The Beauty of Biology
生物之美
Look at a fission yeast cell under the microscope. It is a tiny rod that grows outward from both ends, taking in material from around it as it grows; at a dozen or so micrometers long it grows a septum right across its middle and becomes two. Of the two, neither is the original one, and both carry on its pattern. Under favorable conditions no aging can be seen in its lineage. A subject who has seen this cannot not acknowledge: exchanging its material, it is still itself; its offspring are not it, and yet carry on its pattern; what it keeps and what it hands on cannot be completely accounted for by outside conditions. That sentence is the beauty of biology. It is two halves of one beauty: the inward half is self-maintenance, keeping itself while its material is exchanged; the outward half is replication, offspring that resemble it and are not it. The beauty of both halves has one source: a living thing has a remainder of its own, which stays in the living thing and is not smoothed away by large numbers; this is what separates it from a stone. The beauty has two faces: completive beauty is a living thing keeping itself at this moment, its material changing while its pattern does not; generative beauty is a new boundary growing: one dividing into two, a wound closing, new shoots breaking out on a mountain that has been cut bare. The paper says what a living thing is and is not (not something that merely looks alive, not a victory over entropy, not something that exists for the sake of something, and not tenderness toward life); how this paper inherits from Kant and where it goes further; what can pass for the beauty of biology (merely looking alive, merely growing, merely being passed on, being replaced from outside, being makeable, usefulness, prettiness); and what is left to each person. It traces where the question comes from, from Aristotle, Diotima and "generation upon generation" to today's discussions that take living apart into maintenance, boundary and replication. It ends by handing on to the beauty of reproduction the question of how difference becomes role.
Keywords: beauty of biology, self-maintenance, replication, remainder, completive beauty, generative beauty, Kant, power of judgment, overlap, 5DD, 6DD
1. One Cell Becomes Two
Look at a fission yeast cell under the microscope. It is a tiny rod, about eight micrometers long when it has just divided off. It grows outward from both ends, and as it grows it takes material from the culture medium around it. At about fifteen micrometers it grows a septum right across its middle; the septum splits, and there are two.[^1]
Of the two, neither is the original one. There is no mother and daughter between them; the original one, once divided in two, is no more. Yet both carry on its pattern: the same rod, growing the same way from both ends, growing to the same length, then dividing across the middle again.
There is one more thing. Under favorable conditions, both of the two are new, and there is no old one. Researchers who followed it generation after generation could see no aging in its lineage: the time it takes to divide does not grow longer from generation to generation, and its chance of dying does not grow larger either. A few cells do die, suddenly and without warning. Cells that have been under stress are different: the one that receives a large clump of aggregated protein at division slowly ages; its sister, receiving less or none, does not.[^2]
While it lives it keeps taking material from around it and growing itself out of it. The material comes in, and it is still itself; then it becomes two, and both go on being it.
That point is what this paper is about.
This paper follows the reading set out in the general outline.[^3] A personal aesthetic is each person's own and comes from his own cannot-not; aesthetics is the part that subjects with judgment cannot not acknowledge together, here called the overlap. The overlap is large; what does not overlap is larger. The overlap is not everyone being obliged to agree: whoever looks cannot not see, and whoever has seen cannot not acknowledge. When someone says "it is beautiful," he is claiming that this time he has landed on the overlap, and that claim can be right or wrong. What settles out of an act of drawing a boundary is called a construct; what it cannot contain is called the remainder. The remainder gives a place where one can go on, and a direction; it pushes no one; whether to go depends on a person's own cannot-not.[^4] A beauty has two faces: when the construct has come into place, it is completive beauty, quiet; when the construct is being chiseled out, it is generative beauty, tense. The beauty of biology has both faces. A ray is a direction of judgment, not a classification of objects: the same cell can also be looked at from the direction of causation, or from the direction of perception. This paper asks about one direction only, how a living thing keeps itself while exchanging its material and hands its pattern on, and what the power of judgment sees in that direction.
2. What a Living Thing Is and Is Not
A living thing has two halves. The inward half: exchanging its material, it is still itself. This paper calls this half self-maintenance, a thing maintaining itself: material keeps leaving, it makes good what has left, keeps its boundary, and its pattern does not come apart. How fast the material goes can be measured: in cultured mouse cells the median half-life of proteins is about forty-six hours, so a typical protein is half replaced in about two days.[^5] The outward half: its offspring are not it, and yet carry on its pattern. This half is called replication: a pattern leaves its original portion of material and goes on holding in another portion.
The two halves are two sites of one and the same thing. One and the same pattern carries on after its material has been replaced: within one living thing, that is self-maintenance; from generation to generation, that is replication. So they are two halves of one beauty, not two beauties. Aristotle and Diotima saw it this way very early; this is taken up in Section 7. But "a pattern still there after its material has been replaced" holds of a whirlpool too, and of a ship; what separates a living thing from them is the share spoken of in Section 3.
