The Beauty of Reproduction
繁殖之美
Look at a Volvox under the microscope. It is a hollow green sphere; on its surface two thousand or so small cells, each with two flagella, row together; inside are a dozen or so large cells that do not row. The rowers do nothing but row all their lives and never divide again; each non-rower divides into a small sphere, which turns itself entirely inside out and leaves the mother sphere. The cells the mother sphere leaves behind die, almost all at once, a few days later. A subject who has seen this cannot not acknowledge: its parts differ, each in its own place, and only together are they it; it dies, but its pattern does not die with it, and the whole of it grows again from a single cell, differences and all; what grows each time is not entirely the same. That sentence is the beauty of reproduction. It is two halves of one beauty: the half within the body is the division of labor, difference becoming role; the half across generations is reproduction, the whole of it growing again from a single cell. The two halves are one thing: only with a division of labor is there a body that dies and a line that goes on; and what grows again is exactly that division of labor. The source of this beauty is the share in living things that outside conditions cannot completely account for; at this level, this paper reads it as: what grows each time is not entirely the same. The beauty has two faces: completive beauty is a body with its labor divided, each part in its place at this moment, a flower in bloom; generative beauty is difference growing out: a small sphere turning itself inside out, a shoot tip separating a flower out. The paper says what reproduction is and is not (not one dividing into two, not for the sake of something, not a victory over entropy, not the same as the two sexes, and the roles here are not human roles); what this paper takes over from Kant and where it parts from him; what can pass for the beauty of reproduction (mere abundance, copying, sexual attraction, the prettiness of ornament, the use of ornament, the lock-in of preference, double flowers); and what is left to each person. It traces where the question comes from, from male and female separated for the sake of generation and "male and female blend their essences, and the ten thousand things are transformed and born," through the dispute between preformation and epigenesis, Darwin and Weismann, to today's discussion of the division of labor as one of life's major transitions. It ends by handing on to the beauty of perception the question of which of the not-entirely-alike things that grow will remain.
Keywords: beauty of reproduction, division of labor, reproduction, remainder, completive beauty, generative beauty, Kant, sexual selection, overlap, 7DD, 8DD
1. A Little Sphere Turns Itself Inside Out
Look at a Volvox under the microscope. It is a hollow green sphere a few hundred micrometers across. Its surface is a layer of small cells, two thousand or so, each with two flagella sticking out, rowing together, so that the sphere slowly rolls along. Toward the back half, just inside the surface, are a dozen or so large cells without flagella, which do not row.[^1]
The two kinds of cell do different things. The small cells do nothing all their lives but row, and once grown they never divide again; the large cells do only one thing: produce the next generation.[^2]
A large cell begins to divide, and divides again and again, until it has become a small sphere. When division stops, all the cells the next generation should have are there, small and large. But it is inside out: the ends of the small cells where the flagella grow face inward, and the large cells are on the outside. At one end of the small sphere is a cross-shaped slit, and through this slit it turns itself entirely inside out: the flagella come to the outside, and the large cells are drawn inside.[^3] The turned sphere grows inside the mother sphere, and the next day it leaves the mother sphere and swims off on its own. The two thousand or so small cells the mother sphere leaves behind never divide again; about a hundred hours after the embryos have matured, they die, almost all at once.[^4]
What die are the two thousand or so cells that rowed all their lives. The pattern of this Volvox did not die with them: it had already grown again, in a dozen or so small spheres, each from a single cell. Each small sphere is a complete Volvox: the rowers outside, the non-rowers inside, each in its own place.
That point is what this paper is about.
This paper follows the reading set out in the general outline.[^5] 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.[^6] 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 reproduction has both faces. A ray is a direction of judgment, not a classification of objects: the same Volvox can also be looked at from the direction of biology, or from the direction of perception. This paper asks about one direction only, how a living thing with its labor divided dies and grows the whole of itself again from a single cell, and what the power of judgment sees in that direction.
2. What Reproduction Is and Is Not
The beauty of reproduction has two halves. The half within the body: its parts differ, each in its own place, and only together are they it. This paper calls this half the division of labor, that is, difference becoming role: of the descendants of one cell, some do nothing but row, some do nothing but produce the next generation; taken alone, neither is a Volvox; only together are they a Volvox. The half across generations: it dies, but its pattern does not die with it. This paper calls this half reproduction, in a narrower sense: the whole of it grows again from a single cell, differences and all. The "it" here is a living thing of that kind, with its labor divided, not the one that died.
The two halves are one thing. Only with a division of labor is there a body that stays behind and dies when its time comes, and a line that goes on: the rowing cells do nothing but row all their lives and in the end die; the non-rowing one carries the whole of it into the next generation. What grows again is exactly that division of labor: two thousand or so rowers and a dozen or so non-rowers are separated out again from a single cell in every generation. So they are two halves of one beauty, not two beauties. More than a hundred years ago Weismann already saw these two things as one; this is taken up in Section 7.
Volvox's close relative Pandorina is a small sphere of a dozen or so identical cells: each cell feeds, each swims, each can divide into a new small sphere.[^7] No cell is set apart to do the living and none to do the handing on; the parent colony leaves behind no one who will die, and there are no differences to be grown again: it is closer to one dividing into two. So reproduction cannot do without the division of labor; the two halves can be taken apart in one direction only: a division of labor without growing again. A mule's body has its labor divided in every respect, yet it hardly ever breeds: it has only the half of the division of labor. What this paper looks at is both halves holding at once in one living thing.
