Life Forms As Synthetic Wholes

Life Forms as Synthetic Wholes

It is a common idea that animal bodies (also plant bodies) are synthetic wholes consisting of separate organs. There are about a dozen of these in the mammalian body, depending on how you count. Each is different from the others but they work together to compose a functioning body. They each arose by natural selection in a more or less coordinated way and their successful cooperation ensures survival and reproduction. Thus, we get the idea of a harmonious but composite body, and hence a whole organism—a kind of natural synthesis of parts, disparate yet united. The organism is that synthetic unity—many things in one, a unified complex of separable components. It isn’t one of nature’s simples, homogeneous all through, as the atom was once thought to be. It can be analyzed into parts; it is a construction from simpler components, like a building or a motor car. As the OED says, a synthesis is a “combination of components to form a connected whole”, and an organism is precisely such a combination. But that isn’t the only kind of combination an organism is, the only kind of synthetic whole: it is also a combination of multiple genes and a single organism, of the organism’s body and parts of the environment (the extended phenotype), and of the present and past (inherited traits, remnants of earlier ancestors, obsolete adaptations). Genes combine with individual animals and plants, the organism’s body combines with the tools it uses to live (nests, dams, etc.), and the body and mind of the organism contain combinations of presently useful traits and records of past traits. This is all familiar enough from the popular writings of Richard Dawkins: the selfish gene, the extended phenotype, and the genetic book of the dead. I will say nothing to expand on or explain any of this, but simply take it for granted. For I have a different question: Does all this comprise a different sort of synthetic whole adding up to the complete organism? Is it also what animals are made of? Are they also synthetic wholes in that sense?

The question is not so straightforward. It is (we are assuming) perfectly true that animals are composed of the items mentioned. If we think in terms of biological books, we can say that an animal is a library consisting of the following volumes: the book of the genes, the book of the enveloping organism, the book of the organism’s bounded body, the book of its employed environment, the book of its current adaptations, and the book of its past ancestral history. These are all present in the animal’s nature. What is not so clear is whether this combination deserves to be called a synthetic whole—a synthesis in the full sense. Because it is not clear that we have genuine unification, where each component cooperates with the others. Do they all work harmoniously together, like a well-oiled machine? Or is the animal really a congeries (“disorderly collection”: OED)? Is it more of a heap or pile instead of an (as we say) organic unity? Or it is something in between? The animal is certainly not a mere heap of organs, strung haphazardly together; the organs are tightly connected, interwoven. There is no conflict between them—no friction, no disharmony. But the same is not true of the items I listed: here there is a sense of disharmony, division, conflict. In fact, the elements seem to pull in different directions. Granted, natural selection is the reason for all of them, singly and as a totality, but is the result what we might think of as a natural unity? First, are the genes of like mind with the animal that contains them? Notoriously not: the genes are invariably selfish, but the animal is not. The genes operate to secure their own survival, but the individual animal has its own survival plans. The genes would let you die—would indeed kill you—if it served their own purposes. They sometimes make the animal sacrifice itself for the good of the offspring that houses them (“kin selection”). Also, we can, as Dawkins remarks, rebel against our genes in making moral decisions. By no means do our interests and values coincide with the interests of our genes. There is conflict between the two books; they recommend different courses of action. The combination of genes and animal is conflicted, pointing in different directions; this is a congeries not an organic unity. The parts are not always in agreement with each other.

What about the book of the dead and the book of the living? To be sure, they often see eye to eye in that the present world of the animal overlaps with the past ancestral world described in its book of the dead. But equally there can be conflict, because that old world may no longer exist yet remnants of it persist in the animal’s genes, body, and mind. It still dreams of ancestral environments. This means there is “junk” still hanging around in the animal’s vaults, which may even lead to maladaptive behavior (a craving for sugar, aggressive tendencies no longer needed, appendicitis). The two books tell different stories, make different recommendations. The old book has been superseded but the animal keeps reading it. As a source of advice, it can be worse than useless. There is no synthesis of the two books, just authorial divergence—a mere congeries. What about the extended phenotype—is that all harmony and light? Well, the materials composing it are not the same: the external factor may not even be organic. Body and environment are slapped together, like chalk and cheese. Granted, the environment is useful to the animal, as our technology is useful to us, but it is not of the body, and may even be harmful to it. The physical environment goes its own way, irrespective of the welfare of the animal living in it. Dams may overflow beavers, and tunnels in the ground collapse on the creatures living in them. This is more of an uneasy treaty than a mutually beneficial arrangement. The physical environment isn’t family. It has its coefficient of resistance. Also, you can’t take it with you—the dam, the tunnel, the web, the nest. If you need to move, the extended phenotype will not move with you; it won’t cooperate in the relocation. Isn’t this more like a temporary alliance than a happy marriage? Heaven knows, it is horrendous to move house! This is an adaptation with a sting in the tail, not an ideal set-up. Animals might wish their phenotype had never been extended, given the hassle and stress involved. The extension takes work. Natural selection acts blindly with no concern about the animal’s comfort or convenience. So, this combination (living body, dead implement) is hardly the epitome of a longed-for synthesis; it is a yoking together of the local and the distant, with distinct disadvantages. An intelligent designer might well have thought better of the whole extended phenotype business (it seemed like a good idea at the time). The human extended phenotype (technology, industry) is fraught with hazard and may one day wipe us out. It may bite the hand that created it.

The entire modern picture of the animal reeks of the cobbled-together, the make-do, the okay-for-now. The human back is a notorious case in point: it isn’t a marvelous structural design proof against malfunction but rather a result of the adoption of the bipedal gait. It doesn’t synthesize the quadrupedal back and the bipedal back; it just jams the two together and hopes for the best. The human back is a danger zone not a sleek accommodation. The genes, for their part, combine with the individual animal to produce an entity that is a compromise between the two, not a smooth synthesis into something that serves both equally. In many ways we are at war with our own genes not on the same side as them (consider genetic disease and gene-induced senescence). Animals are, at best, a viable congeries not a splendid synthesis.[1] The God-given view of evolution might suggest the perfect synthesis picture, but once blind natural selection is let loose this agreeable image falls by the wayside. The animal can be analyzed, but it can’t really be synthesized, made whole. It bears all the marks of chance and contingency. It is not an organic unity. It is the sum of its parts, but that sum is not a nice round number. We might better think of it as a conjoined composite.[2]

[1] It is an interesting question which animals are the most unified and which the least. It seems as if the simpler the creature the more unified it tends to be—with bacteria at the most unified end and humans the least unified. This has the look of a biological law: unity is inversely proportional to complexity. We buy our complexity at the cost of increased disunity. We are startlingly advanced, but frightfully divided.

[2] Think of so-called Siamese twins—conjoined but not unified. The animal (as now conceived) is a kind of Siamese plurality: several different biological entities jostling together, glued but not of a piece. There is something of the parasitic about them; they live off each other (not symbiosis exactly). The genes parasitize the animal, the book of the dead takes up space with its more relevant counterpart, the extended phenotype grows a wooden leg. Disparate things make unholy alliances. It isn’t division of labor; it’s a motley crew. The animal exists as a conglomerate of rival factions, a kind of wild bunch. If the parts could talk, they would be arguing with each other.