Nathaniel Perrin

A summary of the appendix to World as Will and Representation Vol. 1

Schopenhauer's comprehensive critique of Kant's philosophy

Note - This review was originally written in 2018. This is a redraft. Also forgive the poorly formatted image, I will fix it, when I am not so lazy.

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To write a masterful monograph which applies a single disciplinary methodology flawlessly, that is a challenge. But to write a book steeped in elegant multidisciplinarity, rich in erudition, and spiced with some dry wit, that is a feat of its own.

As a student of the premier media ecologist Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong roots the sometime offputting frenetic energy of his mentor in a grounded, accessible style by crafting an analysis of that nebulous bridge period between the "medieval" and the "modern". Ong takes one individual as a particularly revelatory nexus of parallel historical developments, the educator Petrus Ramus (1515-1575). Across the chapters of this book, Ong he deftly navigates the development and the implications of Ramus' revolutionary approach to pedagogy, printing, humanism, and beyond. I will only briefly introduce some of these dimensions as a teaser of what a reader can find inside Ong's study.

#### The birth of methodology

One should not forget that in this time Aristotle was king. Ramus was decidedly anti-Aristotelian, as his polemics make no secret of. This rendered him a particularly controversial figure in his own day. The Western university curricula had been thoroughly rooted in Aristotle for several centuries by now, so Ramus' attempt to dethrone "The Philosopher" were not met with cheerful acceptance by the scholastic university system, as one might expect.

The Scholastics (a term Ong finds problematic though useful) decried Ramus for jettisoning Aristotle because it left him with a weak *methodus*, which can be defined as the way one proceeds through their subject matter.

Method had not been problematized in such a way before. What is a method and how does one arrive at it? This is the quintessential Cartesian or Bacon question (or whichever Enlightenment figure floats your boat). Ong contends that through his disruption of Aristotelian teaching, Ramus unintentionally prompted this modern question of method not just between humanists and scholastics but also within these two camps as well. A question that has haunted the natural and human sciences to this day.

#### Print and pedagogy

Print technology was still relatively new at this point in time. It had been used for Bibles and then weaponized for the Reformation, but the technological developments surrounding the book had not yet percolated into the realm of pedagogy, until Ramus. Ong argues that Ramus was the first to employ print diagrams and charts as he implemented them in his textbooks on rhetoric and dialectic. What medieval philosophy and logicians had taken page upon page, subordinate clause upon subordinate clause, to detail in a way that could only make sense to a reader with a remarkable scrutiny of effort, all this verboseness was easily displaced by the visual diagram. Abstruse concatenations of text gave way to clear, simple, visual diagrams which could make the meaning of a thousand words clear in one picture. A revolutionary achievement in the dissemination of knowledge and the circulation of teaching.

Furthermore, while before many writers perished under the suffocating weight of critics' rebuttals (if not snuffed out by the church), Ramus was remarkably proactive in utilizing print technology to respond to his adversaries. He rapidly and repeatedly printed new editions of his books with *corrigienda*, supplemental arguments, or refutations of counter-arguments. He incorporated his critics' points into his own work, thus strengthening his own presentation despite others' attempts to negate it.

The printing press also mobilized Ramus' ability to spread his ideas. Rather than being constrained to a network of universities as manuscript culture had been constrained to do, Ramus was an early figure in the transnational republic of letters, becoming a central figure for the Anglophone Puritan movement in England.

And this is not because Ramus possessed a prodigious degree of foresight, at least in Ong's view, but it is because he had particular reformist goals *contra* scholasticism and was placed at a rare intersection of historical circumstances which allowed him to utilize new scholarly tools in his endeavour.


#### Debunking Thomist Nostalgia

Ramus was a Huguenot. Ong was a Jesuit. And Ong makes no effort to conceal his preference for Catholicism throughout his work. That is fine for me though, for he also has absolutely zero sympathy for the neo-Thomist nostalgia movement which had pervaded twentieth century Catholicism. At the time for him this was Jacques Maritain, but it continues under various auspices via Alasdair MacIntyre, John Milbank, Charles Taylor, and most prominently for me personally in my undergraduate experience.

The basic premise of this Catholic metanarrative is that Thomas Aquinas came along and more or less solved philosophy with the perfect blending of Aristotle and Christianity. This was the ultimate fulfillment of the Western philosophical tradition. However, the innovations of John Duns Scotus corrupted this intellectual utopia and brought us an intellectual Fall called modernity. A simplistic retelling, yes, but that's the basic gist.

