The problem of "organismal agency" in the history of the life sciences

This chapter explores the intellectual framework in which the concept of organismal agency flourished. By drawing on the neglected studies of Georges Gusdorf on the romantic sciences, the chapter suggests that the notion of organismal agency was the result of three related debates addressing (1) the dynamic correlation (and contradiction) between "external" and "internal" factors accounting for life processes; (2) the relations between "wholes" and "parts" in organic entities; and (3) the dichotomy "creativity" versus "determinism" in nature. To test Gusdorf's analysis, this chapter introduces one historical episode that has not received the attention it deserves: the partnership between the polymath Patrick Geddes and the zoologist John Arthur Thomson, who, from 1889 to 1931, published four major popular books where the notion of the organism as a "creative agent" was explicitly upheld. The upshot of this short historical-philosophical account is that however we may define "organismal agency," the definition hinges upon one persistent problem troubling many philosophical and scientific minds since Aristotle: viz., to reconcile organisms' behavioural unpredictably with a physical universe that seems to be mostly predictable.