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The Emergent Feminine:
A Cosmological Inquiry into the Role of the Feminine In the Evolution of the Universe

©1999  Molly Dwyer, Ph.D.
do not copy without permission

1999 Vickers Award
International Society for the Systems Sciences

Abstract

Introduction

Feminine Inquiry

“Masculinity is the only point of view that does not know it is one.”
—Ellyn Kaschak, Engendered Lives

Before going on, I would like to briefly address my reason for referring to this inquiry as cosmological. As defined by Swimme (1996; and Swimme and Berry 1992) cosmology is not identical to science, although it often is, as in the case of this inquiry, deeply informed by science. Cosmology, as I am using the word, is an “ancient wisdom tradition [which] draws from science, theology, art, poetry, and philosophy, but is, strictly speaking, its own distinct tradition” (Swimme 1996, 99). Unlike science, its purpose is not to present a mathematically-conceived, theoretical basis for the understanding of reality. Cosmology is mythic; it “aims at articulating the story of the universe so that humans can enter fruitfully into the web of relationships within the universe” (Swimme1992, 23). Its purpose, as understood within this context, is to transform consciousness by introducing the human species to the metaphoric dimensions of their own cosmogenesis. That is to say, cosmology is a way of presenting human consciousness with the language, metaphor, and scientific insight necessary to allow the human to, not only intellectually, but intuitively and experientially, re-inhabit the universe out of which s/he has evolved. As Swimme notes:

There is always a strong emotional and bodily experience in any entrance into the universe. Such moments are often even tinged with a kind of ecstasy.  And unless this full-bodied experience is pursued, we are settling for abstract understanding rather than a full initiation into the universe. (1996, 32)

At its core, cosmology seeks to evoke in the human an exquisite sense of communion with both the Earth and the Universe. Thus, a cosmological inquiry is an open-ended exploration, both intellectual and emotional, which directs our attention toward the significance of the fact that human beings are an expression—one amongst many—of some fifteen billion years of creative, evolutionary genius, genius which mysteriously erupted into being out of the fecundity of an enigmatic Ground or Other (what science calls the quantum vacuum). Indeed, existence flared forth (flares forth) in a process so impenetrable, contemporary theoretical physics can only speak of it as a singularity. When faced with the original impulse of being, we are, in fact, as dumbfounded as were our ancient ancestors who spoke of this unknowable Otherness out of which existence emerged variously as: Dreamtime (Australia); Gin-nun-ga-gap, the Yawning Gap (Iceland); Ixbalba, the Place of Awe (Yucatan Maya); Pan Ku, the no thing within the cosmic egg (China); Grandmother Spider, who spins existence into being with words (Cherokee and other indigenous Americans); Tiamat, the great goddess salt-sea waters (Babylon); Chaos, the creatrix (Greek); and Logos, the word (Christian)—to name but a few. As the Hindu Upanishads puts it: “In the beginning this was nonexistent. It became existent.”

It is from within this cosmological tradition that I am calling attention to the role, authority, contribution, and mystery of what we have come to call the feminine. To discuss the feminine in such terms is no small matter. It is a subject fraught with political, psychological and sociobiological complexities, among others, and it is a subject that raises the immediate issue of language and style. Because this paper endeavors to capture the archetypal feminine in voice and form, as well as content, it may appear to deviate, sometimes even extravagantly, from the standard anticipated style. It is my contention that such liberties serve significant purpose. Consciousness, as Maturana and Varela note (1998, 206-235) emerges from the domain of language. Language is an active agent in the shaping of consciousness, thus I invite the reader to suspend any expectation or judgment they may have regarding the appropriateness of this particular language design until they’ve experienced the synergistic wholeness of the entire composition.

This paper is written in the spirit of a cosmological inquiry. It seeks to discuss the feminine in light of the evolution of the entire universe. This adds yet another dimension of difficulty as one must attempt to define “the feminine” and place it in the unfurling of the evolutionary process. On the surface, one would assume that the emergence of the feminine would parallel the appearance of sexual dimorphism—the biogenetic differentiation which, in order to ensure contact between haploids during meiosis fertilization cycles, distinguishes the two separate haploids which fuse. Sexual dimorphism evolved on this planet some one billion years ago. That would seem the legitimate, and perhaps only appropriate place to begin, for although the minimum requirements for differentiating mating types can be as small as the presence of a single protein or the existence in one position, but not in another, of a transposable piece of DNA, (Margulis and Sagan 1986a) there apparently is little scientific evidence that, during the previous fourteen billion years, the evolutionary process operated from within a context that can be rendered more intelligible by speculations about the sexuality/gender—symbolic or otherwise—involved in its interplay of opposites.

This point of departure becomes troublesome, however, when one engages the literature currently available on the subject of gender and the history of science. When we take into consideration the sociopolitical dynamics surrounding the development of Western thought and the methods of science to which the European community ultimately gave birth—what today is casually thought of as “science”—and out of which our entire understanding of the evolution of the universe has come—the concepts defining the natural world become somewhat suspect, in that the philosophy driving Western science has been shaped by an unconscious universalizing of the masculine and a correspondent prejudice toward the role and authority of the feminine (Keller 1985/95, 1996; Merchant 1980; Lerner 1986; Haraway 1989; Cavarero 1995; Tuana1989; Berry 1988, 138-162). One’s first response to such an observation might be that it’s superfluous, and that’s understandable. After all,

[S]cience simply is, a faithful reflection of nature. Gravity has (or is) a force, DNA has force, but beliefs do not.  In other words, as scientists, we are trained to see the locus of real force in the world as physical, not mental. There is of course a sense in which... [this is] right: Beliefs per se cannot exert force on the world.  But people who carry such beliefs can. Furthermore, the language in which their beliefs are encoded has the force to shape what others—as men, as women, and as scientists—think, believe, and, in turn, actually do. It may have taken the lens of feminist theory to reveal the popular association of science, objectivity, and masculinity as a statement about the social rather than natural (or biological) world, referring not to the bodily and mental capacities of individual men and women, but to a collective unconsciousness; that is, a set of beliefs given existence by language rather than by bodies, and by that language, granted the force to shape what individual men and women might (or might not) do. (Keller 1992, 25)

It is my contention that it is precisely because of the unconsciously masculine predisposition of thinkers with the influential magnitude of Aristotle (and later Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Bacon, Newton, Kant, Darwin, etc.) that we must consider the underpinnings of our scientific epistemology and accompanying ontological assumptions before we can legitimately enter into a discussion of the role of gender—or more specifically, the feminine—in the evolutionary process. Thus, I begin this inquiry by attending to the history of the scientific method which has given rise to our understanding of the evolutionary process. It is my intention in so doing, not only to demystify some of the paradigmatic dimensions of our scientific worldview, but also to reveal the hierarchical dualisms this worldview has fostered within Western thought.

