Place of Definition, etc., m Philosophical Biology 125 



biology, has there been need of fidelity to description 

 and classification. Never more than now, I say, be- 

 cause the practical work of experimentation on organ- 

 isms does not promote observance of the classifier's 

 watchword "neglect nothing." Indeed, when the experi- 

 mental method is raised, as some enthusiasts try to 

 raise it, to the high place of an end in itself, the ten- 

 dency is rather to neglect everything except the one or 

 very few things which the experimenter must of neces- 

 sity make the object of each special piece of work. 



Although the practical biologist knows that his striv- 

 ings after explanation are utterly futile unless always 

 accompanied by description, the spell of subjectivistic 

 metaphysics is still so strong over science that not 

 many biologists have yet grasped the fact that all true 

 explanation is reached through description. Investi- 

 gators rarely seem to notice that the explanations they 

 propose are usually in reality hypotheses, and that 

 the proof, or the greater or less probability of truth, 

 of these explanations (hypotheses) is wholly depend- 

 ent upon the accuracy and fullness of description to 

 which the organisms are subjected in the aspects of 

 them to which the explanations pertain. Take the 

 classic case of Goethe's explanation of the flower as a 

 transformed branch with its leaves. Is it not true that 

 just in so far as this explanation is accepted it is done 

 on the basis of the accepted description of flowers and 

 branches and leaves? If a true explanation of cancer 

 is ever reached does any one fail to recognize, when he 



