" The object of biology is to grasp that which makes a living being a living being, that is, not--according to the realist postulate common to both mechanism and vitalism--the superposition of elementary reflexes or the intervention of a 'vital force,' but an indecomposable structure of behavior. It is by means of ordered reactions that we can understand the automatic reactions as degradations. Just as anatomy refers back to physiology, physiology refers back to biology. "

― Maurice Merleau-Ponty , The Structure of Behavior