*A.* THE PRINCIPLES OF SYSTEMATICS--
Rational Systematics 243
Biological Systematics 246
*B.* THE THEORY OF DESCENT--
1. GENERALITIES 250
The Covert Presumption of all Theories of Descent 253
The Small Value of Pure Phylogeny 255
History and Systematics 257
2. THE PRINCIPLES OF DARWINISM 260
Natural Selection 261
Fluctuating Variation the Alleged Cause of Organic Diversity 264
Darwinism Fails all along the Line 269
3. THE PRINCIPLES OF LAMARCKISM 271
Adaptation as the Starting-Point 272
The Active Storing of Contingent Variations as a
Hypothetic Principle 273
Criticism of the “Inheritance of Acquired Characters”
assumed by Lamarckism 275
Other Principles Wanted 281
Criticism of the Hypothesis of Storing and Handing Down
Contingent Variations 282
4. THE REAL RESULTS AND THE UNSOLVED PROBLEMS OF TRANSFORMISM 290
5. THE LOGICAL VALUE OF THE ORGANIC FORM ACCORDING TO THE
DIFFERENT TRANSFORMISTIC THEORIES 293
The Organic Form and Entelechy 294
*C.* THE LOGIC OF HISTORY 297
1. THE POSSIBLE ASPECTS OF HISTORY 299
2. PHYLOGENETIC POSSIBILITIES 304
3. THE HISTORY OF MANKIND 306
Cumulations in Human History 308
Human History not an “Evolution” 311
The Problem of the “Single” as such 315
*CONCLUSIONS ABOUT SYSTEMATICS AND HISTORY IN GENERAL* 322
THE PROGRAMME
ON LORD GIFFORD’S CONCEPTION OF “SCIENCE”
This is the first time that a biologist has occupied this place; the
first time that a biologist is to try to carry out the intentions of the
noble and high-minded man to whom this lectureship owes its foundation.
On such an occasion it seems to be not undesirable to inquire what Lord
Gifford’s own opinions about natural science may have been, what place
in the whole scheme of human knowledge he may have attributed to those
branches of it which have become almost the centre of men’s intellectual
interest.
And, indeed, on studying Lord Gifford’s bequest with the object of
finding in it some reference to the natural sciences, one easily notes
that he has assigned to them a very high place compared with the other
sciences, at least in one respect: with regard to their methods.
There is a highly interesting passage in his will which leaves no doubt
about our question. After having formally declared the foundation of
this lectureship “for Promoting, Advancing, Teaching and Diffusing
the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of that term,” and
after having arranged about the special features of the lectures, he
continues: “I wish the lecturers to treat their subject as a strictly
natural science, the greatest of all possible sciences, indeed, in one
sense, the only science, that of Infinite Being.... I wish it considered
just as astronomy or chemistry is.”
Of course, it is not possible to understand these words of Lord
Gifford’s will in a quite literal sense. If, provisionally, we call
“natural theology” the ultimate conclusions which may be drawn from a
study of nature in connection with all other results of human sciences,
there cannot be any doubt that these conclusions will be of a rather
different character from the results obtained in, say, the special field
of scientific chemistry. But, nevertheless, there are, I think, two
points of contact between the wider and the narrower field of knowledge,
and both of them relate to method. Lord Gifford’s own phrase, “Infinite
Being,” shows us one of these meeting-points. In opposition to history
of any form, natural sciences aim at discovering such truths as are
independent of special time and of special space, such truths as are
“ideas” in the sense of Plato; and such eternal results, indeed, always
stand in close relation to the ultimate results of human knowledge
in general. But besides that there is still another feature which
may be common both to “natural theology” and to the special natural
sciences, and which is most fully developed in the latter: freedom from
prepossessions. This, at least, is an ideal of all natural sciences;
I may say it is *the* ideal of them. That it was this feature which
Lord Gifford had in view in his comparison becomes clear when we read
in his will that the lectures on natural theology are to be delivered
“without reference to or reliance upon any supposed special exceptional
or so-called miraculous revelation.”
