Biological organicism and the ethics of the human-nature relationship

Descriptions of living objects represent relationships between those doing the describing and the living objects: describing is performing a relations hip. The relationship, and therefore the description, matters ethically. Th is is explored in this article as a 'hermeneutic approach' to the phenomeno n of describing. Historically, the term 'organism' seems to have been intro duced by Georg Ernst Stahl in 1708, as a contrast to 'mechanism', making re ference to the Aristotelian use 'organon' to explain the functions of body parts. Neither author can be taken as supporting technomorphic models; they did not use 'organon'/'organism' in the context of a machine metaphor. Tod ay, organism' can be used either in the emphatic sense to qualify living be ings ontologically as transcending every mechanistic description, or to poi nt, to the machine model itself and imply a claim against materialistic red uctionism, since an autonomy of systemic properties arises only with organi sation. The author characterises the ontological discussion by its ethical implications for the human-nature relationship and suggests a position clai ming that organisms are ontologically irreducible entities.