With the help of my three young boys who are on school holidays at the moment, I have been working hard on the removal of twenty-years of growth of a mixture of Russian vine, ivy, and honeysuckle from the roof of my garage. A hell of a job, but an interesting opportunity to observe the vegetative domain of nature’s fight for 'the survival of the fittest.'

Sometimes, opportunistically, to gain advantage, a species will wind itself around another of its own parental furcates, woody siblings or bifurcated offshoots for support, but never in a detrimental way that eliminates its own supporting siamese connective branch. It seems that 'the will to thrive,' the 'life-force,' 'the conatus' as (Leibniz and Mad Madge [Margaret Cavendish] called it) is ruthless, but not eliminative in seeking advantage over the variegated parts of its own holism.

Sitting there, my hands aching with the constant cutting of the woody fibres caused me to muse upon the possibility that perhaps all living organisms whose component parts are thought to exist in an apparent holistic balance of mutual dependency, in fact exist in a kind of beneficially induced contestation. Could there be a rivalry for nutriments between the various parts of plants and the organs and body-parts of human beings, and other animals, which is 'ruthless,' but by a mechanism of inbuilt genetic compromise falls short of initiating a familial necrosis at the first sign of the mutual extinction of the macro unity and diverts part of the nutritional flow to weaker areas of the assemblage of parts?

Is all biological life a compromise or a successful existential equilibrium between an allopoiesistic process, whereby a system is concerned with producing something other than the system itself? For example is an individual branch, an individuate hand, a liver or a brain primarily concerned with its own respective requirements - in contrast to an autopoiesistic process, which is characterised as a self-governing and self-maintaining unity which contains subservient, component-producing processes genetically dedicated to the greater holism?

Such a new 'symbio-poiesistic theory' (a neologism I have coined, for I have never heard such ideas expressed elsewhere) would add further interesting ontological dimensions to modern concepts of autopoiesis and allapoiesis.

The term symbiosis has been applied to a wide range of biological interactions. The symbiotic relationship may be categorised as being mutualistic, parasitic, or commensal in nature. A cell, an organism, and perhaps a corporation are examples of autopoietic systems - the process whereby an organisation produces itself, but perhaps organisations are in fact disguised symbiotic relationships?

Is it possible that plants can communicate? If so, is this communication species-specific and is this communication observed in and confined to within the plant organism? According to  Günther Witzany

Although a wart, a cancerous tumour, a carbuncle is undoubtably a part of the person (note the physicians attributive term 'your cancer') and does not 'belong' to somebody else – it is often characterised as being invasively 'foreign' to the human bodily structure. Is this because the relationship is one of a unilateral dependency on the part of the overtly 'selfish' cancer, rather than a commensal sharing of the nutritional blood supply with the host? This is evidenced by the fact that unless the tumour has already metastasised,  the cancerous growth can be removed without the host body dying – yet the tumour itself is considered dead flesh as soon as the surgeon separates it from its venous host. But a human hand or leg can be surgically separated from the body. It too dies quite quickly without a blood supply. It figures therefore that the contributive hand was as much dependent upon the host body as the 'defiantly' non-contributive 'foreign' tumour.

How then, and in what way, are the 'normal' cells within an organism to be legitimately considered a 'property' of the body and which part of the body is to be considered the 'proprietor' or seigniorial 'owner' of the organic and ontologically dependent parasitic mass? It can be argued that whilst the hand is parasitically dependent on the body for blood – it does make a contribution to the body in that it helps facilitate the physical existence of the host – whereas the tumour is a negative non-contributive presence. But the cancer cells are not 'to blame' – they are simply a different variety of 'guest organism' from the 'healthy' cells.

Are cellular systems in fact disguised symbiotic relationships? Is cellular behaviour a form of inquilinism - using a second organism for food and housing? Are human body cells epiphytic guests or 'nutritional pirates' that may waylay and intercept substantial amounts of mineral and chemical nutrients that would otherwise go to the host body?

An autopoietic organisation is an autonomous and self-maintaining unity which contains component-producing processes. The constituents, through their interaction, generate recursively the same network of processes which produced them. What I am musing about concerns the nature of the interaction between the elements which themselves form this network of processes which 'bring forth' the greater unity. If, for example we compare the finely tuned balance between the activities of individual human members of society we might perhaps conclude that selfishness and otherness are just variants of narcissism, namely a devils compact of sociopathy and co- dependency.

But perhaps what we call 'selfishness' and 'narcissism' are no more than clumsy or ill-concealed manifestations of conatus, or evolutionary altruism and people who are really clever and dedicated to selfishness, in that they realise the damaging or negative aspects of overt self-interest, are simply more careful in concealing their apparent egocentricity which is actually the drive to donate the benizon of their genes to future generations?