So we might say that both in their logical and their moral methods,
natural sciences are to be the prototype of “Natural Theology” in Lord
Gifford’s sense.
NATURAL SCIENCES AND “NATURAL THEOLOGY”
But now let us study in a more systematic manner the possible relations
of the natural sciences to natural theology as a science.
How is it possible for a natural scientist to contribute to the science
of the highest and ultimate subject of human knowledge?
Almost all natural sciences have a sort of naïveté in their own spheres;
they all stand on the ground of what has been called a naïve realism,
as long as they are, so to say, at home. That in no way prejudices
their own progress, but it seems to stand in the way of establishing
contact with any higher form of human knowledge than themselves.
One may be a first-rate organic chemist even when looking upon the
atoms as small billiard balls, and one may make brilliant discoveries
about the behaviour of animals even when regarding them in the most
anthropomorphic manner--granted that one is a good observer; but it
can hardly be admitted that our chemist would do much to advance the
theory of matter, or our biologist to solve the problem of the relations
between body and mind.
It is only by the aid of philosophy, or I would rather say by keeping
in constant touch with it, that natural sciences are able to acquire
any significance for what might be called *the* science of nature in the
most simple form. Unhappily the term “natural philosophy” is restricted
in English to theoretical physics. This is not without a high degree of
justification, for theoretical physics has indeed lost its naïveté and
become a philosophy of nature; but it nevertheless is very unfortunate
that this use of the term “natural philosophy” is established in
this country, as we now have no proper general term descriptive of a
natural science that is in permanent relation to philosophy, a natural
science which does not use a single concept without justifying it
epistemologically, *i.e.* what in German, for instance, would simply be
called “Naturphilosophie.”
Let us call it philosophy of nature; then we may say that only by
becoming a true philosophy of nature are natural sciences of all sorts
able to contribute to the highest questions which man’s spirit of
inquiry can suggest.
These highest questions themselves are the outcome of the combination
of the highest results of all branches of philosophy, just as our
philosophy of nature originated in the discussion of the results of
all the separate natural sciences. Are those highest questions not
only to be asked, are they to be also solved? To be solved in a way
which does not exceed the limits of philosophy as the domain of actual
understanding?
The beginning of a long series of studies is not the right place to
decide this important question; and so, for the present certainly,
“natural theology” must remain a problem. In other words: it must
remain an open question at the beginning of our studies, whether after
all there can be any final general answer, free from contradictions,
applicable to the totality of questions asked by all the branches of
philosophy.
But let us not be disturbed by this problematic entrance to our studies.
Let us follow biology on its own path; let us study its transition from
a “naïve” science to a real branch of the philosophy of nature. In this
way we perhaps shall be able to understand what its part may be in
solving what can be solved.
That is to be our subject.
OUR PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS
We call *nature* what is given to us in space.
Of course we are not obliged in these lectures to discuss the
psychological and epistemological problems of space with its three
dimensions, nor are we obliged to develop a general theory of reality
and its different aspects. A few epistemological points will be
considered later at proper times, and always in connection with results
of theoretical biology.
At present it must suffice to say that our general philosophical point
of view will be idealistic, in the critical meaning of the word. The
universe, and within the universe nature, in the sense just defined,
is my phenomenon. That is what I know. I know nothing more, either
positively or negatively; that is to say, I do not know that the world
is *only my* phenomenon, but, on the other hand, I know nothing about
its “absolute reality.” And more, I am not even able to describe in
intelligible words what “absolute reality” might mean. I am fully
entitled to state: the universe *is* as truly as I am--though in
a somewhat different sense of “being”--and I *am* as truly as the
universe is; but I am not entitled to state anything beyond these
two corresponding phrases. You know that, in the history of European
philosophy at least, Bishop Berkeley was the first clearly to outline
the field of idealism.
