Chapter XV 11 

 GROWTH INTEGRATION 



The Field to be Covered by the Constructive Discussion 



ACCEPTING the inevitable destructive result of our cri- 

 tique of the elementalist standpoint, that the attempt 

 to interpret living beings in the terms of their constituent 

 parts alone always leads to partial failure and disappoint- 

 ment, or to the worse result of illusionment as to the trust- 

 worthiness of the explanations proposed; and accepting the 

 constructive result that everything in the critical study tends 

 to show that no part of any organism can be rightly inter- 

 preted except as part of an individual organism, this indi- 

 vidual being in turn interpreted as a member of a taxonomic 

 group, it is revealed that we are only on the threshold of the 

 positive, the constructive side of our general enterprise. Even 

 though the conclusion be unescapable that the living organ- 

 ism somehow acts causally on its parts, the problem still 

 remains as to the modus operandi of that acting. The "some- 

 how" which came to us as an incident of our critical study 

 has yet to be inquired into. 



Stated more specifically the task now before us is that of 

 examining closely and systematically the interdependences 

 among the parts of the individual organism. Although these 

 interdependences are among the most obvious and general 

 of all organic phenomena such an examination of them biol- 

 ogy has not yet made systematically. Indeed and here is 

 one of the most vital things for us to see a cardinal charge 

 against the elementalist standpoint is that in its very nature 



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