1382 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



the unquestioned conception of the single creation of a human pair, 

 thus of common ancestry with "the chosen people" of old; and since 

 then with a single main line of continuity of civilisation (taken as 

 essentially Mediterranean, or thence Nordic, and each self-chosen 

 in turn). But these doctrines have given place to the tracing of 

 (various?) long descents from allied animal forms; and in any case to 

 an evolution of very different peoples in different places, at different 

 rates, and in different times; so with different systems of reference. 

 Hence our eventful European calendar has as yet no value for the 

 Australian, so far as still paleolithic; though his long-persisting 

 time period has prehistoric interest for us. Is not all this Relativity ? 

 i.e. on the social level; yet truly comparable to mathematico- 

 physical relativity, since also of time, space, and movement, in 

 differing reference-systems, throughout organic and human life, as 

 now seen for inorganic nature. And the question even rises — has 

 not this Relativity doctrine thus originated, however sub-con- 

 sciously ? 



In all essential ways, then, the sciences of organic and social 

 life — albeit less rigorously precise, since more intricately variable, 

 than those of the inorganic world — ^have been earlier, and even more 

 fully, relativistic. Or is it perhaps even because of these difficulties 

 and limitations of the sciences of life ? And do not all sciences arise 

 from Life — life social, not simply organic. 



Hence without losing sight of the fundamental succession, in the 

 upbuilding of the sciences, from mathematical and physical know- 

 ledge onwards, we plead for fuller co-operations, beyond the present 

 too specialised detachment of science from science. It is to the mathe- 

 matical mind that we owe the origin and progress of our graphs, 

 throughout all the sciences; as from the simplest co-ordinates 

 onwards; as, of course, also our statistics, from simplest numeration 

 onwards to their mathematical elaboration. Hence it is a little 

 surprising (i) that the eight sub-sciences of biology should have arisen 

 empirically, without mathematical aid; and (2) that it seems left 

 to us as biologists — seeking thus to arrange our innumerable facts, 

 to submit to the experts what appears to us the mathematical 

 reason, and even necessity, of such an eightfold presentment; 

 since grounded in space, movement and time, and this throughout 

 the physical, the organic and the social sciences alike. Yet does it 

 not show too how mathematician and biologist are more akin than 

 they seem; since to his counting, measuring and reasoning we 

 supply not only a wealth of phenomena to be thus treated, but 

 these so far rationally classified as well? It is surely through the 

 unison of both concrete presentment and abstract reason that 

 science advances; but mathematicians have less monopoly of the 

 latter than we are wont modestly to think; for, after all, the "logy" 

 of each science is logos. 