 

The Relevance of Aristotle

“For the female is, as it were, a mutilated male…”
—Aristotle

Since the time of the Pythagoreans, Western culture has been inclined to describe existence in terms of hierarchical dualisms—polar opposites in which preference is granted to one side over the other. Aristotle wrote that the Pythagoreans accepted ten principles or “contrarieties” that were oppositional and in which one—in this case the first-listed term—was superior to the other. For example, “one” (the number of heaven) was superior to “plurality” (the manifestation of matter and earthly existence, that which was no longer “one” but the shattering of “one” into many). It may be useful at this point to examine the term hierarchy, for it has a variety of connotations in both the natural and social sciences. Taxonomic hierarchies entail classification, implying certain common characteristics and evolutionary relationships. Biologists note both “ecological” and “genealogical” hierarchies in order to discuss the “causal dynamics of the evolutionary process”; physiologists speak of the “nested set[s] of functional part-whole relationships,” and political scientists focus on “structured relationships of power, rule or authority— different levels of (political) control” (Corning 1995, 4). This final distinction, that of power and its structuring, is significant because, as is the case with all language, meaning lingers implicitly in words, coloring their message with nuance and subliminal implication. Human language with its metaphoric base is far from neutral; rather, it is, as Maturana and Varela (1998) suggest, profoundly intertwined and, as such, powerfully operative in the structuring of our reality. Moreover, because we so seldom examine the hidden assumptions embedded in our language, we are like fish who do not recognize the sea in which we swim—blind to our own blindness.

The ten principles that Aristotle attributed to the Pythagoreans included: limit and unlimited, odd and even, one and plurality, right and left, male and female, resting and moving, straight and curved, light and darkness, good and bad, square and oblong (1984c, 986b:23-26). We have continued this tradition, in some cases, consciously and, in others, without realizing it. We tend, for example, to value culture over nature, mind over body (or matter), life over death, the transcendent over the immanent, what is intelligible over what is palpable, independence over dependence or interdependence, activity over passivity, order over chaos, objectivity over the subjectivity, control over surrender, conscious design over spontaneous arising, clarity over mystery, reason over imagination, doing over being, competition over cooperation, work over play, private enterprise over public service, the professional over the amateur, the creative over the receptive, quantification over qualification, the conscious over the unconscious, and logical or rational thought over its opposite which we cannot even name except by what it is not, that is, the illogical or irrational. Perhaps the most consequential of these hierarchical dualisms, however, is one which shaped Western science, that is, the preference given to linearity over nonlinearity in the study of dynamical systems, and the concurrent intrigue with parts and pieces over relationships and integrated wholes.

Since Newton, common scientific expertise has advanced by using linear equations to model most natural phenomena. Indeed, classical science proceeded as if linearity were the standard case, when, in fact, it almost never is. All living systems reflect nonlinear dynamics, including the human brain. The strategy of classical reductionist thinking has been to separate the elements of such systems in order to isolate the parts and study them in a controlled environment, an environment which reduced the influences, rounded-off small differences, and allowed science to look at the flow of cause and effect in a simplified way which could either be reduced to solvable linear equations or, when that was impossible, to the statistical analysis of averages. Until the advent of computer technology, nonlinear equations were inevitably translated into linear approximations and often linearized even as they were set up, thus deceiving science into a naive confidence in their linear worldview by utterly camouflaging the presence of the more complex dynamics. The introduction of systems science and complexity has, in fact, “flipped the classical order of things on its head” (Goerner 1994, 33). We find ourselves confronted with a universe in which nonlinear interdependence is the standard case and, are acknowledging, perhaps for the first time, that it is from a nonlinear standard that understanding must be forged. Furthermore, embedded in the paradigmatic thinking of linear dynamics with its emphasis on reductionism and linear and rational thought, are a host of social and political values, mostly associated with the masculine, which must be reassessed and brought into balance with such heretofore discarded ambiguities as intuition, receptivity, embodied emotion, interiority, subjectivity and imagination. Until we address this imbalance, we are not going to be able to participate consciously (successfully and harmoniously) in the creativity we call the universe or live responsibly on (embedded in) our planetary home with its remarkable biosphere and myriad species.

I am not discounting the success and power of classical scientific method—of materialism, determinism or mechanistic reductionism.  Classical science has worked; its theoretical hypotheses have provided the human species with potent technology and abundant insights into the workings of the world.   The point of this inquiry is not to discount or disparage that which has been accomplished, but rather to expose the value of what has heretofore been discounted and disparaged. What is important is to realize that, in spite of the revolution in theoretical physics which essentially began when Einstein introduced his theory of special relativity in 1905, “our minds have been shaped and educated in a culture firmly rooted in the Newtonian worldview” (Swimme 1996, 84), a worldview that “leads us to believe we can isolate causes, predict precisely, reduce [things] to independent elements, and control change” (Goerner 1994, 14). We live our lives accordingly, ignoring the implications of our nonlinear world, failing to recognize that we are embedded in a self-organizing universe, a pulsing creativity of relationships that are engaged in an order-producing process of learning which transcends human understanding and dwarfs our capacity to be in control. We are operating from a limited point of view, and, for the most part, are caught in a naive hubris that prevents us from entering fully into the truth of what we do know. We fail to recognize that we ourselves are but an expression of the awesome creativity that brought us into existence. Such understanding requires a shift in focus which, although subtle, carries with it dramatic ramifications.

