In episode 107 of Overthink, David and Ellie take up a philosophical perspective on biology’s squirmiest concept: the organism. From Kant’s distinction between organisms and mechanisms, to Deleuze and Guattari’s infamous call for ‘bodies without organs,’ they uncover and question the ontological and metaphorical baggage behind the concept. Their exploration takes them from the bottom of Sea of Naples to the heights of Romantic Idealism, passing through the tensions of contemporary genetics. P...
Hello, and welcome to Overthink, the podcast.
Where two philosophers take ideas you didn't know were philosophy and show you that philosophy has a lot to say about them.
One discipline to rule them all, baby.
Dr.
David Pena Guzman.
Oh, goodness.
I'm Dr.
Ellie Anderson.
Well, Ellie, today I want to begin by telling you a little story about the biological world.
And it's a story that I'm getting from the biologist Lewis Thomas, who writes about it in his book the Medusa and the Snail.
And it involves two species, two animals that live in the Bay of Naples in southern Italy.
Ooh, prime real estate.
Yeah.
So I'm going to call them Swirly for the snail and Medusa for the jellyfish.
These creatures live in a symbiotic relationship.
And I want you to visualize the following scene because it's a little bit convoluted, and so it will require you to try to picture it.
Okay, we are at the bottom of the ocean, and we have our little friend Swirly dragging itself around on the ocean floor.
And if you close in on Swirly, you'll realize that he has a little bump attached to the side of his mouth.
It could look like a pimple if he were a human being, but it is, in fact, a parasite.
As somebody who has a pimple by the side of my mouth right now, this is.