The two halves can also be taken apart. A mule lives but does not reproduce: it has only the inward half. A prion has no nucleic acid and appears to consist of a single protein in an altered conformation; it refolds normal protein into its own shape, passing it on from one to the next, but it does not maintain itself: it has only the outward half.[^6] Fatty-acid vesicles grow when they take in fatty acids and divide in two when squeezed through small pores, and researchers on the origin of life use them as models; they grow and divide, but they do not keep themselves.[^7] What this paper looks at is both halves holding at once in one living thing. Which half is mentioned first is only the order of telling, not which appeared first. Where the threshold from chemistry to life lies, and whether it is one threshold or several, is a scientific question, and this paper does not draw that line for science.
Nor is a living thing merely something that looks alive. A flame has to keep taking in fuel, keeps its shape, and can even spread; it looks very much alive. But given the fuel, the air and the wind, its pattern is completely accounted for.
Nor is a living thing a victory over entropy. Schrödinger said that a living organism appears so enigmatic because it avoids rapid decay into the inert state of "equilibrium"; what it feeds on is "negative entropy."[^8] This is not a victory: entropy goes on increasing around it; it only keeps drawing order from its surroundings to maintain itself.
Nor is a living thing something that exists "for the sake of" something. Some say that living things live in order to survive, in order to pass themselves on, in order to share in the eternal; these accounts all come up in the section on where the question comes from. This paper does not say "for the sake of"; it says only that a living thing keeps itself and hands its pattern on.
Nor is the beauty of biology tenderness or awe toward life. Looking at a tree, a cat, a cell under the microscope, people feel all sorts of things. These are each person's own, and are taken up in Section 6. What this paper speaks of is what those feelings are facing.
3. The Beauty of Biology
Once a subject has seen how a living thing keeps itself while exchanging its material and hands its pattern on, he cannot not acknowledge:
Exchanging its material, it is still itself; its offspring are not it, and yet carry on its pattern; what it keeps and what it hands on cannot be completely accounted for by outside conditions.
That sentence is the beauty of biology. The first two clauses are the two halves; the last clause says where the beauty of both halves comes from.
First the source. For a stone, given its composition and the environment it is in, all its macroscopic behavior can be predicted by the laws of physics; there is nothing in it that outside conditions do not completely account for. This paper holds that a living thing is not like this. Calculate it from the whole of its outside conditions, however well, and a part always remains that cannot be calculated in. How Is Subjecthood Possible calls this part the remainder: the part of a system's total state that cannot be exhaustively explained by external conditions.[^9] Cells of one and the same clone can differ from one another a great deal.[^10] This can show that the same genes and the same outside conditions do not yield the same cell; it cannot show that this difference is the remainder, since it could also be merely noise not yet worked out. That paper also says that, under the axiom of ontological randomness, the source of this part is finally traced back to ontological randomness, of which it is the macroscopic trace; the axiom is a conditional, and this paper does not argue for it. Nor does this paper stand on that axiom: that a living thing cannot be completely accounted for from outside is a claim this paper takes on itself, and the axiom is only one explanation of it. That paper also sets up a firewall of its own: if its axiom is overturned, its derivation no longer applies, and structures elsewhere are not affected.[^11] If the axiom falls, the explanation falls with it, and this claim remains; whether it is right depends on the things listed in Section 9.
This remainder is not a disordered jitter in the living thing. Disordered jitter is smoothed away by large numbers: the randomness of billions upon billions of molecules in a cup of water cannot be seen in the water's temperature and flow. That the remainder can stay on in a living thing shows that the living thing somehow keeps it; how it keeps it, that paper says, is a scientific question.[^12] That the two halves are the two halves of a living thing and not of a machine lies wholly here. Inward: it keeps itself, but what it keeps itself as, and what it does next, outside conditions cannot completely account for; it keeps a share of its own. Outward: its offspring resemble it and are not it; the point where they differ cannot be completely accounted for from outside either. Jonas spoke of a needful freedom in living things (taken up in Section 7); this paper reads that freedom as the remainder unfolding in the living thing.
This share is in the living thing that is looked at, not in the one who looks, and it does not push the one who looks. A cell suddenly turns and swims off, and the one looking may stop short all at once; that stir is in the person. To say that a living thing has a remainder is also not to say that it is a subject: between the remainder and the subject there is still the step of recognition.[^13]
There are two sides here, and they have to be kept apart. One side is the living thing: exchanging its material, it is still itself; its offspring carry on its pattern; and what it keeps and what it hands on cannot be completely accounted for by outside conditions. The other side is the cannot-not of the one who looks: having seen, he cannot not acknowledge. Take either away, and it is not the beauty this sentence speaks of. Without keeping itself, there is only a pot of reacting chemicals; if it keeps itself and hands itself on but can be completely accounted for from outside, there is only a machine, even one that repairs itself and builds another; if no one sees, there is no one who cannot not acknowledge anything.
