VI PREFACE 



religion of an emphasis. Let not wisdom scoff at strange notions 

 or isolated facts. Let them be explored. For the strange notion 

 is a new vision, and the isolated fact a new clay, possible founda- 

 tions of tomorrow's science. 



Lest anyone shy at the title before he has sampled the book, I 

 may state that it describes interrelations among a limited number 

 of rather familiar facts. It is not a derivation of the imagination, 

 nor an exposition of a hypothesis, nor a development of a nebulous 

 idea. Whatever ideas went into the work were, I think, either sub- 

 stantiated or killed. The presentation that results therefrom takes 

 on an almost mechanical plan consisting of numerical data and of 

 generalization from them. Often the facts seem exciting enough 

 so that no imagery or creed is required. This book is not a survey 

 nor a review; it is a report of an investigation that became too 

 extensive for presentation in a journal. It would be gratuitous 

 in such a work to note what raw materials were omitted, or even 

 what other lessons might be drawn from the same sludge. Let it 

 be supposed, as for Basil Montagu, that ''He puts the facts before 

 us in the full confidence that they will produce on our minds the 

 effect which they have produced on his own" (T. B. Macaulay: 

 Essay on Lord Bacon). 



The best evidence that the study of regulations actually helps 

 one to understand physiology, lies in predictions about organisms. 

 Here is some substance J always present in muscle. That fact per 

 se implies that there is a source and a sink for J. But further, the 

 fact suggests that acquirement of J is probably faster whenever its 

 content tends to diminish. So metabolism is viewed as an intricate 

 pattern of interrelated processes which persists by virtue of the 

 very multiplicity of its quantitative steps. Once the steps have 

 been enumerated, their correlations become self-evident. Truly 

 each relation is new fruit, which would be discovered to be ''neces- 

 sary" to some future brilliant hypothesis, if it were not firmly 

 indicated by present facts. 



Those who prefer to take their facts on faith may avoid wading 

 through the presentation of details by reading the concluding sec- 

 tion of each chapter. In this way the progress of the inductive 

 development may be partially followed, leading at the close to 

 certain generalizations concerning the functional constitution of 

 organisms. 



