PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION 



common with mechanicism that there is no mystery involved 

 in inanimate matter. 



Mechanicism was not wrong in so far as it claimed that the 

 phenomena of life could be studied and explained by the same 

 methods as the phenomena of inanimate matter, but it was 

 wrong only in so far as it thought that, consequently, no 

 mystery was involved in animate matter. 



To put it another way, if mechanicism will be proved right 

 in assuming that abiogenesis is possible, then this does not 

 mean that vitalistic biologists are wrong in speaking about 

 the mystery of organic life, but will show only how great the 

 mystery of the material world is. A better understanding of 

 this fundamental truth, which is a consequence of the fact 

 that physics and chemistry are abstract sciences, would con- 

 tribute much to the clarification of many philosophical disputes 

 concerning abiogenesis and evolution, and especially that of 

 the descent of man from lower forms of life. In the following 

 we will, therefore, focus our attention on the problems of the 

 distinction between inanimate and animate matter. It will 

 give us the opportunity to discuss at the same time the 

 distinction between man and animal. For it is clear that, 

 philosophically speaking, the real problems of evolution con- 

 cern not so much the transition of one form of animal-life or 

 plant-life to another as the transition from inanimate matter 

 to animate and from animal to man. 



4, The Distinction Between Inanimate Nature, Animate 

 Nature, and Man 



In our natural attitude with respect to the great realms of 

 nature — inanimate matter, vegetative and animal life, and 

 finally man — we usually think of an hierarchic order in which 

 the higher rank possesses everything pertaining to the lower 

 plus something specific proper to the higher rank. This way 

 of thinking is reflected in our manner of speaking. We say, for 

 example, that the inanimate material world does not live, and 

 that it does not have any sense or intellectual knowledge, but 

 merely exists with its material properties. As a consequence, 

 when we speak about the level of plant-life, li[e is added 

 as something special to mere material being, a plant has 

 something, life, which a material thing does not have. By the 



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