BIOLOGY

BY

EDMUND BEECHER WILSON

PROFESSOR OF ZOOLOGY
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

New York
THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
1908

BIOLOGY

BIOLOGY

BY

EDMUND BEECHER WILSON

PROFESSOR OF ZOOLOGY
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

New York
THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
1908

Copyright, 1908,
by THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS.

Set up, and published March, 1908.

BIOLOGY

I must at the outset remark that among the many sciences that are occupied with the study of the living world there is no one that may properly lay exclusive claim to the name of Biology. The word does not, in fact, denote any particular science but is a generic term applied to a large group of biological sciences all of which alike are concerned with the phenomena of life. To present in a single address, even in rudimentary outline, the specific results of these sciences is obviously an impossible task, and one that I have no intention of attempting. I shall offer no more than a kind of preface or introduction to those who will speak after me on the biological sciences of physiology, botany and zoology; and I shall confine it to what seem to me the most essential and characteristic of the general problems towards which all lines of biological inquiry must sooner or later converge.

It is the general aim of the biological sciences to learn something of the order of nature in the living world. Perhaps it is not amiss to remark that the biologist may not hope to solve the ultimate problems of life any more than the chemist and physicist may hope to penetrate the final mysteries of existence in the non-living world. What he can do is to observe, compare and experiment with phenomena, to resolve more complex phenomena into simpler components, and to this extent, as he says, to "explain" them; but he knows in advance that his explanations will never be in the full sense of the word final or complete. Investigation can do no more than push forward the limits of knowledge.

The task of the biologist is a double one. His more immediate effort is to inquire into the nature of the existing organism, to ascertain in what measure the complex phenomena of life as they now appear are capable of resolution into simpler factors or components, and to determine as far as he can what is the relation of these factors to other natural phenomena. It is often practically convenient to consider the organism as presenting two different aspects—a structural or morphological one, and a functional or physiological—and biologists often call themselves accordingly morphologists or physiologists. Morphological investigation has in the past largely followed the method of observation and comparison, physiological investigation that of experiment; but it is one of the best signs of progress that in recent years the fact has come clearly into view that morphology and physiology are really inseparable, and in consequence the distinctions between them, in respect both to subject matter and to method, have largely disappeared in a greater community of aim. Morphology and physiology alike were profoundly transformed by the introduction into biological studies of the genetic or historical point of view by Darwin, who did more than any other to establish the fact, suspected by many earlier naturalists, that existing vital phenomena are the outcome of a definite process of evolution; and it was he who first fully brought home to us how defective and one-sided is our view of the organism so long as we do not consider it as a product of the past. It is the second and perhaps greater task of the biologist to study the organism from the historical point of view, considering it as the product of a continuous process of evolution that has been in operation since life began. In its widest scope this genetic inquiry involves not only the evolution of higher forms from lower ones, but also the still larger question of the primordial relation of living things to the non-living world. Here is involved the possibility so strikingly expressed many years ago by Tyndall in that eloquent passage in the Belfast address, where he declared himself driven by an intellectual necessity to cross the boundary line of the experimental evidence and to discern in non-living matter, as he said, the promise and potency of every form and quality of terrestrial life. This intellectual necessity was created by a conviction of the continuity and consistency of natural phenomena, which is almost inseparable from the scientific attitude towards nature. But Tyndall's words stood after all for a confession of faith, not for a statement of fact; and they soared far above the terra firma of the actual evidence. At the present day we too may find ourselves logically driven to the view that living things first arose as a product of non-living matter. We must fully recognize the extraordinary progress that has been made by the chemist in the artificial synthesis of compounds formerly known only as the direct products of living protoplasm. But it must also be admitted that we are still wholly without evidence of the origin of any living thing, at any period of the earth's history, save from some other living thing; and after more than two centuries Redi's aphorism omne vivum e vivo retains to-day its full force. It is my impression therefore that the time has not yet come when hypotheses regarding a different origin of life can be considered as practically useful.

If I have the temerity to ask your attention to the fundamental problem towards which all lines of biological inquiry sooner or later lead us it is not with the delusion that I can contribute anything new to the prolonged discussions and controversies to which it has given rise. I desire only to indicate in what way it affects the practical efforts of biologists to gain a better understanding of the living organism, whether regarded as a group of existing phenomena or as a product of the evolutionary process; and I shall speak of it, not in any abstract or speculative way, but from the standpoint of the working naturalist. The problem of which I speak is that of organic mechanism and its relation to that of organic adaptation. How in general are the phenomena of life related to those of the non-living world? How far can we profitably employ the hypothesis that the living body is essentially an automaton or machine, a configuration of material particles, which, like an engine or a piece of clockwork, owes its mode of operation to its physical and chemical construction? It is not open to doubt that the living body is a machine. It is a complex chemical engine that applies the energy of the food-stuffs to the performance of the work of life. But is it something more than a machine? If we may imagine the physico-chemical analysis of the body to be carried through to the very end, may we expect to find at last an unknown something that transcends such analysis and is neither a form of physical energy nor anything given in the physical or chemical configuration of the body? Shall we find