One of the most significant contributions of complexity science has been the recognition that creativity and coherence cannot be successfully guided (hence controlled) by the human enforcement of simplistic cause-and-effect codes of behavior. Such numinous dynamics (as creativity and coherence) emerge out of the self-regulating, self-organization of the system/process itself. Of equal significance is the realization that  systems/processes interact one-with-the-other in a chain of interconnectivity and reiterative influence which links all of existence, hence exposing the utter inadequacy of rounding off the dynamics of reality so that they fit within the confines of a two-body “solvable” problem. Although it is evident that nonlinearity leads to brilliantly intelligent expressions of creativity which transcend our capacity for analysis, we still hold many of the characteristics that birth such mysterious fecundity, pejoratively. We still tend to reduce nonlinear dynamics to something more rational and linear some “thing” with familiar attributes. There is also the stereotypical association between such dynamics and “the way women think” and/or communicate—for example: in thoughts that “meander,” that is, branch in a variety of directions rather than directly addressing a point; in intuitive leaps of thinking that have no scientific basis because they cannot adequately be measured or analyzed; in the desire for context, metaphor, story and poetics; in the need for complex causality, or for subjectivity and intimacy; or simply in the intrinsic sense of interconnectivity that speaks of characteristics such as nurturing and the creation of family structures which extend and dissolve boundaries and allow for the emergence of self-expression and self-discovery. The elegance of such recursive, relational dynamics will be addressed in more detail later in this paper, let us simply note here, that our cultural prejudices concerning intelligence and creativity and their appropriate intellectual expression, inevitably correspond to our symbolic rendering of the masculine and feminine. To understand this tendency, it becomes essential to look more closely at the sexism inherent in Aristotle.

Although he was not the first Western authority figure to present a disabling image of women, Aristotle was significant in that he used the rigors of rational and logical empiricism to establish the factual and objective truth of his hypotheses concerning the feminine. His primary thesis was that the female was a special case, as it were, of the more generic male, an impaired derivation of the standard—“for the female is, as it were, a mutilated male” (1984a, 737a:27-28), a “monstrosity;” that is, a departure (albeit necessary) from type (1984a, 767b:5-8), who has no active role in the generation of offspring. The female is not only irrelevant to the core of Aristotle’s thinking, but irrelevant to the generation of life. Her womb is passive, nothing but a vehicle designed to nurture the active, vital and divine male sperm. Aristotle’s central biological premise is that heat is the fundamental principle in the perfection of animals. It is heat that enables the animal to develop complexity. Heat “concocts” (that is develops) matter. The more heat an animal generates, the more developed, that is, perfect, it is. Unlike Plato, Aristotle believed the soul was inseparable from the body; thus, he saw the differences of the soul’s perfection reflected in the body. One can see how Aristotle—a student of Plato’s Academy, an Athenian aristocrat, a free man with a great deal of privilege —might have come to the conviction that the human male, whom Plato had credited with being the most perfect expression of the soul, was consequently the most perfect of all biological forms.

Aristotle observed that the male sperm is white hot, “in its final stage”—that is, “properly concocted” (1984a, 726b:3&6), whereas menstrual blood, which “is analogous in females to semen in males” (1984a, 727a:3-4), is neither white hot nor properly concocted.  The fact that menstrual blood is profuse and is blood, is proof that it has not been concocted to the same degree of perfection. Thus, Aristotle concludes, men obviously generate more heat than women, making them biologically more perfect.  He inventories other manifestations of this difference in heat that demonstrate the superiority of the male: the female is smaller, “less muscular and less compactly jointed, and more thin and delicate of hair...more flaccid in texture of flesh, and more knock-kneed.” A female does not live as long as a male and “the deficient development of her body compared with a man’s is obvious” (1984a, 727a:25). Women have small heads, narrow visage, thin necks, weak chests, small sides, full hips and thighs, and small feet (1984b, 538a:23-538b:11). These deficiencies infect the female intellectual facility as well: the more heat, the purer the heart, the purer the heart, the larger the brain, the larger the brain, the more intellect. Simple logic: “the male is by nature superior, and the female inferior…the one rules, the other is ruled” (1984d, 1254b:6-14).

This foundation persisted well into nineteenth and twentieth century Darwinian (and Neo-Darwinian) thought. Caught in an epistemology based on hierarchical values, evolutionary biologists and anthropologists easily entertained the belief that the European male was superior not only to women, but to other ethnicities. Although the history of our dualistic values has been neither static nor consistent the categorization of gender (that is, attributing certain traits either to the male or the female and favoring those associated with the male) has been, and remains, a basic metaphysical, albeit sometimes subliminal, cultural institution. And although we assume that our texts, our language, the demands of our logic, and even our basic grammatical and sentence structuring are (or should be) gender-neutral, the fact remains, they are not—a truism perhaps more evident to women, than to men.

As Tuana explains:

If, as entreated by Descartes, I attempt to eradicate all the influences of my body, if I attempt to proceed as a disinterested reader, as a genderless, thinking being, I will be quickly stymied by the fact that the texts of philosophy too often contain the depiction of woman as incapable of the type of cognitive ability required to be a Cartesian reader. I, a woman, cannot ignore my body when I am told that the female body precludes or impedes my ability to be rational, to be moral, to participate within the realm of politics. Reading as a woman, being embodied readers, undermines the image of the reader, as well as the text as genderless. (1992, 114)

“Healing must be sought in the blood of the wound itself...”
—Nor Hall, Mothers and Daughters

Years ago, I read a short piece by a contemporary woman novelist recalling how, as a child, she pretended to be Achilles doing battle in the basement with a water heater which she had cast in the role of Paris.  Whenever I think of this anecdote, I see the basement of my own childhood home, and see myself, plastic sword in hand, doing battle with a water heater.  I know it didn’t really happen that way. I didn’t turn our water heater into a Trojan, nor was I particularly obsessed with Achilles.  In truth, it is more likely that a sudden intruder into my private fantasy realm would have found me scrambling across the back of our overstuffed sofa—my surrogate for a desert sphinx—calling out in the words of George Bernard Shaw’s Cleopatra, “At last! I am a real queen!” Although these imaginary games may seem to reflect opposing gender influences, their underlying correlation, though subtle, is telling: in both cases, we see young women discovering their identity by incorporating images that have been mediated by the male sensibility. It may seem a small thing, but, imagine for a moment that the only images of the masculine present in the celebrated literature of our culture had been forged from within the female psyche.