Why is it overlap and not preference? Someone who looks at a cell, and is not using it for an experiment or reckoning a yield, cannot not see the same thing: it has kept itself by itself, and has become two by itself. This does not depend on nationality, or on the era, or on whether he likes small things. On this ray, what is seen is this "itself": the material changes, and the pattern is kept and handed on by the thing itself, not given by fuel and wind as a flame's is; nor is its material swapped plank by plank by others, as the ship's was. This "itself" is not a metaphor; its ground lies in that share of the thing which outside conditions cannot completely account for, its remainder. The one who looks need not calculate the remainder; what he sees is the "itself" that stands only because there is a remainder.
Understanding is not seeing either. A student preparing for an exam learns by heart exactly how a cell divides: how the chromosomes are pulled to the two ends, how the septum grows from the middle. At the time he was not looking; he was only using it. Years later he sees under a microscope a cell dividing across the middle, learns nothing new, yet for the first time stops to look at it: it has kept itself by itself, and now it is going to become two. His understanding has not changed; what has changed is that this time he is looking.
Seeing can also go wrong. A fatty-acid vesicle that grows and divides, a machine that repairs itself and builds another: one may think one has seen that "itself" there; and what cannot be contained in a cell may be only something we have not yet calculated. That paper itself says that whether a behavior is a genuine remainder or only a sign that the model is not good enough can never be settled completely at any given time.[^14] To say "it is beautiful" is to claim that this time one really has seen, and the claim can be wrong.
Completive beauty: a living thing keeping itself at this moment. A tree stands there. It grows year after year, its leaves fall and grow again; its material has been exchanged who knows how many times, and it is still that tree, still with that pattern. A cell between two divisions is the same: material comes in and goes out, and its boundary and shape remain its own. Diotima said that a person, from childhood to old age, is always changing his hair and his flesh and blood, and yet is always called the same person; this does not mean that he has not changed, but that he has kept himself while exchanging his material. Completive beauty is quiet, but the quiet of a living thing is in motion: the pattern does not move because the material is always moving. And the pattern it keeps itself as cannot be completely accounted for from outside; in the quiet there is a share of its own. The outward half has its completive moment too: the two just divided are each a complete it.
Generative beauty: a new boundary growing. Across the middle of a fission yeast cell a septum is growing: one is about to become two, and has not yet. A wound is closing, new skin growing inward from the edges. On a mountain that has been cut bare, after a while, new shoots break out of the stumps. The tension is here: it may fail to grow; and what shape it will grow into cannot be contained either. The completive face is its having kept itself; the generative face is its growing itself anew, in itself and in the next generation.
4. Kant's Tree
This paper takes one thing over from Kant, and goes further in three places.
What it takes over is the thing he saw. He says that a tree has three capacities: it produces another tree according to a well-known law of nature; it produces itself as an individual, that is, it grows, turning foreign material into itself; and one part of it produces itself too, the preservation of one part depending on the preservation of another, so that they maintain one another.[^15] He also sets a watch beside it for contrast: in a watch one part is the instrument of another's motion, but one wheel does not produce another, still less does one watch produce other watches, using other matter and organizing it; it does not by itself replace a part that has been removed, nor repair itself when it breaks. Only something that is organized and also organizes itself can be called a natural end.[^16] What this paper looks at is exactly the thing he saw: a tree producing another tree outward, and maintaining itself inward while exchanging its material.
But Kant does not allow the step from here to beauty. For him there are two kinds of beauty: free beauty presupposes no concept of what the thing ought to be; adherent beauty presupposes such a concept, and the perfection of the thing according to it.[^17] To judge something a natural end one must use the concept of an end; so at most it is adherent beauty, and no longer pure. Pure taste rests on the free play of imagination and understanding, without concepts. In the same section he lists many birds (the parrot, the hummingbird, the bird of paradise) and many shellfish of the sea as free beauties: they belong to nothing determined by a concept or an end, and please freely and for themselves.[^18]
The first place where this paper goes further is the ground. This paper puts the ground of the overlap in the construct, not in the free play of the faculties. Someone who sees an organization keeping itself while exchanging its material is not judging it by the concept of a "natural end," and has no need of that concept; what he sees is that organization itself, and having seen, he cannot not acknowledge. Kant cannot do without the concept of an end because he wants to understand how an organism is possible; this paper's looking is not understanding: the student in Section 3 understood for years before he first looked. The step that will not go through for Kant is, here, this paper's beauty.
The second place is what is looked at. What this paper speaks of is not adherent beauty. Adherent beauty looks at whether a thing matches what it should be, whether it is perfect; this paper looks at its having kept itself and handed itself on, not at how well it has done so. A tree that has grown crooked is still itself while exchanging its material.
