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Culture Documents
Dariusz A. SZKUTNIK1
Contents
Introduction
1. Experiments
2. System harmoniously-equipotential
3. Psychoid as a category of metaphysical vitalism
4. Driesch on Aristotle; remarks concerning methodological differences
Conclusion
Introduction
I am going to describe and succinctly characterize two types of research-
perspectives developed by the famous German embryologist and philosopher, Hans
Driesch (1867–1941), i.e. the methodological and metaphysical vitalism.
1
Jagiellonian University in Krakow and University of Warsaw, POLAND.
EXPERIMENT 2
Driesch has succeeded in pressing rather tightly Echinus’ eggs between two
glass plates without killing them. Then the eggs became deformed to comparatively
flat plates of a large diameter. In those eggs, all nuclear division occurred at the right
angles to the direction of pressure, i.e., in the direction of the plates, as long as the
pressure lasted. But as soon as the pressure has ceased, the divisions began to occur at
right angles to their former direction (Driesch 1908, p.63).
Driesch argued that owing to the fact of a differentiation of pressure exerted on
the embryo during his experiments that he was able to obtain any forms of cell
divisions that he wanted. When he exerted pressure on the eggs until the end of the
eight-cell stadium of the embryo division then he obtained a plate compound of eight
cells placed side by side i.e. one by the other instead of two rings each compound of
And, at the same time, Driesch has emphasized that in order to be able to do
this, it is necessary to earlier introduce some other concept, i.e. the concept of
“prospective potency” or “prospective power” of every of the embryo’s parts. This
last term should designate a possible fate of every one of those embryo’s parts (once
again verbatim in Driesch’ meaning):
2. System harmoniously-equipotential
In the course of his further research, Driesch has come to a formulation of a
concept of a harmoniously equipotential system whose role was to express an
occurrence of a constant prospective power (prospektiven Potenz).
The living objects of Driesch’s research have been equipotential systems in the
sense that each of their constituents might play a separate function as a part of the
entirety of processes appearing in the whole living system; such a role has been
called a “function of place (location)” or “function of the position”. That is why the
systems in question could be designated as the equipotential systems with separate
powers, or shortly: the individually equipotential systems (Driesch 1908, pp.120,
121).
Driesch attempted to demonstrate that equipotentiality of a system consists
among others in that every of its parts plays some determined role only with respect
to the whole system in question – i.e. with respect to what is going on in the entire
system. Every part of such a system is placed (located) in a way guaranteeing its
determinate contribution to the construction of the system in question as a whole as
well as to its reconstruction (e.g. during a process of regeneration), and it is also able
to perform the same tasks which are playing other parts of the system.
Driesch came to the expressly vitalistic conclusions asking the following
question: under which circumstances might be made conditional the prospective
meaning (prospektive Bedeutung) B in all cases of an experimental influence (e.g.
shaking, separating) on the element X?
Driesch has presented following factors in question (shortly but strictly
according to Driesch’s meaning):
One might say that the prospective meaning of an element of a germ depends on
the absolute (total) size of a system, insofar as it is taken in its state just before its
morphogenetic change. Constituents of the system have substance (as if to “know”, in
a way, of how much), which is shaping organs or tissues, and which should be
produced in order to guarantee the complete outcome of the organic development.
Referring to Driesch’s meaning: from the analytical point of view, one can say
that the destiny of every constituent of the developing germ is changing in
dependence on the actual place of real border-lines between parts a¹, b¹ or a², b², with
respect to the fundamental direction-lines or sides of a rectangle a, b under
investigation. Let us designate this location by means of the symbol l as meaning that
a distance of one actual border-line of the given organic part as determined with
relation a to b. Then we could introduce the following, more developed formula of
the function in question: B (X) = f (s, l…), (Driesch 1908, p.124).
The point is that constituents of a germ should be located in any living organism
with respect to appropriate constant points of the system. That is why they can come
into being, in effect, the definite organic form, since the peripheral cells are behaving
in a different way in comparison to those appearing in the center of the system
(Weber 1999, pp.265–295).
Then, one of the most important of Driesch’s conclusions has been developed
(while accentuating its essential methodological meaning) in the following way: the
prospective power of the system in question, or rather of every of its constituents, is
the sum of that what may be carried out in the system by every of these constituents.
Yet, the fact that in every possible case there happens a typical proportional
development is the actual proof that this sum is not only the simple one but it is
presenting a kind of an order. We may call this order a “dependence of location in the
absolutely normal case”. But since we ought to remember that a “prospective power”
or, as it can be otherwise expressed, a relative proportion which is determining
foundations of the harmonious character of the living system, always should co-
determinate this state of affairs, then we may be authorized to apply this expression
without any ado or explanations to the designation of some constant factor on which
there depends the prospective meaning of every element and constituent of the living
system. If we designate the order embracing the prospective power of an organism by
a parameter-symbol E, then we might be able to complete finally the above stated
symbolic expression to the form: B (X) = f (s, l, E) [Driesch 1908, p.124].
1
Entelechy is lacking all the characteristics of quantity. Entelechy is order of relation and
absolutely nothing else; all the quantities concerned in its manifestation in every case were to be
due only to means which are used by entelechy itself, or to material conditions which cannot be
avoided.
Entelechy, though not capable of enlarging the amount of the diversity of composition of a
given system, is capable of augmenting its diversity of distribution in a regulatory manner, and it
does so by transforming a system of equally distributed potentialities into a system of actualities
which are unequally distributed.
Entelechy is not energy, not forces, not intensities but entelechy. Entelechy is a factor in
nature which acts teleologically. It is an intensive manifoldness, and on account of its inherent
diversities it is able to augment the amount of diversity in the inorganic world as far as distribution
is concerned. It acts by suspending and setting free reactions based upon potential differences
regulative (e.g. enzymatic catalysis). There is nothing like it in inorganic nature. (Driesch 1908).
References