Nor is reproduction one dividing into two. When a cell divides across the middle, each of the two is the whole of it, and the original one leaves nothing behind. Here it is different: the original one stays behind, and will die; the next generation does not take away half of it, but grows again from a single cell inside it. Budding and cuttings grow a new one from a piece of the body; they too grow again, only not from a single cell, and reproduction in this paper's narrower sense does not include them. What this paper looks at is the whole of it being separated out again from a single cell.
Nor is reproduction for the sake of something. Some say that the death of the somatic cells has its use; that the meaning of sexual reproduction lies in producing differences. These accounts come up in the section on where the question comes from. This paper does not say "for the sake of"; it says only that it divided its labor, died, and its pattern grew again from a single cell.
Nor is reproduction a victory over entropy. Volvox does not escape entropy: it dies, and its cells come apart. Its pattern can remain because each generation, in a world where entropy goes on increasing, grows it all over again from a single cell.
Nor is reproduction the same as the two sexes. The two sexes are one kind of difference becoming role: when Volvox turns sexual, some grow large, motionless eggs, some grow small, swimming sperm, and only when the two join does the next generation grow.[^8] But in the round described above Volvox does without the two sexes, and still divides its labor and still reproduces. The two sexes add one more layer to reproduction: the offspring grow not from a cell of one parent, but from one cell formed by joining two different cells.
The roles spoken of in the division of labor refer only to the places that cells and organs occupy in the development of a living thing. This paper does not legislate for human roles: from eggs being large and sperm small, nothing follows about what men should do or what women should do; and beauty gives no one power to dispose over others.
Nor does the beauty of reproduction lie in death. Watching the cells of the mother sphere die together, some feel sad, some feel relief; these are each person's own. What this paper looks at is the pattern not dying with it.
3. The Beauty of Reproduction
Once a subject has seen how a living thing with its labor divided dies, and how it grows the whole of itself again from a single cell, he cannot not acknowledge:
Its parts differ, each in its own place, and only together are they it; it dies, but its pattern does not die with it, and the whole of it grows again from a single cell, differences and all; what grows each time is not entirely the same.
That sentence is the beauty of reproduction. The first two clauses are the two halves; the last clause says where this beauty comes from.
First the source. To grow again is not to print a ready-made pattern once more. There is no miniature Volvox inside a large cell; the two thousand or so rowers and the dozen or so non-rowers are separated out division by division, and it still has to turn itself inside out to take on that pattern. So what grows each time is not entirely the same: when the small spheres stop dividing, some have two thousand small cells, some four thousand;[^9] among grown Volvox, some have twelve large cells, some sixteen.[^10] This can show that the same kind of Volvox, growing in the same way, does not grow entirely alike; it cannot show that this difference is the remainder spoken of below: two thousand and four thousand differ by exactly a factor of two, which may be only one more round of division, accounted for by how large the large cell grew and by light and nutrients. When cells copy their genetic material, errors also occur. Where there are two sexes, two different cells join into one, and what grows is neither the father nor the mother but something new, neither of the two. Weismann said that the true meaning of sexual reproduction lies in producing heritable individual differences.[^11] What he spoke of was meaning; this paper takes only the thing he pointed out: the two sexes make offspring not entirely alike.
This paper holds that not all of the small difference in what grows each time can be completely accounted for by outside conditions. How Is Subjecthood Possible calls this part of a system the remainder: the part of a system's total state that cannot be exhaustively explained by external conditions.[^12] Under the axiom of ontological randomness, that paper traces the source of the remainder to ontological randomness; the axiom is a conditional, which this paper does not argue for, and nor does this paper stand on it: the axiom is only one explanation, and that paper also sets up a firewall for it: if the axiom is overturned, its derivation no longer applies, and structures elsewhere are not affected.[^13] If the axiom falls, the explanation falls with it, and this paper's reading remains; whether the reading is right depends on the second item of Section 9. That paper also says that whether living things such as plants and bacteria have a remainder that persists at the macroscopic level, whether the behavioral variation of bacteria is "the result of ontological randomness surviving to the macroscopic level, or deterministic noise in gene expression," is still an empirical question today.[^14] This paper reads "what grows each time is not entirely the same" as what the remainder looks like at the level of reproduction; this is this paper's reading, not that paper's words. Volvox falls on that side, among the cases the question leaves open; this paper does not answer for science, and Section 9 states where it can be wrong.
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. To say that Volvox has a remainder is also not to say that it is a subject.
There are two sides here, and they have to be kept apart. One side is the living thing: it divides its labor, it dies, its pattern grows again from a single cell, and not entirely the same each time. 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 a division of labor there is only one cell dividing into two, which is not the beauty spoken of here; with a division of labor but no growing again, there is only a body that dies; if what grows again is printed on entirely from outside, identical to the last detail each time, there is only a photocopy; 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 Volvox, and is not experimenting on it or ranking it, cannot not see the same thing: the rowers do nothing but row all their lives, and die; one non-rower grows the whole of it again, rowers and non-rowers together. This does not depend on nationality, or on the era, or on whether he likes small things in water. On this ray, what is seen is this point: difference becomes role, and the roles are separated out again from a single cell. It is seeing, not inference: the one who looks does not need to know what assigns one cell to rowing and another to producing the next generation; what he sees is a small sphere turning itself inside out within the mother sphere and swimming off the next day. Someone looking at a pond full of Volvox can also see that they are not entirely alike: this one bigger, that one smaller, one more or one fewer small sphere inside. Seeing the differences does not require calculating whether they can be completely accounted for from outside; that is this paper's reading, as said above.
