Abstract
The idea of organism-environment interaction, at least in its modern form, dates only to the mid-nineteenth century. After sketching the origins of the organism-environment dichotomy in the work of Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, I will chart its metaphysical and methodological influence on later scientists and philosophers such as Conwy Lloyd Morgan and John Dewey. In biology and psychology, the environment was seen as a causal agent, highlighting questions of organismic variation and plasticity. In philosophy, organism-environment interaction provided a new foundation for ethics, politics, and scientific inquiry. Thinking about organism-environment interaction became indispensable, for it had restructured our view of the biological and social world.
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- 1.
Geoffroy (1833a, 88–89n) quotes Blaise Pascal making a related point. However, this is not an accurate quotation but a loose reading of the earlier thinker’s well known remark, “I am very afraid that this nature might itself only be a first custom, just as custom is a second nature” (Pascal 1669, 199; Pascal 1991, 208).
- 2.
- 3.
Related German concepts and terminology would require a history of their own. Thomas Carlyle seems to have originally coined the word ‘environment’ to translate the German word ‘Umgebung’ (Pearce 2010a, 248). Phrases like “der Organismus und seine Aussenwelt” were used in medical writings beginning in the early 1800s: e.g., “the reciprocal determination of the organism and its external world” (Kilian 1802, 150). Philosophically inclined physicians such as Johann Christian Reil and Moritz Naumann also employed this Organismus-Aussenwelt dichotomy (Reil 1816, 63; Naumann 1821, 349, 1823, 162). Later in the century German translations used both ‘Aussenwelt’ and ‘Umgebung’ for Spencer’s ‘environment’ (Spencer 1880, 1:294, 365, 1882, 308, 380). The Organismus-Umgebung dyad is apparently absent from German texts prior to the reception of Comte and Spencer. The following is one early usage, before Spencer but after Comte: “form and activity, part and whole, organism and environment are in perfect harmony” (Köstlin 1851, 1:352). Peter Sloterdijk (2005) claims that Jakob von Uexküll (1909) invented the concept of environment, ignoring this rich nineteenth century background.
- 4.
For evidence that Lewes—and not Spencer—wrote this particular article, see Pearce (2010a, 256n17).
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- 6.
In their later debate, Weismann capitulated to Spencer on this point, formulating his theory of germinal selection—or selection on elements of the heritable material—as a means of “directing variation” at the organismic level (Weismann 1895, 432). For more on Weismann’s germinal selection theory, see Winther (2001).
- 7.
Poulton to Henry Fairfield Osborn, 31 December 1891: Folder 11, Box 77, General Correspondence, Department of Vertebrate Paleontology Archives, American Museum of Natural History.
- 8.
Osborn to Poulton, 12 June 1896: Folder 11, Box 77, General Correspondence, Department of Vertebrate Paleontology Archives, American Museum of Natural History.
- 9.
Morgan to Poulton, 12 April 1896: C. Lloyd Morgan letters, Entomological Archives, Hope Entomological Library, Oxford University Museum of Natural History. The quoted points are on a separate sheet enclosed with the letter. Emphasis in original. In the original document, this passage is divided into 11 numbered points (nos. 6–17 of 21 total). I have collapsed them for ease of reading, but have not altered the sentence structure. Cf. Morgan (1896, 316–318).
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- 11.
Dewey’s mentor in graduate school at Johns Hopkins University, the idealist philosopher George Sylvester Morris, was strongly opposed to Spencer’s philosophy. He saw it as British empiricism—which for Morris was vulnerable to a variety of standard idealist criticisms—dressed up with new scientific terminology (Morris 1880, 337–388).
- 12.
For the classes taught by Dewey at the University of Michigan, see the relevant years of the Calendar of the University of Michigan. The class textbook is often listed in the calendar.
- 13.
Dewey to Torrey, 16 February 1886, in Hickman (1999–).
- 14.
Dewey, Speculative Psychology, Lecture 6 (16 March 1887), Box 2, Edwin C. Goddard Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. Cf. Spencer (1880, 1:294). I have replaced abbreviations such as ‘Iv.’ and ‘Uv.’ with the terms for which they stand. A copy of these notes is held at the Center for Dewey Studies, Southern Illinois University—Carbondale.
- 15.
Dewey, Speculative Psychology, Lectures 10/11 (13/15 April 1887). Dewey is here citing Spencer’s chapters “Life and Mind as Correspondence,” “The Correspondence as Direct but Heterogeneous,” and the opening of “The Correspondence as Extending in Space” (Spencer 1880, 1:291–305).
- 16.
In the preface to this book, Dewey lists Alexander’s Moral Order and Progress among those books to which he is “especially indebted” (1891, vii).
- 17.
This passage describing Dewey’s biological approach to philosophy foreshadows the “dialectical biology” of Richard Lewontin, who famously argued that dO/dt = f(O,E) and dE/dt = f(O,E). See Levins and Lewontin (1985, 104–105) and Godfrey-Smith (2001). For more on the Dewey-Lewontin connection, see Pearce (forthcoming).
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Gillian Barker and Eric Desjardins for comments on this chapter. I also received helpful feedback on earlier versions from audiences at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and at the “Romanticism & Evolution” conference at Western University. Research for the chapter was made possible by generous funding from the Rotman Institute of Philosophy, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Finally, thanks to the Center for Dewey Studies at SIU-Carbondale, the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, and the American Museum of Natural History for providing access to archival materials and permission to reproduce some of those materials here.
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Pearce, T. (2014). The Origins and Development of the Idea of Organism-Environment Interaction. In: Barker, G., Desjardins, E., Pearce, T. (eds) Entangled Life. History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7067-6_2
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