[P M g « CO) [FŮ DTTD s i on DD ¥to(s OtiDlmgj F ® « ©traía] îto® SæsOtray Ey® ¥tr®[ra§D©il®d]s mÂto ©tra DtraíiotFptFOůBiiíi® E§§©y toy iDsOaainál 1 . G n rttar ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHICAL ZOOLOGY BY ADOLF PORTMANN The Living Form and the Seeing Eye Translated, with an Interpretive Essay by Richard B. Carter Problems in Contemporary Philosophy Volume 20 The Edwin Mellen Press Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter /K t&î Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHICAL Portmann, Adolf, 1897- (Essays. English) ZOOLOGY BY ADOLF PORTMANN Essays in philosophical zoology by Adolf Portman : the living form and the seeing eye ; translated, with an interpretive essay by Richard B. Carter. The Living Form and the Seeing Eye p. cm. -- (Problems in contemporary philosophy; v. 20) Translated from German. ISBN 0-88946-323-9 1. Biology-Philosophy. 2. Portmann, Adolf, 1897- -Philosophy. I. Carter, Richard B. (Richard Burnett), 1931- . II. Title. III. Series. QH331. P5913 1990 574’.01~dc20 90-5672 CIP This is volume 20 in the continuing series Problems in Contemporary Philosophy Volume 20 ISBN 0-88946-323-9 PCP Series ISBN 0-88946-325-5 A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 1990 Richard B. Carter All rights reserved. For information contact The Edwin Mellen Press The'Edwin Mellen Press Box 450 Box 67 Lewiston, New York Queenston, Ontario USA 14092 CANADA LOS 1L0 The Edwin Mellen Press, Ltd. Lampeter, Dyfed, Wales UNITED KINGDOM SA48 7DY Printed in the United States of America CONTENTS Preface...................................................................................................................i Acknowledgements............................................................................................v Translator’s Introduction...............................................................................vii Part I The Living Being as an Other-Inclusive Self..........................................1 Chapter I The Orientation and World-Relation of Animals: New Results of Biological Research......................................3 Chapter II The Living Thing as a Pre-Arranged Relationship 21 Part II The Expanded Science of Living Beings...............................................45 Chapter III Problem of Living Things.......................................................47 Chapter IV Contemporary Biological Research.....................................79 Part III Peculiarities of Human Evolution..........................................................95 Chapter V The Path Leading to Words: Levels of Living Communication..........................................97 Chapter VI Human Beings in the Perspective of the Theory of Evolution..............................................................125 Part IV The Living Form-Construct...................................................................145 Chapter VII What Does the Living Form Mean to Us?........................147 Chapter VIII Goethe and the Concept of Metamorphosis.....................161 Appendix IV J. W. Goethe’s Versuch Die Metamorphose Der Pflanzen Zu Erklären PREFACE (An Attempt to Explain the Metamorphosis of Plants) Introduction to the Translation.......................................................179 REVERENCE IN THE PRESENCE OF LIVING THINGS Translation by Agnes Arber............................................................207 Translator’s Essay.............................................................................257 On the Death of Adolf Portmann Index................................................................................................................277 In losing Adolf Portmann, formerly the Professor of Zoology at Basel University, the world doubtlessly lost one of the greatest and, at the same time, one of the most controversial biologists of our time. And controversial he was! For, he accepted the presently popular thesis of evolutionary theory only with definite reservations. He utterly rejected the extreme version of reductionism which teaches that all phenomena involving living things cm be reduced finally to physics and chemistry. These living phenoi na continuously presented Portmann with "the familiar mystery of living things," and he found this familiar mystery at every turn. Indeed, that is the title of the detailed Portmann biography which the Max-Plane Institute biologist, Joachim lilies, gave to his book concerning Adolf Portmann’s life and work. (It is a tragic coincidence that lilies died a few weeks before Portmann. But Portmann went further than merely to reject reductionism; he also rejected the modern theory according to which all developed living beings are the coincidental shells - so to speak, the litter — of their selfish genes. Precisely, that "total visual picture," or "gestalt" of the organism had captivated Portmann during his whole life, and he devoted his most widely known book to the question of the animal’s gestalt. He confessed in the Foreword to that book, (Die Tiergestalt), that he who had originally wanted to be an artist had written the book out of the joy he had taken in his A further stage for him to express his wide-reaching ideas was offered observations of the total visual picture of animals. He did not carry on his him by the Eranos Group, that "feast of souls" (lilies), which he directed for researches only with the eyes of the stone cold sober zoologist, but also, and decades. Furthermore, returning to his teaching, over the years he invited his at the same time, with the eyes of an artist, with uncompromising intensity students to his vacation spots - at Mittlemeer, Villefranche, and especially at and with deep reverence for the familiar mystery of life. "For only he who his beloved Banyuls where he had met his adored wife. knows the immediately and easily accessible things also suspects the extent of For many students, these times at the sea-side provided unforgettable the hidden things." Such