THE BAFFLING PROBLEM 



organizes the universe in space and time." Where or 

 how matter got this organizing property, he offers 

 no opinion. " Given the universe, life, and the tend- 

 ency [the tendency to organize], mechanism is in- 

 ductively proved sufficient to account for all phe- 

 nomena." Biology, then, is only mechanics and 

 chemistry engaged in a new role without any change 

 of character; but what put them up to this new role? 

 "The whole evolutionary process, both cosmic and 

 organic, is one, and the biologist may now rightly 

 regard the universe in its very essence as biocentric." 



Another Harvard voice is less pronounced in fa- 

 vor of the mechanistic conception of life. Professor 

 Rand thinks that in a mechanically determined uni- 

 verse, "our conscious life becomes a meaningless 

 replica of an inexorable physical concatenation" — 

 the soul the result of a fortuitous concourse of atoms. 

 Hence all the science and art and literature and reli- 

 gion of the world are merely the result of a molecu- 

 lar accident. 



Dr. Rand himself, in wrestling with the problem 

 of organization in a late number of "Science," seems 

 to hesitate whether or not to regard man as a molec- 

 ular accident, an appearance presented to us by the 

 results of the curious accidents of molecules — 

 which is essentially Professor Loeb's view; or 

 whether to look upon the living body as the result 



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