Equipotentiality

It might help to list a few things that are close enough to be synonyms for Ruyer -- consciousness, organic form, whole, pure thinking (not to be confused with representing), equipotential surface.  These are all related to the "domain" of finalist activity, a territorial concept that we will explore more in the next section.  In chapter 7, however, Ruyer is just interested in exploring the similarities and differences between the two equipotential surfaces -- the brain and the embryo -- that he discussed in the previous chapter.  The main idea is that ideal finalist activity expresses itself by means of both of these material equipotential systems.  Even though they are both analogously capable of expressing this activity, these surfaces are not identical or interchangeable because the brain is nested inside the embryo, forming a sort of embryonic organ that retains something of the full embryo's fecund ability to reconfigure itself.  

As we saw last time, the embryo is an equipotential system for a few reasons.  You can make all sorts of modifications to it and its environment, and yet it still exhibits a resilient tendency to produce a determined organic form.  In fact, even modifications extreme enough to produce a 'monstrous' outcome still testify to this overall tendency.  However, this tendency to produce an organism, ie. the finalist activity of the embryo, is not located at any particular point within it.  The activity can't be localized, which explains why you can sometimes cut embryos in half and get two organisms, as well as why the embryo is so resilient to extensive damage.  But the embryo is also equipotential in the sense that it is equally capable of becoming all the individual organs.  In a sense, these are all just forms of development of the embryo which never really stop being parts of its whole.  This development, however, is not reversible -- the embryo 'spends' or 'discharges' its equipotentiality in the course of differentiating into the organs.  In short, the embryo trades potential for structure as it develops.

Obviously, the brain is just one of these specialized structures, but Ruyer's concept of its development is reminiscent of Simondon's idea of neotony.  The brain is an organ that, like the embryo itself, is capable of reconfiguration and further differentiation.  It is an organ that can create more organs, in this case, the organic extensions we call tools. 

Primitive embryonic equipotentiality thus disappears progressively; it is distributed in more and more limited areas. The theme of organs, by taking shape, ceases to be a theme to become a structure. The finalist sense of the organ remains obvious, but this sense is incarnated or fossilized, in the same way that the theme of invention in a machine built by an engineer is replaced by substituted mechanical links. Relative to the embryo that he was, the adult realizes in a sense the ancient myth of the divinity that is transformed into a laurel tree. To be an organ for the creation of organs is what equipotentiality allows. This definition makes clear the resemblance and the difference between the fertilized egg or the young embryo and the brain. Both respond to this definition. (NF, 70)

This is simple point that we've seen many times in Ruyer, and before that in different forms in Simondon and Mumford.  In a way, it might almost be the core of the whole individuation project -- individuals arise within a context.  The brain does not fall from the sky as a deus ex machina of intelligence.  It is produced as a specialized tool of the organism.  We misunderstand it whenever we forget this fact, just as we make the same mistake when we forget that humans build technology.  There's a tendency to let the remarkable flexibility of these organs cover over the fact that they are further differentiations of an already existing equipotential system.  So far, it's not particularly clear how Ruyer conceives this ongoing differentiation in general.  We have the impression that the context in which his individuals appear is always another, prior, individual.  Is there then, by extrapolation, an 'earth embryo' and before that a 'universe embryo' that contain the human one?  And how and why do these new levels of equipotentiality arise?  These general questions haven't been addressed yet since we've really only seen two examples of individual unity.  

But Ruyer's goal in this specific case is clear, he wants to clear the ground by driving home the point that human intelligence is not the sole, nor even the first, type of active finalist intelligence in the universe.  The embryo is already intelligent, already 'thinking' and 'planning' in a finalist sense.  And he spends the rest of this chapter clarifying that this is not some vague proto-thought.  The embryo is not a watered down version of the brain that is analogous but quantitatively inferior.  The embryo is not a stupid brain.  If anything, the brain is more like a stupid embryo, condemned to experience only the objects at its sense doors and to think with clumsy inorganic tools.  The embryo's thought is entirely clear and precise even though it is abstract.  For example, is has a very precise understanding of 'front' and 'limb'.  These concepts are only vague from the perspective of our brain, which has to reassemble them from the fully differentiated parts later used to specify them.  But in the course of the embryo's development, these 'thoughts' have a completely clear object, as Ruyer's study of embryology demonstrated.  So the brain doesn't add something new to the history of thinking, it merely develops a line of thought by prolonging the openness of the embryo.

If we want to grasp the facts, we have to become used to dissociating consciousness and brain and to associating consciousness and organic form. The brain is not an instrument for becoming conscious, intelligent, inventive, or reminiscent. Consciousness, intelligence, invention, memory, and active finality are tied to the organic form in general. The brain's "superiority" or its distinctive character is that it is an incomplete organ, an always- open network, which thus retains equipotentiality, the active embryonic consciousness, and applies it to the organization of the world. (NF, 75)