Understanding is not seeing either. A vegetable grower keeps seed every year and sows it every year; which bed comes up evenly, which variety sets more pods, he knows well. In all this he was not looking; he was only using. One summer he looks at a bean plant: it grew from a bean, put out leaves, flowered, and when the flowers fell it set pods, and inside the pods are beans, one by one. He learns nothing new, yet for the first time he stops to look at it: inside a bean there is a tiny embryo, but no flower and no pod; the flower was separated out later, whorl by whorl, at the shoot tip, and the embryo in each bean in the pod grows again from a fertilized cell, returning to a bean. His understanding has not changed; what has changed is that this time he is looking.
Seeing can also go wrong. One may think one has seen growing again when one has seen only growing up: a chick hatches from its shell and grows day by day into a grown chicken, and what one sees is growing up; how head, wings and feathers were separated out from a single cell, one has not seen. To say "it is beautiful" is to claim that this time one really has seen, and the claim can be wrong.
Completive beauty: a body with its labor divided, each part in its place at this moment. A grown Volvox rolls in the water: the rowers outside, rowing together; the non-rowers inside, each in its own place. A flower in bloom: an outer whorl of sepals, inside it a whorl of petals, inside that a whorl of stamens, and at the center the carpels; what each whorl grows into depends on which whorl it is. Completive beauty is quiet: the roles are all there, each in its own place, and the next generation has not yet begun.
Generative beauty: difference growing out. A small sphere inside the mother sphere is turning itself inside out through that cross-shaped slit: the flagella come to the outside bit by bit, the large cells are drawn inside bit by bit. At the tip of a bean shoot, whorl after whorl, sepals and petals are being separated out. The tension is here: it may fail to turn itself inside out; and what grows is not entirely the pattern it came from. The completive face is the roles all being there; the generative face is the roles being separated out again from a single cell.
4. Kant's Flower
This paper takes one thing over from Kant, takes one step further, and parts from him over a flower.
What it takes over is the thing he discerned in offspring. In his day there were two accounts of offspring. One said that offspring are merely educts of the previous generation, already packed inside it, and that being born is only unfolding; he called this individual preformation, or the theory of evolution (in the old sense of unfolding), and said it would better be called the theory of encasement. The other said that offspring are products, generated; he called this epigenesis. Kant leaned toward the latter: even without knowing its empirical advantages, reason would favor it in advance, because, at least as far as reproduction is concerned, it regards nature as producing itself, not merely as unfolding. Preformation also had one place it could not get past: hybrids. Unable to fit hybrids into preformation, its defenders had to grant the male semen too a share of purposively formative power; yet when two parents of the same species produce offspring, they would grant this power to neither.[^15] Epigenesis can also be called generic preformation: what exists beforehand is not a miniature individual, but the capacity of that kind of thing to produce itself. What this paper looks at is exactly the thing he discerned: there is no miniature Volvox in a large cell; it grows again.
Kant places this within teleological judgment: human beings can conceive the possibility of such things only according to a causality of ends.[^16] Here this paper takes one step further: seeing a small sphere grow again does not require the concept of an end. The one who looks need not first ask what it is for; what he sees is one cell separating out two kinds of cell, turning itself inside out, and becoming the whole of it.
Where they part is elsewhere. Kant says that flowers are free natural beauties. Hardly anyone but the botanist knows what sort of thing a flower is supposed to be; and even the botanist, who recognizes it as the reproductive organ of the plant, pays no attention to this natural end when he judges it by taste. He distinguishes 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]
This paper parts from him over exactly this flower. What he brackets is the concept of "what it is for"; what this paper looks at is the very point that concept speaks of: whorl after whorl, each in its own place, and when the flower falls, fruit is set. To look at this point there is no need for "for the sake of." The free beauty he sees once this is bracketed belongs, by the reading of the general outline, to the level of perception. Nor is what this paper looks at adherent beauty: it does not look at whether this flower matches what a flower ought to be, or at whether it is perfect; a flower that has grown crooked still has sepals, petals, stamens and carpels each in its own whorl, and when it falls it still sets fruit.
One flower, two rays. A ray is a direction of judgment, not a classification of objects: looked at toward perception, it is the flower's color and look; looked at toward reproduction, it is whorl after whorl, each in its own place, and when the flower falls, a fruit swelling where it was. The latter needs no botany either: someone who does not know the words "reproductive organ" can still see the flower fall and the fruit set. Kant's botanist knows, and in judging by taste pays no attention; this paper agrees that knowing is not seeing. The only thing this paper adds is that the point that concept speaks of can be seen without the concept.
5. What Can Pass for It
The method is still the same: take it away and see.
