LIFE AND EXPERIMENT 



by comparing their behavior in the altered living with that 

 in the normal. 



This review makes it at once clear that experimenting 

 in biology requires not only knowledge of physics and 

 chemistry but also, and in no less degree, that of the normal 

 living organism, the fundamental object of biological 

 investigation. The following discussion centers around 

 experiments on eggs. However, it applies also to work on 

 other types of cells. 



The investigator must possess familiarity with the bio- 

 logical system whose investigation he undertakes. The 

 chemist demands pure standardized materials for his work 

 and the physicist is at pains to be sure that his apparatus 

 always performs perfectly; neither is satisfied with experi- 

 ments contaminated by sources of error that can be 

 eliminated. Just because of the reason that biological 

 systems are not to be compared to "chemically pure" sub- 

 stances and that their performance is not always one 

 hundred per cent, perfect, the condition of the living thing 

 studied should be as fully known as possible. However, a 

 chemist who will use only purest chemicals will often in 

 biological work use cells or organisms in poor or even mori- 

 bund condition; the physicist who in the physical labora- 

 tory demands perfection in apparatus, frequently is 

 content with whatever cell or organism given him for 

 biological research, no matter how it behaves. Unfor- 

 tunately, it is all too true of many biologists, even of many 

 old-fashioned ones, that they investigate living systems 

 which are not in optimum condition. In the haste to make 

 experiments, many find no time to learn the optimum 

 condition of the system under study. Some do not 

 care and are content to report results that vary from day 

 to day, while others would not be able to distinguish a 

 really normal egg or other living structure from an abnormal 

 one. Indeed, it would seem by the manner in which many 



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