Abstract

In this article, I attempt to accomplish two objectives. The first is a diagnosis of our contemporary understanding of nature, which I propose to characterize as an ontological diplopia between the view of nature as rigidity and the view of nature as plasticity. Second, I suggest a way to address this situation that combines basic clues from what I call Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of the organism, as it can be gleaned from his book The Structure of Behaviour, and Terrence W. Deacon’s autogenetic model of the emergence of life from matter, such as it is set forth in his recent book Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged From Matter. I end with some thoughts on how this assemblage of a dialectical conception of the organism and an autogenetic theory of life’s emergence from non-life might enable a reconsideration of the stakes involved in the subversion of rigidity at the hand of plasticity that is underway in our times.