A HIT-OR-MISS UNIVERSE 



The Mechanistic View of Life, as Expounded by Jacques Loeb — Possibility That 

 Life Is Eternal, and Never Had a Beginning No Evidence of any 

 Intelligent Guidance of Evolution " 



A MAN who lives far from archi- 

 tects and builders can put uj) a 

 \-ery ^ood house or barn nowa- 

 days by buying it " K. D." The 

 entire structure will be shipped to him 

 "knocked down;" every part will be 

 cut to fit, and numbered, and he has 

 only to follow the plan which is sent 

 him, to get each jjiece where it belongs 

 and produce a finished building. 



Evidently, the plan or design is essen- 

 tial. If the "K. D."" building were 

 picked up in the railway yards by a 

 cyclone, carried ten miles and then 

 dropped beside a road, its parts would 

 hardly be expected to arrange them- 

 selves in the projxT order, nail them- 

 selves together, and i)roduce a finished 

 building of their own accord. The 

 building is possible only when each 

 sej^arate part is in its proper place with 

 respect to the others — a fact which 

 seems to make a ])lan a prerequisite. 



The development of an animal from 

 a fertilized egg has been looked on as 

 analogous in some ways to the con- 

 struction of a house. vStudents of 

 genetics have established the fact that 

 the parts of the adult arc in some cases 

 represented in the egg by factors which 

 are distinct and sej^arate. The tiger's 

 strijK'S and his temper are, it is alleged, 

 each rei^resented by something in the 

 original cell — a chemical reaction, ])ro- 

 bably, which, after a long series of re- 

 actions and interactions in the cell and 

 in the developing embryo, ends u]) by 

 producing the stripes, or the temjK'r, 

 as the case may be, in the tiger cul). 



How do these things develop in the 

 right order? Is it ])ossible to conceive 

 of such a complicated i)rocess, unless 

 one conceives of some i)re-existent 

 design or plan in accordancx- with which 



the process of development is carried 

 out? It might be admitted that the 

 plant or animal is a machine; it might 

 even be suj^poscd that it is a machine 

 which automatically runs itself; but 

 can the human mind go so far as to 

 believe that it is also a machine that 

 manufactures itself? 



Darwinism suggested this conclu- 

 sion, but did not establish it. It can 

 only be established through experi- 

 mental biology. 



IT WAS AN ACCIDENT 



In his latest book,^ Jacques Loeb 

 attempts to show that a purely me- 

 chanical view of development is con- 

 sistent with the facts. His explana- 

 tion is (to carry the analogy a little 

 farther) that if the cyclone picks up 

 not one but ten thousand "K. D." 

 houses, 9,999 of them might fall as mere 

 heai)S of kindling and nails, but that 

 one of the numl:)er might by chance be 

 dro])i)ed in a recognizal^le sha]je. 



In addition to this. Dr. Loeb's book 

 is a well-written brief for the mechanistic 

 view of life in all branches of investi- 

 gation. It is worth reading because, 

 whether or not one likes a "purely 

 mechanical philosophy, a mechanistic 

 working hypothesis is being recognized 

 by more men of science each year as 

 the most ])rofitable for research. If 

 the hyj^othesis used is a loose one, the 

 investigator will never know whether 

 his facts fit it or not. But if the 

 hyjDothesis is as rigid as can be im- 

 agined, then any unconformable fact will 

 at once be recognized as such, and the 

 hypothesis can Ijc enlarged to take it in. 



The attem])t of experimental biolo- 

 gists to reduce all the manifestations of 

 life lo terms of ])hysics and chemistry 



• The r)rKanism as a Whole, from a T>hysicf>clu'mical view} fiint. By Jacques Loeb, ^f.D., 

 Ph.D., Sc.I)., nicm])er of the HockefellcT Institute for Meflical Research, New York Citv. 

 Pp. 379, with .SI illustrations, price $2.50. New York. C. P. Putnam's Sons, 2 West Forty-fifth 

 Street, 1916. 



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