464 



NA TURE 



[September 14, 1893 V 



it will be strange indeed if the Nottingham meeting of 

 1893 should not become a record meeting, remembered 

 by the pleasure and satisfaction it has given, if not by 

 the largeness of the number who attend it. 



Frank Clowes. 



Inaugural Address by J. S. BurdonSanderson, M.A., 

 M.D., LL.D., D.C.L., F.R.S,, F.R.S.E., Professor 

 OF Physiology in the University of O.xkord, 

 President. 



We are assembled this evening as representatives of the 

 sciences — :nen and women wh:) seek to advance knowledge by 

 scientific methods. The common ground on which we stand is 

 that of belief in the paramount value of the end for which we are 

 striving, of its inherent power to make men wiser, happier, and 

 better ; and our common purpose is to strengthen and encourage 

 one another in our efforts for its attainment. We have come to 

 learn what progress has been made in departments of knowledge 

 which lie outside of our own special scientific interests and occu- 

 pations, to widen our views, and to correct whatever misconcep- 

 tions may have arisen from the necessity which limits each of 

 us to his own field of study ; and, above all, we are here for the 

 purpose of bringing our divided energies into effectual and com- 

 bined action. 



Probably few of the members of the Association are fully 

 avare of the influence which it has exercised during the last 

 half-century and more in furthering the scientific development 

 of this country. Wide as is the range of its activity, there has 

 been no great question in the field of scientific inquiry which it 

 has failed to discuss ; no important line of investigation which 

 it has not promoted ; no great discovery which it has not wel- 

 comed. After more than sixty years of existence it still finds 

 itself in the energy of middle life, looking back with satisfaction 

 to what it has accomplished in its youth, and forward to an even 

 more efficient future. One of the first of the national associa- 

 tions which exist in different countries for the advancement of 

 science, its influence has been more felt than that of its succes- 

 sors because it is more wanted. The wealthiest country in the 

 world, which has profiled more — vastly more — by science than 

 any other, England stands alone in the discredit of refusing the 

 necessary expenditure for its development, and cares not that 

 other nations should reap the harvest for which her own sons 

 have laboured. 



It is surely our duty not to rest satisfied with the reflection 

 that Eigland in the past has accomplished so much, but rather 

 to unite and agitate in the confidence of eventual success. It is 

 not the fault of governments, but of the nation, that the claims 

 of science are not recognised. We have against us an over- 

 whelming majority of the community, not merely of the ignor- 

 ant, but of those who regard themselves as educated, who value 

 science only in so far as it can be turned into money ; for we are 

 still in great measure — in greater measure than ai.y other — a 

 nation of shopkeepers. Let us who are of the minority — the 

 remnant who believe that truth is in itself of supreme value, and 

 the knowledge of it of supreme utility — do all Ihat we can to 

 bring public opinion to our side, so that the century which has 

 given Young, Faraday, t.yell, Darwin, Maxwell, and Thomson 

 to England, may before it closes see us prepared to take our part 

 with other countries in combined action for the full development 

 of natural knowledge. 



Last year the necessity of an imperial observatory for physical 

 science was, as no doubt many are aware, the subject of a dis- 

 cussion in Section A, which derived its interest from the number 

 of leading physicists who took part in it, and especially from the 

 presence and active participation of the distinguished man who 

 is at the head of the National Physical Laboratory at Berlin. 

 The equally pressing necessity for a central institu ion for 

 chemistry, on a scale commensurate with the practical impor- 

 tance of that science, has been insisted upon in this Association 

 and elsewhere by distinguished chemists. As regards biology 

 I shall have a word to say in the same direction this evening. 

 Of these three requirements it may be that the first is the 

 most pressing. If so, let us all, whatever branch of science 

 we represent, unite our efforts to realise it, in the assurance that 

 if once the claim of science to liberal public support is ad- 

 mitted, the rest will follow. 



