one after the other
For Aristotle, the ways in which bees construct their hive in order to shelter their honey and youth, is parallel with the method in plants that produce leaves in order to surround and protect their fruits. Instinctive dispositions in animals like the construction of a hive, the construction of a nest, are comparable to certain modes of growth, which, have a visible finality in plants. What animals do by various movements such as the way bees construct their hive and benefit from the honey comb inside, is the construction of a structure comparable to what we see develop in the growth of a plant, a process with a view towards generation, reproduction. The animal and vegetal world are different, but there is a functional identity.. between these distinct operatory modes. In the less developed, least differentiated animals, the functions that liberate and define other animal forms such as imagination, anticipation. This phantasia aisthetike does not exist in ants worms, or bees, states Aristotle... They work and construct like a plant grows. The society of ants or the society of bees constructs its hive like a plant grows and constructs its branches and leaves during its development. This is where instinct appears. Instinct is a certain faculty of constructing as if it were a way of developing, like that of a plant. What is instinct in animals, is, in plants, the fact of growing in such and such a way, of developing a certain foliar scheme, formula, of the given vegetal form, with very specific characteristics. Consequently, instinct, in as much as it is an operatory mode of construction of a hive or an anthill, instinct is equivalent to a structure of development. It is specific. Instinct is part of specificity, it is a drive in animals and more specifically social animals, which is equivalent to growth defined by specific lines in the plant.
Two Lessons on Animal and Man / Simondon / Univocal Publishing
They
alone hold children in common: own the roofs
of
their city as one: and pass their life under the might of the law.
They
alone know a country, and a settled home,
and
in summer, remembering the winter to come,
undergo
labour, storing their gains for all.
For
some supervise the gathering of food, and work
in
the fields to an agreed rule: some, walled in their homes,
lay
the first foundations of the comb, with drops of gum
taken
from narcissi, and sticky glue from tree-bark,
then
hang the clinging wax: others lead the mature young,
their
nation’s hope, others pack purest honey together,
and
swell the cells with liquid nectar:
there are those whose lot is to guard the gates,
and
in turn they watch out for rain and clouds in the sky,
or
accept the incoming loads, or, forming ranks,
they
keep the idle crowd of drones away from the hive.
virgil georgics, book 1V
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