"Why should we elect the late renowned Swiss zoologist Adolf Portmann one of our most cherished teachers? Because of his vision of the mystery of the manifest and his effort to give biology an orientation that is ethical and aesthetic and that goes beyond the perilous narrowness of mechanistic Darwinism. . . . Read Portmann on Goethe and the poetry of plants, bird navigation, sex, fish display, and human infancy, to mention just a few topics, for a sense of relief and rejuvenation in biological and zoological vision that may be tantamount to a seeing for the first time of what was always there. Carter has done an essential service in making Portmann, worthy antagonist to Descartes and Darwin, available to us in English."

- Roger A. Lewin in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease

Excerpts:
“The distinguishing features of self-representation are, first and foremost, peculiarities which endure beyond any function of preservation, beyond any selection-value, beyond any utility, and which are presented to us as a primary given of the living thing. The Concept of “self-representation” is descriptive; at the same time, this concept should remind us of the fact that even the most widely dissimilar functional correlates as, say, activities in the realm of species-preservation, metabolism, etc., are not sufficient to explain the distinctive mode of being of a characteristic feature. The consideration of self-representation as a supreme peculiarity of life carries with it the justification for a comprehensive, self-supporting theory of forms. Morphology, whose limits have always defied any easy specification, is the science of the self-representation of the organism, and, working with physiology, it clarifies those special characteristics of form which are to be understood as adaptations to the environment, to metabolism or to species-preservation. However striking we may find the images in many of those living forms which are in the service of these preservative faculties, these structures are nevertheless all parts of a whole, of a whole, what is more, which cannot be understood as a sum of such preservative apparatuses and faculties.” (p. 38-39)

A brief example of self-representation, given in the context of his fascinating treatise on bird migration in Chapter 1, is Portmann’s comment on singing birds:

“To the extent that it creates an intensification of self-representation and, at the same time, makes for an intensification of the manifestation of inwardness, the singing which characterizes a species is like play. During singing, the meaningless flow of “dead time” is transformed into meaningfully lived time; “mere time” becomes fulfilled time, that is, becomes time given form.” (p. 4)

Appendix: Goethe’s “An Attempt to Explain the Metamorphosis of Plants
Introduction to the Translation, by Agnes Arber
Translation by Agnes Arber (of Goethe’s essay on the metamorphosis of plants)

Translator’s Essay, by Richard B. Carter
Introduction
The “Emergence” of Life
Consciousness
Portmann and the Living Thing
Analytic Biology and Evolution
Species: Portmann and Darwin
Form and the Evolution of Consciousness

Index