But my phenomenon--the world, especially nature--consists of elements
of two different kinds: some of them are merely passive, some of them
contain a peculiar sort of activity in themselves. The first are
generally called sensations, but perhaps would be better called elements
or presentations; the others are forms of construction, and, indeed,
there is an active element embraced in them in this sense, that they
allow, by their free combination, the discovery of principles which
are not to be denied, which must be affirmed, whenever their meaning
is understood. You know that I am speaking here of what are generally
called categories and synthetic judgments *a priori*, and that it was
Kant who, on the foundations laid by Locke, Hume, and Leibnitz, first
gave the outlines of what may be called the real system of critical
philosophy. Indeed, our method will be to a great extent Kantian, though
with certain exceptions; it is to be strictly idealistic, and will not
in the Kantian way operate with things in themselves; and it regards
the so-called “synthetic judgment *a priori*” and the problem of the
relation between categorical principles and experience in a somewhat
different manner. We think it best to define the much disputed concept
“*a priori*” as “independent of the *amount* of experience”; that is
to say, all categories and categorical principles are brought to my
consciousness by that fundamental event which is called experience, and
therefore are not independent of it, but they are not inferences from
experience, as are so-called empirical laws. We almost might say that we
only have to be reminded of those principles by experience, and, indeed,
we should not, I think, go very far wrong in saying that the Socratic
doctrine, that all knowledge is recollection, holds good as far as
categories and categorical principles are in question.
But enough at present about our general philosophy.
As to the philosophy of nature, there can be no doubt that, on the basis
of principles like those we have shortly sketched, its ultimate aim must
be to co-ordinate everything in nature with terms and principles of the
categorical style. The philosophy of nature thus becomes a system; a
system of which the general type is afforded by the innate constructive
power of the Ego. In this sense the Kantian dictum remains true, that
the Ego prescribes its own laws to nature, though, of course, “nature,”
that is, what is given in space, must be such as to permit that sort of
“prescription.”
One often hears that all sciences, including the science of sciences,
philosophy, have to find out what is true. What, then, may be called
“true” by an idealistic philosopher, for whom the old realistic formula
of the conformity between knowledge and the object cannot have any
meaning? Besides its ordinary application to simple facts or to simple
judgments, where the word truth only means absence of illusion or no
false statement, truth can be claimed for a philosophical doctrine or
for a system of such doctrines only in the sense that there are no
contradictions amongst the parts of the doctrine or of the system
themselves, and that there are no features in them which impel our
categorical Ego to further analysis.
Those of you who attended Professor Ward’s lectures on “Naturalism and
Agnosticism,” or who have read his excellent book on that subject, will
know what the aims of a theory of matter are. You will also be aware
that, at present, there does not exist any theory of matter which can
claim to be “true”; there are contradictions in every theory of matter,
and, moreover, there are always some points where we are obliged to ask
for further information and receive no answer. Experience here has not
yet aroused all the categorical functions which are needed in order to
form one unity out of what seem to be incompatibilities at the present
day. Why is that? Maybe because experience is not yet complete in this
field, but maybe also because the whole subject is so complicated
that it takes much time to attach categorical functions to what is
experienced.
But it is not our object here to deal either with epistemology proper
or with ontology: a full analysis of biological facts is our problem.
Why, then, all these introductions? why all these philosophical sketches
in fields of knowledge which have quite another relation to philosophy
than biology has? Biology, I hear some one say, is simply and solely
an empirical science; in some sense it is nothing but applied physics
and chemistry, perhaps applied mechanics. There are no fundamental
principles in biology which could bring it in any close contact with
philosophy. Even the one and only principle which might seem to be
an innate principle of our experience about life, the principle of
evolution, is only a combination of more simple factors of the physical
and chemical type.
It will be my essential endeavour to convince you, in the course of
these lectures, that such an aspect of the science of biology is wrong;
that biology is an elemental natural science in the true sense of the
word.
But if biology is an elemental science, then, and only then, it stands
in close relations to epistemology and ontology--in the same relations
to them, indeed, as every natural science does which deals with true
elements of nature, and which is willing to abandon naïve realism and
contribute its share to the whole of human knowledge.
