"According to Portmann in animals all organs that cannot be arranged symmetrically are concealed under non-transparent covers. All types of animals that are glass-clear, completely transparent (ctenophorans, water-fleas, etc.) demonstrate "an important rule in primary animal reproduction: their whole organisation is uniformly symmetrical. Whether they are radial or bilateral this building plan regulates all organs to the deepest point".
Portmann refers to all the visible optical structures characterized by a symmetrical construction as "organs of view, whose entire appearance only makes sense if we consider it as directed to the eye, be it the eye of another animal of the same species of the eye of an enemy".
It goes on. Portmann is out of fashion, I believe, maybe seen as an eccentric or even discredited. I read about this idea in an interview with the artist Pierre Huyghe.
https://books.google.ie/books?id=wzhqDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA35
extract from that page: https://imgur.com/a/IAB12T5
"According to Portmann in animals all organs that cannot be arranged symmetrically are concealed under non-transparent covers. All types of animals that are glass-clear, completely transparent (ctenophorans, water-fleas, etc.) demonstrate "an important rule in primary animal reproduction: their whole organisation is uniformly symmetrical. Whether they are radial or bilateral this building plan regulates all organs to the deepest point".
Portmann refers to all the visible optical structures characterized by a symmetrical construction as "organs of view, whose entire appearance only makes sense if we consider it as directed to the eye, be it the eye of another animal of the same species of the eye of an enemy".
It goes on. Portmann is out of fashion, I believe, maybe seen as an eccentric or even discredited. I read about this idea in an interview with the artist Pierre Huyghe.