14 RESEARCH IN BIOLOGY 



interpretation. We take it for granted that life can be explained by 

 physics and chemistry and that living things obey the physical laws. 

 This assumption, although it cannot be tested, is very necessary because 

 the vitalist assumption acknowledges that life cannot be understood by 

 science. Even if we think and experiment as mechanists, a number of 

 serious problems still exist. The goal of all biological research must be 

 the explanation of life according to the physical laws. Therefore an 

 understanding of living things can never be more complete than our 

 comprehension of the physical laws. Biology must always lag behind the 

 physical sciences, just as physics has lagged behind mathematics. Allow- 

 ing investigations in biology to contribute to the physical theories is the 

 only alternative. 



Difficulties in biology 



Biology offers several other challenging difficulties. The living system 

 is far more complex than any physical entity. Biological chemicals are 

 large molecules, and the arrangement of these molecules in a particular 

 pattern is a necessary condition for life. No mere list of all the kinds of 

 chemical compounds and the amounts of each will ever explain life, 

 and yet, no picture showing the exact location of each molecule within 

 a cell would be adequate either, because these locations change with 

 time. Altogether, the living cell is more complex than anything the physi- 

 cal scientist is used to working with. In fact, some modern scientists 

 feel that the whole living organism is more than the sum of its parts. 

 Although reminiscent of vitalism, this new approach is perhaps on better 

 intellectual grounds and even suggests that findings in biology can con- 

 tribute to understanding of the chemical and physical laws. The little 

 book by E. Schrodinger, the great theoretical physicist, called What is 

 Life? gives an extremely stimulating discussion of this idea. Even though 

 the ideas were first proposed in 1943, they are still pertinent. 



Living things are more difficult to observe than nonliving things. 

 Their extreme complexity is only a part of the difficulty. Living material 

 is naturally variable. Its responses during an experiment may be influ- 

 enced by a great variety of factors, and the experimenter may not be 

 aware of some of these. Often a difference in the treatment of an organ- 

 ism before the experiment will cause changes in responses. Materials 

 present in amounts so small that they almost defy microanalysis can have 

 profound effects. 



