KEYWORDS:

SCIENTIFIC METHOD: "Principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses." - Miriam Webster Dictionary (accessed May 4, 2026)

SURREALIST or POETIC SCIENCE: A form of study that can take into account the objective stance required by the scientific method while allowing for active engagement and participation in the experiment.  

INDIVIDUAL: Etymology of the word “individual”:

Latin: “in” means “not”, “dividuus” means “divisible.”

Dividuus is a conjugation the verb “divider”, “to divide.”

The word individual started out in late Middle English as the word “indivisible”.

Is it the individual that cannot be divided, or the individual that cannot be divided from the whole?

“In living nature, nothing happens that is not in connection with a whole. When experiences appear to us in isolation or when we look at experiments as presenting only isolated facts, that is not to say that the facts are indeed isolated…since everything in nature, especially the more common forces and elements, is in eternal action and reaction, we can say of every phenomenon that it is connected to countless others, just as a radiant point of light sends out its rays in all directions."

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1792[2010]:22-23

German Romantic poet/polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe advocated in the late 18^th/early 19^th century for a kind of research he called “delicate empiricism,” a mode of investigation capable of bearing in mind paradoxes, notably that the researcher is both separate from and entangled with the subject of study, and that both the quantitative and the qualitative exist simultaneously and are of comparable value. When Goethe looked at a plant, for example, he viewed its various observable parts as not as static, separate entities, but rather as the fleeting artifacts of a larger ongoing process that he referred to as the “ur-phenomenon” (Urphänomen) (Seamon and Zajonc 1998:4).

“There is a delicate empiricism that makes itself utterly identical with the object, thereby becoming true theory."

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Seamon and Zajonc 1998:11

“The analysis of Nature into its individual parts, the grouping of the different natural processes and natural objects in definite classes, the study of the internal anatomy of organic bodies in their manifold forms – these were the fundamental conditions of the gigantic strides in our knowledge of Nature which have been made during the last four hundred years. But this method of investigation has also left us as a legacy the habit of observing natural objects and natural processes in their isolation, detached from the whole vast interconnection of things; and therefore not in their motion, but in their repose; not as essentially changing, but as fixed constants; not in their life, but in their death. And when, as was the case with Bacon and Locke, this way of looking at things was transferred from natural science to philosophy, it produced the specific narrow-mindedness of the last century, the metaphysical mode of thought[i]….”

—Fredrick Engels 1878[1934],27

“Just as plants, animals, stones, air, light, etc., constitute theoretically a part of human consciousness, partly as objects of natural science, partly as objects of art––his spiritual inorganic nature, spiritual nourishment which he must first prepare to make palatable and digestible––so also in the realm of practice they constitute a part of human life and human activity. Physically man lives only on these products of nature, whether they appear in the form of food, heating, clothes, a dwelling, etc. The universality of man appears in practice precisely in the universality which makes all nature his inorganic body––both in as much as nature is (1) his direct means of life, and (2) the material, the object, and the instrument of his life activity. Nature is man’s inorganic body––nature, that is, in so far as it is not itself the human body. Man lives on nature––means that nature is his body, with which he must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to die. That man’s physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.” 

—Karl Marx1844 [1983],138

“…in nature nothing takes place in isolation. Everything affects every other thing and vice-versa, and it is mostly because this all-sided motion and interaction is forgotten that our natural scientists are prevented from clearly seeing the simplest things…at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature––but that we, with flesh, blood, and brain belong to nature, and exist in its midst…"

—Frederick Engels 1883 in Merchant 1994:42

“Man’s collective and immediate material dealings with nature bring him into a dialectical relation with it, into a dynamic and potentially developing interaction with it. Such a relation, when critically analyzed, reveals nature as a continuous motion, interconnection, and transformation. Nature is a ceaseless series of unities of opposites, which are mutually creative, mutually destructive, and mutually transforming.”

—Parsons 1977

20^th century conceptual artist and self-proclaimed “social sculptor” Joseph Beuys expressed through his work the view that overcoming destructive ecological practices would require dramatic shifts in underlying social dynamics. He called for forms of creative practice that engage the senses, stimulate capacities for creativity and wonder, and involve participation.

“Beuys preached that one of the causes of our society’s disregard of ecological relationships was to be found in our characteristic attempts to understand them purely through the ‘dead,’ abstract, analytical thinking and narrowly specialized viewpoints…Beuys contended that the separated ‘outsider’ consciousness characteristic of the modern scientific worldview was one-sided and unbalanced…the sharp, clear thinking of limited materialistic and rationalistic thoughts, and the seemingly absolute Cartesian alienation of self from object that this thinking was based upon, were identified by Beuys as the root causes of our ecological crisis. Human alienation was in turn inflicted on the entire natural environment."

