The Biology of Wonder: Finding the Human in Nature

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June 29, 2021

a project of ServiceSpace

Feeling is never invisible; it takes shape and manifests as form everywhere in nature.

- Andreas Weber -

The Biology of Wonder: Finding the Human in Nature

"In this book, I describe a biology of the feeling selfa biology that has discovered subjective feeling as the fundamental moving force in all life, from the cellular level up to the complexity of the human organism. I also describe how this discovery turns our image of ourselves upside down. We have also understood human beings as biological machines that somehow and rather inexplicably entail some subjective x factor variously known as mind, spirit, or soul. But now biology is discovering subjectivity as a fundamental principle throughout nature. It finds that even the most simple living thingsbacterial cells, fertilized eggs, nematodes in tidal flatsact according to values. Organisms value everything they encounter according to its meaning for the further coherence of their embodied self. Even the cells self-production, the continuous maintenance of a highly structured order, can only be understood if we perceive the cell as an actor that persistently follows a goal. I call this new viewpoint a 'poetic ecology.'" Andreas Weber shares more in this excerpt from his book, "The Biology of Wonder." { read more }