"In this book, I describe a biology of the feeling selfa biology that has
discovered subjective feeling as the fundamental moving force in all life, from
the cellular level up to the complexity of the human organism. I also describe
how this discovery turns our image of ourselves upside down. We have also
understood human beings as biological machines that somehow and rather
inexplicably entail some subjective x factor variously known as mind, spirit, or
soul. But now biology is discovering subjectivity as a fundamental principle
throughout nature. It finds that even the most simple living things bacterial
cells, fertilized eggs, nematodes in tidal flatsact according to values.
Organisms value everything they encounter according to its meaning for the
further coherence of their embodied self. Even the cells self-production, the
continuous maintenance of a highly structured order, can only be understood if
we perceive the cell as an actor that persistently follows a goal. I call this
new viewpoint a 'poetic ecology.'"
Andreas Weber shares more in this excerpt from his book, "The Biology of
Wonder."
