There are animate (with brains) and inanimate (without brains) agents. Animate agents include most living things – single-celled and many-celled plants and animals. Inanimate agents can be arranged along a continuum with quantum entities at the small end, volcanoes, avalanches and meteorites in the middle and galaxies and universes at the big end.
Scientists now reckon that inanimate agents gave rise to the celestial bodies and to our solar system and planet. It is in the nature of stuff (matter and energy) to be in perpetual churn. After the big bang, the churn gave rise in turn to (a) simple elements (mainly hydrogen and helium) then (b) more sophisticated elements (ref the periodic tables of the elements) and so to (c) stars and planets.
It is hard for human beings to take in (a) the vast time and space associated with these cosmic bodies and (b) the comparative simplicity of their physics and chemistry. But these were the inanimate agents whose actions and reactions gave rise to the large and complicated molecules that reproduced themselves with occasional mutations. And the rest is the history of natural selection and the origins of life in all its varied complexity.
It is not easy to draw a line between things that are animate and living and those that are inanimate and lifeless. Where does chemistry stop and biochemistry begin? The nitrogen in the nitrates in the soil is inanimate but when it is absorbed into grass then cows then humans – is it then animate? Is it animate in the bladder and does it quickly change to inanimate as it pours back into the soil?
When we speak we can use the words animate and inanimate. But do the words refer to anything real?
The dictionary suggests that an inanimate agent would be lifeless, lacking perception and volition, and generally sluggish, dull, dormant, and torpid. This is true of rocks and stones but not of tsunamis and volcanoes nor of the creation and death of stars. Inanimate agents made many things happen before there were living things and they will still be making things happen long after our sun stops burning and planet earth with its living crust has disappeared.
An animate agent is alive, motivated and stirred to action with zest or spirit. Being an animate agent implies comprehending a situation and having an intention to change it this way rather than that. Plants are alive and animate. They photosynthesise, occupy space and are key elements of most biogeochemical cycles. They may not be self conscious but they are agents – they make thing happen – some eat insects!
Humans think of themselves as animate agents. There appears to be a ‘me’ that acts and reacts. We are not only animate but also conscious and sometimes self conscious. Michael Shermer suggests that two main processes govern human understanding – patternicity and agenticity.
Masses of data enter through our sense organs and we make sense of it by seeing patterns – for example we in the West look at the night sky and see the Plough, Orion’s Belt and various other constellations. The patterns do not correspond with reality but, as rule of thumb concepts, they can help with navigating at night. Useful fictions.
Pre-scientific people project human style agency into the inanimate world – for example thunder is thought to be the wrathful voice of God – so he has to be appeased by making sacrifices. There are still people who reckon that there is a metaphysical God who is an agent working in mysterious (but broadly human?) ways. But there are many people (Eastern Meditators and Western scientists) who think differently about the nature of agency.
So - what might be said about the ‘reality’ of the patterns and agents that are recognised in particular cultures?
Ancient Chinese Taoism was quite clear – “The reality that can be described is not the real reality”. Taoism also has the notion of wu-wei which can be translated as effortless non-action. Taoism recognises that “The only constant thing is change”. This can be observed in Nature when, with great reliability and effortless non-action, night turns to day and winter turns to spring – and there is no forward plan designed and implemented by a higher being. Taoism also recognises the illusory nature of the individuated self with a clear beginning and ending. “Nothing comes from nothing.” This ancient pattern of thinking sits well alongside the modern field of developmental biology (ie embryology).
Your father’s sperm and your mother’s egg came together to create the fertilised egg (zygote) that was you. You were once a single celled organism made of a nucleus, cytoplasm and cell membrane. And in the nucleus were your chromosomes which contained your genes which are coded for by your DNA which will make trillions of copies of itself as you develop.
But the DNA is not exclusively yours. It is the DNA of all your ancestors stretching back through the primates, mammals and fish and on through the invertebrates and single celled animals and so to the macromolecules that were the inanimate ancestors of the first living things that appeared on planet earth about 3.6 billion years ago.
It is interesting to view multicellular living things as the way that bundles of DNA (and genes) make copies of themselves. This line of thinking pits various patterns of agent against each other. What is the unit of evolution? Is it the gene, an individual organism (eg you), a tribal group (and the idea of group selection), or even an ecosystem? There will be trade offs between the levels.
So – what agent made this story happen? The cause and effect chains go back at least 3.6 billion years. The roots of ‘me’ lie steeped in evolution and found expression first in my mother’s womb and then in my birth culture. Nature, nurture and serendipity ensured that I learned a language and that I absorbed a world view into both conscious and unconscious parts of my mindbrain.
And then I travelled and lived and worked in various parts of the world where thoughts about patterns and agents were different from my natal ones. As an education advisor I was an agent of change tasked with making things happen. It pleases me to think that I facilitated rather than dictated the changes that happened on my watch. But why should that please me? Did ‘I’ freely choose or is it due to my cultural conditioning? Aargh – the perpetual churn!
“Sitting quietly doing nothing, Spring comes,
and the grass grows by itself.”
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