Ong has several remarks on this subject (I have several more but will refrain from interjecting here).

First, the idea that Thomism reigned as some supreme vogue tradition until it was displaced by Scotus or the Reformation, that has zero historical grounding. When Aquinas died, the University of Paris only felt it necessary to preserve a few of his commentaries and his treatise on aqueduct construction. More than that, teachings espoused by Aquinas were explicitly condemned as heretical in 1277, until this decision was somewhat discreetly reversed when he was canonized in 1322. Not many realize that Aquinas has a much more controversial reception history than his nostalgists often acknowledge.

Second, scholasticism was not institutionally built on faculties of theology. If one considers the hard numbers of what represented scholasticism, the vast majority of those at scholastic institutions were logicians, and Thomas was not a strong logician either. Theologians constituted a significantly smaller number of scholars than their counterparts in logic, and their voice in pedagogy was often unheard. Thomism was at best a marginal doctrine, even among the literate and educated, it was not a universally promulgated doctrine.

Another laudable observation from Ong is the problematic nature of using terms such as realism or nominalism to distinguish medieval thinkers. Such an anachronistic label is often used to bifurcate the Western philosophical tradition, but in Ong's view, this method of teaching the history of philosophy introduces more misconceptions than it does impress accurate ones. They ultimately misframe the conversations of medieval and Renaissance thought.


#### Media Ecology: Spatial Cognition

 Ong is foremost remembered as a media ecologist, as his predecessor Marshall McLuhan was. And this frame of observations is also prevalent in this work as well. One of the key arguments of this book is that the technology of the print book was part of a larger ongoing development of constructing and defining knowledge almost exclusively in visual and spatial terms. 
 
 Charts and diagrams are visual ways we construct, relate, delineate, and compartmentalize knowledge. For Ong, the wake of print technology ushers in semantic evolution as well. With more people reading instead of listening, philosophical vocabulary became increasingly visualistic as well (e.g. the word definition means the physical delimitation of space). 
 
 For Ramus, the true nature of things was not conveyed through oral dialogue or lectures but through the written word and its containment in visual spaces. Scholastic pedagogy featured the oral monologue of the professor while humanist pedagogy showcased the text as the primary instrument for truth and understanding. The humanists engaged in oral dialogue for the sake of discerning the more real truth contained (this, also being a spatial term) within the written/printed text.

#### Literary and Philosophical Impacts of Ramist Pedagogy

Ong also draws attention to a variety of ways that Ramism gave birth to the greatest minds of the Renaissance. He argues that it was only because education shifted from listening-only to dialogue and exercises that required the students to think and imagine more, that great thinkers and writers of the later Renaissance like Shakespeare were possible. This pedagogy made the minds of the next generation more synthestic, imaginative, and thus creative. He argues that the visualist typology of Ramus' works were an important precursor to the highly visual style of writers such as the English metaphysical poets.

 

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There are a wide variety of other historical, etymological, pedagogical, and philosophical arguments that Ong convincingly weaves into his narrative, and it is truly remarkable that he could cover so much ground in his studies (especially since he personally traveled around the world to track down thousands of various copies and editions of Ramus' works). This is truly a landmark study, a classic which is essential for anyone interested in intellectual history, methodology, media ecology, or the history of the book.

Review: Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason

Il Morazzone's (1573-1626) *Lotta di Giacobbe con l'angelo*

### Preface

For a denizen of antiquity, Augustine has a nearly unparalleled bulk of writing which have survived to our day.

Even so, not all of Augustine's oeuvre has been translated into English, [though that work is currently in progress](https://www.newcitypress.com/catalog/category/view/s/the-works-of-saint-augustine/id/24/).

As an exercise for myself, I took on a translation project for Augustine's *De agone christiano* which has only been translated once before in a collection by the Catholic University of America Press just under a hundred years ago.

*De agone christiano* (396) dates to Augustine's early mid period, roughly between *De doctrina christiana* and *Confessiones*. It is a short tract of about thirty pages which frames the earthly temporal struggle of Christian life as one of fighting the desires of the heart which are corralled by the devil to steer us into depravity.

From the perspective of the history of theology, I find this treatise is interesting as a sample case of how Augustine decisively and distinctly casts the terms of Christian spiritual ethics in light of an interior struggle. A war against desire, so long as we remain in this life. A framing with long lasting implications, not without controversy in the course of all Western history.