Here is a thought exercise: Imagine, if you will, that Achilles, Odysseus, Oedipus, Hamlet, Romeo, Lear, Arthur and Lancelot, or the men who people the novels of Joyce, Hemmingway and Dostoevsky, Kafka or Thomas Pynchon, et. al.—in short, that the mythic and literary image of the male—had been characterized by a hostile or condescending feminist hand. Imagine if the options young men faced growing up were either to identify with the females of their culture or to adopt the caricatures of their sex as presented by women, even sympathetic women, who, like Emily and Charlotte Brontë, brought forth the brooding but ineffectual Heathcliff and Mr. Rochester. Imagine if the men of history were considered irrelevant, and their works, like the writings of third century mathematical genius, Hypatia —who has of late been credited with directly influencing the work of Copernicus—were completely invisible, unknown, subsumed. Imagine that Aristotle’s influence still lingered in that men were judged primarily by externals, that what was important if you were a man, was how you looked, and that what you knew was not only secondary, but likely to be discounted if it had not been determined important and/or true by a woman.

Shaw’s Cleopatra is little more than a child, not so distant from his more famously rendered Eliza Doolittle. The time and the setting have shifted; the storyline is a bit different. But the characterization of the feminine is very much the same. Cleopatra, who has no idea how to rule, no capacity for the subtleties of power, politics, or authority, is simply a beautiful, young maiden awed by the sexual virility of Caesar, beside herself with petulance and pouty silliness; insecure, impotent and, in her childlikeness, sexually alluring. There’s nothing in Shaw’s portrayal of Cleopatra to indicate that she, although not a celebrated playwright, she may have been an author.  Chrysopeia (GoldMaking) is one of the Gnostic texts (coincidentally, most Gnostic philosophy assigns equal importance to both the female and the male principle) that has been attributed to this famous “femme fatale” (Merchant 1980, 17).

“The woman I needed to call my mother was silenced before I was born,” writes poet Adrienne Rich (In Perera 1981, 7). And so it goes: In a recent interaction with a colleague, I mentioned that I was reading a book on women and the history of philosophy. “Must be a short book,” he quipped with a droll smile. Academia, except in the most progressive institutions, seems oddly intent on marginalizing the contributions of women, still championing the tradition that European history is bereft of significant women thinkers. The women who, on occasion, rate a reference in the history of Western cultural thought are indeed rare. Most women either go unacknowledged or, like Cleopatra, are modified to conform to a predictable image. Not long ago, in a conversation with another colleague, I defended the relevancy of exposing Aristotle’s attitudes toward women. My colleague felt such material was tangential to the understanding Aristotle and, for that matter, Western culture. There simply wasn’t time, he told me, in a year-long course surveying the history of Western thought, to concern oneself with the more obscure and irrelevant aspects of Aristotle’s philosophy. I left the conversation not only dissatisfied, but with an urgent sense that, in fact, there is something absolutely essential to the comprehension of Western thought embedded in the manner in which Aristotle characterized and scientifically defined females and, further, something even more crucial about the fact that our cultural predilection to dismiss the feminine is still considered irrelevant. This may seem obscure, but it is an important point, a significant and pernicious expression of objectification, an example of what happens when a culture systematically disavows the subjectivity, the psychic interiority, the autonomous point of view of the Other—in this case, the feminine. It is evident in the prevailing attitude of our post-modern, technological culture, which assumes the earth to be nothing more than a resource for the human species. It is present in our treatment of animals as food sources or objects of medical research, as equipment and machinery, or as entertainment. 

It is evident, too, in the insight that led Louis Leaky to hire the now famous primatologist, Jane Goodall, to study chimpanzees in their natural habitat. Leaky sought a researcher who could “relinquish control.” He chose a young, inexperienced woman, because he wanted someone who could tolerate an approach that allowed for “choice and the nurturing of a relationship on the Other’s terms” (Montgomery 1991, xvi). Goodall was “receptive” in the classic Chinese sense of the word. She approached the chimps in a way that allowed them to come forward on their own terms and reveal themselves. Leaky made a wise choice in Goodall; she was intuitive and empathetic. It is questionable whether a scientist shaped by mechanistic methodologies and Newtonian assumptions could have grasped what was necessary, could have exhibited the restraint and the open, spaciousness which allowed the chimps to enter into relationship.

In the discussion of coevolution, one finds terminology describing the necessity of “vacant ecologies,” open niches in the environment where new forms can find their footing. In fact, the Cambrian Explosion is thought to have been possible in its magnitude because multicellular life found such a vacant ecology and exploited it. The term vacant ecology needs to be associated with our understanding of receptivity—what we’ve tended to call passivity. When Jane Goodall made psychic space for the chimpanzees in her consciousness, in her languaging, and in her assumptions, she was essentially presenting them with a vacant ecology, following Nobel Laureate Barbara McClintock’s advice and letting the material “lead” her. McClintock discovered one of the elements now understood to be responsible for sexual differentiation in haploid cells, that is, the existence of transposons, moveable genetic elements or “jumping genes.” Known for getting “down in the cell and looking around” (Keller 1983), McClintock’s methodology was unique, and, I would argue, archetypally feminine, in that she, like Goodall, was essentially practicing receptivity. McClintock worked by consciously choosing to “follow the material.” In essence, she thought like a woman. As she explains it:

