ABSTRACT
Current research and reassessments of natural and social phenomena using complexity theory, self-organization, phenomenology, enactivist approaches to cognition, and developmental systems theory are making advances beyond dualisms and reductive neo-Darwinism by developing “a middle way” to understand the co-generative dynamics between organisms and environment (Lewontin 1995). There is direct continuity between Plessner’s ideas and many of these contemporary interpretations of organism-environment relationships at the level of life itself, and in cultural manifestations such as architecture. Indeed, much of this work was pioneered by Plessner, who did not shy away from the big question of “what it means to be alive” (Grene 1968, 65). Our understanding today can be deepened by recovering and applying his theory of organic modals, which deals with the characteristics or qualities of life, especially his insights in The Levels of the Organic and Man [Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch, 1928] concerning eccentric positionality (which replaces old dualisms with a dynamic view of the sustained tensions of human existence) (GS IV).