In selecting a subject on which to address you this evening, I 

 have followed the example of my predecessors in limiting my- 

 self to matters more or less connected with my own scientific 



NO. T246, VOL. 48] 



occupations, believing that in discussing what most interests 

 myself I should have the best chance of interesting you. The 

 circumstance that at the last meeting of the British Association 

 in this town. Section D assumed for the first time the title 

 which it has since held, that of the Section of Biology, sug- 

 gested to me that I might take the word "biology" as my 

 starting-point, giving you some account of its origin and first 

 use, and of the relations which subsist between biology and 

 other branches of natural science. 



Origin and Meaning oj the Term "Biology." 



The word " biology," which is now so familiar as comprising 

 the sum of the knowledge which has as yet been acquired con- 

 cerning living nature, was unknown until after the beginning of 

 the present century. The term was first employed by Treviranus, 

 who proposed to hi nself as a life-task the development of anew 

 science, the aim of which should be to study the forms and 

 phenomena of life, its origin and the ccn litions and laws of its 

 existence, and embodied what was known on these subjects in 

 a book of seven volumes, which he entitled " Biilogy, or the 

 Philosophy of Living Nature." For its construction the 

 material was very scanty, and was chiefly derived from the 

 anatomists and physiologists. For botanists were entirely occu- 

 pied in completing the work which Linna:us had begun, and the 

 scope of zoology was in like manner limited to the description 

 and classification of animals. Ii was a new thing to regarc; the 

 study of living nature as a science by itself, worthy to occupy a 

 place by the side of natural philosophy, and it was therefore 

 necessary to vindicate its claim to such a position. Trevirinus 

 declined to f lund this claim on its useful applications to the arts 

 of agriculture and medicine, considering that to regard any sub- 

 ject of study in relation to our bodily wants — in other words to 

 utility — was to narrow it, but dwelt r.xther on its value as a 

 discipline and on its surpassing interest. He commends biology 

 to his readers as a study which, above all others, " nourishes and 

 maintains the taste for simplicity and nobleness ; which affords 

 to the intellect ever new material for reflection, and to the 

 imagination an inexhaustible source of attractive images." 



Being himself a mathematician as well as a naturalist, he 

 approaches the subj ct both from the side of natural philosophy 

 and from that of natural history, and desires to found the new 

 science on the fundamental distinction between living and ron- 

 living material. In discussing this distinction, he takes as his 

 point of departure the constancy with which the activities which 

 manifest themselves in the universe are balanced, emphasising 

 the impossibility of excluding from that balance the vital activi- 

 ties of plants and animals. The difference between vital and 

 physical processes he accordingly finds, not in the nature of the 

 processes themselves, but in their co-ordination ; that is, in . 

 their adaptedness to a given purpose, and to the peculiar 

 and special relation in which the organism stands to the 

 external world. All of this is expressed in a proposition 

 difficult to translate into English, in which he defines life as con- 

 sisting in the reaction of the organism to external influences, 

 and contrasts the uniformity of vital reactions with the variety 

 of their exciting causes.' 



The purpose which I have in view in taking you back as I 

 have done to the beginning of the century, is not merely to 

 commemorate the work done by the wonderfully acute writer to 

 whom we owe the first scientific conception of the science 

 of life as a whole, but to show that this conception, 

 as expressed in the definition I have given you as its foundation, 

 can still be accepted as true. It suggests the idea of organism 

 as that to which all other biological ideas must relate. It also 

 suggests, although perhaps it does not express it, that action is 

 not an attribute of the organism but of its essence — that if, on the 

 other hand, protoplasm is the basis of life, life is the basis of 

 protoplasm. Their relations to each other are reciprocal. We 

 think of the visible structure only in c )nneclion with the in- 

 visible process. The definition is also of value as indicating at 

 once the two lines of inquiry into which the science has divided 

 by the natural evolution of knowledj^e. These two lines may 

 be easily educed from the general principle from which Trevir- 

 anus started, according to which it is the fundamental charac- 

 teristic of the organism that all that goes on in it is to the 

 advantage of the whole. I need scarcely say that this funda- 

 mental conception of organism has at all times presented itself 



1 " Leben bestcht in der Gleichformiglteil der Reaktionen bei ungleich- 

 formigen Einwirkiingen der Aussenwelt."— Treviranus, Biologic Oder Pkit^ 

 Sophie der lebenden Natur, Gottingen, 1802, vol. i. p. 83. 



I 



