Jan Diek van Mansvelt’s book, The Wonders of Development, is filled with joy and wonder. It offers a look into all the manifold phenomena of life through observation of plant development, the life cycle of human beings, and the stages of developing a project.
With great enthusiasm, Jan Diek van Mansvelt (1943–2024) submitted his manuscript to me in 2019 for the Dutch original of this beautiful and richly illustrated book. It was published in 2020 with the title Wonderen van ontwikkeling. Plant, mens, project [Wonders of development. Plant, human, project]. It was to be his last work and thus his legacy. The book was also published in English in 2022 (along with a contribution by Pieter van der Ree) as Wonders of Development in Plants, People, and Projects. Since 2024, the book can now be read in German too. The author and creator was a biologist, phenomenologist, co-founder of the Louis Bolk Institute, and professor of organic farming at Wageningen University. Pieter van der Ree contributed a chapter on the development of a project in the life of an architect.
A Desideratum
In addition to its rich, instructive, aesthetically pleasing illustrations and overall readability, the book is highly educational as it applies an understanding of plant metamorphosis (its stages of development) to human beings (their bodily and biographical development) and to project development (from car design to architectural process sequence). If you’ve already had the opportunity to study the metamorphosis of plant leaves, it may have occurred to you how these evolving stages can apply to a human life or to the course of a project. In most cases, however, we tend not to fully elaborate on these notions, and the parallel remains more or less underground. Uncovering the underlying relationship between these three areas has thus far been an unspoken desideratum. Jan Diek van Mansvelt has finally tackled this long overdue project. And what he uncovered in the process is nothing less than the riddle of life.
Life’s Riddles
Of course, the author doesn’t present us with any kind of ultimate answer to such a riddle. That simply is not how life’s questions are answered. Life inherently goes on and on and never remains fixed. It’s always in a constant state of flux, always brings new activities and effects, and must be discovered anew in every moment. It doesn’t simply lie at our feet like a finished object. Life cannot be grasped squarely in the hand, nor comprehended merely through sensory perception of matter. Life is suprasensible. It is a phenomenon that can only be understood with “new organs.” As the book shows, to develop these organs, we must familiarize ourselves with a plant’s process of transformation. In fact, this activity is the archetype of what we call a “practice.” We ourselves must become active in our soul and spirit, so that the phenomena of life can display itself in its ever-transforming flow and thereby become observable. In doing so, we create (through our inner activity) and perceive at the same time.
Reading in the Book of Nature
The book is an opportunity to begin a practice of comprehending life. Jan Diek van Mansvelt’s observations make it clear that this does require knowledge of the facts and details. But it also requires another knowledge that can’t be acquired through abstract textbooks or memorization. Rather, we must let ourselves be guided by phenomena themselves and give respect and proper devotion to our capacity of observation and what we are observing. It’s quite like learning to read. We didn’t study the history of writing and letters when we learned to read; we learned through practice. With the book of nature, we learn by observing, thinking, and experiencing natural phenomena; we develop a practice.
Beauty
Life itself is our teacher, our suprasensible guide. Life dissolves our fixed mental pictures while still maintaining the connection between what is spiritual and what is sensory. This is the beauty of life. The scientifically accurate and also aesthetically beautiful illustrations by Gerda Peters, Willem Beekman, Frank de Bruijn, and Sipke Huismans bear witness to this relationship of spirit and sense. The arrangement of the content in the images seems to arise naturally, out of an empathy with the sphere of life itself. Anyone touched by the breath of life knows how the experience of nature leads one to art. The same wind blows through our thinking as through the creations of culture as through the creations of nature: the ever-evolving, transforming breath of life.
Book Jan Diek van Mansvelt, Pieter van der Ree, Wonders of Development in Plants, People, and Projects (Hudson, NY: Adonis, 2022).
Translation Joshua Kelberman
