The philosophy of biology

Argument.—The conscious organism is one that acts. Its consciousness of an external world is not simply the result of the stimuli made by that world on its organs of sense, for it becomes fully aware only of those stimuli which result in deliberated bodily activity. This awareness of an outer world on which it acts is the perception of the organism. Its consciousness is an intensive multiplicity. This multiplicity is arbitrarily dissociated, for convenience’ sake, by the mental organisation, which confers extension and magnitude and succession on those aspects of consciousness which it arbitrarily dissociates from each other. Our notion of space is an intuitive one and depends on our modes of bodily exertion. Our notions of motion and continuity are also intuitive ones, and they cannot be represented intellectually, but we can approximate to them by the methods of the infinitesimal calculus. Mathematical time is only a series of standard events which punctuate our duration. Duration is the accumulated existence and experience of the organism. We cannot prove intellectually that there is a world external to our consciousness, but that this world exists is a conviction intuitively held.

Argument.—If the organism is a physico-chemical mechanism its activities must conform to the two principles of energetics: the law of conservation of energy and matter, and the law of entropy-increase. They conform strictly to the law of conservation. The law of the degradation of energy is true of our experience of inorganic nature, but we can show that it cannot be universally true. Inorganic processes are irreversible ones, and they proceed in one direction only, and in them energy is degraded. Organic processes, that is, the processes carried on in the generalised organism, are irreversible; or, at least, there is a tendency for them to be carried on without necessary dissipation of energy.

Argument.—If the organism is investigated by the methods of physical and chemical science, nothing but physico-chemical activities can be discovered. This is necessarily the case, since methods which yield physico-chemical results only are employed. The physiologist makes an analysis of the activities of the organism, and he reduces these activities to certain categories; although all attempts completely to describe the functioning of the organism solely in terms of physical and chemical reactions fail. In addition to the reactions which make up the functioning of an organ or organ-system, there is direction and co-ordination of these reactions. The individual physico-chemical reactions which occur in the functioning of the organism are integrated, and life is not merely these reactions, but also their integration.

Argument.—The notion of the organism as a physico-chemical mechanism is a deduction from the methods of physiology, and not from its results. The notion of vitalism is a natural or intuitive one. The historic systems of vitalism assumed the existence of a spiritual agency in the organism, or of a form of energy which was peculiar to the activities of the organism. Modern investigation lends no support to either belief. But the study of the organism as a whole, that is, the study of developmental processes, or that of the organism acting as a whole, afford a logical disproof of pure mechanism. It shows that there cannot be a functionality, in the mathematical sense, between the inorganic agencies that affect the whole organism and the behaviour or functioning of the whole organism. Mechanism is only suggested in the study of isolated parts of the organism. We are compelled toward the belief that there is an agency operative in the activities of the organism which does not operate in purely inorganic becoming. This is the Vital Impetus of Bergson, or the Entelechy of Driesch.

Argument.—The concept of the organic individual is one which is arbitrary, and is convenient only for purposes of description. Life on the earth is integrally one. Personality is the intuition of the conscious organism that it is a centre of action, and that all the rest of the universe is relative to it. The individual organism, regarded objectively, is an isolated, autonomous constellation, capable of indefinite growth by dissociation, differentiation, and re-integration. This growth is reproduction. The dissociated part reproduces the form and manner of functioning of the individual organism from which it has proceeded. The offspring varies from the parent organism, but it resembles it much more than it varies from it. There are therefore categories of organisms in nature the individuals of which resemble each other more than they resemble the individuals belonging to other categories: these are the elementary species. Hypotheses of heredity are corpuscular ones, and are based on the physical analogy of molecules and atoms. The concept of the species is a logical one. The organism is a phase in an evolutionary or a developmental flux, and the idea of the species is attained by arresting this flux.

Argument.—A reasoned classification of organisms suggests that a process of evolution has taken place. It suggests logical relationships between organisms, while the results of embryology and palÆontology suggest chronological relationships. Yet this kinship of organisms might only be a logical, and not a material one. Evolution may have occurred somewhere, but it might be argued that the ideas of species have generated each other in a Creative Thought. But transformism may be produced experimentally, and so science has adopted a mechanistic hypothesis of the nature of the process. Transformism of species depends on the occurrence of variations, but these arise spontaneously and independently of each other, and they must be co-ordinated. This co-ordination of variations cannot be the work of the environment. Variations are cumulative, and they exhibit direction, and this direction is either an accidental one, or it is the expression of an impetus or directing agency in the varying organism itself. The problem of the cause of variation is only a pseudo-problem.

Argument.—If we assume the existence of an evolutionary process, the results of morphology, embryology, and palÆontology ought to enable us to trace the directions followed during this process. But these results are still so uncertain that they indicate only a few main lines of transformism. Phylogenetic trees are largely conjectural in matters of detail. Evolution has resulted in the establishment of several dominant groups of organisms—the metatrophic bacteria, the chlorophyllian organisms, the arthropods, and the vertebrates. Each of these groups displays certain characters of morphology, energy-transformation, and behaviour; and a certain combination of characters is concentrated in each of the groups. But there is a community of character in all organisms which have arisen during the evolutionary process. The transformation of kinetic into potential energy is characteristic of the chlorophyllian organisms. The utilisation of potential energy, and its conversion into the kinetic energy of regulated bodily activity, by means of a sensori-motor system, is characteristic of the animal. The bacteria carry to the limit the energy-transformations begun in the tissues of the plants and animals. Immobility and unconsciousness characterise the plant, mobility and consciousness the animal. Animals indicate two types of actions—intelligent actions and instinctive actions. Instinctive activity involves the habitual exercise of modes of action that have been inherited. Intelligent activities involve the exercise of modes of action that are not inherited, but which are acquired by the animal during its own lifetime, and are the results of perceptions which show the animal that its activity is relative to an outer environment.

Argument.—A strictly mechanistic hypothesis of evolution compels us to regard the organic world, and the inorganic environment with which it interacts, as a physico-chemical system. All the stages of an evolutionary process must therefore be equally complex: they are simply phases, or rearrangements, of the elements of a transforming system. The physics on which these mechanistic hypotheses were based was that of a discontinuous, granular, Newtonian universe, that is, one consisting of discrete particles, or mass-points, attracting or repelling each other with forces which are functions of the distances between them. It was a spatially extended system of parts. Therefore at all stages in an evolutionary process, or one of individual development, the elements of the system constitute an extensive manifoldness, and the obligation of mechanistic hypotheses of evolution and development to accept this view has shaped modern theories of heredity. Life is an intensive manifoldness, but in individual or racial evolution this intensive manifoldness becomes an extensive manifoldness. Life is a bundle of tendencies which can co-exist, but which cannot all be fully manifested, in the same material constellation, therefore these tendencies become dissociated in the evolutionary process. In this dissociation there is direction and co-ordination, which are the Vital Impetus of Bergson, or the Entelechy of Driesch.

Entelechy is an elemental agency in nature which we are compelled to postulate because of the failure of mechanism. It is not spirit, nor a form of energy, but the direction and co-ordination of energies. There is a sign, or direction of inorganic happening which absolutely characterises the processes which are capable of analysis by physico-chemical methods of investigation, and the result of this direction of inorganic happening is material inertia. Yet this direction cannot be universal: it must be evaded somewhere in the universe. It is evaded by the organism.

The problem of the nature of life is only a pseudo-problem.

Infinity and the notion of the limit. Functionality. Frequency distributions and probability. Matter, force, mass, and inertia. Energy-transformations. Isothermal and adiabetic transformations. The Carnot engine and cycle. Entropy. Inert matter.