A biologist's view of whitehead's philosophy 



carbohydrates and fats. The ancient problem of body and mind, too, 

 was always around the corner. How to reconcile the introspected "me" 

 and the domain of mind and spirit with the world of flesh and blood, 

 of macromolecules and hydrogen ions, with which the former seemed 

 to be so strangely connected ^ This interest in the organisation of the 

 living cell, the borderline between biology and physics, was natural 

 in Cambridge, where the tradition of W. B. Hardy and F. G. Hopkins 

 was, and still is, in full vigour. 



The author's first approach to the whole subject on the theoretical 

 side was therefore a careful, if somewhat unrewarding, examination 

 of the voluminous and polemical literature on "vitalism," "neo- 

 vitalism," and "mechanism," which had appeared during the last 

 decade of the past century and the first two of the present one. The 

 writings of Hans Driesch, J. S. Haldane and E. S. Russell on the 

 one side, and of men such as Jacques Loeb, H. S. Jennings and Judson 

 Herrick on the other, were gone through. It would be probably well 

 worth someone's while to take this literature and make a coherent 

 historical summary of it, for it belongs to a distinct period which 

 has been closed since about 1930. The vitalists systematically drew 

 attention to the flaws in the over-simplified explanations of biological 

 processes which workers such as Loeb, recognising them to be 

 interim hypotheses only, were always putting forward. Their attitude 

 was no doubt partly inspired by the human, all too human, but 

 nevertheless obscurantist, desire to retain elements of mystery in the 

 universe, and hence they fought decade after decade a stubborn 

 withdrawing action against the ever-fresh shock-troops of the 

 mechanists. The process had begun long before; it was familiar to 

 the men of T. H. Huxley's time, as witness the interesting passage 

 in the book of that curious character, W. H. Mallock, The New 

 Republic (1878). 



"Saunders (intended to be W. K. Cliflbrd, the mathematician): 



*One word more, one plain word, if you will allow me. All 

 this talk about religion, poetry, morality, implies this — or it 

 implies nothing — the recognition of some elements of in- 

 scrutable mystery in our lives and conduct; and to every 

 mystery, to all mystery, science is the sworn, the deadly, foe. 

 What she is daily branding into man's consciousness is that 

 nothing is inscrutable that can practically concern him. Use, 

 pleasure, self-preservation — on these everything depends; on 



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