An Introduction to a Biology 



Description influenced by Interpretation. Hausmann 

 interpreted development of horse in terms of man. 



Five nerves have always been described as going to 

 electric organ of Torpedo, because the original investigator 

 described five. There are four. 



* * * * 



If all description were direct it would be bad enough ; 

 but most of it is copied. What an additional source of error 



is here ! 



* * * * 



My dissociation between seeing and understanding : 

 Lying in bed, I discern an outline, blocks of light and shade. 

 I do not know which is light and which shade. I cannot 

 recognise the object. I cannot fit it into a category. Seeing 

 is remembering. 



[Correlate my inability to interpret the shadow with the 

 Siamese-twinness of Description and Interpretation.] 



* * * * 



A theory which touches reality at no point cannot be 

 disproved or proved by an appeal to reality. 



* * * * 



I see theories as balloons. Their makers inflate them, 

 their admirers over-inflate them ; and they generally burst 



from over-inflation. 



* * * * 



Those who prefer swimming out of their depth may 

 speculate upon first causes and on what happens after death. 

 But the biologist, whose business is the difficult task of 

 understanding life, must be careful to undertake a much 

 less ambitious and precarious task. 



* * * * 



Obvious reason for thinking in terms of opposites is that 

 it is thinking in terms of a struggle perhaps the best in- 

 stance of the application in the conceptual sphere of habits 

 of thought contracted in the sphere of action. 



105 