—Adams 1992:28,30

Contemporary philosopher-feminist-physicist Karen Barad suggests that “mattering” is what happens when matter matters. When treated as a verb, the limited definition of matter as substantial material falls away, and the very process of bringing an entity into being can be conceptualized. Barad says:

“According to my agential realist ontology, or rather ethico-onto-epistemology (an entanglement of what is usually taken to be the separate considerations of ethics, ontology, and epistemology), ‘individuals’ do not preexist as such, but rather materialize in intra-action. ‘Individuals’ do not not exist but are not individually determinate. Rather, individuals only exist within phenomena (particular materialized/materializing relations) in their ongoing iteratively intra-active reconfiguring…It is through specific agential intra-actions that the boundaries and properties of ‘individuals’ within the phenomenon become determinate and particular material articulations of the world become meaningful…So it is not that there are no separations or differentiations, but that they only exist within relations.” 

—Barad in Kleinman 2012:77

Barad uses slime molds, colonies of amoebas, and even atoms to illustrate her points about the amorphousness––the “queerness”–– of individual identity:

“[Slime molds] have the ability to morph from a seemingly uncoordinated group of genetically identical single cells to an aggregate ‘slug’ with an immune system, muscles and nerves with ganglia (that is, simple brains) and other organismic functionality characteristic of multicellular species with different roles played by identical cellular units…Social amoebas queer the nature of identity, calling into question the individual/group binary. In fact, when it comes to queering identity, the social amoeba enjoys multiple indeterminacies, and has managed to hoodwink scientists’ ongoing attempts to nail down its taxonomy, its species-being defying not only classification by phylum but also by kingdom…I entertain the possibility of the queerness of one of the most pervasive of all Earthlings: atoms. I dub them “ultraqueer” critters due to the fact that their quantum quotidian qualities queer queerness itself in their radically deconstructive ways of being. Indeed, given that ‘queer’ is a radical questioning of identity and binaries, including the nature/culture binary, I explain, based on a detailed consideration of recent experimental findings, that all sorts of seeming impossibilities are indeed possible, including the queerness of causality, matter, space, and time.” 

—Barad in Kleinman 2012:81

Evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis is noted for a concept known as symbiogenesis, or endosymbiotic theory. In 1967 when she proposed that the organelles of eukaryotic cells were once free-living prokaryotes that had become absorbed to form a symbiotic unit, her work was ridiculed. Now the idea that cooperative complexes of organisms can merge is not so unusual (Helmreich 2009:250).

Multi-species ethnographers such as Eban Kirksey cite “companion species” such as certain figs, wasps, and the parasites living within wasp bodies that become “intimately entangled”; none can survive without the other, bringing into question where one organism begins and another ends (Kirksey 2015).

It is now well-known that human beings are not discreet, autonomous entities, but that approximately half the cells in our bodies are microorganisms which play critical roles in the immune system, brain function, and genetic make-up.

“The human is not a unitary entity but a dynamic and interactive community of human cells and microbial cells. The realization that humans are not individual, discrete entities but rather the outcome of ever-changing interactions with microorganisms has consequences beyond the biological disciplines. In particular, it calls into question the assumption that distinctive human traits set us apart from all other animals––and therefore also the traditional disciplinary divisions between the arts and sciences.”

—Rees, Bosch, Douglas 2018

While filled with potential to profoundly alter the worldview of those in places most in need of such a shift, it must be said that the concept of the radical interdependence of all things living and non-living proposed by Goethe, Marx and Engels, Beuys, Kirksey, Barad, Margulis, and other contemporary microbiologists are only radical only to those inside the purview of European post-Enlightenment “Western” thought. For many others, that humans are but one aspect of an intricately-balanced, living biosphere is not “queer” at all.

“The recent move to ‘multi-species ethnography’ applies anthropological approaches to studying humans and their relations with non-human-beings such as dogs, bears, cattle, monkeys, bees, mushrooms, and microorganisms. Such work is both methodologically and ethically innovative in that it highlights how organisms’ livelihoods are co-constituted with cultural, political, and economic forces. But the field has starting points that only partially contain indigenous standpoints. First of all, indigenous peoples have never forgotten that nonhumans are agential beings engaged in social relations that profoundly shape human lives. In addition, for many indigenous peoples, nonhuman others may not be understood even in critical Western frameworks as living. ‘Objects’ and ‘forces’ such as stones, thunder, or stars are known within our ontologies to be sentient and knowing persons (this is where new materialisms intersect with animal studies)."