The third place is where what cannot be contained is placed. Kant says that it is absurd for human beings to hope that some Newton might yet arise who could make comprehensible even the generation of a blade of grass according to natural laws that no intention has ordered.[^19] He places what cannot be contained in our power of judgment: it is we who can only view it this way. This paper, following How Is Subjecthood Possible, places it in the living thing itself: it has a share that outside conditions cannot completely account for. So what this paper relies on to separate living things from machines is not that the whole is the cause of the parts, but this remainder: a machine that repairs itself and builds another passes Kant's test of the watch, and is still not this paper's beauty. This step could be wrong, as Section 9 says.
As for the free beauty Kant sees once ends are bracketed, the colors of a parrot, the look of a flower, by the reading of the general outline it belongs to the level of perception; the example of the flower and the botanist is left to the beauty of reproduction.
5. What Can Pass for It
The method is still the same: take it away and see.
Merely looking alive. A flame has to take in fuel, keeps its shape, and can even spread. But given fuel, air and wind, its pattern is completely accounted for: its pattern is given entirely from outside, and nothing in it is its own. A whirlpool is the same: where a river flows past a rock there is always a whirlpool downstream, the water changes again and again and the whirlpool is still there; but its pattern is completely accounted for by the river and the rock. Looking alive is not being alive.
Merely growing. A crystal grows layer by layer in solution, extending an existing order onto new material. Its pattern is completely accounted for by the solution and the lattice: when the solution is concentrated it grows, when dilute it dissolves. Nothing in it is kept by itself.
Merely being passed on. A prion passes its conformation on to other proteins, one to the next. Take the host away and see: it does not eat, does not maintain itself, keeps no boundary. It has the outward half and not the inward half.
Being replaced from outside. The ship in which Theseus once sailed was kept by the Athenians, who took out the old timbers as they rotted and put in new, sound ones; so the ship became a standing example for the philosophers in their dispute about growth, one side saying it was still the same ship, the other that it was not.[^20] The planks were replaced and the pattern remained, which looks just like a living thing. Take the Athenians away and see: the ship does not replace a single plank by itself. A living thing exchanges its material by itself.
Makeable, understood. In 2016 researchers pared the genome of a bacterium down to 473 genes, and the cell could still replicate itself, doubling about once every three hours; no one could then say what 149 of them did.[^21] Being able to pare it down this far and to make it does not mean understanding why it can live as a whole; and understanding is not seeing either. It cannot show that people have made life: it was pared down from existing cells and lineages; it did not cross the threshold again from chemistry; and that people can make it does not mean it is completely accounted for from outside.
Useful; an organ well made. An eye focuses light precisely; a pair of wings uses the wind cleverly. Some hold that knowing the proper function of a thing changes whether it looks good to us.[^22] Take the use away and see: a cell whose use cannot be seen at all is still itself while exchanging its material. Use can sit in the same living thing as beauty, but it is not the beauty spoken of here.
A pretty exterior. The patterns on a butterfly's wings, a parrot's colors. Take the prettiness away and see: a drab grey cell still has the point this paper speaks of. A pretty exterior is a matter for the beauty of perception.
Neighboring rays. The beauty of causation looks at how what comes before holds what comes after, how what has happened remains in what comes after; this paper looks at how a pattern carries on after its material has been replaced, and cannot be completely accounted for from outside. The beauty of physics looks at how the world answers form at its point of necessity; whether flames, whirlpools and other structures far from equilibrium fit a form is the affair of that ray. The beauty of reproduction looks at how difference becomes role, taken up in Section 8. The beauty of perception looks at the exterior of living things, and at the kind of world a living thing itself lives in. The beauty of the self has to wait for an "I" to appear; a living thing has a remainder, but is not yet an "I."
One last sentence, which this aesthetics says of every ray: beauty is not correctness, not usefulness, not importance, not understanding. That an organ is made correctly and usefully, that research on the minimal cell is important, that how a cell divides can be understood: all of these have been set aside above. What is left is that it has kept itself and handed its pattern on, and cannot be completely accounted for from outside.
6. What Is Left to Each Person
Which living things move you is each person's own. Some love trees, some love cats, some spend a lifetime bent over a microscope.
Tenderness, awe, the slight unease at seeing something squirm under the microscope: these are each person's own. Some see a bug and want to step on it; some crouch down to watch it crawl.
Where to look and what to keep is each person's own too. Wang Yangming's student Xue Kan was weeding among the flowers, and Wang Yangming said to him: the impulse of life in heaven and earth is the same in flowers and in weeds; where is there any distinction of good and bad? When you want to look at flowers, you take the flowers as good and the weeds as bad; when you want to use the weeds, you take the weeds as good again.[^23] The one who looks at flowers keeps the flowers, the one who uses weeds keeps the weeds; this is each person's own choice. That flowers and weeds alike grow while exchanging their material: this point, those who have looked can all see.
To say "this tree is more beautiful than that one" is a judgment of beauty, and it can be discussed: does the point at which it keeps itself and grows itself show more fully? Even a tree that has grown crooked can show it more fully. Discussion may find that each has a way of its own, and then each keeps its own.