Mere abundance. A wood grows denser year by year; the small things in a pond grow more and more numerous. Abundance and flourishing can move people, but they are not the beauty this paper speaks of. Take away the division of labor and the growing again, and see: in a pot of spoiled broth, bacteria go from one to two, from two to four, more and more; yet none of them grows, from a single cell, a body with its labor divided.
Copying. A photograph printed ten thousand times, ten thousand bowls cast from one mold. The pattern is the same, one after another. Take away "grows again from a single cell," and see: the printing press does not grow, nor does the mold; the pattern is printed on from outside. When printed copies differ, they are misprints; the differences in what reproduction grows are not, in themselves, things grown wrong.
Sexual attraction. Schopenhauer says that love is taken so seriously because what it decides is nothing less than how the next generation will be composed; nature implants an illusion in the individual, so that what is good only for the species appears to him to be good for himself, and he thinks he is serving himself when in fact he is serving the species.[^18] This is this paper's closest counterfeit: it grows right next to reproduction. Take it away and see. In the round described above, no Volvox attracts any other, yet it still divides its labor and still grows the whole of itself again; and the one who looks at a Volvox does not need any desire toward it in order to see it. Conversely, even if one person's attraction to another were, as Schopenhauer says, the species desiring in him, it would be a force pushing him, in him but not his own; the cannot-not this paper speaks of is his own, and seeing pushes no one.
The prettiness of ornament. A peacock spreads his tail; a male Argus pheasant spreads his wings, on which a row of eyespots is shaded so that each looks like a ball lying in a socket. Darwin said that he knew of no fact in natural history more wonderful than that the female Argus pheasant should appreciate the exquisite shading of these ornaments.[^19] Take away reproduction and see: a peacock feather in a vase is still pretty. That prettiness is a matter for the beauty of perception.
The use of ornament. Wallace would not grant the female bird anything like a human sense of beauty. He said that the display of plumage, like the plumage itself, is the chief outward sign of the male's maturity and vigor, and is therefore necessarily attractive to the female; we have no reason to attribute to her the aesthetic emotions that these feathers stir in us.[^20] Zahavi went further: traits developed through mate preference are a handicap to the survival of the individuals selected;[^21] on his account, only those who can afford the handicap are good mates. Grafen later gave the idea a formal model.[^22] Take the use away and see: to a female a tail feather may be evidence, but the person who stops to look at it is not using it; use can sit in the same feather as beauty, but it is not the beauty spoken of here.
The lock-in of preference. Fisher saw another path: once the female's preference for some ornament is passed down linked to that ornament, the two "must thus advance together," and so long as there is no severe counterselection, they advance with ever-increasing speed, so that even a very small beginning can produce a very large effect.[^23] Prum argues that research on mate choice should take this model of the coevolution of preference and trait as its null model, and should not assume in advance that ornaments all reveal quality.[^24] This is the hardest counterfeit to answer: it does not reduce beauty to use, and insists even more than this paper that beauty is not usefulness. The pressure it puts on this paper: if the preference's own history can explain why everyone likes it, why place the ground in the construct? Take the history away and see. The ancestors of human beings never chose among Volvox; no history of mate choice links people's liking to Volvox; yet those who look at it dividing its labor, dying and growing again see the same point all the same. A preference shared in a population is a distribution; the overlap this paper speaks of is the part that subjects who have seen each cannot not acknowledge, not everyone liking it. As for the female bird's liking, this paper does not rule on the bird's behalf whether it has subjecthood; even if it were its personal aesthetic, a preference shared in a population is not the overlap. The question of what the "beauty" in sexual selection is must wait for the next ray: there, one side is choosing, and the one choosing must first sense what is before it. This paper says only that it is not the beauty spoken of here.
Double flowers. Which organ each of a flower's four whorls, sepals, petals, stamens and carpels, grows into is fixed by a few classes of genes overlapping and combining in adjacent whorls.[^25] Arabidopsis has a mutation that lacks one of these classes: the whorl that should grow stamens grows petals, and where the carpels should be, another flower grows.[^26] Some double flowers in gardens are close to this: in a double-flowered variety of a meadow rue, both stamens and carpels have become sepal-like organs.[^27] Take away the difference of roles and see: the flower is still seen as pretty; but in those repeated whorls, difference has not become role, and the stretch that leads to the next generation is missing too; in that Arabidopsis mutation, stamens and carpels are both gone. That prettiness is not in this paper. This case cannot show that all double flowers are sterile: in the double roses that have been studied, the range over which that class of genes acts has shrunk toward the center of the flower, and stamens and carpels are still present.[^28] Nor can one infer from "sterile yet pretty" that reproduction has nothing to do with beauty; it shows only that that prettiness is not the beauty spoken of here.
Neighboring rays. The beauty of biology looks at how a living thing keeps itself while exchanging its material and hands its pattern on; this paper looks at how a living thing with its labor divided dies, and grows the whole of itself again from a single cell. The beauty of causation looks at how what has happened remains in what comes after; the history a Volvox carries is seen from that direction. The beauty of perception looks at the prettiness of ornament, at how the female bird chooses, and at which of the not-entirely-alike things that grow remain. The beauty of the self has to wait for an "I" to appear; a Volvox that divides its labor and dies 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 a tail feather can reveal the male's vigor, that Volvox is good material for studying the origin of multicellularity, that how a flower develops can be understood: all of these have been set aside above. What is left is this: difference has become role; it dies; and its pattern grows again from a single cell.