If you are interested in discovering other minor works by Augustine, you should check out [this bibliography here](https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/twayne/twaynebib.html).


I have translated most of this book (if not finished by the time you read this). I am still deciding what to do with it. If you are interested in reading more, feel free to [reach out](https://www.ngperrin.com/contact).

Note - Biblical references are generally taken from the ESV with minor alterations in translation.

 
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### Chapter 1

 

The crown of victory is not promised to us except through struggle. However in the divine
Scriptures, we constantly find the crown to be promised to us, if we do overcome what we face. But, so as not to be overly verbose in drawing upon many different quotations, this can be seen most evidently in the writings of the Apostle Paul where he says:

”I have completed the work I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth
there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness.” (2 Tim. 4:7-8)

Therefore, if we are to be crowned, we must recognize who this very adversary is, whom we must overcome. For it is this very adversary which our Lord previously overcame,
so that we might also overcome him through perseverance in the Lord. And indeed by excellence and wisdom and the Word of God, the God through whom all things were made, who is the only Son of God always remains unchanging, above every creature. And since under him are even the creatures who do not sin, how much more under him is every sinful creature! Therefore since all the holy angels are under him, how much more under him are all the fallen angels, of whom the devil is ruler.

But due to the fact he had deceived our nature, the only begotten son of God deigned to take our very nature so that the devil might be overcome, whom he subjugated under himself, and even subjugating him under us. This is shown when Paul says, “The ruler of this world has been cast out”. (John 12:31)

Not because he was cast out of the world, like in the way certain heretics are punished,
but cast out from their souls, those who are united in the Word of God and do not
cherish this world, of which the devil is ruler, because he controls them, who cherish earthly goods, which are contained in this visible world, not because that very lord is of this world, but the ruler of their desires, through which things are craved, but which all pass away, that they are subjected to him, those who disregard the eternal God and cherish instability and the changeable. “For the root of every sin is desire: it is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.” (1 Tim. 6:10)

Through this desire the devil reigns in man and hold his heart. Such is the case for all
who cherish this world. However the devil is cast out, when the heart in its entirety
renounces the world. For in this way is the devil renounced, who is ruler of this world,
when he is renounced along with his corruptions and his pomp and his angels. And that
same Lord, already bearing the triumphant nature of man, says to us, “Take heart; I
have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

A new translation of the first chapter of De agone christiano

Augustine translation: The Christian Struggle

### Preface

Why Uexküll?

Many thinkers have unsung fathers. Forerunners who begot the ideas that their successors were celebrated for. (Who remembers Brunschvicg, Polanyi, or Henry of Ghent?) In this case, both Heidegger and Deleuze owe some of their thought to the good Baron Uexküll. 

Philosophers are often so distant from any concrete form of experience or work, their prestige garnished from verbal posturing and polemics, in a way sometimes no better than middle management. Not so with Uexküll: he was a biologist. A son of the Baltic, a German aristocrat living in what is present-day Estonia.

Uexküll's writings on the consciousness of animals, among other ideas, inspired developments in fields as wide ranging as phenomenology, semiotics, cybernetics, as well as in the biological sciences.

If this should not make him intriguing enough, Uexküll was highly critical of Darwinism from a theoretical standpoint. 

Grasping the bankruptcy of a scientific theory derived from liberal capitalism, Uexküll hoped to develop a new biological outlook as an alternative to Darwin's shallow theory. That biology is not at its root a sequence of individuals eliminated, or not. But instead a biology focused on the nexus of relationships between animals and the world, starting from the viewpoint that different species belong together and mutually determine each other.

Unfortunately, very little of Uexküll's work has been translated into English. The only full-length book I have been able to find is *A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans with a Theory of Meaning* which combines *Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen* with *Bedeutungslehre*.

Here I will present a translation of the introduction to one of his earliest publications, *Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere* (1909) which can be found [here for free](https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/15902#page/5/mode/1up). I translated this above as "The External and Internal Worlds of Animals" to reflect the dual natures of the world outside *Um-welt* and the world inside *Innen-welt*, but it should be noted that *Umwelt* is the German word for the "environment", that is the world all around us. One of those colorful forms of German wordplay that cannot be translated succinctly.


I will likely translate more of the book. If you are interested in fetching a draft copy, feel free to [reach out](https://www.ngperrin.com/contact).

