THE SCOPE OF BIOLOGY 3 



gained content, clearness, and individuality. Astronomy, 

 physics or natural philosophy, and chemistry were emanci- 

 pated first owing to the fact that their material was more 

 readily susceptible to mathematical and experimental treat- 

 ment, thus leaving the histories of the Earth, animals and 

 plants, or so-called observational sciences, as the residue for 

 natural history. It is in this restricted sense that natural 

 history still lingers. 



It remained, however, for Lamarck and Treviranus during 

 the opening years of the nineteenth century to attain a vision 

 of the unity of animal and plant life the unity of ZOOLOGY 

 and BOTANY and to express it in the term biology. But 

 biology is something more than a union of botany and 

 zoology under one name for it endeavors, in addition to 

 describing the characteristics of animals and plants, to un- 

 fold the general principles underlying both. 



Thus the biologist has as his field the study of living 

 things what they are, what they do, and how they do 

 it. He asks, how this animal or that plant is constructed 

 and how it works and this he attempts to answer. 

 He would like to ask, why it is so constructed and why 

 it works the way it does but this is beyond the scope 

 of science. 



These queries of the biologist reflect the two primary 

 viewpoints from which biological phenomena may be ap- 

 proached: the morphological in which interest centers 

 upon the form and structure of living things, and the 

 physiological in which attention is concentrated upon the 

 functions performed the mechanical and chemical engin- 

 eering of living machines. Clearly, however, it is impossible 

 to draw a hard and fast distinction between morphology and 

 physiology because in the final analysis structure must be 

 interpreted in terms of function, and vice versa. But again, 