6. What Is Left to Each Person
Which kind of growing moves you is each person's own. Some watch flowers open and fall, some watch over a clutch of chicks hatching, some spend a lifetime bent over a microscope counting the cells of Volvox.
Feelings about bearing children and about parents and children are all the more each person's own: hope, joy, worry, the pain of losing a child, the various states of mind of those who have no children. None of these is this paper's beauty, and none of them is this paper's business.
This paper's beauty gives no one a reason to have children or not to. Whoever has seen the beauty of reproduction is not thereby obliged to have children; those who do not have children lack nothing of this seeing. Beauty gives no one power to dispose over others.
Here cultivation and colonization have to be told apart. Someone who has watched, since childhood, crop after crop grow from seed has had his eyes helped to grow this way; that is cultivation. A climate of opinion that makes bearing and raising children the proper business of a person's life, and measures people by it, can also make that ruler take the place of a person's own looking: only when his own family adds a child does growing look pretty to him. Take that ruler away and see: if, looking at a seed or a Volvox, he still discerns that point, and can revise that way of seeing himself, then it is his. As for whether to have children, this paper does not ask.
To say "this flower is more beautiful than that one" is a judgment of beauty, and it can be discussed: does the point at which it has each part in its place and grows from a single seed show more fully? A flower that has grown crooked can also 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
Why differences exist and how offspring grow again were looked at very early; why people looked, and what they saw it as, has been rewritten several times. First male and female were separated for the sake of generation, and "male and female blend their essences, and the ten thousand things are transformed and born"; then came a dispute over whether offspring are packed in ready-made or grow again; Darwin put the choosing eye into the lineage; Weismann separated the body from the germ cells, and said that death came with the division of labor; and today the division of labor is seen as one of the several major transitions of life, with Volvox as a window onto that transition. 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.
Male and female separated for the sake of generation. Aristotle says: mortal things cannot be eternal as individuals, only as a kind, and that is why there is generation; male and female are the principles of generation, so male and female are in living things for the sake of generation. The moving principle, in which the definition and the form reside, is better and more divine than the matter; and it is better that the better be separated from the worse, so wherever it is possible, and as far as it is possible, the male is separated from the female. The male and the female come together again for the work of generation, because that work is common to both.[^29] In this passage he also uses the word "beautiful": the beautiful and divine is always the cause of what is better in things that can be better or worse. This "beautiful" is a cause that makes things better, not the point that the one who looks stops and sees. He discerned that difference has its place in living things, and exists for the sake of generation; he ranges male and female as two individuals, one given form and motion, the other matter. This is an assignment of offices between individuals, not the division of labor within one body that this paper speaks of. He looked in order to explain why animals have generation and why they have male and female. He presses on this paper in two places: first, roles are higher and lower; second, difference is for the sake of something. This paper meets him here: difference has its place in the generation of a living thing, and two sides come together for a work they share. It parts from him in two places: this paper ranks no higher and lower, and different roles are not one better and one worse; nor does it say what anything is for.
Male and female blend their essences, and the ten thousand things are transformed and born. The Xici, second part, says: "Heaven and earth intermingle, and the ten thousand things are transformed and refined; male and female blend their essences, and the ten thousand things are transformed and born." It goes on to quote the third line of the hexagram Sun, Decrease, "when three travel together, one is lost; when one travels alone, he finds his companion," and says that this is "attaining oneness." Han Kangbo's commentary: "only after attaining oneness is transformation completed." Kong Yingda's subcommentary glosses gou 構 as "to join": male and female, yin and yang, respond to each other, follow the natural tendency toward oneness, and join their essences, and so the ten thousand things are transformed and born; "if male and female lacked this natural tendency, and each held to its difference and duality, the ten thousand things would not be transformed and born."[^30] It discerned that two different things must join together for there to be birth. It looked in order to speak of "attaining oneness": heaven and earth, male and female, follow one principle; only by joining into one is anything completed. It presses on this paper: if differences each hold to their difference, there is no birth; so what matters is the one, not the difference. This paper meets it here: the kind of birth that comes through the two sexes needs two different things to join. This paper parts from it here: the Xici looks at the "one" formed by the joining; this paper looks at the new one born of the joining, which is not that "one" formed by joining, nor either of the two, and in which difference has not been dissolved but has grown into new roles.
The young peach tree. The ode "Taoyao" in the "Zhounan" of the Classic of Poetry has three stanzas: "The peach tree is young and lovely, bright, bright are its blossoms," "plump is its fruit," "lush are its leaves"; from blossom to fruit to leaf, stanza by stanza, it is joined to a young woman going to her marriage, "fitting for her house and home." Zhu Xi comments: "The Rites of Zhou order that in mid-spring men and women be brought together; so the peach's being in blossom is exactly the season for marriage."[^31] It discerned that the peach's blossom, fruit and leaves are one continuous stretch of time, joined stanza by stanza to a young woman marrying and making a home; the peach blossom is not taken out on its own to be looked at, which is exactly the opposite of Kant's botanist. Why does Zhu Xi read it this way? The word "so" shows that he reasons from the seasonal calendar of the rites: to speak of King Wen's transforming influence, of marriage in its proper season. He did not stop to look at the flower itself. It presses on this paper: the flower can be felt at this moment because it is set within the seasons and human relations, not only within one person's eye. This paper meets it here: from blossoming to setting fruit is one stretch, and it is not bracketed. This paper parts from it here: human relations are human roles, and this paper's roles do not legislate for them; whether this shared reading is cultivation or a ruler from outside can be told apart only by taking away the seasonal calendar of the rites and seeing, and the test has already been given in Section 6.