 
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### Introduction

 

These days, the word "science" is the subject of ridiculous fetishism. Therefore, it is probably appropriate to point out that science is nothing but the sum of the opinions of researchers alive today. As far as we record the opinions of older researchers, they also live on in science. As soon as an opinion is discarded or forgotten, it is dead to science.


Little by little, all opinions are forgotten, discarded, or modified. Therefore one can answer the question, "What is a scientific truth?" without exaggeration with: "The misconception of the day."

The question, whether there is progress in science, is therefore not quite as simple to answer as is generally assumed. We hope to progress from cruder to more refined errors, but whether we are really on the right track for biology is highly doubtful. The study of the living offers such an immense abundance of facts to the unbiased observer at every step that the mere registering of these facts would make any science impossible. Only the opinion of the researcher, which forcibly separates the studied into the essential and the unessential, gives rise to science. The prevailing opinion ruthlessly decides on what should be considered "essential". If it is overturned, thousands of diligent, painstaking, and excellent studies will fall into oblivion along with it as "unessential".

In biology, we are still under the fresh impression that the fall of Darwinism has produced in all of us. The achievements of half a century of restless work today seem insignificant to us.

No wonder that biologists now strive to give their work a firmer foundation than the doctrine of the perfection of living things had. 

The success of these efforts is not very encouraging. No agreement has yet been reached on the foundations upon which animal biology is to rise as a proud scientific house. And yet this agreement decides the fate of biology. If the question of the foundations remains undecided or subject to fashionable trends, there will be no progress, and everything that has been worked out with the greatest effort of mind by one generation will be discarded by the next.

Only when all hands work according to a shared plan to build a house on a firm foundation that something prosperous and lasting can come into being.

It is instructive and perhaps useful to be clear about the causes that have prevented agreement in modern animal biology so far.

Modern animal biology owes its existence to the introduction of physiological experimentation into the study of lower animals. The expectations that were attached to the expansion of the field of research from the physiological side were not fulfilled. One looked for a solution for the questions of the physiology of higher animals and found new problems instead. The dissolution of living phenomena into chemical and physical processes did not advance it one step. Thus experimental biology discredited itself of more rigorous observance in the eyes of the physiologists.

For all those researchers, however, who saw the essential content of biology in the life process itself and not in its reduction to chemistry, physics, and mathematics, the enormous wealth of experimentally solvable problems had to be a special incentive to turn to the lower animals. In a few years the abundance of the edited material has become so large that today the ordering of the material appears as the much more urgent task, vis-à-vis the always progressing new research. Building material is available in abundance to start the construction of science. One must only agree upon the construction plan.

The most natural thing to do would be to continue working with the old, long-standing construction plans. In the good old days, when anatomy and physiology still formed a unified biology, each animal was regarded as a functional unit. The anatomic structure and its physiological performances were studied simultaneously and considered to belong together.

It does not occur to anyone to introduce a division of labor into technology, and to train two classes of engineers, one for the study of structure, the other for the study of energy conversion in machines.

Technology, like engineering, would soon be ruined by this division. Biology, too, would have perished long ago from division into anatomy and physiology, if medicine with its practical requirements had not peremptorily demanded the union of the two sciences, at least for man. The latest work also owe its deep biological significance to this joining of the sciences. One need only remember the life work of Pavlov, or the great success of English physiologists like Langley and Sherrington.

Wherever physiology and anatomy proceeded separately, it did not turn out for their good. Comparative anatomy, which more and more neglected the merit of the organs, finally came to consider the structure of the living beings as a mere "formal unity". "Homology" became the basis of a completely new doctrine of the relationships of body types, while analogy was despised, and thus dead spatial relationships took the place of the living interaction of organs. Only in recent times does experimental embryology lead anatomical science back to the sources of the deepest problems of life. 

Likewise, general physiology increasingly lost the understanding that every living being is a "functional unity". In place of striving for knowledge of the structural plan of each living being, which can be deduced from anatomy and physiology alone, the one-sided study of the most isolated partial functions ever possible took place, in order to be able to handle these as purely physical or chemical problems.

This was the doom of the biology of higher animals. Quite strange was the fate of the biology of lower animals. Here anatomy and physiology did not go separate ways, but physiology was completely suppressed temporarily. This happened by Darwinism. Darwinism (not Darwin himself) regarded the capacities of anatomical structure as "unessential" in contrast to a problem: how the structure of higher animals had developed from that of lower ones.