And, therefore, a philosophical sketch is not out of place at the
beginning of lectures on the Philosophy of the Organism. We may be
forced, we, indeed, shall be forced, to remain for some time on the
ground of realistic empiricism, for biology has to deal with very
complicated experiences; but there will be a moment in our progress when
we shall enter the realm of the elemental ontological concepts, and
in that very moment our study of life will have become a part of real
philosophy. It was not without good reasons, therefore, that I shortly
sketched, as a sort of introduction to my lectures, the general point of
view which we shall take with regard to philosophical questions, and to
questions of the philosophy of nature in particular.
ON CERTAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF BIOLOGY AS A SCIENCE
Biology is the science of life. Practically, all of you know what a
living being is, and therefore it is not necessary to formulate a
definition of life, which, at the beginning of our studies, would be
either provisional and incomplete, or else dogmatic. In some respects,
indeed, a definition should rather be the end of a science than its
opening.
We shall study the phenomena of living organisms analytically, by the
aid of experiment; our principal object will be to find out laws in
these phenomena; such laws will then be further analysed, and precisely
at that point we shall leave the realm of natural science proper.
Our science is the highest of all natural sciences, for it embraces as
its final object the actions of man, at least in so far as actions also
are phenomena observable on living bodies.
But biology is also the most difficult of all natural sciences, not
only from the complexity of the phenomena, which it studies, but in
particular for another reason which is seldom properly emphasised, and
therefore will well repay us for a few words devoted to it.
Except so far as the “elements” of chemistry come into account, the
experimenter in the inorganic fields of nature is not hampered by the
specificity of composite objects: he makes all the combinations he
wants. He is always able to have at his disposal red rays of a desired
wave length when and where he wants, or to have, at a given time and
place, the precise amount of any organic compound which he wishes to
examine. And he forces electricity and electromagnetism to obey his
will, at least with regard to space, time, and intensity of their
appearance.
The biologist is not able to “make” life, as the physicist has made red
rays or electromagnetism, or as the chemist has made a certain compound
of carbon. The biologist is almost always in that strange plight in
which the physicist would be if he always had to go to volcanoes in
order to study the conductivity of heat, or if he had to wait for
thunderstorms in order to study electricity. The biologist is dependent
on the specificity of living objects as they occur in nature.
A few instances may show you what great inconveniences may hence arise
to impede practical biological research. We later on shall have to deal
with experiments on very young embryos: parts of the germ will have
to be destroyed in order to study what will happen with the rest. Now
almost all germs are surrounded by a membrane; this membrane has to be
detached before any operation is possible. But what are we to do if it
is not possible to remove the membrane without killing the embryo? Or
what if, as for instance in many marine animals, the membrane may be
removed but the germs are killed by contact with sea-water? In both
cases no experiments at all will be possible on a sort of germ which
otherwise, for some special circumstances of its organisation, might
have given results of importance. These results become impossible for
only a practical, for a very secondary reason; but enough: they are
impossible, and they might have thrown light on problems which now
must remain problems. Quite the same thing may occur in experiments
on physiology proper or functional physiology: one kind of animals
survives the operation, the other kind does not, and therefore, for
merely extrinsic reasons, the investigations have to be restricted to
the first, though the second might have given more important results.
And thus the biological experimenter always finds himself in a sort of
dependence on his subjects, which can hardly be called pleasant. To a
great extent the comparatively slow advance of biological sciences is
due to this very fact: the unalterable specific nature of biological
material.
But there is still another feature of biology dependent on the same
fact. If a science is tied down to specific objects in every path it
takes, it first, of course, has to know all about those objects, and
that requires nothing else but plain description. We now understand why
pure description, in the most simple sense of the word, takes up such an
enormous part of every text-book of biological science. It is not only
morphology, the science of form, that is most actively concerned with
description; physiology also, in its present state, is pure description
of what the functions of the different parts of the body of animals and
plants actually *are*, at least for about nine-tenths of its range. It
seems to me important to press this point very emphatically, since we
often hear that physiology is from the very beginning a much higher sort
of knowledge than morphology, inasmuch as it is rational. That is not at
all true of the beginning of physiology: what the functions of the liver
or of the root are has simply to be described just as the organisation
of the brain or of the leaf, and it makes no difference logically that
one species of description has to use the experimental method, while the
other has not. The experiment which only discovers what happens here or
what happens there, possesses no kind of logical superiority over pure
description at all.