Are offspring packed in, or do they grow? See Section 4.
The choosing eye enters the lineage. In 1860 Darwin wrote to Asa Gray that he well remembered the time when the thought of the eye made him cold all over; he had got over that stage, and now small, trifling particulars of structure often made him very uncomfortable: "The sight of a feather in a peacock's tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!"[^32] What made him uncomfortable was how natural selection could explain such a thing, not beauty. Eleven years later, in The Descent of Man, he said: when we behold male birds elaborately displaying their plumes and splendid colours before the females, while other birds not so decorated make no such display, "it is impossible to doubt that the females admire the beauty of their male partners";[^33] and the case of the male Argus pheasant is good evidence that the most refined beauty may serve as a sexual charm and for no other purpose.[^34] He discerned that what someone finds pretty enters the lineage; the eye of the choosing side, generation after generation, shapes the body of the chosen side. He looked in order to explain ornament. He presses on this paper: if birds' liking can shape bodies over the long run, does shared acknowledgment still have to wait for subjects with judgment? This paper's answer is in Section 5: a preference shared in a population is not the overlap. From Darwin until today this question has been in dispute; Prum says that Darwin proposed an explicitly aesthetic theory of sexual selection, calling mate preferences a "taste for the beautiful" and an "aesthetic faculty."[^35] This dispute has already been set out separately in Section 5; the question of what "beauty" it asks about is left to the beauty of perception.
The body and the germ cells separated. At the beginning of a lecture in 1881 Weismann quoted a sentence of the physiologist Johannes Müller: organic bodies are perishable; life keeps up the appearance of immortality in the continual succession of similar individuals, while the individuals themselves pass away.[^36] From Volvox he discerned that the cells of one colony had separated into two kinds: many small cells with flagella, and far fewer large germ cells without flagella, only the latter able to produce new colonies; in its close relative Pandorina, every cell is alike. He said that the phylogenetic origin of the germ cells and the differentiation that came through the division of labor in the earliest multicellular organisms are one and the same thing.[^37] He also said that the death of somatic cells came with the differentiation of originally similar cells into different ones, "this is the first beginning of natural death"; what dies is only one part, but a part far larger than the part that remains and does not die, namely the germ cells.[^38] He discerned that death came with the division of labor; at the moment difference became role, one part became a body that dies, another a line that goes on. In him this paper's two halves are already joined into one thing. He looked for the sake of a theory of heredity, to explain where the material for natural selection comes from; that he said the true meaning of sexual reproduction lies in producing heritable individual differences has already been quoted in Section 3. He presses on this paper in two places: first, he says the germ cells are "immortal"; second, he says that death is not a necessity inherent in life, but something acquired later as an adaptation, which has its use; and that sexual reproduction too has its meaning.[^39] This paper meets him here: death came with the division of labor. It parts from him here: this paper does not say "immortal," only that the pattern does not die with the individual, and that what grows each time is not entirely the same, so that it is not one and the same immortal thing going on; nor does this paper say what anything is for.
The division of labor seen as a major transition. At the end of the twentieth century Maynard Smith and Szathmáry put together the several great leaps in the history of life and called them the major transitions in evolution.[^40] Michod says that the specialization of reproductive and survival-enhancing functions, which he calls germ-soma specialization, is a major factor in turning a group of cells into a true multicellular individual.[^41] Kirk takes Volvox as a window onto this transition, laying out step by step the path from a unicellular ancestor to the complete germ-soma separation of Volvox.[^42] They discerned that the "it" in "only together are they it" is largely made by the division of labor; for a group of cells to become one individual, the division of labor is a main reason. They looked in order to explain how individuals arise in evolution. They press on this paper: if the "it" is largely made by the division of labor, then in this paper's "it dies, but its pattern does not die with it," what is it that dies, and what goes on? This paper's answer: what dies is the body with its labor divided; what goes on is the single cell that can grow the whole division of labor again; this paper does not ask how it evolved, only what the one who looks sees.
The parts of a flower divide their labor. Which organ each of a flower's four whorls grows into, as Section 5 said, is fixed by a few classes of genes overlapping and combining; this account comes from research at the end of the twentieth century on mutations of several kinds of flower.[^43] They discerned that the parts of a flower are difference becoming role, with roles assigned by position. They looked in order to understand how flowers develop, and beauty is not understanding. They press on this paper: since the roles are fixed by the combination of a few classes of genes, is seeing them the same as understanding these genes? This paper's answer: to see a flower with each part in its place does not require knowing these classes of genes; and knowing them is not seeing either. This paper meets them here: a flower is a body with its labor divided.
8. The Question Left Open
What grows is not entirely the same each time. In one pond, this Volvox has a few more small cells, that one a few fewer; this one has twelve large cells, that one sixteen. Which of them remain?
