time: the refreshing river 



point is that by the time this has become possible, the physics and 

 the chemistry have been completely transformed by the incorporation 

 of wider factual ranges. The matter has recently been well put as 

 follows: *'It seems to become clear that chemistry will never become 

 predictable mathematically, and that, in fact, we have rather to make 

 mathematical physics — in a sense — more chemical. We have to dis- 

 cover a set of empirical simplifications — corresponding to the nature 

 of the chemical properties of matter — which will allow us to crystallise 

 the general equations of atomic physics into a form readily applicable 

 to chemical changes."^ 



Woodger*s point of view, supported also by the Austrian theoretical 

 biologist V. Bertalannfy,^ was perhaps the most technically well- 

 informed manifestation of a great movement of modern thought 

 which sought to base a philosophical world-view on ideas originating 

 from biology rather than from the classical physics. It fused once 

 again what Descartes had put asunder. It was Descartes, as Woodger 

 acutely said, who introduced the practice of calling organisms 

 machines, with the unfortunate consequence that transcendent 

 mechanics had to be invented to drive them. Organicism, if not 

 obscurantist, was bound to be the death of "vitalism" as well as of 

 "mechanism." It was likely to be the death of animism too, since 

 mental phenomena cannot but be considered in the light of the 

 evolution of the central nervous system, as is discussed in the latest 

 and most interesting work of this kind, the Gifford Lectures of Sir 

 Charles Sherrington.^ 



Succession in Time and Envelopes in Space. 



From the scientist's standpoint, the organic conception of the 

 world involves succession in time and envelopes in space. Taking the 

 latter first, it is obvious that the different levels of organisation, for 

 such we must call them, occur one within the other. Ultimate particles, 

 the proton, electron, etc. build up atoms, atoms build molecules, 

 molecules build large colloidal particles and cell-constituents and 

 paracrystalline phases and the like, these in their turn are organised 

 into the living cell. Above this level, cells form organs and tissues, 

 the latter combine into the functioning living body, and the bodies 

 of animals, especially men, form social communities. As the central 



^ M. Polanyi, Nature, 1942, 149, 510. 



^ L. V. Bertalannfy, Theoretische Biologie (Berlin, 1932). 



^ C. Sherrington, Man on His Nature (Cambridge, 1941). 



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