can teach us about the diverse range of registers of communication bodies have.
For example, take the case of ectohormones^9 or pheromones. Pheromones are
so-called semiochemicals, small molecules emitted by a creature through the skin
or by specialized glands or secretory organs which have some effect on creatures
of the same species,^10 usually a definite behaviour or a developmental process.
They are normally detected by smell (Thrift 2003a), although they can also be
detected through touch (Wyatt 2003). Thus, very often no direct contact is needed
for their transmission: pheromones are in the air. Though often associated only
with sexuality and reproduction, pheromones have a wider compass, often acting
as means of unconscious communication. Pheromones are a powerful means of
transmitting affect through smell and taste, along with sight (understood as grip),
sound and rhythm, with its insistent beats. ‘Across the animal kingdom, more
interactions are mediated by pheromones than by any other kind of signal’ (Wyatt
2003: 4 ), not least because the metabolic costs of this kind of signalling are so
low. The importance of pheromones for human behaviour is only just becoming
clear, not least because humans cannot smell most of the chemicals important
to other animals so that this branch of biological research has languished. That is
now changing. It is recognized that chemical cues are crucial in the recognition
of kin and familiar people, seem to be important for human sexuality and are vital
in producing synchrony of some human functions (e.g. menstruation) (Wyatt
2003). Equally, it is now recognized that different cultures have different olfactory
palettes. Most importantly for the purpose of this chapter, chemical cues function
as mood changers, affective switches that can tone and tune situations. Animals
provide one more piece of relevant information about affect. That is that it is crucial
to time and decision-making (Grandin and Johnson 2005). Like people, animals
use affects to predict the future and make decisions about what to do next; affects
provide information about the future and what to do about it. Without affects,
cognitive systems collapse: nothing is affectively neutral because emotions provide
vital information about every bit of information. They are a key element of all
decisions (T.D. Wilson 2002).
The third debate has revolved around the rediscovery of the work of A.N.
Whitehead, and most especially his work on the metaphysics of a non-bifurcated
nature, that is a nature which is no longer considered to have primary and
secondary qualities (such as the kind of causal laws supposedly discovered by
science and an apparent nature, nature as we perceive it), and on the characteristics
of what might be thought of as a creative organism, able to remain in existence
- to endure, to achieve togetherness, to become obstinate^11 – and able to affect
its environment and be affected by it, that is, at least in part, to be able to shape
its environment, often, paradoxically, by becoming impatient against the very
habits that allow the organism to endure. Thus, biology means being able to
innovate, to produce original answers to changing conditions.
In his striving to construct a process-based view of the world without human
subjectivity, Whitehead produced a metaphysics which attempted to invent new
modes of abstraction founded on the idea that ‘everything that may be told to
exist will be concerned’ (Stengers 2005: 10), through adventures of thought that
228 Part III