Homeostasis, Homeokinesis, and Individuality. In
his book on living phenomena common to animals and
vegetation, mentioned above, Claude Bernard had
guessed that the maintenance of stable conditions in
the body fluids and cells was in some way dependent
upon neural control: “In the animal which has attained
a completely independent life, the nervous system is
called upon to achieve harmony among all these con-
ditions” (Olmsted, in Grande and Visscher, p. 27).
This view was developed much further by the physi-
ologist Walter B. Cannon in his classical work on the
role played by the sympathetic nervous system in
maintaining the internal equilibrium of the body. Can-
non introduced the word “homeostasis” to describe this
phenomenon in his The Wisdom of the Body (1932).
Homeostatic mechanisms are not merely passive.
They involve on the part of the body and the mind
powerful reactions which aim at warding off the envi-
ronmental threat, or at repairing the damage it has
done. In this respect the concept of homeostasis recalls
the Hippocratic view that disease involves not only
suffering (pathos) but also work (ponos). Ponos is the
work expended by the organism in its attempts to
maintain its identity in an ever-changing world.
The responses to biological and mental environ-
mental changes must naturally help the organism to
function adequately under the changed conditions; but,
as already mentioned, the adjustments must remain
within limits precisely defined for each organism. These
two demands apply to populations as well as to indi-
vidual organisms. Whatever its complexity, a biological
system can continue to exist only if it possesses mecha-
nisms that enable it, on the one hand, to maintain its
identity despite the endless pressure of external forces,
and, on the other hand, to respond adaptively to these
forces. The complementary concepts of homeostasis
and adaptation are valid at all levels of biological
organization; they apply to large social groups as well
as to unicellular organisms.
A further elaboration of the milieu intérieur concept,
providing a link with cybernetics, was formulated by
Norbert Wiener when he wrote:
Walter Cannon, going back to Claude Bernard, emphasized
that the health and even the very existence of the body
depends on what are called homeostatic processes... that
is, the apparent equilibrium of life is an active equilibrium,
in which each deviation from the norm brings on a reaction
in the opposite direction, which is of the nature of what
we call negative feedback
(Wiener [1956], p. 291).
Both the theory of evolution (Darwin, Mendel, and
the Neo-Darwinians) and the cybernetic theory of
physiological responses (Bernard, Cannon, Wiener)
provide a dynamic approach to some of the problems
posed by the interplay between man and his environ-
ment. But neither theory deals with the mechanisms
through which each individual person becomes what
he is and behaves as he does in response to the envi-
ronmental forces that have impinged on him in the
course of his development.
The shape of our biological and mental individuality
is influenced by forces which do not affect genetic
constitution, but act on our organism at the critical
periods of development.
W. B. Cannon's and Norbert Wiener's self-correcting
cybernetic feedback represents sophisticated expres-
sions of Claude Bernard's constancy of the milieu
intérieur concept. Unfortunately, an uncritical belief
in the efficacy of homeostatic processes tends to create
the impression that all is for the best in the best of
all worlds. The very word “homeostasis” seems indeed
to imply that nature in its wisdom elicits responses that
always bring back the organism to the same ideal
condition. There is no mention of disease in Cannon's
The Wisdom of the Body—as if the homeostatic nega-
tive feedback was always successful in preventing the
nefarious effects of environmental influences, and in
assuring healthy development. This is, of course, far
from the truth.
Furthermore, if it were true that the cybernetic
feedback always returns the organism to its original
state, individual development would be impossible. But
in fact, the situation is very different. Most responses
to environmental stimuli leave a permanent imprint
on the organism, thus changing it irreversibly. It is now
obvious that if an organism were truly in a state of
complete equilibrium, it could not develop. What
characterizes living processes is homeokinesis and not
homeostasis.
Individuality develops step by step throughout life,
in part as a result of physiological processes which are
encoded in the genetic constitution, and in part also
because the total environment has formative and re-
pressive effects on developmental processes. Most re-
sponses to environmental stimuli leave an imprint on
the body and the mind, thereby conditioning subse-
quent responses to the same and other stimuli. The
so-called reticulo-endothelial system acts as a memory
organ for those responses which manifest themselves
in the form of immune and allergic phenomena,
whereas the brain is of course the memory organ for
mental processes.
Individuality, therefore, reflects the evolutionary
past as encoded in the genetic apparatus and the
experiential past inscribed in the bodily structures that
store biological and mental memories. Since biological
and mental attributes include at any given time all the
inherited potentialities that have been made functional
by life experiences, and since they are irreversibly
altered by most responses to environmental stimuli,
individuality might be defined as the continuously
evolving phenotype of each individual person. It con-
sists, so to speak, in the incarnation of those aspects
of the environment to which the organism has re-
sponded during its evolutionary and experiential past.
The influence of environmental factors on the
phenotypic expression of the genetic endowment is
particularly striking and lasting during the formative
stages of prenatal and early postnatal life. As com-
monly used, the phrase “early influences” denotes the
conditioning of emotional attitudes and behavioral
patterns by the experiences of early life. But such
conditioning also affects many other biological charac-
teristics, indeed almost every phenotypic expression of
the adult.
The effects of environmental factors on the develop-
ment of individuality are complicated by the fact that
man tends to symbolize everything that happens to him
and then to react to the symbols themselves as much
as to external reality. All perceptions and apprehen-
sions of the mind can thus generate organic processes
of which the environmental cause is often extremely
indirect and remote. In many cases, furthermore, the
person does not create the symbols to which he re-
sponds; he receives them from his group. His views
of the physical and social universe are impressed upon
him very early in life by ritual and myth, taboos and
parental training, traditions and education. These
acquired attitudes constitute the basic premisses ac-
cording to which he organizes his inner and outer
worlds, in other words his conceptual environment.
Whether this conceptual environment is acquired
from the social group, or whether it develops from
individual experiences, the body and the mind are
simultaneously affected by any stimulus—physico-
chemical or mental—that impinges on the organism.
Like the evolutionary development of mankind, the
experiential development of each individual consists
therefore in an integrated series of responses to envi-
ronmental stimuli. Man cannot perceive the external
world objectively without concepts because his per-
ceptual apparatus is shaped by the environment.