Aesthetics says only this: whoever has seen cannot not acknowledge that it is beautiful; aesthetics decides for no one whether to stop for it.
7. Where the Question Comes From
That living things are worth stopping to look at was said very early; the account of why they are worth looking at has been rewritten several times. First there was the form of a living thing and its "for the sake of," with nutrition and reproduction seen as the work of one and the same soul; then "generation" and the "impulse of life"; Kant separated the organism from beauty; Darwin put form into lineages; in the twentieth century maintenance, boundary and replication were parceled out to different disciplines; and today the difference between the living and the non-living has again become a question one can ask. What follows runs in the order of these rewritings. For each figure, the paper reports faithfully what he discerned, why he looked, where he presses on this paper, and where this paper parts from him; other traditions appear in their own words.
Form, reproduction and "for the sake of." Aristotle defends the study of the lower animals. He says that we should not, like children, shrink from examining humble animals, for there is something marvelous in all natural things; when visitors came to see Heraclitus and found him warming himself at the stove, they stopped and would not come in, and Heraclitus told them to come in without fear, for there were gods here too. The study of every kind of animal should be approached the same way, without distaste, for each will show us something natural and beautiful.[^24] He uses the word "beautiful," and does so for the sake of research. He discerned that even the least conspicuous living thing is worth stopping to look at. He goes on to say that not chance but being for the sake of something is found most of all in the works of nature; the end for which a thing exists takes the place of the beautiful.[^25] He presses on this paper: if beauty lies in this "for the sake of," it comes before the one who looks. This paper agrees that the ground lies in the construct, and the construct waits for no one; it parts from him in that aesthetics waits for the one who looks, and in not saying what a living thing is for.
In On the Soul he says that for a living thing that has reached completion, the most natural work is to produce another like itself, an animal an animal, a plant a plant, so as to share as far as it can in the eternal and the divine; what remains is not itself but something like it.[^26] He assigns nutrition and reproduction to one and the same soul. He discerned that the inward and the outward come from one place; this is the earliest precedent for this paper's two halves, and this paper's "its offspring are not it, and yet carry on its pattern" is very nearly his sentence. He presses on this paper: "in order to share in the eternal" puts the end in the living thing itself. This paper parts from him over "in order to": the tendency of a living thing is part of the construct that is seen, and this paper does not say what it is for.
Plato has Diotima come closer still. A person is called the same person from childhood to old age, yet in fact he never has the same things in him; he is always being renewed and always losing something: hair, flesh, bones, blood, the whole body. This is how mortal things preserve themselves: not by being always entirely the same, as the divine is, but by what departs and grows old leaving behind something else new, like what it was.[^27] She discerned that inward renewal and outward leaving behind are one and the same preservation. Why does she say this? To speak of eros: eros is not love of the beautiful, but love of giving birth in the beautiful, because for mortals giving birth is what is everlasting and deathless; mortal nature seeks, as far as it can, to be everlasting and deathless, and can do so only by giving birth, by always leaving behind something new in place of the old.[^28] She then climbs step by step up to the beautiful itself. She presses on this paper: what pushes people to give birth is eros's desire for immortality, and beauty is the place where giving birth happens. This paper meets her at this level, and does not follow her upward; nor does it place the push in eros, but in each person's own cannot-not.
"Generation" and the "impulse of life." The Xici says: "Generation upon generation is what is called change."[^29] It discerned that heaven and earth are not a finished product but generation upon generation, continuing without end. It looked in order to explain the changes of heaven and earth. It presses on this paper: generation comes before the one who looks, and has weight in itself. This paper meets it in "generation"; it parts from it here: "generation upon generation" speaks of the changes of heaven and earth, without first marking off an individual that keeps itself, and this paper does not translate it as self-maintenance.
Mencius said: "The trees of Ox Mountain were once beautiful." The mountain lay near a great city, and its trees were cut down by axes; yet with the growth of day and night and the moistening of rain and dew, new shoots did not fail to appear, and then cattle and sheep came and grazed on them, which is why the mountain is so bare. People see it bare and think it never had fine trees; but how could that be the nature of the mountain?[^30] He uses the mountain to speak of human nature. He discerned that the bareness before one's eyes is not the whole, and the new shoots are still growing. He presses on this paper: does full unfolding look only at what is before one's eyes now, or does it also count what is held down and can still grow? This paper's answer: both count. What is held down, so long as it is still growing, is the generative face; this paper meets him in the new shoots.
Zhuangzi and Hui Shi were watching fish from a bridge over the river Hao, and Zhuangzi said that the fish's swimming about at their ease was the joy of fish. Hui Shi asked: "You are not a fish; how do you know the joy of fish?"[^31] The two were questioning and answering for the sake of argument. The question presses on this paper: seeing a fish and knowing its pattern, knowing one's own joy, and knowing how the fish itself lives are three different things. This paper speaks only of the first: seeing that it keeps itself. What kind of world it itself lives in is handed to the beauty of perception.