—Tallbear 2015:234)

As anthropologist Arturo Escobar impressively argues, “…unless and until ways are found to shift the dominant “civilizational model, that of patriarchal Western Capitalist modernity” toward “mutually enhancing” and radically “relational modes of knowing, being and doing”, “the inexpressible devastation of the Earth” is bound to continue (Escobar 2017;ix-xi).

How can “relational modes of knowing, being, and doing” be catalyzed now?

In Cosmopolitan Greetings, poet Allen Ginsberg advises the reader to “notice what you notice.” While this advice may seem at first almost so simplistic as to be nonsensical, in practice it serves the function of challenging the observer-observed relationship inherent to the Western scientific method. Upon noticing a thing, a dynamic interrelationship forms. What caused us to notice that particular thing out of all the possible things we could have noticed? The noticed thing stands out for reasons that may be difficult to identify or explain. Our individual aesthetic is unique; perhaps no one else would ever have noticed that particular thing in that particular way. Noticed things serve as clues, points of connection with/appreciation for the world of which we are a part. 

On Tuesday April 9, 2019 during a visit to Tillinghast Farm near Barringon, RI, I happened to notice clumps of live Slipper Snails, Crepidula fornicata, on the beach near the tide line.

Other common names include Common Atlantic Slippersnail, Boat Shell, Quarterdeck Shell, Slipper Limpet. And…Fornicating Slipper Snail. Its taxonomy indicates that there has been some focus on the sex habits of this species. According to the University of Rhode Island Environmental Data Center:

“All common slipper shells start their lives as males, but some change to females as they grow older [this is known as protandrous hermaphroditism]. A waterborne hormone regulates the female characteristics. Once they change into females, they remain females. They often stack up on top of each other for convenient reproduction. The larger females are on the bottom, the smaller males are on the top, and the hermaphrodites are between the two. If the ratio of males to females gets too high, the male reproductive organs will degenerate and the animal will become female. Eggs are laid in thin-walled capsules that the female broods under her foot.”

I find this communal living habit of C. fornicata – the Slipper Snail Umwelt (to borrow a term from Uexküll) – intriguing both conceptually and aesthetically. Thinking along the lines of multispecies ethnographers such as Eben Kirksey (2015) and Kim Tallbear (2015), we can ask: where does one individual end and another begin?

Does the stone, the clam, or the horseshoe crab that the Slipper Snail attaches itself to become part of its extended body? With regard to a snail that carries a shell that is ostensibly “separate” from the flesh of its body and contains no cells, where do the “alive” parts end and the “inert” parts begin?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC and London, UK: Duke University Press

Engels, frederick. 1878[1934]. Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science [Anti-Dühring]. London, UK: Martin Lawrence Limited

Escobar, Arturo. 2018. Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. Durham, NC and London, UK: Duke University Press. 

Goethe, Wolfgang von. 1792. “The Experiment as Mediator of Object and Subject.” In Context #24 (The Nature Institute Newsletter). Fall 2010. http://natureinstitute.org/pub/ic/ic24/ic24_goethe.pdf/ Accessed May 11, 2019

Gosner, Kenneth. 1978. Peterson’s Field Guide to the Atlantic Seashore: Invertebrates and Seaweeds of the Atlantic Coast from the Bay of Fundy to Cape Hatteras. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company

Helmreich, Stefan. 2009. Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press

Kirksey, Eban. 2015. “Species: A Praxiographic Study”. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 21. 758-780

Kleinman, Adam. 2012.” Intra-Actions: An Interview with Karen Barad”. Mouse 34: An Issue About dOCUMENTA(13). 76-81

Marx, Karl. 1844 [1983]. Eugene Kamenka, editor. The Portable Karl Marx. New York, NY: Penguin Books

Parsons, Howard L. (editor). 1977. Marx and Engels on Ecology. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. 129-185

Rees, Tobias, Thomas Bosch, and Angela Douglas. 2018. “How the Microbiome Challenges Our Concept of Self.” PLoS Biol 16(2): e2005358

Seamon, David and Arthur Zajoc (editors). 1998. Goethe’s Way of Science: A Phenomenology of Nature. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press

Tallbear, Kim. 2015. “An indigenous Reflection on Working Beyond the Human/Not Human”. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Volume 21, Numbers 2-3. 223-235.