kent).
Paul.





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