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(2010) The collected works of Aron Gurwitsch (1901–1973) II, Dordrecht, Springer.
The living organism has very often been conceived as composed of a certain number of elementary mechanisms that are more or less independent of one another. Each of the mechanisms has its mode of operation or its specific function. The organism's life is explained by the cooperation among these elementary mechanisms; its actions and reactions result from the partial effects which mutually reinforce, inhibit, and modify one another. Knowledge of these is therefore necessary for the study of the organism. But only if it is exposed to an isolated stimulation can the operation of one of these mechanisms be established. It is therefore necessary to examine it under conditions which, as far as possible, permit one to exclude every influence deriving from another elementary mechanism. The elementary or primitive vital phenomenon is in these terms, then, seen to be the response to a localized stimulation affecting one receptive organ—that is to say, the reflex. The goal of the biological sciences is supposedly to construct the organism's life starting from reflexes; it is to compose that life by means of the latter.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-90-481-2942-3_3
Full citation:
Gurwitsch, A. (2010). Goldstein's conception of biological science, in The collected works of Aron Gurwitsch (1901–1973) II, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 77-98.
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