beliefs, and his concept of "inwardness" led to his and glorious experiences. This also was the case for the short tea breaks at expulsion "from the club made up of the ruling caste of science," (lilies). He the tradition-rich Institute of Biology at Rheinsprung in Basel. Prominent was also looked upon as a renegade because he held that mutation and guests often took part in these teas, guests with whom the old students and selection could not be the sole design engineers of species-modification. In teaching staff could establish respectful first contacts. I myself remember spite of this, he received a great many national and international honors. several of these meetings which included men such as Witschi, Goldschmit, Portmann recognized absolutely no dogmas -- either biological, Buytendijk, Uexkill, Spemann, Koehler, and others. religious, or political. He himself built his own world view on the foundation After about a 25 year interruption, I called upon Portmann who was of a profound comprehension and awareness of form which is concerned with then over 80 years old. I had been asked to visit by lilies who wanted to talk the world of marine animals and with that in it which is so often lacking with me personally at Neubad in the suburbs of Basel. Portmann came to the today because the consideration of complete animals has been pushed into point at once - to his point, of course: He had decided to complete a the background through the analysis of the individual cells and cel 1-parts. manuscript for a book about birds, one which he had discussed with The division between research and teaching posed no problem in publishers much earlier. Leafing through the work and playing with his Portmann’s case. He performed both passionately. His lectures, courses, delightful labrador, he proclaimed with emphasis, "Archeopterix is simply not and reports were lively and exciting and he often relaxed their tension a missing link; it was, even at that time, a true bird. We lack any trace of a through humor - as I know from personal experience which began in my first sure proof for a transition from reptiles’ scales to birds’ feathers." Portmann semester and extended to the last - and even beyond to my lectureship and was an evolutionist of a peculiar stamp; his new ideas were important and on to my assistantship. Our friendship thus developed over a 25 year period. often the work of genius. His ideas will occupy future generations and they Portmann’s Saturday lectures finally became such a legendary event will give grounds for the revision of many of today’s doctrines. that they had to be located in a very large lecture hall outside the Zoological Heini Hediger Institute. In this somewhat extra-territorial space, Portmann dealt with July 3/4, 1982 themes which had hitherto been more or less peripheral - as, for example, with peculiar aspects of rabies with its contradictory symptoms of thirst and fear of water or hydrophobia, themes which permitted something of the evil of nature to glimmer through to our vision. At other times, he broke open the walls surrounding zoology and dealt with issues which were highly exciting for physicians, anthropologists, psychologists, philosophers and even for theologians. One only need mention his discovery of that extra-uterine "early year" which located humans as secondary nestsquatters in his system of the "phylogeny of ontogeny." ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I must first acknowledge my debt to The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy both for their award of an National Endowment for the Arts grant to enable me to begin the work of polishing these translations, and for providing me with an office and secretarial help during the period of October 1980-April 1981. The directors of AEI saw that Portmann’s work had direct bearing on public policy issues, an insight which, alas, all too few American public policy institutes realize. Next, I must acknowledge my great debt to the Earhart Foundation for several grants since 1981. Their generosity was crucial in providing me with the time to finish the work of refining the rough translations. I would especially like to express my gratitude to Dr. Anthony Sullivan, the Secretary of the Earhart Foundation. Dr. Sullivan went far beyond his required duties in helping me in countless ways, and I am deeply grateful to him. Again, Mrs. Eric New of Bar Harbor, Maine and Basel, Switzerland, has been a generous and critically important friend to me over the last 15 years. Without her prompt help in matters as different as providing me with her wonderful food and wines while I spoke with Portmann in Bar Harbor, and checking out the copyrights of the articles, I would not be presently prepared to publish the period when these translations were being worked on, Mrs. New was a co-worker. Again, I owe a special debt of gratitude to Prof. Frans Verdoorn, the editor of Chronica Botanica, who graciously gave me the copyright to Vol. 10, Number 2, pages 63-126, containing Agnes Arber’s wonderful essay on and translation of 1790 Goethe’s work on the metamorphosis of plants which I have included among the present translations. Finally, I would like to thank Ms Lisa D. Pace who, working with me during the Summer of 1988, acted most ably as my typist, proof-reader and general factotum. Her never-endingly cheerful and discerning precision made a difficult and trying stage of work much more enjoyable than it would otherwise have been. Baltimore, Maryland October, 1989 TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION Translating Adolf Portmanns’ writing is an undertaking filled both with pleasure and a certain kind of vexation. Because he is brilliant stylist, it is always a delight to follow his subtle address to vastly complex problems; by the same token, however, it is extremely difficult to catch that very subtlety in translation-and this quite apart form the usual difficulty in translating from German to English. In all