Raymond Ruyer and the metaphysics of absolute forms.

Raymond Ruyer and the metaphysics of absolute forms. 

Daniel W. Smith
 

Absolute forms include molecules, viruses, embryos, organisms, consciousness, and culture (externalized technics and symbolization). Molar structures include, for instance, clouds or gasses, which are composites of individual molecules; sedimentary limestone formations, which are an aggregate of individual mollusks (143), or crowds of human beings, which are collections of individual consciousnesses (84). This distinction in turn entails a new distribution of the sciences: the primary sciences are those that focus on absolute forms, while the secondary science are those that only study ind individuals from their statistical side.

In  so-called  higher  animals,  “functions”  like digestion  and  thought  become  localized  in  specific  organs  such  as  the  stomach and the brain, but clearly—as the example of the amoeba shows—the functions do not require the specialized organs. 17 Ruyer drew the obvious conclusion: bodily organs are themselves technical artifacts; they are specialized “tools” that have been  fabricated by the organism over the course of evolution. Ruyer thus distinguishes three  levels  of  technicity:  bodily  organs  as  an  originary  technicity;  externalized organs  as  an  extended  phenotype  (webs,  dams,  nests);  and  the  detachable  artifacts that enter into a circuit external to the body. “Organic formation, instinctive external circuit, and intelligent external circuit” (33; cf. 20).

The consequences Ruyer draws from this analysis are immense. Most obviously, it  explains  the  title  of  Neofinalism.  Ruyer  is  not  a  traditional  “finalist,”  presuming  a  teleology  or  purpose  throughout  nature  or  for  nature  as  a  whole.  Rather,  he defends a “neo-finalism” that begins, uncontroversially, with the presumption that humans act in a purposeful manner when they fabricate technical artifacts: we have a finalist aim in fabricating cooking utensils, which depend on mnemic themes or senses that exist in a “transspatial” dimension (126-33). But here again, Ruyer draws the inevitable conclusions: what is true for intelligent behavior must be  equally  true  of instinctive  behavior.    “It  is  impossible  to  recognize  a  finalist sense in the invention of cooking utensils and to deny it to the organs of ingestion, digestion, and assimilation” (19). In other words, neither consciousness, nor the brain, nor the nervous system has a monopoly over memory, habit, invention or signifying activity in general (37). Consider the fact that humans are currently attempting to fabricate an artificial brain or an artificial intelligence whose capacities may soon exceed those of human intelligence (the so-called “singularity”). 18 Yet every human embryo  already knows how to fabricate a human brain, as well as a stomach, lungs, kidneys, and a circulatory system. In epistemological terms, one could say that an embryo has a knowledge that exceeds that of the brain—a brain, moreover, that the embryo itself has created. If Ruyer sometimes calls the embryo our “primary organic consciousness” (38, 43-44, 72, 74, 100), it is because the creation of the body and its organs is the neo-finalist activity of the embryo...

Also note the following:

Without a Library of Platonic Forms, Evolution wouldn't work

In an ever-changing Darwinian world, species incessantly spew forth new species whose traits can shade into one another. The 20th-century biologist Ernst Mayr called Plato the ‘great antihero of evolutionism’, and in fact it was Mayr who replaced the essentialist concept of species with a modern biological alternative, based on individuals in the same population that can interbreed.

But as has happened many times before, Plato might have the last word. We just need to look deeper than the ephemeral appearance of living things.