Scott and Seglow debate this point in their recent publication Altruism (2007) and in doing such supply this interesting quotation from Sober 1998: 462 who writes:

What we must remember here is that there is a big difference between  one Russian vine plant, or soldier-ant sacrificing itself for the plantation or for the nest.  Here we are considering whether it is possible, or indeed necessary,  for one  PART of a  vegetable unity to give way  -  or hold itself back from reaching a situation where it can distribute its seeds to the environment.  Such sacrifice or selfcentredness would not be made for some deserving OTHER -  but for another part of its self.

Only a plant biologist could provide an authoritive opinion as to whether a more virile, stronger and successful branch of a plant has a stronger physiological or chemical  reproductive potency and broadcasts seeds which are more likely to hit the genetical reproductive jackpot or that nature has pre-programmed  the winning branchlet to activate the seed distribution and written the DNA script to instruct the weaker one to take a reproductive back-seat.

Due to the inadequate nature of language in describing the existential modality of non-human entities there is much in this essay which smacks of the pathetic fallacy which I hasten to disclaim.   Personification is an ontological illusion that can be traced back to the early Greeks who believed that the world of non-human animate entitiies, vegetables and inanimate objects is possessed of human feelings, volitions and desires. It is a phenomenon which Frank Olin Copley refers to as:

I do not mean in human terms that some of the more flourishing tendrils are more 'merciless' or 'ruthless' than their fellow cirri in their fight for access to sunlight and the nutrients from the soil in the human sense - but in the 'life-force' or 'conatic' sense of the genetical script. As yet I have not come across any examples where the more 'merciless' tendrils, which often twist themselves around their fellow-creepers, have strangled their 'relatives' to death.(like some humans occasionally do.

They employ their own dead body-parts for support and to gain purchase as a matter of course, but I have found no evidence of where they appear to have 'deliberately' cut off the supply essential of nutrients by squeezing the other branch in a tight vegetative tourniquet - nor are there any signs that the weaker frond fights back. Could this be a form of vegetative altruism?  I think not, at least not in the human sense,  but if it is, it could only be that the stronger branch stands more chance of  reaching sunlight and distributing its seeds and that the weaker one concedes the fact rather like a weak mountaineer realises that he is not fit enough to reach the summit and allows his climbing mate to push on to the top.


This contemplation of a Russian vine raises all kinds of interesting philosophical and ontological questions. What are the implications for generosity and selfishness? Is altruism no more than a clever, self-serving device to elicit individual and societal approval based upon the anticipated future benefits for the 'selfish gene?' Is 'morality' no more than a holding device (a la Nietzsche) to protect the weaker transcendentalist tendrils from the self-assertive, agnostical, ruthless briers of 'being?'  Could religion, which is ubiquitous throughout humanity, be a mechanism to support the advantages of mutuality by way of supporting the frailer twiglets against the strong in the struggle for genetical advantage. A strategy to support the weak for the benefit of the whole?

But wait, so often in history the strong have usurped the levers of religious power and turned them against the weak for the benefit of the enstrengthened strong? So often the combined forces of monarchs' laws reinforced with the Bishops' ex-cathedra back-up is to the disadvantage of the weaker members of society. In both world wars both the Allied and German religious hierarchy were urging war and blessing the combatants, and Pope Pius was said to favour Mussolini and the Nazis and to be less than helpful towards the salvation of the Jews. The Reichskonkordat, of 1933, between Germany and the Holy See, while thus a part of an overall Vatican policy, was controversial from its beginning.

It took me three days to cut off all the foliage and throw it down to the ground, but now I am faced with a huge tangled pile of vegetation. Weather permitting I sit there for hours with garden secetuers cutting and black-bagging it and then I drive to the local Refuse Dump and start again. There is no ingress for any kind of mechanised collection of the mass (a dumper truck or whatever) for the heap is at the side of the garage behind a wall and not in the access drive

The (local authority) refuse dumps are highly organised in Britain now. By law all the various types of garbage - food, paper, bottles and glass, bricks, cloth, stones and soil, metal, plastic, TVs, white-goods, garden vegetation,  all have to be separated by the depositor. Domestically, here in the North at least, if you happen to leave the lid of your bin or bins open outside your home you are fined. People complained at first when these laws were introduced, but now it has been accepted and become part of natural behaviour.

Anyway sitting here for hours cutting vine is not a complete waste of time. I enjoy physical work and I listen to music and MP3 files of philosophical interest - and anything is a welcome break from the ineffable but eminently  eff - able Heidegger. ;-)

BTW. As an eliminativist, for purposes of paraphrastic avoidance (adjectivally re-jigging sentences to make ontological sense) I have placed 'scare quotes' around most reifico-abstractions.

References:

[1] Witzany. Günther.  Plant Communication from Biosemiotic Perspective. Plant Signaling and Behavior. 2006. pp.169-178).
[2 ]Scott. Niall and Seglow. Jonathan. Altruism. 2007. p.40. Open University Press. Mc Graw Hill Education. Mc Graw Hill House. Shoppenhangers Road, Maidenhead. Berks, England. SL6 2QL.
[3] Copley. Frank. Olin. The Pathetic Fallacy in Early Greek Poetry The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 58, No. 2 (1937), pp. 194-209.  The Johns Hopkins University Press.