Abstract
Psychology has to be defined based on what is specific for life compared to the nonliving nature. Life is an asymmetric subject-object relation starting with a symmetry break only intelligible in a thermodynamic context, going beyond mechanicism. This is common to all life, including plants and animals. But compared to plants, animals are reaching actively out toward their vital objects in an intentional relation. This intentional relation is of a dual character as it is both directed toward objects’ form or features and toward their distribution in space and time as distinct pieces of matter.
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Notes
- 1.
This is one of the consequences of the second law of thermodynamics. If a proximal selector existed which should not import energy and/or information from outside to accomplish the reduction of entropy on one side and increase it on the other side of the membrane, it would be possible to build a perpetual motion machine by running the selected material back again, thus violating the laws of thermodynamics. Such a hypothetical, but in reality impossible, “selector” has been much discussed, often under the name of Maxwell’s demon after the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell.
- 2.
We can’t here go in details with these highly sophisticated processes across the membrane. And we can’t even exclude that some quantum phenomena, as, i.e., “tunneling” over the membrane, are involved.
- 3.
The individual time of death may, however, be programmed to occur long before this ideal limit of “entropic necessity.” A short generation-turnover interval can be an advantage for a species adapting to changes in life conditions.
- 4.
This section follows the presentation in Mammen (2017).
- 5.
Plants are not totally immobile. They grow on their root and can in some cases turn (slowly) in relation to light. In some cases they are also being transported passively by wind or current.
- 6.
This is the case in many species which are not, as mammals and birds, hatching, feeding, or protecting their eggs or offspring.
- 7.
Here Engelsted (2017) follows Aristotle, for whom the self-initiated movement, or locomotion, of the animal was its specific “psyche,” but Engelsted goes somewhat further, with echoes of existentialism.
- 8.
It is debated if plants can learn by association or conditioning as the animals (Gagliano et al., 2016).
- 9.
And in the world of events, as far as they are tied to objects. In the following we shall mostly refer to objects and later take the discussion of other phenomena belonging to reality. The duality of form and matter has already been introduced above in connection with modern physics and referring to Aristotle and Kant.
References
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Gagliano, M., et al. (2016). Learning by association in plants. Scientific Reports, 6. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep38427. http://www.nature.com/articles/srep38427
Mammen, J. (2017). East of Eden. In N. Engelsted (Ed.), Catching up with Aristotle. a journey in quest of general psychology (pp. 123–136). New York, NY: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978–3–319-51,088-0
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Prigogine, I., & Stengers, I. (1984). Order out of chaos. Man’s new dialogue with nature. New York, NY: Bantam Books.
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Mammen, J. (2017). A New Beginning. In: A New Logical Foundation for Psychology . SpringerBriefs in Psychology(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67783-5_4
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