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Notes on an Epistemology
for Living Things*
I. Problem
While in the first quarter of this century physicists and cosmologists were
forced to revise the basic notions that govern the natural sciences, in the
last quarter of this century biologists will force a revision of the basic
notions that govern science itself. After that “first revolution” it was clear
that the classical concept of an “ultimate science,” that is an objective
description of the world in which there are no subjects (a “subjectless uni-
verse”), contains contradictions.
To remove these one had to account for an “observer” (that is at least
for one subject): (i) Observations are not absolute but relative to an
observer's point of view (i.e., his coordinate system: Einstein); (ii) Obser-
vations affect the observed so as to obliterate the observer's hope for
prediction (i.e., his uncertainty is absolute: Heisenberg).
After this, we are now in the possession of the truism that a description
(of the universe) implies one who describes (observes it). What we need
now is the description of the “describer” or, in other words, we need a theory
of the observer. Since it is only living organisms which would qualify as
being observers, it appears that this task falls to the biologist. But he himself
is a living being, which means that in his theory he has not only to account
for himself, but also for his writing this theory. This is a new state of affairs
in scientific discourse for, in line with the traditional viewpoint which sep-
arates the observer from his observations, reference to this discourse was
to be carefully avoided. This separation was done by no means because of
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