Place of Definition, etc., in Philosophical Biology 115 



the word man. 



It is desirable to raise the question at this point as 

 to the difference between the biological and the logical 

 meaning of the term man. The kernel of the difference 

 seems to me statable thus : The briefest possible biolog- 

 ical meaning of the word spreads it out, as one might 

 say, evenly over the whole living world, while the brief- 

 est possible logical meaning does not do this. The 

 insular mother whom we invoked in imagination may be 

 supposed to teach her child formal logic, and, in so 

 doing, to make use of herself and her child to illustrate 

 the logician's use of the terms genus and species. She 

 might say to the child: 



"You and I are natural bodies like the rocks and the 

 clouds ; but since we talk with each other, a thing which 

 neither rocks nor clouds can do, we are particular 

 kinds of natural bodies. When bodies stand in such 

 relation as this to one another, we, as logicians, speak 

 of them as being in the relation of genus and species." 



So far as I can see, this example, if supplemented 

 by others of like import that might be drawn from in- 

 animate nature, could be made to satisfy completely 

 the needs of formal logic as touching its doctrines of 

 naming, defining, dividing, classifying. In a word, 

 formal logic is not obliged to take cognizance of the 

 fact that living nature contains any organisms other 

 than man himself. Logic is something that can be used 



