LIFE AS MECHANISM 



another."^" After a very masterly argument, and he 

 is a biologist whose work carries conviction, he sum- 

 marizes his position as follows: "When we make use 

 of physical categories, we are employing simplified 

 maxims or principles which, on account of their sim- 

 plicity, are very convenient for purposes of predic- 

 tion, but which can only be used over a limited extent 

 of our experience without gross error. When we at- 

 tempt to apply them to biological or psychological 

 phenomena, the error becomes apparent; we cannot 

 express biological or psychological experience in terms 

 of physical conceptions."^^ 



The principal reply to this thesis is given by Pro- 

 fessor D'Arcy Thompson; with the natural reluc- 

 tance of the biologist, and especially of one who has 

 advanced most interesting physical explanations of 

 many phenomena connected with cell action, to aban- 

 don a cherished theory, he is not willing to give up 

 hope that in some future time biology may become a 

 branch of physics. But even he is willing to admit 

 that the biologists can apply physical laws only to 

 those actions of the organism which are physical, and 

 he furthermore makes an unbridgeable gulf between 

 •consciousness, or psychology, and physics; that is, he 

 partially connects biology and physics and separates 

 psychology as a science from both of them. His con- 

 clusion is: "The physicist is, ipso facto, a mechanist, 



^-Life and Finite Individuality, p. ii. 

 ^^ Ibid., p. 27. 



C 295 2 