this, I have been most fortunate. During the last three su timers of his life - 1980, 1981 & 1982 --1 had the great pleasure of spending several days with him in Bass Harbor, Maine, after I had completed the rough drafts of these translations. During those visits I had the chance to discuss difficulties and his own preferred address to them, and this encouraged me greatly in a number of places where I was least comfortable as a scholar of Descartes addressing concepts which taxed the 82 year old zoologist, Portmann. (As the enclosed letters from Portmann to me indicate, we both agreed on the importance of my Descartes studies for my work with him and for my interpretation of his writing both in my translations and in my interpretive essay with which I end this book.) With a fine, and, in my own experience, altogether unique generosity, Portmann patiently illustrated point after point which was obscure to me, and never, even once, made me feel uncomfortable in facing the wide chasm separating his life-long study and mine. On Saturday, July 3, of 1982, I received notice of Portmann’s death from my friend, Yves-Pierre Simonin, First Minister of the Embassy of Switzerland in Washington, D.C. At the time that morning’s distressing mail arrived, I was preparing for a Monday class in which we were going to leave Darwin’s The Origin of Species and begin to read some of my (then) rough translations of Portmann’s essays. The news of his death renewed my ZOOLOGISCHES INSTITUT 4051 BASEL, determination to polish these translations for a wide reading public and so I DER Reinsprung 9 have given all the time I could to accomplish this task -- no little one, since UNIVERSITAET BASEL May 13,1974 professional translators find Portmann’s work so difficult that at least one of them, to my personal knowledge, refused to undertake the task: He said he Dear Sir: could not make a living doing such painstaking work! My own sense of my effort is that, although I am sure I have made mistakes which no professional Dr. Richard B. Carter and I have been in contact for several years, translator would be likely to make, I have worked with and thought about beginning with a correspondence concerning biological and anthropological Portmann’s work as no professional translator could possibly afford to do. problems and leading to his stay here in Basel from July, 1973 to June, 1974. Also, I have worked with him as a colleague at Basel, and I think that, though During this period, we have worked together intensively and he has these translations might not be perfect, the flow of ideas and their stress are progressed yet further in his understanding of the biological viewpoint of my quite adequate. I am persuaded that Portmann would approve of this effort. own work of the last decade. In closing I would like to say that this work is my attempt to repay my Professor Carter’s interest concerns the synthesis and philosophical great debt to Portmann. He was always a fine and generous friend to me analysis of biological theory. His own field, the explanation and clarification over the all-too short time we knew one another, a period covering somewhat of the work of Descartes, has led to an enlargement of my own perspective, over 13 years. When I first began to work with him in Basel in 1973,1 was an and constitutes what I judge to be an important contribution to a deeper unknown from an unknown college in New England. He gave me his philosophical penetration of the current problems of biology. attention and time for a year, with no real grounds for hope of any I would be pleased to supplement this letter with any further details recompense. The longer I read his books and articles, the more I wonder at requested of me,.... Sincerely yours, his enormous gifts and at his great learning. To have sat and talked with him at Basel and to have walked the autumn woods with him in Maine, are surely Prof. Dr. Adolf Portmann prize events in my philosophic life. This book of translations represents my attempt to recognize my debt to the scholar I judge to be the deepest and most vivid man I have ever met, a man who by right belongs in the company of the very best men who have ever written a book. PARTI THE LIVING BEING AS AN OTHER-INCLUSIVE SELF Introduction In "The Living Thing as a Pre-arranged Relationship," Portmann discusses the implications of the evolution of opaque surfaces in living forms, and tells us that: "The opaque surface has a unique value as a display for something visually apparent. Whether this appearance is actually seen, that is, whether it appears to the eyes of higher organisms, is perhaps beside the point in this context; we are not yet within the realm of ‘visual’ structures which are, it is generally assumed, meant to camouflage the organism or make it strikingly noticeable. The surface display is a part of the presentation of the self of a living being. To be sure, the perceiving eye plays no role in the life-realm in which patterns and designs first arise from these newly constructed forms; but, in that same life-realm the possibility of perceived beings already exists -- and that potentiality leads to the further promise of an enrichment of living relationships which grows out of the existence of those patterns and designs which uniquely characterize distinct individuals." In this section on the living being as an other-inclusive self, Portmann examines the way living things relate to the world around them by means of their forms and patterns. He also discusses in what way the patterned, shaped, opaque surface, on the outside, mediates between what he terms as "the inwardness of the living thing" — which is "a non-dimensional reality which is spatially located neither in a spacial inside nor in a center" — and that world given to it because it is the kind of individual it is. In short, this section introduces us to Portmann’s thought concerning the "vital" importance of the individual living being’s outward shape in relating it to its world.