The ESF is goal-oriented, surely without a remote goal, but having itself as goal. [When treating, in the present Part of Website, of the evolution of organisms, we spoke of an organismic species (and also an organismic individual of that species) to be a strategy to materially exist (in the Explicate Order), meaning that this strategy itself is such as to preserve this very strategy itself.]. This is not senseless, because with its existence all has been accomplished. In the lower inorganic systems this is for us a simple fact. In the case of the higher organismic systems one might say that it is up to the ESF-al goal not merely to simply accomplish existence right or wrong, but accomplish it as good as possible. The ESF then is close to what is indicated as self-purposive. In contrast, the supplementary concept of other-than-self purposiveness [Fremddienlichkeit, altruism] can only be categorized under it if one either has in mind the relationships of symbiontic subcomponents, or a hereditary determined conciliatory defence activity against parasitic partners (or a mix between the two). The ever pressing-on impression of the (special) order in living things is the order of Unimol ESF.
In Schrödinger ( [in his book] What is Life?) we find the very remarkable statement : "... at least from the human, albeit not from a purely objective biological, standpoint, all physiological processes only play a subordinated role as against the one that is responsible for thought and sense observation." ... Among the uncountable descriptions of the essence of the ESF that may be a good formulation.
Schrödinger's treatise, as to its title long known to us, but only now (1959) actually obtained and read by us [Müller], gives a series of statements that do well fit our view, that is, that are supplemented by our view. See, for example the considerations in nr. 71, that not only demand what we believe to provide for, but also show a view friendly to our own view of the unimolecularity of organisms. Schrödinger's authority as theoretical physicist also renders his statements concerning adjacent areas of research significant. Not any publication we have read with more satisfaction than this one.
The ESF-al unimolecularity is the useful biotechnical constructive expression of the "universal principle of organization of biological regulation" (R. Wagner) and the ESF-al intramolecular reflection may be connected with the somatically regulative "feedback" of the nerve cells of the frontal brain part (R. Wagner), the same also applies to the "reafferences" (E. v. Holst, 1957) but here more explicitly lying within the somatic.
The ESF-al unimolecularity is of course also relevant in all wholeness considerations whatsoever. For example P. Jordan (on the wholeness of the organism) " ... for the unity and wholeness of the organism may in the end mean nothing more than the uniform direction [steering] of its reactions." And this is accomplished by the one-molecule eminently and evidently, because unavoidable.