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Boundary Questions Between Ontology and Biology

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Theory and Applications of Ontology: Philosophical Perspectives

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Abstract

This chapter deals with some problems linking biology and ontology. After a general survey of the most prominent ontological questions lying behind biology, the study case of biological boundaries is addressed. The scrutiny of the relevant literature shows that biologists speak of various types of boundary: perceptual, compositional, epithelial, cellular and sensu lato processual boundaries; all of them appear to be, in a way or another, flawed by some theoretical inconsistencies. So, a new concept of organismic boundary is introduced and discussed, by which the organismic boundary is the (concrete) part of an organism which spatially encompasses all and only the other (concrete) parts of that organism.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Nor did they care for it in past decades, as Woodger showed ad abundantiam and repeatedly (1929 1, 19672).

  2. 2.

    I address the reader to this book for further references on the following items. For an extremely interesting list of keywords in theoretical biology see the Konrad Lorenz Institute Theory Lab website at http://www.kli.ac.at/theorylab/index.html.

  3. 3.

    Conceptual oppositions are of particular interest in biology: ‘[b]iology is a science of antitheses’ (Woodger 1967: 11). See Gil (1978) for a general survey on conceptual oppositions.

  4. 4.

    My personal collection of biological terms starting with the prefixoid auto-includes more than fifty entries, see Ramellini (2006b: 111 ff).

  5. 5.

    Compare these types with Woodger’s list of the modes of biological analysis: perceptual (usually visual), genetical, manual (above all visual and tactual), physiological and chemical (1967: 274–275).

  6. 6.

    On the importance of optical boundaries in the genesis of the concept of cell see however Woodger (19672: 158).

  7. 7.

    I also recall the case of «glassy» fishes like Parambassis ranga, whose thoraco-abdominal muscles are nearly transparent, making their «visible» boundary invisible to predators (interestingly, glassy fishes are often sold after injections of fluorescent dyes into their bodies, to make them more appealing to aquarists, who evidently are not predators). Transparent living bodies account for Portmann’s caveat about opaque surfaces. The physical basis of transparency is still poorly understood (Johnsen and Widder 1999).

  8. 8.

    This optical illusion is also due to a photoabsorbent layer, the choroid, behind the pupil. However, many animals – like dogs – possess a light-reflecting layer behind or within the retina, i.e. the tapetum lucidum, allowing them a better night vision.

  9. 9.

    Notably, their being erogenous zones due to the presence of superficial nerve networks; see the classical paper by Winkelmann (1959).

  10. 10.

    Sometimes (e.g. Smith and Varzi 1997), the surface of skin alone is considered as the outer boundary of the human body, pointing out that such boundary has discernible sub-boundaries, like the edge-line of mouth or surgery-scars.

  11. 11.

    The set of all the ECs of a human, plus Z, could be compared with the set zgdend as introduced by Woodger (1937: 90).

  12. 12.

    Note that after all the human body is a simple case, since its (living) cells occupy the bulk of the body; in other cases, cells occupy only a small minority of the total volume: for instance, in a trunk of a spermatophyte, almost only its vascular cambium and phloem are composed of (living) cells.

  13. 13.

    Such question, apparently so bizarre, stirred hot debates during the Middle Ages, as to whether Jesus’ blood drops, felt down on the Via Crucis, had resurrected with him.

  14. 14.

    According to Foucault, ‘[L’objet de l’histoire naturelle] est donné par des surfaces et des lignes, non par des fonctionnements ou d’invisible tissus. La plante et l’animal se voient moins en leur unité organique que par la découpe visible de leurs organs’ (1966: 149). Cuvier ‘fait déborder – et largement – la fonction par rapport à l’organe, et soumet la disposition de l’organe à la souveraineté de la fonction’ (ivi: 276). In sum, “tout au long de l’âge classique la vie relevait d’une ontologie qui concernait de la même façon tous les êtres matériels, soumis à l’étendue, à la pesanteur, au mouvement; ... à partir de Cuvier, le vivant échappe, au moins en première instance, aux lois générales de l’être etendu” (ivi: 286, emphasis added).

  15. 15.

    For these two technical terms see Smith (1994) and Varzi (2004).

  16. 16.

    For a thorough discussion see Ramellini (2006).

  17. 17.

    That is, I shall not tackle here the problem of the boundary of a living part of an organism, like a hepatocyte or possibly a heart. Actually, while the boundary of a cell inside a multicellular seems rather clear, with tissues or organs it becomes far more blurry, to the point that I doubt that we can recognize a heart as a living part (Ramellini 2006a).

  18. 18.

    Though concepts like co-movability or solidarity still need in my opinion a better explication (for an interesting approach see Hoffman and Rosenkrantz 1997: 80 ff.), it is at least clear that here I am speaking of a physical, rather than a topological, closeness, contact or attachment. For an alternative viewpoint, according to which attachment is not so important, see the concept of extended phenotype in Dawkins (1982).

  19. 19.

    The statocyst is an organ capable of sensing the gravitational field, thanks to little stones made of sand grains called statoliths; this has obviously tempted biologists to give the shrimps tiny magnets instead of sand, inducing them to orientate according to the resultant of magnetic and gravitational fields.

  20. 20.

    Besides, in plants uric acid is a precursor of ureids, organic compounds which play an important role in transporting nitrogen from roots to other organs of the plant.

  21. 21.

    Like in the famous xiphopagus twins Chang and Eng Bunker (1811–1874), whose conjunction simply involved a band of cartilage in the xiphoid process of their chests.

  22. 22.

    Like in cephalothoracopagus twins, with sharing of head, neck, chest, and hence usually heart and brain.

  23. 23.

    However, if it were shown that, say, digestive processes in the fused intestine are physiologically separated, this would cast doubt on the diplozoon being only one organism.

  24. 24.

    A possible exception could be given by a living body L composed of three parts ABC, placed consecutively in the sense of its length; if A and C are inter-subordinated, they will constitute an organism O, which will result – modelled as a topological space – a disjoint union; however, it would be controversial whether AC were an organismically living body. Smith and Varzi (1997) say that it is reasonable to assume that all bona fide objects are connected; in this case, the question is about which entity is the bona fide object: L, or O, or both?

  25. 25.

    Besides, the concept of organismic boundary is logically posterior to the concept of organism; i.e., while I can define the term ‘organism’ without any reference to boundaries, I cannot define the term ‘organismic boundary’ without a reference to the organism possessing that boundary.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, and is part of the Research Project ‘The Organism in Interdisciplinary Context’ of the STOQ Project. I thank my friend and philosopher Alberto Bertini for helpful comments and incessant encouragement, Roberto Poli for having invited me to reflect more carefully upon the links between ontology and biology, and an anonymous referee for his or her valuable suggestions.

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    Pietro Ramellini

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  1. Dipto. Sociologia e Ricerca Sociale, Universita di Trento, Via Verdi 26, Trento, 38100, Italy

    Roberto Poli

  2. Dept. Philosophy, University of Aarhus, Jens Chr. Skousvej 7, Aarhus C, 8000, Denmark

    Johanna Seibt

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Ramellini, P. (2010). Boundary Questions Between Ontology and Biology. In: Poli, R., Seibt, J. (eds) Theory and Applications of Ontology: Philosophical Perspectives. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8845-1_8

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