You let the material tell you where to go, and it tells you at every step what the next [step] has to be because you’re integrating with an overall brand new pattern in mind. You’re not following an old one; you are convinced of a new one. And you let everything you do focus on that. You can’t help it, because it all integrates (Keller, 1983, 125). I feel that much of the work is done because one wants to impose an answer on it…. They [the researchers] have the answer ready and they [know what they] want the material to tell them. [Anything else it tells them] they don’t want to recognize as there, or they think it’s a mistake and they throw it out. (Keller 1983, 179)

We are, for the most part, engaged in imposing a flurry of techniques upon every situation in which we find ourselves. We rush to explain what we see, to prove what we know, to demonstrate our expertise—in short, to control the situation. We have little understanding of what it means to exercise restraint, to allow what is present to emerge spontaneously of its own accord, to order itself. We have little grasp of what it means to learn—especially from that which is subtle or elusive. In essence, we have silenced not only our mothers, but most of the natural world. In fact, we have silenced every voice except the one voice we must—our own. Our dominant culture, through its privileged members, has declared its position objective, that is, central, neutral and universal. And, from that exalted position, it has disseminated a “sense of the world cut to [its] own measure and revealed in [its] own mythic figures” (Cavarero 1995, 2), in short, a world with which it is comfortable.

Western cultural elites (primarily men) proceed on the premise that they have the right to deny the subjectivity of what they call the Other. This is but one example of the sociological implications of our conviction that evolution is simply a matter of the survival of the fittest. It is one of the more striking implications of objectification: the subordination and subsumption of the subjectivity, that is, of the authentic self-governing existence of the Other. Objectification represents a fear of intimacy, because true intimacy, like true learning, is only possible when the Other is recognized, honored, valued. Goodall recognized the psychic interiority and intelligence, the sensitivity and internal coherence of the chimpanzee “worldview,” of their reality. And since the publication of her findings, startling new and controversial evidences of the self-reflective awareness of chimpanzees—these creatures we’ve been, and still are, subjecting to imprisonment and medical experimentation—have surfaced. Not only do chimpanzees have family systems and emotions, the capacity to design tools, use sign language and comprehend simple numbers, they recognize themselves in their mirrored reflection, thus challenging most of our coveted definitions, if not of humanness itself, then, at least, of what we’ve labeled “conscious awareness” (Fouts 1997; Montgomery, 1991; Haraway 1989).

Women, who have been for many centuries now, the recipient of much oblivious objectification, tend to value the personal and private, the unique over statistical average, the concrete over the theoretical or abstract. Feminist methodology allows—even invites—biographical and idiosyncratic detail. It solicits the discussion of what is apparently singular, thus allowing researchers to open themselves to subjective and qualitative interpretations. Perhaps women simply place a higher value on intimacy. It makes a certain sense: the female carries the next generation to term in her womb.

One could anticipate a genetic predisposition for accepting a hazy barrier between self and Other, while at the same time attending to the need for the differentiation of the unique individual who issues forth. One could hypothesize a genetic capacity for recognizing interdependency. This is, however, a slippery slope: Darwin argued for an evolutionary dynamic he referred to as female choice, describing the evolutionary role the female plays by selecting her mate. Ultimately this became justification for male promiscuity and for expecting female chastity. It led to a proliferation of new “scientific” theories vindicating Aristotle’s original contention that women were biologically inferior to men, demonstrating how biological function determines social roles.

Biological determinism fails to acknowledge the cultural complexity of gender.  By focusing on women’s reproductive capacity and assuming reproduction and motherhood as a woman’s chief reason d’être, female subordination can appear “scientifically” reasonable. Contemporary feminist-anthropologists are successfully challenging many of the basic assumptions and generalizations of biological determinism, and justifiably so. The Darwinian idea of survival of the fittest, which defines women through their maternal role, maintains that the feminine obligation to maternity is in the “best interests of the species’ survival,” and hence, genetically encoded. This thinking fails to acknowledge the way cultural influences are (have been) separating both sexes from their genetic nature. Further, as Lerner points out, “the human brain develops for many years during the child’s period of infancy and complete dependency, and… it is therefore subject to modifications through learning and intense cultural molding in a way that is decisively different from animal development” (Lerner 39, 1986). Sociobiology is a recent and sophisticated manifestation of the traditionalist view. It’s founder, E.O. Wilson (2000/1975) has argued that such complex human behaviors as altruism, loyalty and maternalism are “adaptive” for group survival and hence “encoded in the genes.”

It is understandable why feminist theorists chafe: given the prejudices operative in Western culture, the exploitation of biological difference easily becomes yet another millstone hung from the necks of modern women, justifying the exclusion of women from a wide range of economic and political opportunities. The controversy around biological determinism is complex and beyond the scope of this paper. What can be acknowledged here, is, that there is a rich literature focusing on the necessity to distinguish between sexual attributes which are biological givens and gender identity, which is a cultural construct and product of historical process. Nevertheless, throughout the mammalian world, the female is the primary parent responsible for nurturing. And although my reasoning is obviously vulnerable to feminist critique in that it tends, on the surface at least, to support those sociobiological claims currently suspect, it is reasonable to speculate that the cultivation of intimacy may indeed be an evolutionary strategy introduced through the mother-child bond. As Swimme and Berry note:

These qualities for intimate association with others, for sympathetic response to the needs of others, is shown especially in the child-parent relation as these exist in the mammalian world, particularly with the maternal parent, since the survival of the offspring depends directly on personal intimacy between mother and child. (1992, 156)

Feminist historian Gerda Lerner acknowledges the same dynamic and takes the issue even further:

The first characteristic distinguishing humans from other primates is the prolonged and helpless infancy of the child. This is the direct result of bipedalism, which led to the narrowing of the female pelvis and birth canal due to upright posture. One result of this was that human babies were born at a greater stage of immaturity than other primates, with relatively smaller heads in order to ease passage through the birth canal. Further, in contrast to the most highly developed apes, human babies are born naked and therefore must experience a greater need for warmth.  They cannot grasp their mothers for steady support, lacking the apes’ movable toe, so mothers must use their hands or, later, mechanical substitutes for hands to cradle their infants against them (1986, 38-9)…. Only the mother’s arms and care sheltered the infant from cold; only her breast milk could provide the nourishment needed for survival. Her indifference or neglect meant certain death. (1986, 40)