Cheng Hao said: "The impulse of life in the ten thousand things is most worth looking at; this is what 'origination is the chief of goodness' means; this is what is called ren." He also spoke of "watching the chicks," and the note to it says, "here one can see ren."[^32] Zhou Dunyi never cleared away the grass before his window; when someone asked him why, he said: "It is just like my own intent."[^33] What they looked at was the impulse of life itself: a blade of grass growing, a chick growing. They did not use the word "beauty"; Cheng Hao carried this looking through to ren, and Zhou Dunyi said it was just like his own intent. This paper reports them in their own words and does not substitute beauty for them; beauty need not be pointed out: whoever looks cannot not see, and then it has arrived. They press on this paper: the one who looks and what is looked at are within one and the same life, not someone standing outside looking in. This paper meets them here: "just like my own intent" is what the one who looks discerned, not the grass pushing him. The point they saw is the same point as this paper's; Cheng Hao calls it ren, and this paper does not say that it is ren.
Kant separates the organism from beauty. See Section 4.
Form acquires a history. Goethe says that the organs of a plant that sprouts and flowers, different as they look, can all be explained from a single organ, the leaf.[^34] He discerned that form lies in metamorphosis, not in a static finished state. He presses on this paper: full unfolding cannot be read as having come to a stop. This paper meets him on the generative face; it parts from him in that he looked in order to know forms, and beauty is not understanding.
In the last sentence of On the Origin of Species Darwin wrote that from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.[^35] He discerned that forms are not the eternal types of each species, but a history branching out along lineages; the outward half changes from generation to generation. He presses on this paper: "carry on its pattern" is not copying. This paper takes this in: its offspring resemble it and are not it. The history carried in form is seen from the direction of causation; heredity and variation belong to the beauty of reproduction; selection belongs to the beauty of perception.
Maintenance, boundary and replication, taken apart. D'Arcy Thompson says that the form of an object is a "diagram of forces," at least in this sense, that from it we can judge of or deduce the forces that are acting or have acted upon it.[^36] He discerned that many forms that look alive can be produced by force, scale and geometry alone. He presses on this paper: what more is there to life? This paper answers: keeping itself by itself, and the share that outside conditions cannot completely account for. Schrödinger's words have already been used in Section 2.
Maturana and Varela say that living is first of all an organizational closure: a network of processes that produce components, which components in turn continually regenerate that network and mark out the system's own boundary; reproduction is not part of the definition.[^37] They discerned that self-maintenance can be spoken of on its own. They press on this paper: the two halves this paper wants to put together are here taken apart, and an individual that does not reproduce is still alive. This paper accepts the taking apart, and has recorded it faithfully in Section 2; what this paper looks at is both halves holding at once in one living thing.
Jonas saw freedom in metabolism: a living thing cannot do without matter, yet it is not identical with any particular batch of matter; need and freedom are bound together from the start.[^38] He discerned that a living thing is not indifferent to its own existence: to stop is to die. He presses on this paper: the norm is in the living thing itself, and does not wait for the one who looks. This paper meets him in freedom, and goes one step further: that a living thing is not identical with any batch of matter, this paper reads as its also not being identical with any set of outside conditions, and this is the remainder unfolding in the living thing. It parts from him here: its need and freedom are in the living thing that is looked at, not a drive in the one who looks; nor does this paper say that it is therefore a subject.
8. The Question Left Open
A cell keeps itself and divides in two; no part of it is set aside especially for the next generation, and the two that divide off are each complete members of its kind. But in some living things the cells divide their labor: some do nothing all their lives but live, some specialize in bringing forth the next generation. Difference becomes role, and the offspring have to grow their complex selves again from a single cell. How does this carry on?
Living things do not push anyone to ask this. A person can spend a whole life looking only at how a cell keeps itself; if he cannot not ask how difference becomes role, that is another ray. This ray stops here.
The question left open is: how difference becomes role, and how offspring grow their complex selves again. That is the beauty of reproduction.
9. What Would Make This Paper Wrong
If any one of four things held, this paper would be wrong. First, once "exchanging its material" and "handing on" are taken away, looking at a cell and looking at a stone show the same thing; then the beauty of biology would have no object of its own. Second, the whole state of a living thing is shown to be completely accounted for by outside conditions, its remainder is zero, and what was called uncontainable was only something we had not yet calculated. How Is Subjecthood Possible itself says that whether living things such as plants and bacteria have a remainder that persists at the macroscopic level is still an empirical question today;[^39] this paper's yeast and trees are on that side, and if the answer is no, the beauty this paper speaks of has no source in them. Third, self-maintenance and replication can be taken apart in every living thing and looked at separately, and the one who looks sees nothing more because both hold at once in one living thing; then the two halves of one beauty would be only two things. Fourth, whoever sees a living thing cannot but have the concept of an "end" first, and without it sees nothing at all; then Kant is right, and what this paper speaks of is only adherent beauty. This paper does not think any of these will happen, but it writes them here: a paper about living things not being completely accountable from outside should not itself speak with finality either.