But there will be another occasion in our lectures to deal more fully
with the logic of experiment and with the differences of descriptive
knowledge and real rational science.
THE THREE DIFFERENT TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT NATURE
Natural sciences cannot originate before the given phenomena of nature
have been investigated in at least a superficial and provisional manner,
by and for the practical needs of man. But as soon as true science
begins in any limited field, dealing, let us say, with animals or with
minerals, or with the properties of bodies, it at once finds itself
confronted by two very different kinds of problems, both of them--like
all “problems”--created in the last resort by the logical organisation
of the human mind, or, to speak still more correctly, of the Ego.
In any branch of knowledge which practical necessities have separated
from others, and which science now tries to study methodically, there
occur general sequences in phenomena, general orders of events. This
uniformity is revealed only gradually, but as soon as it has shown
itself, even in the least degree, the investigator seizes upon it. He
now devotes himself chiefly, or even exclusively, to the generalities in
the sequences of all changes. He is convinced that there must be a sort
of most general and at the same time of most universal connection about
all occurrences. This most universal connection has to be found out; at
least it will be the ideal that always will accompany the inquiring mind
during its researches. The “law of nature” is the ideal I am speaking
about, an ideal which is nothing less than one of the postulates of the
possibility of science at all.
Using for our purposes a word which has been already introduced into
terminology by the philosopher Windelband, though in a somewhat
different sense, we shall call that part of every branch of natural
sciences which regards the establishment of a law of nature as its
ideal, “nomothetic,” *i.e.* “law-giving.”
But while every natural science has its nomothetic side, it also has
another half of a very different kind. This second half of every natural
science does not care for the same general, the same universal, which
is shown to us in every event in a different and specified kind: it
is diversity, it is specification, that constitutes the subject of
its interest. Its aim is to find a sufficient reason for the types of
diversities, for the types of specifications. So in chemistry there
has been found a systematic order in the long series of the compounds
and of the elements; crystallography also has its different systems of
crystals, and so on.
We have already employed the word by which we shall designate this
second half of every natural science: it is the “systematic” side of
science.
Nomothetic work on the one side and systematics on the other do, in
fact, appear in every natural science, and besides them there are no
other main parts. But “science” as a whole stands apart from another
aspect of reality which is called “history.” History deals with
particulars, with particular events at such and such a place, whilst
science always abstracts from the particular, even in its systematic
half.[1]
[1] Windelband (*Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft*, 3 Auflage, 1904)
gives the name “nomothetic” to the whole of our “science” and calls the
method of history “idiographic.” We thought it better to establish three
fundamental types of all possible branches of knowledge.
GENERAL PLAN OF THESE LECTURES
Turning now to a sort of short outline of what is to be discussed
in the whole of our future lectures, this summer and next, it seems
clear, without further analysis, that biology as a science has its
nomothetic and its systematic part also; respiration and assimilation,
for instance, have proved to be types of natural laws among living
phenomena, and that there is a “system” of animals and plants is too
commonly known to require further explanation here. Therefore we might
study first biological laws, and after that biological systematics, and
in the third place perhaps biological history. But that would hardly
correspond to the philosophical aims of our lectures: our chief object
is not biology as a regular science, as treated in text-books and in
ordinary university lectures; our chief object is the Philosophy of the
Organism, as aided and supported by scientific biology. Therefore a
general acquaintance with biology must be assumed in these lectures, and
the biological materials must be arranged according to their bearing on
further, that is on philosophical, analysis.
That will be done, not, of course, to the extent of my regarding every
one of my audience as a competent biologist; on the contrary, I shall
explain most fully all points of biology proper, and even of the most
simple and descriptive kind of biology, which serve as bases for
philosophical analysis. But I shall do so only if they indeed do serve
as such bases. All our biology will be not for its own sake, but for the
sake of philosophy.
