The philosophy of biology / by James Johnstone.

  • Johnstone, James, 1870-1932.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The philosophy of biology / by James Johnstone. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    physico-chemical constellations capable of independent existence, and capable of indefinite growth by dis- sociation. They are parts of the organism, which, having received the impulse of life, an impulse which soon becomes exhausted, exhibit for a time some of the phenomena of the organism. What Physiology did attain in such investigations was an analytical descrip- tion of some of the activities of the organism. It did not describe life, but rather the physico-chemical reactions in which life is manifested. The description, it should be noted, is all-important for the human race in its effort to acquire mastery over its environment; and there is no other way in which it may be carried further but by the methods of physical Science. Given- ness is one, though we arbitrarily divide it into the domains of the organic and the inorganic, and there can be only one way of describing it. That is the mechanistic method. Nevertheless all this is only a description, and our Philosophy must be the attempt to understand our description. The mechanistic biologist, in the attempt to identify his Philosophy with that of a former genera- tion of physicists, says that he is describing a physico- chemical aggregate—an assemblage of molecules of a high degree of complexity—actuated by energy, and undergoing transformations. But our scepticism as to the validity of this conclusion is aroused by reflect- ing on its origin. If it was borrowed from the Philo- sophy of a past Physics, and if the more penetrating analysis of the Physics of our own time has made a new Philosophy desirable, should not Biology also revise its understanding of its descriptions ? For Biology has not stood still any more than Physics, and the Physiology of our own day has become different from that of the times when the mechanistic Philosophy