Acknowledgments
This paper is the sixth ray paper in the aesthetics branch of the SAE (Self-as-an-End) philosophical system and is published under the sole name of Han Qin. The author made the final decision on all philosophical arguments and choices, and alone is responsible for the final text.
Both drafting assistance and review were carried out with large language models. Drafting and internal precision audit were done by Claude (Anthropic); the structural gate and pre-publication sign-off were handled by ChatGPT (OpenAI). The material on the history of ideas used in Section 7, "Where the Question Comes From," was first gathered by ChatGPT's deep research, and its sources were then checked item by item. This paper, together with the second edition of the general outline and the other twelve ray papers, passed final review by both the internal precision audit and the structural gate, and passed a key-sentence acceptance check. The author thanks these systems and the research and engineering teams behind them. The author ruled on their comments one by one, and both acceptances and rejections are on record; the record of revisions and withdrawals across rounds is not reproduced here.
Notes
[^1]: Charles S. Hoffman, Valerie Wood, and Peter A. Fantes, "An Ancient Yeast for Young Geneticists: A Primer on the Schizosaccharomyces pombe Model System," Genetics 201, no. 2 (2015): 403–423, https://doi.org/10.1534/genetics.115.181503.
[^2]: Miguel Coelho et al., "Fission Yeast Does Not Age under Favorable Conditions, but Does So after Stress," Current Biology 23, no. 19 (2013): 1844–1852, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2013.07.084.
[^3]: Han Qin, SAE Judgment and Aesthetics, 2nd ed. (2026), §5.1, "How to Read the Rays," DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19296710.
[^4]: Han Qin, SAE: The First Critique (2026), DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21439120.
[^5]: Björn Schwanhäusser et al., "Global Quantification of Mammalian Gene Expression Control," Nature 473, no. 7347 (2011): 337–342, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10098.
[^6]: Stanley B. Prusiner, "Prions," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 95, no. 23 (1998): 13363–13383, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.95.23.13363.
[^7]: Martin M. Hanczyc, Shelly M. Fujikawa, and Jack W. Szostak, "Experimental Models of Primitive Cellular Compartments: Encapsulation, Growth, and Division," Science 302, no. 5645 (2003): 618–622, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1089904.
[^8]: Erwin Schrödinger, What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1944), chap. 6, §§56–57.
[^9]: Han Qin, How Is Subjecthood Possible: Symmetry, Negativity, and Subjecthood (2026), DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18777363, §§1.5, 2.3.
[^10]: Michael B. Elowitz, Arnold J. Levine, Eric D. Siggia, and Peter S. Swain, "Stochastic Gene Expression in a Single Cell," Science 297, no. 5584 (2002): 1183–1186, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1070919.
[^11]: Han Qin, How Is Subjecthood Possible, abstract.
[^12]: Han Qin, How Is Subjecthood Possible, §§2.2, 2.4.
[^13]: Han Qin, How Is Subjecthood Possible, §3.1.
[^14]: Han Qin, How Is Subjecthood Possible, §2.6.
[^15]: Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, ed. Paul Guyer, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), §64, 5:371–372.
[^16]: Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, §65, 5:374.
[^17]: Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, §16, 5:229–230.
[^18]: Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, §16, 5:229–230.
[^19]: Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, §75, 5:400.
[^20]: Plutarch, Theseus 23.1, in Plutarch's Lives, vol. 1, trans. Bernadotte Perrin, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914).
[^21]: Clyde A. Hutchison III et al., "Design and Synthesis of a Minimal Bacterial Genome," Science 351, no. 6280 (2016): aad6253, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aad6253.
[^22]: Glenn Parsons and Allen Carlson, Functional Beauty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), chap. 3, https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199205240.001.0001.
[^23]: Wang Shouren 王守仁, Chuanxi lu 傳習錄, juan 1, "Recorded by his student Xue Kan" 門人薛侃錄 (Project Gutenberg e-text no. 25517).
[^24]: Bernhard Langkavel, ed., Aristotelis De Partibus Animalium (Leipzig: Teubner, 1868), I.5, 645a15–26.
[^25]: Langkavel, Aristotelis De Partibus Animalium, I.5, 645a15–26.
[^26]: W. D. Ross, ed., Aristotelis De Anima (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), II.4, 415a23–b7.
[^27]: Plato, Symposium 206b, 206e, 207d–e, 208a–b, in Platonis Opera, vol. 2, ed. John Burnet (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901).
[^28]: Plato, Symposium 206b, 206e, 207d–e, 208a–b.
[^29]: Zhu Xi 朱熹, Yuanben Zhouyi benyi 原本周易本義, juan 7, "Xici shang zhuan" 繫辭上傳, chap. 5, Wenyuange Siku quanshu edition.
