Vol. VI. February, 1904.. No. 



BIOLOGICAL BULLETIN. 



THE SPECIAL PHYSICS OF SEGMENTATION AS 

 SHOWN BY THE SYNTHESIS, FROM THE STAND- 

 POINT OF UNIVERSALLY VALID DYNAMIC 

 PRINCIPLES, OF ALL THE ARTIFICIAL 

 PARTHENOGENETIC METHODS. 



E. G. SPAULDING. 



The genesis of this paper is a twofold one. In the first place 

 the careful perusal of the literature which has appeared in very 

 recent years on the matter of the obtaining of artificial partheno- 

 genesis in various forms by a number of methods, and which in- 

 cludes also varying theories of the process of segmentation as in- 

 terpretations of these data, this perusal readily convinces one that 

 such a consistent and far-reaching synthetic view of the nature of 

 segmentation as known data would seem to warrant one in try- 

 ing to obtain is quite lacking. In fact no attempt seems to have 

 been made to show that all the methods employed must result 

 in bringing about one and the same series of physical events in 

 the cell preceding and during segmentation, to which the process 

 resulting from normal fertilization is no exception. That vital 

 (?) phenomena can be reduced to a purely physical basis will 

 doubtless be disputed as long as any details connected therewith 

 remain unstudied or in any way ambiguous. The absence of 

 such a complete reduction is in itself, however, no disproof of 

 the correctness of the view as a theoretical standpoint, and suc- 

 cess in it will at least always remain a scientific ideal. 1 A clear 

 and detailed demonstration that the effectiveness of the various 

 artificial parthenogenetic methods can be explained if it is held 

 that one series of physical events always occurs in the process of 

 segmentation would seem therefore to go a considerable way in 



1 The position that this standpoint is logically necessary for biology as a science is 

 discussed in the author's article, " The Contrary and the Contradictory in Biology; 

 a Study of Vitalism," in The Monist, July, 1903. 



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