UNDERSTANDING MAMMALS

When I read Wolfgang Schad's book, Man and Mammals: Toward a Biology of Form (Waldorf Press, 1977), some 20 years ago, I had a threefold reaction. First, "why doesn't everyone teach biology this way?" second, the book sheds sharp light on incongruities in conventional biological wisdom, realigning them to show us nature's inherent organic coherence, wisdom and order, and third, I must meet this man. So, I went to his doorstep. Anyone with even a modest inclination towards holistic thinking, and a basic grasp of biology, will likely experience a similar intuitive sense of organic wisdom and wholeness in reading Understanding Mammals, a wide-ranging, much-extended revision of Man and Mammals, with an appropriately updated title.

To call it a tour de force is perhaps glib hyperbole; rather, let's say Schad has shown us, again, how deeply he understands mammal organisation, and the implications such organic appreciation has for our place in the mammalian world. Not only does he show us how we as individual humans, like all mammals and other species, are "made up" or "function as" a highly integrated, threefold "organisation" of organ systems (explained below), but he also shows how this organisation is evolutionary and deeply woven into the very fabric of nature, in every individual family, order, class and ecosystem. Schad warmly engages us in practically every aspect of mammalian biology, from sensory perception to respiration, digestion, reproduction, embryology, locomotion, coloration, physiology, life span, evolution, behaviour and psychology. His insights into the history, philosophy, strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary biology are both masterful and revolutionary in scope and simplicity. They reflect a biological genius honed by a lifetime of loving and dedicated nature observation, and an emancipated scientific outlook free of preconceptions, dogma and convention.

Threefoldness needs introduction for those unfamiliar with Goethean-Anthroposophical traditions in biology. No organism can exist without both open and closed attributes (functioning): open for the intake of sensory information, air and food, but closed enough to ward off infections, and the myriad impacts, "slings and arrows" posed by the environment and other organisms. We, like all mammals, use our more-open "sense-nerve" pole, centred around our nervous system, to remain alert to the airy, long-range world of light, sound, smell, etc., and cannot disengage from sensory input while awake. The opposite, more-closed pole is the digestive-limb (or metabolic-limb) system, which is emancipated from the environment insofar as it ingests (transforms, in darkness) the food it takes in, and literally pushes back, as limbs do, in immediate short range contact, against the physical environment. [We digest while limbs thrash and even sleepwalk in the dark of night].

A plant analogy of this polarity would be the difference between the light, airy, photosynthetic, transpiring leaves, swaying in the breeze, while the roots, like powerful limbs, heave in the soil, disintegrating minerals, physically breaking and ingesting the very bedrock. Between this twofold polarity, the middle respiratory-circulatory system, in mammals, and vertebrates generally, provides the third and mediating component. Neither open or closed, it is in a constant rhythmic cycle between inhalation and exhalation, and opening and closing of heart valves. [Like the mammal, even the tree has a trunk, which mediates the rhythmic in-out circulation of xylem and phloem].

This threefoldness is far more than a cataloging of organ functions. To recognise the middle system at the literal "heart" of the threefold organism is to see dynamic organic wholeness "as it really is," simultaneously the same, and with subtle variation, in every one of us, and in shades of kind and degree in all our mammal cousins. As Schad writes "The relational organism illustrates one of the first principles of life, namely that the whole is present, albeit in a modified way, in each of the parts." [A holographic principle]. Since its inception, modern biology has talked about order, organisms and organisation without fully understanding its own quest for a conceptual coherence, or "order," which remains unsatisfied and incomplete until the threefold reality of organic dynamism is "seen" and appreciated, as the beating heart of nature.

Just as fish are unaware of the watery reality in which they swim, so, thus far, biology, for all its fine achievements, has failed to appreciate fully the "structure" and "dynamism" of the organic reality of which we, its component biologist-observers, are both an essential "part" and, at the same time, a coherent representation of the whole, "natural" organisation. [The very human quest to "know ourselves" is more than psychological curiosity. As every discipline from Darwinism to genetics informs us, it is a manifestation of and inherent search for meaningful understanding of what we intuit–that organic nature is a dynamic coherent whole, and we an integral part]. Whether turning to science, spirituality or Anthroposophy (a happy blend of both), we prove our own, and nature's, wisdom in the dynamic quest to bring our encounters with the outer world into a satisfying harmony with what constitutes our emotional, intellectual and spiritual inner being. This can only happen through achieving dynamic resonance and equilibrium, at all levels of organisation. This is what Schad and Anthroposophical Science have to offer.

