A Biologist s View of Whitehead' s 



Philosophy 



(From the Whitehead volume in the Library of Living 



Philosophers, 1941) 



The author of this contribution is very conscious, both of the honour 

 which has been done him in an invitation to contribute to the present 

 symposium, and of the pleasure which it is to be able to participate 

 in a reasoned tribute to one of the greatest of living philosophers. 

 The reader's indulgence is begged at the outset in case any of what 

 follows should appear unduly trite, but in requesting the co-operation 

 of a working biologist, the editors laid themselves open to receiving 

 a paper in which the finer points, to say the least of it, of Professor 

 Whitehead's philosophy, should be but poorly appreciated.^ 



Trends in Theoretical Biology. 



The author's interest in "philosophical" or theoretical biology was 

 probably awakened by the very fact of his being a biochemist. The 

 zoological systematist may get along well enough by treating his 

 data as an array of empty forms unconnected with a material sub- 

 stratum; the psychologist may do the same; and the organic chemist 

 may reveal the structural formula of some compound once involved 

 in a living cell, or analyse the constituents of blood or tissue fluids, 

 without devoting much thought to the organisation of the living 

 being which synthesised the one or secreted the other. But the true 

 biochemist is deeply concerned about the structure and organisation 

 of the living cell, with its "topography" permitting of innumerable 

 simultaneously-proceeding chemical reactions, its faculty of getting 

 things done just at the right time and place, and its remarkable pro- 

 perties of symmetry and polarity, exhibited in an aqueous colloidal 

 medium of certain essential constituents, especially the proteins, 



^ Abbreviations adopted in what follows: 



S & MW Science and the Modern World. 



AOI Adventures of Ideas. 



N & L Nature and Life. 



P & R Process and Reality, 



MOT Modes of Thought. 



178 