Whilst regarding the whole of the biological material with such aims,
it seems to me best to arrange the properly scientific material which
is to be the basis of my discussions, not along the lines which biology
as an independent science would select,[2] but to start from the three
different kinds of fundamental phenomena which living bodies offer to
investigation, and to attach all systematics exclusively to one of them.
For there will not be very much for philosophy to learn from biological
systematics at present.
[2] See J. Arth. Thomson, *The Science of Life*, London, 1899.
Life is unknown to us except in association with bodies: we only know
living bodies and call them organisms. It is the final object of all
biology to tell us what it ultimately means to say that a body is
“living,” and in what sorts of relation body and life stand one to the
other.
But at present it is enough to understand the terms “body” and “living”
in the ordinary and popular sense.
Regarding living bodies in this unpretentious manner, and recollecting
what the principal characters are of all bodies we know as living ones,
we easily find that there are three features which are never wanting
wherever life in bodies occurs. All living bodies are specific as to
form--they “have” a specific form, as we are accustomed to say. All
living bodies also exhibit metabolism; that is to say, they stand in a
relation of interchange of materials with the surrounding medium, they
take in and give out materials, but their form can remain unchanged
during these processes. And, in the last place, we can say that all
living bodies move; though this faculty is more commonly known among
animals only, even elementary science teaches the student that it also
belongs to plants.
Therefore we may ask for “laws of nature” in biology about form, about
metabolism, and about movements. In fact, it is according to this scheme
that we shall arrange the materials of the biological part of our
lectures, though, as we cannot regard the three divisions as equally
important in their bearing on our ultimate purposes, we shall not treat
them quite on equal terms. It will appear that, at least in the present
state of science, the problems of organic form and of organic movement
have come into much closer relation to philosophical analysis than have
most of the empirical data on metabolism.
It is *form* particularly which can be said to occupy the very centre
of biological interest; at least it furnishes the foundation of all
biology. Therefore we shall begin our scientific studies with a full and
thorough analysis of form. The science of living forms, later on, will
afford us a key to study metabolism proper with the greatest advantage
for our philosophical aims, and therefore the physiology of what is
usually called the vegetative functions will be to us a sort of appendix
to our chapters on form; only the theory of a problematic “living
substance” and of assimilation in the most general meaning of the word
will be reserved for the philosophical part; for very good reasons,
as I hope to show. But our chapters on the living forms will have yet
another appendix besides the survey of the physiology of metabolism.
Biological systematics almost wholly rests on form, on “morphology”; and
what hitherto has been done on the metabolical side of their problems,
consists of a few fragments, which are far from being an equivalent to
the morphological system; though, of course it must be granted that,
logically, systematics, in our general meaning of the word, as the sum
of problems about the typically different and the specific, may be
studied on the basis of each one of the principal characteristics of
living bodies, not only on that of their forms. Therefore, systematics
is to be the second appendix to the chief part of our studies in
morphology, and systematics, in its turn, will later on lead us to
a short sketch of the historical side of biology, to the theory of
evolution in its different forms, and to the logic of history in general.
So far will our programme be carried out during this summer. Next year
the theory of movements will conclude our merely scientific analysis,
and the remaining part of the course next summer will be devoted to the
philosophy of living nature. I hope that nobody will be able to accuse
our philosophy of resting on unsound foundations. But those of you, on
the other hand, who would be apt to regard our scientific chapters as a
little too long compared with their philosophical results, may be asked
to consider that a small clock-tower of a village church is generally
less pretentious but more durable than the campanile of San Marco has
been.
Indeed, these lectures will afford more “facts” to my hearers, than
Gifford Lectures probably have done, as a rule. But how could that
be otherwise on the part of a naturalist? Scientific facts are the
material that the philosophy of nature has to work with, but these
facts, unfortunately, are not as commonly known as historical facts,
for instance, generally are; and they must be known, in order that a
philosophy of the organism may be of any value at all, that it may be
more than a mere entertainment.
Goethe once said, that even in so-called facts there is more “theory”
than is usually granted; he apparently was thinking of what might be
called the ultimate or the typical facts in science. It is with such
typical or ultimate facts, of course, that we must become acquainted if
our future philosophy is to be of profit to us.