Examples inform better than words. Consider the parallels between 400 million years of vertebrate evolution (phylogeny) and the development of each human (mammal) individual (ontogeny). Vertebrates, as fish, first internalised (emancipated) the brain (central nervous system CNS), then amphibians internalised the lungs, next reptiles, including some dinosaurs and close bird relatives, internalised the thermoregulatory circulatory system. Mammals internalised the reproductive systems and humans freed their limbs (especially hands) from the environment. (In contrast "the ape's limbs…come under the influence of their arboreal environment"). The long-term head-to-toe developmental wave recapitulates, in short order, in our own individual development.

The anterior CNS (head) is disproportionally much enlarged through fetal development and early infancy, meaning it has matured (accelerated development) relatively early (analogous to the early start it got in evolution). The infant first lifts the head at 3 months, sits up at 6 months and stands between 9 and 12 months. Maturation of the limbs and reproductive system follow later in the last of three seven-year (1-7-14-21) cycles, also expressed in digestion- and limb-related tooth development. Thus, development of posterior organs is held back, rendering each individual a 3-fold blend of organs that have mostly completed early, accelerated development, developed on an intermediate schedule, and those that have held back (retarded) development until later. Differences in the degree to which these organ systems develop is pronounced in different species, families and orders, but more subtle in individuals of the same species. But, in all cases, they correspond to differences in anatomy, physiology, behavior and other attributes.

Rodents, for example, are small and dominated by their relatively over developed nervous systems, whereas ungulates are large and dominated by powerful limbs and elaborate digestive systems. The carnivores mediate between these poles and actually regulate rodent and ungulate populations. But within each group, these polarities and associated 3-foldness reiterate in a recognisable orderly way. So there are large digestive rodents (beavers) and small, skittish ungulates (contrast small gazelles with buffalo). Psychologically, the nervous rodent is over-reactive to the environment (un-emancipated, and too objective) while the large ungulate is placid and ruminative (subjective and emancipated from its surroundings).

Such psychological diversity is more subtly manifest in human constitutional types, and ethnic groups, but due to our unique self-awareness we recognise much greater nuanced and subtle human differences than we might in regarding all lions, tigers, or pandas as essentially very similar. In the human species the balance between aforementioned polar, animal extremes led Goethe to describe the "extraordinary perfection" of the human organism achieved through "developmental restraint," that is, being unspecialised.

Schad recognises that each species organs and whole body "represents the completion of a stage in the evolutionary process," not an "incomplete" transitional stage in development between an ancestral and future species, which is implied by the Darwinian "line of descent" paradigm. You cannot "propagate a pear tree from an apple tree." Moreover, the discovery of "lateral gene transfer"(coalescence) leads to the conclusion that "Darwin's principle of divergence has thus been complemented by that of coalescence." [His italics]. Others have also rightly pointed out that evolution involves cooperation or symbiosis as well as competition. Schad's holistic conclusions are revolutionary in their "ordered" sequential, dare I say "evolutionarily progressive," implications: "The sequence of …emancipation process[es] reveals a striking principle," the "accelerating tendency [of] the sense and nervous systems led the way; the emancipation of the metabolism…reproductive system, and …limbs came only later …in the higher animals. But only when these systems had gained their autonomy did the …most evolved organism become possible." Thus "our personal freedom and independence have not evolved recently but have accrued over the whole course of this evolutionary journey" …they have been imperfect steps towards towards an extraordinary perfection.

Such imperfect steps are also how science proceeds. SMN members may lament that mainstream scientific paradigms are imperfect, and ask, as I did, when first reading Schad's work "why don't they teach biology like this" or better? Well, teachers like Schad have dedicated lifetimes to doing a better job. He is both ahead of his time, and an excavator of ancient, insightful and nuanced Goethean and Anthroposophical wisdom. In order to transcend certain deficient and overly reductive modes in science, we may consider his work to represent one of many multiple working paradigms, albeit an extraordinarily holistic one, that a more mature biology will need to adopt, explore further, and refine, as his colleagues have done to various degrees.

Schad inspired me to apply his paradigm to dinosaurs and I was gratified that he appreciated that my results helped him understand dinosaurs 'better.' Our colleague Mark Reigner, who wrote the forward to Understanding Mammals, has applied Schadian paradigm thinking to birds, with most fruitful results. We have also coopted other researchers in the field of heterochrony (timing of development) with synergistic results, and in fact "we" colleagues, having convened at a few conferences, are poised to follow Understanding Mammals with a broader treatise on vertebrates. We have learned that without Schad as a mentor and guide our scientific quests have led to incomplete and imperfect results. The Schadian paradigm may not be the last word in extraordinary perfection, but it is extraordinary and has what lyrical scientists like to call elegance. Such awareness of elegance speaks to the perennial quest for shaking off imperfections and aspiring to new, more perfect paradigms.