SOME FINAL CONSIDERATIONS 187 



not belong to the domain of physics and chemistry, and which 

 these sciences will be unable to analyse. On the other hand, 

 it follows that biology, wherever it employs causal analysis, 

 will greatly benefit by the use of the concepts coined by 

 physics and chemistry, and of the laws discovered by these 

 disciplines. 



However, the matter takes on an entirely different aspect, 

 if we state the problem as follows: Is it possible to give a 

 complete explanation of the phenomena of life on the basis 

 of physics and chemistry? In other words, is biology nothing 

 but a part of physics and chemistry ? We have already seen that 

 what matters in the living organism are not only the modes of 

 action as such, but in particular also their localisation in space 

 and time. The modes of action as such are not different from 

 those studied by physics and chemistry; it is their mutual 

 connections, the "here" and "now", in a word, the orderliness 

 of the phenomena of life, that constitutes the typical subject 

 of biology. We need not consider here whether or not non- 

 living systems can have an "order", comparable to the 

 orderliness found in living organisms (Kohler's "physische 

 Gestalten''), The important fact is that physics and chemistry 

 are powerless to explain this "order" because it is outside their 

 domain. This "order" cannot be analysed further with the causal 

 method ; if we trace the phenomena backwards through time, we 

 find that the orderly progress of the phenomena of life always 

 proceeds from the preformed order of an earlier situation. 

 Without this order, life is not conceivable; biology, therefore, 

 will never be able to dispense with it without belying its most 

 essential nature. 



If we apply these ideas to animal development, we see that 

 the phenomena as such, taken severally, can be described 

 simply as physical and chemical processes. Movements of 

 material particles, diffusion and osmosis, chemical reactions, 

 colloid-chemical processes — physical and chemical laws govern 

 the course of all these phenomena. But as soon as we focus 

 our attention on the orderly character of the developmental 

 phenomena, the way in which they are harmoniously inter- 

 linked, their well-arranged course in space and time — character- 



