What does it mean when we say that something is “new”? Not just “new” in an ordinary sense of “another one”, “the next one”, or “the latest”. The truly new in question is here meant in both the strong and the narrow sense of a radical novelty not only unheard of, or unknown yet, but positively non-existent before it started to be. All attempts to put into words the most ordinary meaning of what is “new” are doomed to fail. “New” is anything that has not been before, or that did not exist prior to its coming into existence. This is the kind of newness we shall deal with here – the kind that turns the world (a realm of reality) into something different, in a typical case into something richer than it had been before.
And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, we make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful. (Rev 21, 5)
So the biosphere, it seems, in its persistent evolution, is doing something literally incalculable, nonalgorithmic, and outside our capacity to predict, not due to quantum uncertainty alone, not deterministic chaos alone, but for a different, equally, or more profound reason: Emergence and persistent creativity in the physical universe is real.
Kauffman 2000, x
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Notes
- 1.
See discussion of emergentism in the preamble to the second part of this book.
- 2.
Moreover, in the Shakespearian parable above, both the previous and the new likeness represents animal shapes familiar to everybody: thus indeed nothing is new after all!
- 3.
Status Spiritus in the 13th century terminology of Joachim da Fiore.
- 4.
Of course, exceptions can be found to the dismal status of modern knowledge (e.g. in thinkers such as F. Nietzsche, H. Bergson, or M. Heidegger), but they have never had the impact necessary to change profoundly the path of either science or philosophy.
- 5.
The Concise English Dictionary. Omega Books Ltd., London, 1982. See also the introduction to Part 2 of our text.
- 6.
Cf. Heideggerian Gestell in the previous chapter.
- 7.
See canalization of superposition in the previous chapter.
- 8.
Still, to mention eidos here is appropriate because of its anonymous presence in the suffix “-oid” in many words (such as crystalloid, ovoid, anthropoid, colloid, asteroid) indicating likeness, resemblance or similarity.
- 9.
The third meaning of likeness – as an artificial imitation (such as a portrait, effigy or image) in no way fits the concept presently elaborated. On the other hand, the connotation with likeliness, seen in words like plausible, suitable and even probable (cf. likely, in all likelihood), is in tune with the concept we seek of likeness affecting its semantic field in the right way.
- 10.
That is why an expert (in butterflies, say) can recognize the species of single and even atypical specimens at first sight by their likeness, and still not know how and why: he can “tell the difference” but cannot tell what actually is different.
- 11.
Even in such an “objective” branch of bioinformatics as the comparison of DNA or protein sequences.
- 12.
See the similar conception of von Uexküll mentioned above.
- 13.
In this chapter we do not go into phenomena like imitation, although they are undoubtedly germane to discussions of likeness. We discuss the topic in Chapter 6.
- 14.
Not an easy task – recall Heidegger’s struggling with, going-along-with, Chap. 2.
- 15.
One may accept it, yet one can always also deny, and denial too requires a hermeneutic feat! At the time the extraordinary is seen, it is already part of the (newly) established order. Hence the invisibility of scientific revolutions and the mystery of missing links in evolution.
- 16.
Every growing form is original: it was formed through growth out of its origin and will give rise to other origins. A growing form is actually the form of the growth, a form of formation or of becoming; that is what nature (physis) means. Thus any natural form is the Form of its own being (esse), the essential form (forma essentialis or eidos) itself.
- 17.
To confuse flesh and matter, and to privilege the body’s materiality, has been a mistake of western thought that has had enormous and disastrous consequences. To understand the nature of life, of the living, of ourselves, one felt obliged to turn one’s back on the body, to ignore it altogether, or to separate from the body its essential form, the soul that is the principle of life – or to take up invoking spirits! Biosemiotics is the way to break this thousand-year curse and end such an unfortunate state of affairs.
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Markoš, A., Grygar, F., Hajnal, L., Kleisner, K., Kratochvíl, Z., Neubauer, Z. (2009). Novelty Wherefrom?. In: Life as Its Own Designer. Biosemiotics, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9970-0_3
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