Certainly, there would be nothing to prevent us from arranging our
materials in a manner exactly the reverse of that which we shall adopt;
we could begin with a general principle about the organic, and could
try to deduce all its special features from that principle, and such a
way perhaps would seem to be the more fascinating method of argument.
But though logical it would not be psychological, and therefore would
be rather unnatural. And thus our *most* general principle about the
organic will not come on the scene before the eighteenth of these twenty
lectures, although it is not a mere inference or deduction from the
former lectures: it will be a culmination of the whole, and we shall
appreciate its value the better the more we know what that whole really
is.
GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE ORGANIC FORM
Our programme of this year, it was said, is to be devoted wholly
to organic forms, though one of its appendixes, dealing with some
characteristics of the physiology of metabolism, will lead us on to a
few other phenomena. What then are the essentials of a living form, as
commonly understood even without a special study of biology?
Living bodies are not simple geometrical forms, not, like crystals,
merely a typical arrangement of surfaces in space, to be reduced
theoretically, perhaps, to an arrangement of molecules. Living bodies
are typically combined forms; that is to say, they consist of simpler
parts of different characters, which have a special arrangement with
regard to one another; these parts have a typical form of their own and
may again be combinations of more simple different parts. But besides
that, living bodies have not always the same typically combined form
during the whole of their life: they become more complicated as they
grow older; they all begin from one starting point, which has little
form at all, viz., the egg. So the living form may be called a “genetic
form,” or a form considered as a process, and therefore *morphogenesis*
is the proper and adequate term for the science which deals with the
laws of organic forms in general; or, if you prefer not to use the
same word both for a science and for the subjects of that science, the
*physiology of morphogenesis*.
Now there are different branches of the physiology of morphogenesis or
physiology of form. We may study, and indeed we at first shall study,
what are the laws of the morphogenetic processes leading from the egg
to the adult: that may be properly called physiology of development.
But living forms are not only able to originate in one unchangeable
way: they may restore themselves, if disturbed, and thus we get the
physiology of restoration or restitution as a second branch of the
science of morphogenesis. We shall draw very important data, some of the
foundations indeed of our philosophical discussions, from the study of
such restitutions. Besides that, it is to them that our survey of the
problems of the physiology of metabolism is to be appended.
Living forms not only originate from the egg and are able to restore
themselves, they also may give origin to other forms, guaranteeing in
this way the continuity of life. The physiology of heredity therefore
appears as the counterpart to those branches of the physiology of form
which deal with individual form and its restitutions. And our discussion
on heredity may be followed by our second appendix to this chief section
on form, an appendix regarding the outlines of systematics, evolution
and history.
Theoretical considerations on biology generally start, or at least,
used to start, from the evolution theory, discussing all other problems
of the physiology of form by the way only, as things of secondary
importance. You see from our programme, that we shall go just the
opposite way: evolution will come last of all, and will be treated
shortly; but the morphogenesis of the individual will be treated very
fully, and very carefully indeed.
Why then this deviation from what is the common practice? Because we do
not know very much about evolution at all, because in this field we are
just at the very beginning of what deserves the name of exact knowledge.
But concerning individual morphogenesis we really know, even at present,
if not very much, at least something, and that we know in a fairly exact
form, aided by the results of experiments.
And it will not be without its reward, if we restrict our aims in such a
manner, if we prefer to deal more fully with a series of problems, which
may seem at the first glance to be of less interest than others. After a
few lectures we shall find already that we may decide one very important
question about life merely by an analysis of individual form production,
and without any regard to problematic and doubtful parts of biology:
that we may decide the question, whether “life” is only a combination
of chemical and physical events, or whether it has its elemental laws,
laws of its own.
But to prepare the road that is to lead to such results we first have
to restrict our aims once more, and therefore the next lecture of this
course, which eventually is to touch almost every concept of philosophy
proper, will begin with the pure description of the individual
development of the common sea-urchin.
SECTION A
THE CHIEF RESULTS OF ANALYTICAL BIOLOGY