no HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



organism which it denotes. It is this abuse, in addition to 

 its indefiniteness, which has led to its abandonment by the 

 great majority of biologists who have preferred to see in life 

 /nothing but a specific type of mechanism. I suggest that 

 the substitution, for scientific and philosophic purposes, of 

 the concept of the whole for life would give far more preci- 

 sion to the underlying idea. Thus a definite concept, whose 

 properties could be investigated and defined, would take 

 the place of a vague expression, already ruined by popular 

 use and abuse. A living organism is not an organism plus 

 life, as if life were something different and additional to it; 

 it is just the organism in its unique character as a whole, 

 which can be closely defined. The sense in which it differs 

 from a chemical compound considered as a whole is also 

 capable of accurate definition; and thus it is quite unneces- 

 sary to resort to the dubious concept of mechanism in order 

 to describe the living organism or, as I prefer to call it, the 

 holistic organism. The concept of the whole enables us to 

 use a technical scientific terminology, which is not vitiated 

 by popular usage, and which is capable of accurate definition 

 and description. 



The substitution of the concept or the category of the 

 whole for that of life will probably be found a solvent for 

 many of the most perplexing problems in biology as well as 

 the philosophy of life. The whole connects not only with 

 the physical on the one side and the psychical on the other, 

 thus maintaining the contacts of Nature; it brings to bear a 

 perfectly definite and intelligible concept on the phenomena 

 of ''life," for which hitherto no other definite category has 

 been found except the other misleading and misplaced one 

 of mechanism. 



In the foregoing I have tried to give some preliminary 

 and introductory sketch of the concept of the whole, which 

 will be further developed and filled in as this inquiry pro- 

 ceeds. For the sake of simplicity I have omitted reference to 

 an important feature in that concept which I must now pro- 

 ceed to mention and explain. I have stated that by the whole 

 I mean, not the All-Whole of Absolutist philosophy, but the 



