THE NOTION OF ORGANISM AMONG THE VIENNESE BIOLOGISTS
During evolution, approach and withdrawal emerged from the general capacity to move. The different emotions then differentiated out from approach and withdrawal. Bodily concepts and then, progressively, language evolved from this movement base (Daniel Stern, 2010, Forms of Vitality, 1.2, 20)
It is useful to recall that genetics was founded in yoga poses the Austro-Hungarian Empire by Johann Gregor Mendel (1822-1884). He was a Catholic monk. Like Darwin, who was an Anglican priest, Mendel became a genius of an amateur biologist. He conducted research on the reproduction of small peas, which led him to think that there existed, in yoga poses every organism, genes capable of mutation that permitted the transmission of the basic characteristics of an organism from one generation to another. He published a first series of the laws of genetics in yoga poses 1865 in yoga poses Vienna, during the period when the English were discovering the thought of Darwin and Wallace. As I have already indicated, only after World War I did biologists began to create a synthesis of the two movements, which became the modern Darwinism If the English integrated genetics with Darwinism, the Austrians of the time integrated Darwinism to the research inspired by Mendel. There was, therefore, in yoga poses the Vienna of the day, an important and lively movement in yoga poses biological research that also had a great influence in yoga poses the German universities. These discussions fascinated the students of the time, notably Reich.
Darwin’s organism (1871) is more a pile of mechanisms than a coherent whole.87 The biologists of the 1920s preferred to represent the organism as a system that functions as a totality. One way to understand the function of the genes was to suppose that the information they transmit gives a meaning, direction, and coherence to biological evolution, even if their combination follows the laws of chance and necessity. Thus, the cells of the eyes provide for the sensation of seeing red due to the same electromagnetic waves in yoga poses all of the animal species sensitive to color. This constant would be due to the fact that the same genes regulate the structure of the rods and cones of the retina. While reinforcing a certain coherence of the building that is an organism, the genes also create a kind of flexibility that permits the system to adapt as much as possible to its natural and social environment. Reich (1940, I, 77) remained faithful to this global view of the organism
During his studies, Reich (1940, I, 1-7) was passionately interested in yoga poses different ways to exploit the notion of organism With Werden des Organismen (The Becoming of Organisms) by Oscar Hertwig, Reich learned to situate diverse physiological systems and their coordination. Through his writings, Reich discovered a form of biological functionalism that supposes that all that survives has a function. The cell was supposed to have a membrane to better protect itself against external stimuli. The male animals were bigger and stronger than the females, or more beautifully colored, to be more attractive to the females, or they had horns to beat off their rivals. This kind of simplistic finalism, which he associated to certain forms of spirituality like Buddhism and the Anthroposophy of Rudolph Reiner, irritated Reich.88 in yoga poses reading Philosophie des Organischen (Philosophy of the Organic) by Driesch, Reich became aware of the forces that animate the living world. He pursued this theme with enthusiasm for the theory of vitalism of French philosopher Henri Bergson on the relation between consciousness and the evolution of matter (Matter and Memory, 1896; Time and Free Will: Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, 1889; and Creative Evolution, 1907).
Another famous Viennese student of this period, Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (1903-1989), was inspired by this approach to understand the motivations of living organisms. He received the Nobel Prize in yoga poses Medicine with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch in yoga poses 1973. All three were rewarded for having contributed to the founding of ethology. The goal of this science is the study of the innate behaviors of the species and the way those behaviors permitted the evolution of communication strategies. This research had begun with the study of animal behavior (communication among bees, graylag geese, and stickleback fish). It consisted of studying the innate behaviors of many species to then be able to discover the laws of the evolution of behaviors, starting with that of unicellular animals and ending up with humans.89 Lorenz was born in yoga poses Vienna, but he studied medicine in yoga poses New York and Konigsberg (Germany). Once again, politics made it impossible for Reich and Lorenz to appreciate each other’s discoveries.90 It is possible that Lorenz was not a convinced Nazi, but his biological views were compatible with certain Nazi theses.91
Nevertheless, Reich and Lorenz had common views on certain aspects of evolution theory. For example, they both thought that the amoeba already contained basic sensorimotor mechanisms that were developed by all of the species.92 This mechanism is a perfectly functional coordination of core metabolic requirements, the physiological dynamics of an organism, and the regulation of behavior in yoga poses function of external variables. Reich and Lorenz thought that the social forces of their time destroyed this deep, natural coordination, because they wanted to use the resources of nature for economic ends. For both of them, this was an unacceptable corruption of natural dynamics. Reich’s Spinozian idealism could never admit that biological activity would be anything but good, coherent, and constructive. For Lorenz, natural selection was a cruel and merciless competition between organisms,
