Brief History of the Organism and the Relationship Between the Whole and Its Parts

Abstract

.

Organicism is the doctrine that interprets the world and nature by analogy with the organism. This is the starting point of this work and develops the conviction that the various positions of environmental ethics depend on the concept of the organism on which they are based. The studies of the philosophy of biology by Mario Bunge and Rafael Amo support the historiography of the organism. Both detect three stages in this science that coincide with the three great explanatory models of the organism: vitalism, mechanism, and systemism. In this way, the three concepts of organism will be explored, their cosmological repercussions and, above all, their ethical consequences, since the universe and nature, when thought of as an organism, vary and are valued differently. This work shows the importance of the concept of organism in the most widespread models of environmental ethics.