Robert Drury King
Assistant Professor
Sierra Nevada College
“Systems Theory: The Fate of the Organism from Hegel‘s Logic to Autopoiesis”
Wednesday, November 16, 2011, 4:00 p.m.
Edmund J. Cain Hall, Room 108H
University of Nevada, Reno
In the Science of Logic (and Philosophy of Mind) Hegel discusses the organism as part of an argumentative strategy designed to show how thought is ideal. By ideal, Hegel means that thought does not depend on an other for its production. Rather, for Hegel, the ideality of thought consists in its exclusive self-production. Indeed, it has been argued that the entire task of the Science of Logic is to show that thought must do away with appeals to any external givens, it must eschew its dependency on any other, in order to demonstrate its nature as immanent or auto-productive. Relying on the life sciences of his time, Hegel uses the concept of organism as an analogy for this auto-productive activity. In 20th century autopoietic systems theory (a species of epistemological constructivism), the organism is viewed in similar lights. Here, organisms function by recursively generating their own elements, as if in a closed circle of production. In autopoietic theory, organisms neither represent inputs given at their sensory surfaces through interactions with environments nor do they construct an independent medium, least of all a description of an environment, for the purpose. In my talk I will highlight the debt that autopoietic systems theory owes to Hegelian Logic in order to 1) discuss what is novel in the autopoietic concept of the organism and to 2) reevaluate the contributions of Hegelian and idealist philosophy in debates in biophilosophy and epistemological constructivism.
Robert Drury King is assistant professor in the Humanities and Social Sciences Department at Sierra Nevada College. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Purdue University and was awarded the Purdue University College of Liberal Arts Distinguished Dissertation Award for 2011. Robert recently returned from the annual Unseld Lectures Seminar at the University of Tübingen, Germany, where he studied with Humberto Maturana (who figures heavily in his Leonard Lecture) and Christof Reinfandt, and has also studied at Cornell University’s School of Criticism and Theory and at the Collegium Phaenomenologicum in Città de Castillo. His writing has been published in a variety of journals, and he is co-editor with Darrell Arnold of St. Thomas University, Miami, of the forthcoming volume, Traditions of Systems Theory: Major Figures and Developments. As well, Robert currently serves as the book review editor for Journal of Philosophy: A Cross-Disciplinary Inquiry.
Sponsored by: The Department of Philosophy and The Guy L. Leonard Memorial Endowment
Free and open to the public