One saw in the series of evolving animals the proof for a increasing perfection step-by-step from the simplest to the most multifaceted structure. Only one thing was forgotten, that the perfection of the structure cannot be derived from its multifaceted nature. No one will claim that an ironclad is more perfect than the modern rowboats of the international rowing clubs. Also, an ironclad would play a pitiable role in a rowing regatta. Likewise, a horse would fill the role of an earthworm only very imperfectly.

The question of a higher or lower degree of perfection of living beings can only be asked if one checks every blueprint with its execution and sees in which case the execution is most successful. In this question, there is no doubt the lower animals will win the prize, since they belong to the oldest creatures, because this rule seems to apply: the older the family, the better the performance.

One tries to discuss the problem of perfection by comparing the needs of the organisms with their blueprint, and thus asks, to what extent this blueprint corresponds to its needs. This has also been the question of Darwinism. Only from this does the assertion hold meaning that higher animals are more perfect.

For if the needs of man are regarded as the measure against which all the blueprints of animals are to be measured, then naturally the highest animals are the most perfect. But this is too evident an error to waste a word on it. After all, we have no other means at hand for the investigation of the needs of an animal other than its blueprint. That alone gives us information about the active and passive role which the animal is appointed to play in its environment. Therefore the whole question is meaningless.

But even the assertion that the varying individuals of a species are more or less well adapted to their environment is completely taken out of thin air. Every varying individual is different according to its modified blueprint but somehow also equally perfectly adapted to its environment. Because the blueprint on its own establishes the environment of the animal with wide limits.

This realization, which I intend to prove step by step, can alone be regarded as the permanent basis of biology. Only through this can we gain the correct understanding of how living beings order and control the chaos of the inorganic world. Every animal in its own place and its own way. Out of the immense diversity of the inorganic world, every animals chooses just that which suits it (i.e. it creates its own needs according to its design).

Only at a superficial glance does it appear as if all sea animals live in a shared homogeneous world. Closer study teaches us that each of these thousandfold varying life forms possesses an environment unique to it, which mutually conditions itself with the blueprint of the animal.

It is not surprising that the environment of an animal also includes other living beings. Thus this mutual conditioning also takes place between the animals themselves and results in a strange phenomenon that the predator fits to the prey just as well as the prey is fitted to the predator. Thus no only is the parasite adapted to the host, but also the host to the parasite.

The attempt to explain this mutual belonging togetherness of neighboring animals through gradual adaptation has failed miserably. It has also diverted interest from the nearest task, which is to first determine the environment of each animal.

This task is not as simple as the novice might believe. It is not difficult to observe any animal in its environment. But this in no way resolves the problem. The experimenter must try to determine which parts of this environment affect the animal and in what way.

Our anthropocentric way of looking at things must step back more and more, and the point of view of the animal must become the sole decisive one.

With that, everything which is considered natural to us disappears: the whole nature, the earth, the sky, the stars, yes all objects which surround us, and only those influences which exert an influence on the animal according to its blueprint remain as world-factors. Their number, their association is determined by the blueprint. If this connection of the blueprint with external factors is carefully investigated, then a new world, completely different from ours, is formed around each animal, as its environment.

It is just as objective as the factors of the environment are, the effects caused by them must also be acknowledged and regulated by the blueprint. Together they form the inner world of animals.

This inner world is the unadulterated fruit of objective research and is not to be clouded by psychological speculation. One may perhaps, to make the impression of such an inner world lifelike, raise the question, what would our soul do with such a limited inner world? But to paint and to spruce up this inner world with mental qualities (which we can neither prove nor deny) is no activity for serious researchers.

The blueprint stands above the inner world and the environment, dominating everything. In my opinion, the research of the blueprint alone can provide a healthy and secure basis for biology. It also brings anatomy and physiology together again for more fruitful interaction.

If the development of the blueprint for each animal species is placed at the center of research, then every newly discovered fact finds its natural place, where it receives meaning and significance.

The contents of the present book shall serve the purpose of demonstrating the importance of the blueprint as vividly as possible and to show by individual examples how environment and inner world are interrelated through the blueprint. A textbook of special biology is not offered here, but only the way is shown, by which one could arrive at one.

