Andreas Weber

Francisco Varela highlighted many links between his philosophy of cognition and Buddhism. This paper focuses on those connections which Varela did not make explicit. Varela was a disciple of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, a renowned master of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. This school emphasizes the direct experience of the 'nature of the mind' — hence, reality. Only by taking into account how this experience formed Varela's thinking do we understand the full scope of his idea of life. For Varela, living beings act from the perspective of a self, although this self does not exist as a place or organ in the organism. In his training with Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, Varela realized that this 'selfless' self in the centre of an organism is the activity of giving life. In it, matter and inwardness, the subjective perspective and the perspective of 'being everything', are not separate. An organism is the gift of life coming from this centre, which is pure original consciousness — the 'nature of the mind'.

A plant is a biological subject whose self-realization transforms mostly invisible inorganic matter and energy (CO2 and light plus water) into organic matter – flesh – which in turn nourishes other subjects and therefore enables terrestrial ecosystems to exist. Plants are able to perceive, to communicate and have the inner experience of being a self. Plants are the prime metamorphic agents of the biosphere, mediating the potential for life of the anorganic world with fully blossoming aliveness. Plants are expressive of their embodied metamorphosis and therefore lend themselves as “primordial metaphors” to an experience of reality as shared and transformational in most cultures of human history.

Sein heißt Teilen. Teilen heißt Sein, auf allen Ebenen, vom Atom bis zu unserer Erfahrung von Glück. Lebendigsein folgt der Sehnsucht, ganz Individuum zu werden - und diese erfüllt sich nur in Austausch und Verwandlung. Erst aus Teilhabe entsteht Stimmigkeit, das Gefühl, ein eigenes Selbst, Zentrum der eigenen Erfahrung zu sein. Unser Stoffwechsel, gelingende Beziehungen, Sinnerfahrungen, aber auch der Austausch von Gütern und Leistungen können nur gedeihen, wenn wir sie als gemeinsame Teilhabe an einer schöpferischen Wirklichkeit erschaffen. Diese ist Stoff, und sie ist Fantasie. Atmen heißt Teilen, Körpersein ist Teilen und Lieben bedeutet Teilen. Sein durch Teilen ist die Seele der lebendigen Wirklichkeit. In dieser durchdringen sich Innen und Außen. Sie ist ein leidenschaftlicher Beziehungsprozess, in dem das Begehren nach Identität erst im Leuchten des Anderen eingelöst wird.

Meaning, feeling and expression - the experience of inwardness - matter most in human existence. The perspective of biopoetics shows that this experience is shared by all organisms. Being alive means to exist through relations that have existential concern, and to express these dimensions through the body and its gestures. All life takes place within one poetic space which is shared between all beings and which is accessible through subjective sensual experience. We take part in this through our empirical subjectivity, which arises from the experiences and needs of living beings, and which makes them open to access and sharing in a poetic objectivity. Biopoetics breaks free from the causal-mechanic paradigm which made biology unable to account for mind and meaning. Biology becomes a science of expression, connection and subjectivity which can understand all organisms including humans as feeling agents in a shared ecology of meaningful relations, embedded in a symbolical and material metabolism of the biosphere.

Nautilus Award Gold Medal Winner, Ecology & Environment In Matter and Desire, internationally renowned biologist and philosopher Andreas Weber rewrites ecology as a tender practice of forging relationships, of yearning for connections, and of expressing these desires through our bodies. Being alive is an erotic process--constantly transforming the self through contact with others, desiring ever more life. In clever and surprising ways, Weber recognizes that love--the impulse to establish connections, to intermingle, to weave our existence poetically together with that of other beings--is a foundational principle of reality. The fact that we disregard this principle lies at the core of a global crisis of meaning that plays out in the avalanche of species loss and in our belief that the world is a dead mechanism controlled through economic efficiency. Although rooted in scientific observation, Matter and Desire becomes a tender philosophy for the Anthropocene, a "poetic materialism," that closes the gap between mind and matter. Ultimately, Weber discovers, in order to save life on Earth--and our own meaningful existence as human beings--we must learn to love.

This essay analyses the career of the German chemist and government functionary Caspar Georg Carl Reinwardt through the layered lens of governance and management. By conceptualizing governance as the historical result of the interaction between locally situated accumulation and management projects and the ‘metropolitan’ assessment of their value, it uses Reinwardt’s experiences to shed fresh light on the idiosyncrasies through which Europe and Southeast Asia were linked in the early nineteenth century. The discussion of three closely related episodes exemplifies this point. Taken together, the essay problematizes simple center-periphery relationships by demonstrating that such global connections be understood through a comparison between ‘metropolitan’ and ‘colonial’ science. Rather it demonstrates the insights drawn from employing a framework that unites narratives of ‘imperial’ and ‘metropolitan’ histories of accumulation, and brings them under one analytical umbrella.

Sein heißt Teilen. Teilen heißt Sein, auf allen Ebenen, vom Atom bis zu unserer Erfahrung von Glück. Lebendigsein folgt der Sehnsucht, ganz Individuum zu werden - und diese erfüllt sich nur in Austausch und Verwandlung. Erst aus Teilhabe entsteht Stimmigkeit, das Gefühl, ein eigenes Selbst, Zentrum der eigenen Erfahrung zu sein. Unser Stoffwechsel, gelingende Beziehungen, Sinnerfahrungen, aber auch der Austausch von Gütern und Leistungen können nur gedeihen, wenn wir sie als gemeinsame Teilhabe an einer schöpferischen Wirklichkeit erschaffen. Diese ist Stoff, und sie ist Fantasie. Atmen heißt Teilen, Körpersein ist Teilen und Lieben bedeutet Teilen. Sein durch Teilen ist die Seele der lebendigen Wirklichkeit. In dieser durchdringen sich Innen und Außen. Sie ist ein leidenschaftlicher Beziehungsprozess, in dem das Begehren nach Identität erst im Leuchten des Anderen eingelöst wird.

This paper describes the semiotic approach to organism in two proto-biosemiotic thinkers, Susanne K. Langer and Hans Jonas. Both authors develop ideas that have become central terms of biosemiotics: the organism as subject, the realisation of the living as a closed circular self, the value concept, and, in the case of Langer, the concept of symbol. Langer tries to develop a theory of cultural symbolism based on a theory of organism as a self-realising entity creating meaning and value. This paper deals mainly with what both authors independently call “feeling”. Both authors describe “feeling” as a value-based perspective, established as a result of the active self interest manifested by an organic system. The findings of Jonas and Langer show the generation of a subject pole, or biosemiotic agent, under a more precise accent, as e.g. Uexküll does. Their ideas can also be affiliated to the interpretation of autopoiesis given by the late Francisco Varela (embodied cognition or “enactivism”). A synthesis of these positions might lead to insights how symbolic expression arises from biological conditions of living.