I would suggest that the problem with our thinking and our accompanying symbolism may not be the fact that women are thought of and represented as genetically encoded to be nurturing, but that the feminine has been housebound—housebroken—and in spite of her postmodern escape into sex object—stripped of her genius, her history, her numinous fecundity. She has been denied her depth. In many of the ancient indigenous cultures, the sacred feminine was personified as a triple goddess intimately associated with the phases of the moon. Just as the moon transforms from one phase to another, the feminine expressed itself in a three-part harmony: the maiden, the mother, and the matriarch. The maiden was strong, willful and self-defined; the mother, the source of all nourishment; the matriarch, the sibylline holder of mystery, death and transformative rebirth. Awed by her own capacity to bring forth life, indigenous woman honored the feminine force; she honored her womb and her menstrual blood (which cycled in rhythm with the moon) and so, too, her breasts which miraculously brought forth nourishment.

In ancient Egypt, the moon goddess, Isis, was the mother and giver of all life. She not only gave birth to the sun; she resurrected her murdered husband (her brother). So bountiful was her essence, the tears of her grief brought forth the life-giving floods of the Nile. Isis was but one of the many Mediterranean goddesses subsumed by the Athenian Greeks, her power as an overarching goddess shattered into a myriad of sub-personalities, who were either dependent upon males, subservient to them, or separated from them. Artemis is the virgin goddess directly descended from the early Greek (pre-patriarchal) triple-moon creatrix. She is still a virgin, but virginity no longer means one-in-herself and independent, one who chooses of her own accord when (and with whom) she will be sexual and when she will refrain. It now refers to chastity, to an intact hymen. Artemis is now a separate, solitary female, a protector of the wild things whose connection to the male has been severed, an isolated female who is given a “feeble, even ridiculous part in the Iliad” (Spretnak 1992/78, 76)—she who had been worshipped with wild and ecstatic dance—a source of immortality, secret knowledge and inspiration, she who symbolized the moon in its crescent phase.

What is of concern here is the incessant tenacity with which science has carried forward the metaphoric divisions between the standard, “active” driving male-force and the derivative, “passive” neutral, female background on which that active force enacts its essence. To illustrate, let us consider the passivity of the moon, because, as we have seen, the moon is a primordial symbol of the feminine. Newtonian cosmology teaches us that the moon reflects the sun’s rays. The moon is understood as an object in atomist thinking, an aggregate of unchanging atoms. In this depiction, the moon is easily recognized as nothing but a dead object in the sky.  Its major activity is to reflect the light of the sun off its surface.  If this simplified image is examined more carefully, however, several things become immediately obvious.  First of all, it becomes essential to review our understanding of an atom. Our language tells us that an atom, like the moon, is an object, but quantum mechanics has made such a definition untenable. Elementary particles “are not permanently existing objects but are events” (Swimme 1996, 102).

   They do not travel in space, but rather exist, cease to exist and exist again in another location. “[P]articles and atoms are flashing into existence, surging into existence, and then just as suddenly they are dissolving from their place to surge forth in a nearby location” (Swimme 1996, 102). Like our knowledge that the sun is not setting, but rather the earth is turning on its axis, this is a scientific understanding that has not penetrated our awareness.  Scientists and educators seldom note the implications that such a shift in perception hold within it. And, indeed, we have little impetus to acknowledge the moon as an active occurrence when our interest in it is solely objective—that is to say, when we either romanticize its presence in our poetry, literature, and entertainment or think of it as a potential resource to be mined for human benefit. Swimme is one of the few mathematical physicists who does not define the moon in Newtonian terms. “The moon,” he writes,

[I]s not a dead object, but instead an ongoing scintillating event. It is false to think of photons as “bouncing” the way a ball would bound when thrown against a wall. Instead, the photons from the Sun “interact” with the particles of the Moon. As with every interaction at the quantum level of reality, the process of this interaction begins with the annihilation of the particles as they are absorbed into the all-nourishing abyss and is followed by the creation of a new set of particles.  If this new set contains any photons, these photons are new. They did not exist in the previous instant but, rather, came forth out of the annihilating event of the interaction. Thus, it is not true to say that the photons of light arriving here from the Moon have just been bounced off the Sun. Moonlight comes from the Moon, for moonlight is created by the Moon. (1996, 102-3)

Our historical insistence on the passivity of the feminine womb is oddly coincidental to our unmindful acceptance of the passivity of space and our lingering Newtonian comprehension of “the quantum vacuum,” which renders it emptied and barren. Neo-Darwinian thinking tells us the environment and the biosphere are basically inactive backdrops for a genetic “arms race” and the evolutionary ascension of “man.” Our contemporary myths regarding the entire, non-human world soothe us into believing that everything that is not human is but a passive resource which we can manipulate with audacious indifference solely for own (apparent) benefit. As with the sun and the moon, in each case, a subliminal, hierarchical duality is operative, one which can ultimately be associated with our mythic expressions of masculine and feminine.

A Mutually Beneficial Joint Venture

“When we see with one eye, our vision is limited in range and devoid of depth.”
—Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy

As stated earlier, I would argue there is an overarching synergistic relationship between the feminine and the masculine that is impacting evolution. In considering such a synergistic relationship, an obvious place to begin is with sexual reproduction. Corning identifies sexual reproduction as an evolutionarily co-operative phenomenon which is “by and large, a mutually beneficial joint venture” (Corning 1997, 367). Sexuality is, after all, the fundamental expression of human creative-potential. Reproduction and birth are undoubtedly the most overt expressions of creativity human beings can directly access, and significantly they require the participation of both the masculine and the feminine. When one includes human consciousness in the discussion of the union of the sexes, however, the question of creativity—that is, the construction of new form and structure—enters an altogether different dimension, that of human culture. 