[^30]: Mengzi zhushu 孟子注疏, commentary by Zhao Qi 趙岐, subcommentary by Sun Shi 孫奭, juan 11B, "Gaozi I" 告子上, Wenyuange Siku quanshu edition.
[^31]: Guo Qingfan 郭慶藩, Zhuangzi jishi 莊子集釋, ed. Wang Xiaoyu 王孝魚 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1961), "Qiushui" 秋水, 607.
[^32]: Cheng Hao 程顥 and Cheng Yi 程頤, Er Cheng yishu 二程遺書, juan 11, juan 3, Wenyuange Siku quanshu edition.
[^33]: Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi, Er Cheng yishu, juan 3, Wenyuange Siku quanshu edition.
[^34]: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären (Gotha: Ettinger, 1790), §119.
[^35]: Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (London: John Murray, 1859), 490.
[^36]: D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, On Growth and Form (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1917), 11.
[^37]: Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 42 (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1980), 77–84.
[^38]: Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology (New York: Harper & Row, 1966).
[^39]: Han Qin, How Is Subjecthood Possible, §6.6.
References
Works of the SAE system cited here are archived on Zenodo, with the Chinese and English versions in the same record. The DOIs cited are concept DOIs, which always resolve to the latest version, so version numbers and access dates are not given. All are single-authored (Han Qin). Drafting and review assistance is described in the Acknowledgments.
Cheng Hao 程顥 and Cheng Yi 程頤. Er Cheng yishu 二程遺書. Wenyuange Siku quanshu edition.
Coelho, Miguel, Aygül Dereli, Anett Haese, Sebastian Kühn, Liliana Malinovska, Morgan E. DeSantis, James Shorter, Simon Alberti, Thilo Gross, and Iva M. Tolić-Nørrelykke. "Fission Yeast Does Not Age under Favorable Conditions, but Does So after Stress." Current Biology 23, no. 19 (2013): 1844–1852. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2013.07.084.
Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species. London: John Murray, 1859.
Elowitz, Michael B., Arnold J. Levine, Eric D. Siggia, and Peter S. Swain. "Stochastic Gene Expression in a Single Cell." Science 297, no. 5584 (2002): 1183–1186. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1070919.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären. Gotha: Ettinger, 1790.
Guo Qingfan 郭慶藩. Zhuangzi jishi 莊子集釋. Edited by Wang Xiaoyu 王孝魚. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1961.
Hanczyc, Martin M., Shelly M. Fujikawa, and Jack W. Szostak. "Experimental Models of Primitive Cellular Compartments: Encapsulation, Growth, and Division." Science 302, no. 5645 (2003): 618–622. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1089904.
Hoffman, Charles S., Valerie Wood, and Peter A. Fantes. "An Ancient Yeast for Young Geneticists: A Primer on the Schizosaccharomyces pombe Model System." Genetics 201, no. 2 (2015): 403–423. https://doi.org/10.1534/genetics.115.181503.
Hutchison, Clyde A., III, et al. "Design and Synthesis of a Minimal Bacterial Genome." Science 351, no. 6280 (2016): aad6253. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aad6253.
Jonas, Hans. The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology. New York: Harper & Row, 1966.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Edited by Paul Guyer. Translated by Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. First published 1790.
Langkavel, Bernhard, ed. Aristotelis De Partibus Animalium. Leipzig: Teubner, 1868.
Maturana, Humberto R., and Francisco J. Varela. Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 42. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1980.
Mengzi zhushu 孟子注疏. Commentary by Zhao Qi 趙岐. Subcommentary by Sun Shi 孫奭. Wenyuange Siku quanshu edition.
Parsons, Glenn, and Allen Carlson. Functional Beauty. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199205240.001.0001.
Plato. Symposium. In Platonis Opera, vol. 2, edited by John Burnet. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901.
Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives. Vol. 1. Translated by Bernadotte Perrin. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914.
Prusiner, Stanley B. "Prions." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 95, no. 23 (1998): 13363–13383. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.95.23.13363.
Qin, Han. How Is Subjecthood Possible: Symmetry, Negativity, and Subjecthood. 2026. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18777363.
———. SAE Judgment and Aesthetics. 2026. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19296710.
———. SAE: The First Critique. 2026. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21439120.
Ross, W. D., ed. Aristotelis De Anima. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956.
Schrödinger, Erwin. What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1944.
Schwanhäusser, Björn, Dorothea Busse, Na Li, Gunnar Dittmar, Johannes Schuchhardt, Jana Wolf, Wei Chen, and Matthias Selbach. "Global Quantification of Mammalian Gene Expression Control." Nature 473, no. 7347 (2011): 337–342. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10098.
Thompson, D'Arcy Wentworth. On Growth and Form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1917.
Wang Shouren 王守仁. Chuanxi lu 傳習錄. Project Gutenberg e-text no. 25517.
Zhu Xi 朱熹. Yuanben Zhouyi benyi 原本周易本義. Wenyuange Siku quanshu edition.