The work of French philosopher Raymond Ruyer (1902–87) is making a belated appearance in English translation with the publication of these two works. Ruyer is a philosopher of science who continues a French tradition of finding Lamarck neglected and Darwin overrated. Ruyer is also among those who think the best hints for problems of evolutionary biology come from the theory of development. He advances arguments seldom aired in Anglophone philosophy, including a rehabilitation of biological teleology, a reformulation of the problem of consciousness, and a new statement of panpsychism. Finalist or teleological action advancing life-cycle goals is a primitive characteristic of life, and for Ruyer it is the primary expression of consciousness. He departs from default positions in Anglophone philosophy when he declines to equate consciousness with either mental representation or neurological action. Consciousness comes with organic form and is coextensive with life and even surpasses it, as Ruyer finds...
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The Genesis of Living Forms
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Book Review|
May 01 2022
The Genesis of Living Forms
Neofinalism
Raymond Ruyer,
The Genesis of Living Forms
, trans. Jon Roffe and Nicholas B. de Weydenthal (London
: Rowman and Littlefield International
, 2020
), 208
pp.Raymond Ruyer,
Neofinalism
, trans. Alyosha Edlebi (Minneapolis
: University of Minnesota Press
, 2016
), 300
pp.
Barry Allen
Barry Allen, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at McMaster University and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is the author of Truth in Philosophy; Knowledge and Civilization; Art and Technology in Human Experience; Knowledge in Chinese Tradition; Striking Beauty: A Philosophical Look at the Asian Martial Arts; and Empiricisms: Experience and Experiment from Antiquity to the Anthropocene.
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Common Knowledge (2022) 28 (2): 306–307.
Citation
Barry Allen; The Genesis of Living Forms
Neofinalism. Common Knowledge 1 May 2022; 28 (2): 306–307. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-9809431
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