Organization 459 



thing, however— its self-regulatory organization— must still be explained 

 before we claim that we know what life is. This may well involve princi- 

 ples, still undiscovered, which are distinctively biological and different 

 from the presently understood ones of the physical sciences. This is the 

 position taken by men like Delbruck ( 1949) and Schrodinger ( 1945). The 

 line between the physical and the biological sciences steadily grows less 

 distinct, but this does not necessarily mean that biology is simply a 

 specialized kind of physics and chemistry. Says Prof. Wald ( 1958 ) : "If 

 biology ever is 'reduced' to chemistry and physics, it will be only because 

 the latter have grown up to biology. At this point it will be hard to say 

 which is which." 



Here the problem touches deeper questions of philosophy which lead 

 us away from purely scientific ideas. That biology, and perhaps especially 

 morphogenesis, is bound to have important philosophical implications 

 cannot be denied, but these questions are beyond the purpose of the 

 present discussion. It is important, however, for a student of the life 

 sciences to remember that back of all the phenomena of genetics, bio- 

 chemistry, and physiology stands the important fact that a living thing 

 is an organism, that there is an interrelationship among its parts, which is 

 manifest in development, and that if this system is disturbed it tends, by 

 a process of self -regulation, to restore itself. The most evident expression 

 of this organization is the form of the organism and its structures. Mor- 

 phogenesis, the study of the origin of form, thus assumes a central posi- 

 tion in the biological sciences. 



