Raymond Ruyer (1902-1987) was an influential philosopher of science and Professor of Philosophy at the Universite de Nancy.Jon Roffe is Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of New South Wales, and a founding editor of Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy. The co-editor of a number of volumes on twentieth-century French philosophy, he is the author of Badiou’s Deleuze (2012), Abstract Market Theory (forthcoming), Gilles Deleuze’s Empiricism and Subjectivity (forthcoming), and the co-author of Lacan Deleuze Badiou (2014, with AJ Bartlett and Justin Clemens).Nicholas B. de Weydenthal is a doctoral candidate based in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies and the Department of Management and Marketing at the University of Melbourne.

This translation of Genèse des formes vivantes (first published in French in 1958) is part of the "Groundworks" series, which includes less-known seminal texts that have shaped contemporary Continental thought. The success of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's What Is Philosophy? (Eng. tr., CH, Dec'94, 32-2061), which described the brain in terms of Ruyer's developmental processes, led to a resurgence of interest in Ruyer's work. Roffe and Weydenthal's translation masterfully elucidates Ruyer's exposition of the embryonic development of an organism's unfolding organization of cells. Consciousness in this morphogenesis is identified with active formation of biological structure. The metaphysical interpretation of these biological processes, in addition to themes from Ruyer's magnum opus Ne´o-finalisme (1952; Eng. tr., Neofinalism, 2016), influenced much later 20th-century French thought, especially informing Deleuze's exposition of self-forming beings and Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of living beings. The particular value of The Genesis of Living Forms rests not on the novel historical scientific ideas of the mid-20th century on which its biophilosophical explication of morphogenesis is drawn, but rather on its influence on the development of post–WW II French structuralism and posthumanism. This is a book for scholars of Continental philosophy. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.

• Translator's Preface / Introduction / 1. Verticalism and Thematism / 2. From the Molecule to the Organism / 3. Internal Reproduction / 4. The Division and Socialisation of Development / 5. Signals-Stimuli / 6. 'Competence' / 7. Autonomous Procedures and Regulated Behaviour / 8. Open Formations and Markovian Jargon / 9. 'Crossword' Formations / 10. The 'Spectacle-Spectator' Complex / 11. I-Forms, II-Forms, III-Forms / 12. The Philosophy of Morphogenesis / Further Reading / Index

Raymond Ruyer (1902-1987) was an influential philosopher of science and Professor of Philosophy at the Universite de Nancy.Jon Roffe is Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of New South Wales, and a founding editor of Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy. The co-editor of a number of volumes on twentieth-century French philosophy, he is the author of Badiou’s Deleuze (2012), Abstract Market Theory (forthcoming), Gilles Deleuze’s Empiricism and Subjectivity (forthcoming), and the co-author of Lacan Deleuze Badiou (2014, with AJ Bartlett and Justin Clemens).Nicholas B. de Weydenthal is a doctoral candidate based in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies and the Department of Management and Marketing at the University of Melbourne.

This translation of Genèse des formes vivantes (first published in French in 1958) is part of the "Groundworks" series, which includes less-known seminal texts that have shaped contemporary Continental thought. The success of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's What Is Philosophy? (Eng. tr., CH, Dec'94, 32-2061), which described the brain in terms of Ruyer's developmental processes, led to a resurgence of interest in Ruyer's work. Roffe and Weydenthal's translation masterfully elucidates Ruyer's exposition of the embryonic development of an organism's unfolding organization of cells. Consciousness in this morphogenesis is identified with active formation of biological structure. The metaphysical interpretation of these biological processes, in addition to themes from Ruyer's magnum opus Ne´o-finalisme (1952; Eng. tr., Neofinalism, 2016), influenced much later 20th-century French thought, especially informing Deleuze's exposition of self-forming beings and Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of living beings. The particular value of The Genesis of Living Forms rests not on the novel historical scientific ideas of the mid-20th century on which its biophilosophical explication of morphogenesis is drawn, but rather on its influence on the development of post–WW II French structuralism and posthumanism. This is a book for scholars of Continental philosophy. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.

• Translator's Preface / Introduction / 1. Verticalism and Thematism / 2. From the Molecule to the Organism / 3. Internal Reproduction / 4. The Division and Socialisation of Development / 5. Signals-Stimuli / 6. 'Competence' / 7. Autonomous Procedures and Regulated Behaviour / 8. Open Formations and Markovian Jargon / 9. 'Crossword' Formations / 10. The 'Spectacle-Spectator' Complex / 11. I-Forms, II-Forms, III-Forms / 12. The Philosophy of Morphogenesis / Further Reading / Index

Raymond Ruyer (1902-1987) was an influential philosopher of science and Professor of Philosophy at the Universite de Nancy.Jon Roffe is Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of New South Wales, and a founding editor of Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy. The co-editor of a number of volumes on twentieth-century French philosophy, he is the author of Badiou’s Deleuze (2012), Abstract Market Theory (forthcoming), Gilles Deleuze’s Empiricism and Subjectivity (forthcoming), and the co-author of Lacan Deleuze Badiou (2014, with AJ Bartlett and Justin Clemens).Nicholas B. de Weydenthal is a doctoral candidate based in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies and the Department of Management and Marketing at the University of Melbourne.

This translation of Genèse des formes vivantes (first published in French in 1958) is part of the "Groundworks" series, which includes less-known seminal texts that have shaped contemporary Continental thought. The success of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's What Is Philosophy? (Eng. tr., CH, Dec'94, 32-2061), which described the brain in terms of Ruyer's developmental processes, led to a resurgence of interest in Ruyer's work. Roffe and Weydenthal's translation masterfully elucidates Ruyer's exposition of the embryonic development of an organism's unfolding organization of cells. Consciousness in this morphogenesis is identified with active formation of biological structure. The metaphysical interpretation of these biological processes, in addition to themes from Ruyer's magnum opus Ne´o-finalisme (1952; Eng. tr., Neofinalism, 2016), influenced much later 20th-century French thought, especially informing Deleuze's exposition of self-forming beings and Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of living beings. The particular value of The Genesis of Living Forms rests not on the novel historical scientific ideas of the mid-20th century on which its biophilosophical explication of morphogenesis is drawn, but rather on its influence on the development of post–WW II French structuralism and posthumanism. This is a book for scholars of Continental philosophy. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.

• Translator's Preface / Introduction / 1. Verticalism and Thematism / 2. From the Molecule to the Organism / 3. Internal Reproduction / 4. The Division and Socialisation of Development / 5. Signals-Stimuli / 6. 'Competence' / 7. Autonomous Procedures and Regulated Behaviour / 8. Open Formations and Markovian Jargon / 9. 'Crossword' Formations / 10. The 'Spectacle-Spectator' Complex / 11. I-Forms, II-Forms, III-Forms / 12. The Philosophy of Morphogenesis / Further Reading / Index