The hypothesis that human consciousness is an expression of structural coupling has been laid out in some detail by Maturana and Varela (1998, 179-239). Briefly encapsulated, structural coupling is interaction which triggers structural changes in autopoietic systems without bringing about a disintegration of their inherent unity. This interaction does not “specify or direct” the system; the self-organizing dynamics of the system direct it. Structural coupling refers to an on-going relationship in which learning takes place: “We speak of structural coupling whenever there is a history of recurrent interactions leading to the structural congruence between two (or more) systems” (1998, 75). Human culture represents a special case, an expression of what Maturana and Varela call third-order structural coupling. Consciousness, by their definition, emerges from the domain of language and occurs in social systems, that is, in culture (1998, 181, 209). I am not prepared to defend their definition of consciousness. Nevertheless, it is on the basis of such third-order structural coupling that I would argue that male and female consciousness, when joined (through language, art, metaphor or philosophy, for example) are a co-operative phenomenon, operative not only in the creation of culture, but—because of their synergistic dynamic—in the transformative growth of individual living beings, and in the evolutionary process itself.

Abram (1996), Swimme (1992), Swimme and Berry (1996), Berry (1988), and Maturana and Varela (1998), all argue, in one way or another, that human perception is a matter of relationship.  Thus, it could be said that what a hawk perceives when it is watching a mouse scamper across the field far below, is due to the evolutionary relationship, in this case, the predator-prey dynamic that has long existed between the two.  Were I in my hang-glider to pace the hawk and watch the ground below, what I would see would be different.  My ocular system is not equipped to catch the nuances of a mouse hundreds of feet below me.  The tendency in our anthropocentric fixation is to assume that what the human sees is the “what” of what is out there, and what the hawk sees is a deviation from the standard (albeit a necessary one established by natural selection). Thus the hawk’s perception becomes nothing more than an evolutionary departure from the “generic” (ontologically accurate) human perception. In fact, what the human sees is no more standard than what the hawk sees. Both are the result of the dynamics between the individuals involved and their environment; that is to say, both are an expression of structural coupling.

Simplistically speaking—for the ocular system must be considered as a whole, structurally-coupling system—there are physiological differences between the retina of the hawk and the retina of the human which contribute to their differences in perception.  The same is true between women and men.  Women have more rods in their retina, while men have more cones. Rods are “extremely sensitive to light,” and consequently can “detect the slightest movement in the visual field.” Women have better peripheral vision. They are better wired to see the whole, to see, as it were, “all-at-once.” Cones allow for focus. They “intensify clarity” and color, hence men tend to be better at focusing on one thing at time (Shlain 1998). Though admittedly oversimplified, this suggests that there may indeed be subtle differences in the way the sexes perceive the world, just as there are differences in the way a hawk and a human perceive the world.  The point that Swimme and Berry (1992) Swimme (1996), Berry (1990), Abram (1996), and others are calling into focus is that we are dependent upon the diversity of existence for the fullness of our experience of being.  Without the Other to enter into relationship with, we are nothing. We cannot exist.  As Swimme puts it, “to be, is to be related” (1992, 77). He tells us, for example, that,

Mountains can… be understood as agencies in the world, participating in the ongoingness of the universe. That is, mountains act… in a multivalent way. They sculpt cycles of the hydrosphere and atmosphere.  They shape the climates and thus the biology of the local region. And particular mountains also stun at least some of the animals. A human being, for instance, can climb a mountain and get hit by something so profound, at so deep a level, that the human will never be quite the same. This precise feeling will not occur on the ocean or in a cave or a valley. Other sorts of experience will take place there.  This specific mountain moment will emerge only in the presence of the mountain; it is evoked out of potentiality by the mountain. The dynamic of the mountain is accomplishing something in the universe, is acting, is altering reality. (1992, 41)

Maturana and Varela (1998) are in essence saying the same thing: that cognition, consciousness, perception, experience—being itself—are evoked through structural coupling—through, I would argue, the synergistic dynamic which arises when interaction takes place.  Sight is a matter of structural coupling and thus must be considered from a holistic perspective as a system that is informed not simply by the physicality of the ocular mechanisms, but by the cognitive (as defined by Maturana and Varela 1998) dynamics of the system’s relationship to the Other. That is to say, there are cognitive dimensions to the way the ocular system couples with the environment and with other systems within that environment (i.e., the mouse) which determine sight. As defined by Maturana and Varela, both the cellular structure—the “living system” and the environment—“the background”—are characterized by “definite organization,” and are consequently systems, “operationally independent of each other” (1998, 95) but able to impact one another.  Internal changes are ultimately determined by the self-organizing (autopoietic) properties inherent in the system—not by the outside force, but by the system’s inner response to that force.

To follow up on the fact that men and women may perceive reality somewhat differently, and the fact that they are an expression of a single species that has evolved through sexual dimorphism, it is my argument that the union of the two, the synergy of the two sexes, is necessary for more than simply reproducing the species. Sexual dimorphism, in this context, can be seen as an overarching evolutionary strategy.  For example, let’s return to the concept of sight for a moment and imagine our earliest ancestry entering into tribal community, the processes of cooperative survival, and the nurturing of their young. As already noted, human infants are helpless when they are born; they require nurturing and attentive care in order to survive.  Also, in order for cultural systems to develop, there is a need to pass on certain kinds of information; learning must take place. Corning, in discussing the research of Egbert Leigh, speaks of the development of “government,” that is, the emergence of “sufficient incentive” for overriding “individual advantage” in order that the collective succeed, because the capacity of the collective is more significant (and individually beneficial) than the capacity of the individual on its own. (Corning 1999, 17) For example, emperor penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri) huddle together in the cold winter months to form “heat-sharing colonies.” These colonies are significantly more efficient than what an individual penguin could produce alone (Corning 1999, 6). Thus it could be implied that the social behavior of individual penguins will conform to the group demands in order to participate in the advantage the group provides.

