NOTES AND COMMENT 



For many years we have had with us popular, semi-popular and even 

 scientific books in which plants are tacitly or overtly credited with the 

 human attributes of foresight, prudence, ingenuity, and fear. Indeed, 

 we have recent texts and very recent articles in creditable scientific 

 journals in which occur expressions implying that this or that activity 

 in plants is of a purposeful character, directed to the attainment of an 

 advantage or to the evasion of an impending harm. The use of such 

 expressions indicates that their author is blind to the causality which 

 underlies all natural phenomena and that he sees ahead of the army of 

 scientific workers an impregnable wall at which they must halt and dis- 

 band, rather than a limitless field over which they may deploy in every 

 direction. While the existence of such a wall is in accord with the work- 

 ing philosophy of some biological investigators, it is highly probable 

 that it is the inertia of language and phrase which is chiefly responsible 

 for the survival of these objectionable expressions. To many writers it 

 seems difficult to make statements about plant behavior without resort- 

 ing to them, and to others it seems excusable to use them together with 

 an explanation or an apology. Two texts have appeared during the past 

 year— The Chicago Text-Book and Duggar's Plant Physiology— in 

 which a studied effort has been made to evade homocentric phrases and 

 words, and these books will do much to persuade the doubters that 

 it is possible to dispense with them. The authors of these texts have not 

 only avoided expressions which are flagrantly teleological or homocentric, 

 but they have expunged words which have merely "a bad flavor" in this 

 connection, words, that is, which have too close an association with the 

 literature and ideas of the homocentric period, and words which are of 

 objectionable etymology. 



There is no doubt of the fact that in order to get clear of objectionable 

 ideas we must abandon the vocabulary in which these ideas were clothed. 

 We are glad to see "moisture loving" and "drought resistant" go. We 

 are willing to abandon "function" because of its intimation of purpose, 

 and to speak of " conditions" rather than of "stimuli," because the former 

 word connotes something wholly understandable. We cannot, however, 

 go so far as to feel that it is equally important to discard Latin or Greek 



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