Sometimes no one is choosing: the world simply does not keep them all. Sometimes one side is choosing: a female bird watches a male spread his tail, and she must first sense what is in front of her before she can choose.
Volvox does not push anyone to ask this. A person can spend a whole life looking only at how a Volvox divides its labor, dies and grows again; if he cannot not ask which remain and who is choosing, that is another ray. This ray stops here.
The question left open is: of what grows not entirely the same, which remains, and who is choosing. That is the beauty of perception.
9. What Would Make This Paper Wrong
If any one of four things held, this paper would be wrong. First, the division of labor and reproduction merely happen to sit side by side in the same living things: the one who looks sees the division of labor, and sees growing again, but cannot see that what grows again is exactly that division of labor; then the two halves of one beauty would be only two things. Second, the small difference in what grows each time is shown to be completely accounted for by outside conditions and deterministic chemistry; then this paper's reading of it as what the remainder looks like at this level would be wrong. Section 3 has said that this question is still empirical today, and that Volvox falls on that side. Third, the point people acknowledge when they look at Volvox is shown to be explained by a history of mate choice after all: take that history away, and no one acknowledges it any longer; then Fisher's and Prum's reading would be enough, and there would be no need to place the ground in the construct. Fourth, people acknowledge this point only in living things where they can see two sexes, and when they look at Volvox growing asexually they do not: what they thought they saw was only the species desiring in them; then Schopenhauer would be right, and the seeing this paper speaks of would be only the shadow of sexual attraction. This paper does not think any of these will happen, but it writes them here, and leaves them to those who look to test.
Acknowledgments
This paper is the seventh 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]: James G. Umen, "Volvox and Volvocine Green Algae," EvoDevo 11 (2020): 13, https://doi.org/10.1186/s13227-020-00158-7.
[^2]: David L. Kirk, "A Twelve-Step Program for Evolving Multicellularity and a Division of Labor," BioEssays 27, no. 3 (2005): 299–310, https://doi.org/10.1002/bies.20197; Gavriel Matt and James G. Umen, "Volvox: A Simple Algal Model for Embryogenesis, Morphogenesis and Cellular Differentiation," Developmental Biology 419, no. 1 (2016): 99–113, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ydbio.2016.07.014.
[^3]: Kirk, "A Twelve-Step Program"; Matt and Umen, "Volvox."
[^4]: Matt and Umen, "Volvox," sec. "Somatic Cell Senescence and Death."
[^5]: Han Qin, SAE Judgment and Aesthetics, 2nd ed. (2026), §5.1, "How to Read the Rays," DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19296710.
[^6]: Han Qin, SAE: The First Critique (2026), DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21439120.
[^7]: August Weismann, "The Continuity of the Germ-Plasm as the Foundation of a Theory of Heredity," in Essays upon Heredity and Kindred Biological Problems, ed. Edward B. Poulton, Selmar Schönland, and Arthur E. Shipley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1889), 202–203.
[^8]: Weismann, "The Continuity of the Germ-Plasm," 203–204.
[^9]: Matt and Umen, "Volvox."
[^10]: Umen, "Volvox and Volvocine Green Algae."
[^11]: August Weismann, "The Significance of Sexual Reproduction in the Theory of Natural Selection," in Essays upon Heredity, 272.
[^12]: Han Qin, How Is Subjecthood Possible: Symmetry, Negativity, and Subjecthood (2026), DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18777363, §2.3.
[^13]: Han Qin, How Is Subjecthood Possible, abstract.
[^14]: Han Qin, How Is Subjecthood Possible, §6.6.
[^15]: Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, ed. Paul Guyer, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), §81, 5:422–424.
[^16]: Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, §81, 5:422–424.
[^17]: Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, §16, 5:229–230.
[^18]: Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, trans. R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp, vol. 3, 6th ed. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1909), chap. 44, 340, 345–346.
[^19]: Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1871), 2:141, 2:400.
[^20]: Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwinism: An Exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection with Some of Its Applications (London: Macmillan, 1889), 294.
[^21]: Amotz Zahavi, "Mate Selection—A Selection for a Handicap," Journal of Theoretical Biology 53, no. 1 (1975): 205–214, https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-5193(75)90111-3.
[^22]: Alan Grafen, "Biological Signals as Handicaps," Journal of Theoretical Biology 144, no. 4 (1990): 517–546, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5193(05)80088-8.
[^23]: R. A. Fisher, The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930), 137.
[^24]: Richard O. Prum, "Aesthetic Evolution by Mate Choice: Darwin's Really Dangerous Idea," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 367 (2012): 2253–2265, https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2011.0285.
[^25]: John L. Bowman, David R. Smyth, and Elliot M. Meyerowitz, "Genetic Interactions among Floral Homeotic Genes of Arabidopsis," Development 112, no. 1 (1991): 1–20, https://doi.org/10.1242/dev.112.1.1.
[^26]: Bowman, Smyth, and Meyerowitz, "Genetic Interactions"; John L. Bowman, David R. Smyth, and Elliot M. Meyerowitz, "Genes Directing Flower Development in Arabidopsis," Plant Cell 1, no. 1 (1989): 37–52, https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.1.1.37.
[^27]: Kelsey D. Galimba et al., "Loss of Deeply Conserved C-Class Floral Homeotic Gene Function and C- and E-Class Protein Interaction in a Double-Flowered Ranunculid Mutant," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109, no. 34 (2012): E2267–E2275, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1203686109.
