34 NATIONAL TRENDS IN BIOLOGY 



masses of cells, and cells, in turn, were composed of proto- 

 plasm, it was but logical that one should study proto- 

 plasm. This was not only a fruitful field for an analysis 

 both physically and chemically of the substance of proto- 

 plasm itself, but of the behavior of the single-celled plants 

 and animals, which, being actual living organisms, must 

 have within their single cell the answer to the riddle 

 of life. 



Physics had won first place in the sciences for four 

 reasons: (1) it accepted the uniformity of nature, (2) it 

 insisted upon exact measurements, (3) it concentrated 

 attention on the regularities that underlie the complexities 

 of phenomena as they appear to us, and (4) it emphasized 

 the importance of crucial experiments. 



It was but natural that physiology should try to do with 

 organs what physics did with inanimate material. Thus 

 the study of mere reactions came into being, so that first 

 we wanted to find out the actual chemical make-up of the 

 material with which we were working, and then how it 

 would react to all manner of stimuli as a whole or when 

 certain portions were eliminated. From the grosser experi- 

 ments, there was a resort to finer ones, and here a single 

 organism was taken and subjected to all manner of "indig- 

 nities" to see how this particular thing would react under 

 very particular and definite excitations. And here again, 

 biological workers landed in the same type of ctd-de-sac 

 in which Driesch had landed. 



As J. Arthur Thomson says, "The chemical-physical 