Can we imagine that females, keeping track of, and educating wandering juveniles, needed to see the whole terrain, and thus began to favor the presence of rods in the retina? Can we imagine too, that the males, in tracking prey, needed the capacity to strike the killing point of their target, and thus began to favor the presence of cones?  What I am suggesting is that this is but one example of how the sexes, once separated into their gendered differentiation, moved in subtly different directions, thus fulfilling two of the major categories that Corning identifies as aspects of synergy: 1) the division of labor, and 2) information sharing (1999, 5-6). It is possible that the unique, evolutionary differences between the sexes are not arbitrary, nor the result of one sex deviating from a standard, appropriate expression. Rather, what we could be observing in these differences are survival strategies that have evolved in the human species and are necessary in order to evoke evolutionary synergy—for synergy is, we must remember, an “important source of causation in the ongoing evolutionary process” (Corning 1999, 13). When we human beings consciously unite in perceptual awareness (and experience the consciousness of a collective consciousness) we are—within the parameters of our species behavior—acting no differently than the penguins who huddle together in the winter to create a group temperature that allows the entire population to succeed.

Conscious, psychically-aware (that is internally self-aware) coupling between the sexes creates a unity that I would call conscious synergy, and, it is a unique unity, precisely because it is self-aware and, consequently, intensely intimate. Maturana and Varela note that intimacy personalizes the Other, and plays a fundamental role in creating conditions that lead to “the appearance of a self as a distinction in a linguistic domain” (1998, 222). In speaking of a union between the sexes, it is important to recognize that I am not limiting this unity to sexual copulation. If anything, I am redefining the sexual act in order to include and acknowledge the phenomenon of conscious synergy, that is, the energetic exchange present in a conscious, psychically-aware coupling between the sexes. I am equating this conscious coupling with sexual union for two reasons. First, such coupling potentially gives birth to tremendous creativity, to the creation of cultural novelty, that is, new structure and form within the culture and within the unfolding of the evolutionary process. Secondly, in beings as complex, as conscious, and as language-dependent as the human, conscious coupling is not only a creative force, but a profoundly intimate force. I am suggesting intimacy be added to Corning’s list of aliases as a psychological term which represents the essence of conscious synergy.

Concluding Thoughts

“The crisis of modern man is an essentially masculine crisis.”
—Rick Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind

My argument is ultimately quite simple. For the human community to exist in a way that actually serves the evolutionary process, an intertwining, interpenetrating synergy of masculine and feminine perspective is absolutely crucial. We need a synergistic understanding of our species sexual dimorphism, one which recognizes the contribution of the feminine, in its difference, as epistemologically valid and utterly essential, not simply for an academic understanding of Aristotle or Western thought, but for the healthy perpetuation of the entire human project.  I would venture to say, given the grievous state of the planet, our lives and the lives of our earthly companions depend upon our recognizing the authority and autonomous subjectivity of feminine wisdom. What is being called for is no small task: the economics of our cultural structures have taught both sexes to fill every existing niche with competitive—survival of the fittest—aggression and activity. A shift in paradigm to a more co-operative receptivity (a more balanced integration of the feminine) will require a new found appreciation for restraint, as well as an active openness to the voice of the enigmatic Other. The kind of restraint I am suggesting is not superficial. We will not come by it easily. It may even feel like a necessary sacrifice of fundamental qualities, not unlike the sacrifice oxygen makes to enter into the dynamic of water.

Western culture, and particularly North American cultural, has romanticized rugged individualism and the image of the lone male creator/hero. The pervasive influence of Judeo-Christian mythology that posits a single, creator male begetting without the benefit of the feminine, is, I would argue, subversively dysfunctional. Most of us—men and women, alike—do not recognize the extent to which we assume that archetypally masculine attributes, whether expressed by men or women, are superior and more trustworthy than the less understood feminine attributes. We tend to revert to the masculine when we are under stress, or suffering from impatience or when we sense danger. In other words, we tend to turn to men and/or to the masculine perspectives (i.e. competition or rational thought) without questioning the imbalance of our actions. We must forge a new dimension of intimacy between the sexes, a new, consciously-balanced synergy. What we need is genuine gender-reconciliation, that is, an authentic rebalancing of the power structures that currently exist between the genders (as well as between ethnicities and between humans and the other species inhabiting the planet). Such a reconciliation will require abandoning the metaphoric underpinnings of our hierarchical thinking. What we must achieve is an uncorrupted democratic form of cooperative being, an interior self-government, not rule by “law,” but by a synergistically-awakened conscious awareness that grasps the necessity of collective and interspecies benefit. As Corning explains, there is a survival of the fittest which is concerned not with the individual, but with the cooperative unit—where “the co-operators… [are] the fittest” (1999, 12).

The I Ching has long held that the duality we see in opposites is ultimately one whole; that in all of these conceptually-conceived linguistic metaphors we have established to describe the oppositions we observe in nature and in the dimorphism of our mating, what we are confronting is no different than particle-wave phenomena, the energy-matter unity. This understanding of unity, of synergy, is identical to the intellectual impulse that drove Einstein and continues to drive theoretical physicists to find a unifying field theory.  It is evident in Corning’s observation of the “balance struck by the two cosmic forces of dispersion (powered by the ‘Big Bang’) and gravity (which holds localized parts of the whole together)” (1999, 13). And here, I touch but briefly on my last argument.  I stated at the opening of this paper that it was difficult at best to justify imposing a sexual metaphor on the evolution of the universe, apparently inappropriate to imagine that there had been anything of feminine and masculine interplay in the earliest unfoldings of the universe. Allow me, if you will, the liberty of two metaphoric observations that I assume are already obvious: first, that the Big Bang is a hopelessly masculinized metaphor for the beginning and holds within it the implication of a masculine orgasm spewing forth its divine, life-giving sperm into the vacant passivity of the feminine nothingness. And secondly, that if the feminine is to be properly represented in this metaphorical configuration, it hinges on Corning’s observation: balance is struck between two cosmic forces: the force of dispersion (the masculine energy) and of gravity (the feminine). Thus what we see here is not a hierarchical duality, but a dimorphistic synergy responsible for the whole of existence.