THE SCIENCE OF BIOLOGY 429 



all Science leads into indeterminism, as a line if extended leads 

 into infinity. But the struggle at the barriers and the attempts to 

 penetrate the unknown are not futile, for it has been human expe- 

 rience that immediate objectives and partial answers are attained 

 by concerted and sustained attacks; new and illuminating prin- 

 ciples are being disclosed and new methods and material welfare 

 and enrichment of intellect are conferred on humanity. 



The most striking example of recent success in the field of Biol- 

 ogy has been the development of the Mendelian laws of heredity. 

 This success is not total, however, for there are many facts of he- 

 redity and of cell behavior that have so far eluded analysis. So the 

 present status of this great problem, as of all biological problems, is 

 that of work unfinished. In fact, Biology as an exact science has 

 only just begun, for the fact that the living substance, protoplasm, 

 the physical basis of all vital phenomena, is a colloid was estab- 

 lished less than four decades ago. Further progress depends upon 

 the vigor and steadfastness with which the search for facts is con- 

 tinued and upon the fertility of human minds in their evaluation. 



Biology Today. The present century has seen the develop- 

 ment of Biology as an experimental science and an increasing tend- 

 ency toward its becoming an exact or mathematical science. More 

 and more it tends to draw closer to the exact sciences of Physics 

 and Chemistry, as more and more it becomes evident that vital 

 phenomena are but special cases of the operation of the principles 

 of these sciences. Biology has come to make use of the tools and 

 instruments of precision of Physics and Chemistry, to express its 

 values as mathematical formulae, and to think in terms of reactions 

 and energy transformations. The descriptive branches. Anatomy, 

 Taxonomy and their various subdivisions, are not obscured but are 

 seen in their proper relation as descriptions of the necessary and 

 indissociable medium in which the dynamics of life take place. 



Experimental Technique. The technical methods employed 

 by the modern experimental biologists are so diverse and so numer- 