In the selection of present examples, I was determined above all by the desire to give pictures as systematically as possible. Of course, there are gaps everywhere, not only in the physiological but also in the anatomical material. On the other hand, since I could only use such anatomical material that was physiologically alive, the great mass of anatomical and zoological knowledge had to be omitted. Likewise all physiological results had to be neglected, which offer only physical or chemical interest. But even those structures whose capacities are well studied had to be disregarded if their complication made too great demands on the reader's imagination.

Finally I have limited myself to the invertebrates, because I am at home there myself, leaving the higher animals to the more qualified. From the invertebrates, bees and ants remained unconsidered, because detailed textbooks about them are already available.

I could now proceed to the content of the book, because the point of view, from which it is to be considered, is sufficiently stated. But it is unnecessary to go into those opinions that strive to give biology a different basis.

What can arise in the way just outlined is a special biology of all animal species. Such a biology would be very one-sided if it did without the aid of comparison. All animals perform their animalistic capacities with the help of tissues which remain very similar through the whole set of animals. Muscle tissue and nerve tissue show analogous capacities everywhere, no matter how differently they are combined in organs. This is of great importance for special biology, because the generally valid properties of muscle and nerves can be presupposed as valid also in those animals whose body constitution does not permit a physiological analysis down to the individual tissues. Therefore, the comparative physiology of the tissues will always remain a very necessary part of special biology, and there is nothing to be said against it, if the comparative tissue science precedes the discussion of the individual animals. I have refrained from doing this because I wanted to show in which animal species we can most easily reach more general conclusions for general tissue science.

The biology is completely different, if one makes the comparison the basis of the entire study. This has been done by Loeb, and in an extraordinarily original and interesting way.

The great majority of animal movements proceed as follows: An external stimulus acts on a receptive organ, which gives an excitation to the nervous system. Directed by the nervous system, the excitation finally reaches the muscle, which then contracts. This process is called a reflex. Loeb found that a large number of animals, when exposed to very elementary stimuli, such as light, gravity or simple chemical substances, always respond with an ordered movement, by which they either turn toward or away from the source of the stimulus. He saw in this an elementary process, which he called tropism, and depending on the direction taken by the movement, he spoke of positive or negative tropism.

Loeb himself admitted the possibility that many tropisms are not yet sufficiently analyzed reflexes. But certain tropisms, e.g. the phototropism, which occurs on one-sided exposure, he wants to be regarded as an elementary phenomenon to be equated with the physical phenomena. The light rays should be able to turn the animal body during their passage through it like a magnet turns iron filings. Animals which react to light in this way are called photopathic.

But there is no doubt that in many cases the light simply causes a reflex on the illuminated side of the animal, which must result in a unidirectional movement, since there is no reflex on the shaded side. The animals that react in this way against the light are called phototactic.

Photopathic phototropism is a physical process, whereas phototactic is a reflex.

Now Ms. Lee has been able to prove on unicellular animals that the photopathic explanation of their movements can very well be replaced by a phototactic one.

Recently Radl has tried to prove that light has the same directional effect on insects as gravity has on a floating body. On the other hand, G. Bohn has found that the undeniably directional effect of illuminated objects on snails and crabs depends on the physiological state of the animals.

One sees from this, how uncertain the interpretation of these processes is.

It seems tempting to attribute all movements of the animals to tropisms, because this relieves us of the task of treating the apparently simple processes as performances of a structure which is difficult to determine. But a certain basis is gained only by the study of the structure and the blueprint.

Already this view seems to gain more and more ground. But only some of the researchers turns to the study of the blueprint. Another part follows a new doctrine, which rejects the study of the blueprint and wants to regard the animals free from any analogy with the machines.

It is undeniable that determining the blueprint of the animals has only then a sense, if the structure of the animals is to be equated with the structure of the machines.

With this we approach the basis of all biology, which cannot be decided by speculation, but only by observation of the living substance, on which all living beings are built, while the machines consist of dead material-- we approach the protoplasm problem.

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Translation completed with assistance from [DeepL](www.deepl.com).

The introduction from Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere, in English for the first time

Uexküll translation: The External and Internal Worlds of Animals

Media supersaturation and a few effects on young folks

Tired before their time

Meeting notes of the 1922 encounter translated from the French, perhaps for the first time

Schopenhauer's comprehensive critique of Kant's philosophy

Review: Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason

Augustine translation: The Christian Struggle

Uexküll translation: The External and Internal Worlds of Animals

Tired before their time

The infamous Bergson-Einstein debate, translated