Dear reader,
I am pleased to announce a new book, Organization Without Formal Priority? It begins with a deceptively simple question: what makes a living thing one thing?
Aristotle’s answer placed form at the center of living unity. Modern mechanism, by contrast, explains organisms through parts, processes, and causal organization. The familiar choice is therefore between a governing form and a collection of mechanisms. I argue that this choice is too narrow.
A living system can possess genuine organization without placing one element in unconditional command of all the others. Capacities may be acquired, retained without present exercise, exercised well or imperfectly, and sometimes lost in ways that matter to identity. Following those differences reveals a form of unity that is material, dynamic, and distributed.
The book brings Aristotle into conversation with contemporary questions about mechanism, biological impairment, persistence, and identity. Its aim is neither to restore classical hylomorphism unchanged nor to reduce organisms to inventories of parts. It is to show how organization can be real without formal priority.
I hope the argument will interest readers in metaphysics, philosophy of biology, Aristotelian philosophy, and the conceptual foundations of the life sciences.
With appreciation,
George Skouras
george-skouras.com