Implications of the Theories of Nerve Action 07 



which we are forced joins issue with the very opening sen- 

 tence of the Physiology of the Brain, as we have already in- 

 dicated. "The understanding of complicated phenomena," 

 particularly as presented by organisms, can not be accom- 

 plished through "an analysis by which they are resolved into 

 their simple elementary components." Unquestionably an- 

 alysis is essential to, but it is not adequate for, full under- 

 standing of the phenomena. 



The very nature of organic synthesis and of knowledge- 

 getting precludes the possibility of attaining the hind and 

 degree of understanding of organisms which element alls t 

 biology claims to have attained and promises to attain. 



"A complete explanation of life in terms of physics and 

 chemistry" is impossible for the sufficient reason that physics 

 and chemistry as such do not contain any of the really dis- 

 tinctive terms of life. Those terms can only be brought 

 into physics and chemistry after and not before the phe- 

 nomena of life have been searchingly scrutinized ; that is, an- 

 alyzed and found to involve physics and chemistry. The 

 terms of life are in the original data on the phenomena of 

 life, and no sort of analysis can possibly make this other- 

 wise. 



Our position, it should be noticed, touches the hackneyed 

 controversy over vitalism and materialism only in so far as 

 the course of reasoning we have pursued involves the recog- 

 nition that each organism (the dog, for instance) is a 

 natural object possessed of certain causal powers, by ex- 

 actly the same logical and epistemological criteria that any 

 simple chemical element or chemical compound is a natural 

 object. 



Stated in a brief and common-sense way, our contention 

 is that the attributes which make a dog a living body are no 

 less natural than are the attributes which make carbon a 

 chemical body. The tiresome and meager-fruited contro- 

 versy between Materialists and Vitalists may be character- 



