comodating of impinging forces. Jozsef Kovács characterizes a healthy
relationship between organism and environment as “a dynamic steady
state which can be maintained by the living being in spite of changes in
the environment.”^27 In biological terms, health coincides with the highest
stability and self-preservation of the individual and of the species, which
in turn contributes to the self-preservation of the ecosystem in which in-
dividuals and species participate. In human life, adaptation is not only a
biological process; it is also cultural process, involving the production
and use of knowledge, instruments, methods, and institutions aimed at
successful participation in the environment, and transformation of it.^28
Adaptation for the purpose of self-preservation is central to
Descartes’ physics, medicine, and ethics. Descartes’ physics is concerned
with “simple bodies,” what contemporary science calls “masses in mo-
tion,” and the natural forces that resolve compound bodies back into their
original state as simple bodies. In the physical universe, each entity, living
or non-living, acts and reacts to its environment so as to maximize its
chances of survival. The living organism, in Descartes’ terms, is a com-
pound body formed of organ systems, a mechanism of self-preservation
that supports the functioning and interaction of those organs. Life, then, is
the compound motion of the simple bodies constituting the organism, and
medicine is responsible for helping human beings preserve the functions of
the body’s systems. For Descartes, just as medicine is concerned with rela-
tions among the parts of the body, ethics addresses the relations among
persons (i.e., living, sentient, compound bodies) so that each might act as
an organic part of the largest body, society, or the ‘body politic.’^29
In psychological terms, adaptation pertains to how a person re-
sponds to life’s problems, classified by Maslow and Mittelmann as (1) bi-
ological and physical, (2) cultural, and (3) those set by internal psycho-
logical demands.^30 An ambiguity in human health exists in the fact that
even though adaptation is generally a criterion of health, there are cases
where failureto adapt is indicative of health. Sanford gives this example:
People who adapted to Hitler’s Germany of the 1930’s appeared “well”;
in terms of their particular social framework they were well-adjusted
people. Those who could notadapt found themselves in a painful condi-
tion, and suffered a terrible malaise. They appeared sick and disturbed
people, but their very lack of adaptation may well have been their sign
of health. It is as though there was too much health in them to adapt to
a sick situation.^31Medically, disease itself may be adaptive, as in the case of cowpox infec-
tion preventing smallpox.^32
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