[^28]: Annick Dubois et al., "Tinkering with the C-Function: A Molecular Frame for the Selection of Double Flowers in Cultivated Roses," PLoS ONE 5, no. 2 (2010): e9288, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0009288.
[^29]: Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium II.1, 731b24–732a11, trans. Arthur Platt, in The Works of Aristotle Translated into English, ed. J. A. Smith and W. D. Ross, vol. 5 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912).
[^30]: Zhouyi zhushu 周易注疏, commentary by Wang Bi 王弼 and Han Kangbo 韓康伯, subcommentary by Kong Yingda 孔穎達, juan 12, "Xici xia" 繫辭下, Wenyuange Siku quanshu edition.
[^31]: Zhu Xi 朱熹, Shi jizhuan 詩集傳, juan 1, "Zhounan: Taoyao" 周南·桃夭, Wenyuange Siku quanshu edition. Characters in quotations follow standard forms.
[^32]: Charles Darwin to Asa Gray, 3 April [1860], Darwin Correspondence Project, letter no. DCP-LETT-2743; also in Francis Darwin, ed., The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, vol. 2 (London: John Murray, 1887).
[^33]: Darwin, Descent of Man, 1:63.
[^34]: Darwin, Descent of Man, 2:92.
[^35]: Prum, "Aesthetic Evolution by Mate Choice," 2253.
[^36]: August Weismann, "The Duration of Life," in Essays upon Heredity, 5.
[^37]: Weismann, "The Continuity of the Germ-Plasm," 202–204.
[^38]: August Weismann, "Life and Death," in Essays upon Heredity, 143.
[^39]: Weismann, "The Duration of Life," 24; Weismann, "The Significance of Sexual Reproduction," 272.
[^40]: John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry, The Major Transitions in Evolution (Oxford: W. H. Freeman, 1995).
[^41]: Richard E. Michod, "Evolution of Individuality during the Transition from Unicellular to Multicellular Life," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104, suppl. 1 (2007): 8613–8618, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0701489104.
[^42]: Kirk, "A Twelve-Step Program."
[^43]: Enrico S. Coen and Elliot M. Meyerowitz, "The War of the Whorls: Genetic Interactions Controlling Flower Development," Nature 353, no. 6339 (1991): 31–37, https://doi.org/10.1038/353031a0; Bowman, Smyth, and Meyerowitz, "Genetic Interactions."
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.
Aristotle. De Generatione Animalium. Translated by Arthur Platt. In The Works of Aristotle Translated into English, vol. 5, edited by J. A. Smith and W. D. Ross. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912.
Bowman, John L., David R. Smyth, and Elliot M. Meyerowitz. "Genes Directing Flower Development in Arabidopsis." Plant Cell 1, no. 1 (1989): 37–52. https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.1.1.37.
———. "Genetic Interactions among Floral Homeotic Genes of Arabidopsis." Development 112, no. 1 (1991): 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1242/dev.112.1.1.
Coen, Enrico S., and Elliot M. Meyerowitz. "The War of the Whorls: Genetic Interactions Controlling Flower Development." Nature 353, no. 6339 (1991): 31–37. https://doi.org/10.1038/353031a0.
Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. 2 vols. London: John Murray, 1871.
———. Letter to Asa Gray, 3 April [1860]. Darwin Correspondence Project, letter no. DCP-LETT-2743.
Darwin, Francis, ed. The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin. Vol. 2. London: John Murray, 1887.
Dubois, Annick, et al. "Tinkering with the C-Function: A Molecular Frame for the Selection of Double Flowers in Cultivated Roses." PLoS ONE 5, no. 2 (2010): e9288. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0009288.
Fisher, R. A. The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930.
Galimba, Kelsey D., et al. "Loss of Deeply Conserved C-Class Floral Homeotic Gene Function and C- and E-Class Protein Interaction in a Double-Flowered Ranunculid Mutant." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109, no. 34 (2012): E2267–E2275. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1203686109.
Grafen, Alan. "Biological Signals as Handicaps." Journal of Theoretical Biology 144, no. 4 (1990): 517–546. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5193(05)80088-8.
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.
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Matt, Gavriel, and James G. Umen. "Volvox: A Simple Algal Model for Embryogenesis, Morphogenesis and Cellular Differentiation." Developmental Biology 419, no. 1 (2016): 99–113. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ydbio.2016.07.014.
Maynard Smith, John, and Eörs Szathmáry. The Major Transitions in Evolution. Oxford: W. H. Freeman, 1995.
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———. SAE: The First Critique. 2026. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21439120.
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Wallace, Alfred Russel. Darwinism: An Exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection with Some of Its Applications. London: Macmillan, 1889.
Weismann, August. Essays upon Heredity and Kindred Biological Problems. Edited by Edward B. Poulton, Selmar Schönland, and Arthur E. Shipley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1889.
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Zhouyi zhushu 周易注疏. Commentary by Wang Bi 王弼 and Han Kangbo 韓康伯. Subcommentary by Kong Yingda 孔穎達. Wenyuange Siku quanshu edition.
Zhu Xi 朱熹. Shi jizhuan 詩集傳. Wenyuange Siku quanshu edition.