THE UNITY OF SCIENCE 15 



should have a unification of biology and chemistry. Upon 

 this question an eminent American man of science has written 

 as follows: "As matter takes on new arrangements, its ac- 

 tivities and reactions become different even though the prop- 

 erties of each constituent remain the same .... New methods 

 of action arise when oxygen and hydrogen combine, produc- 

 ing water ; new methods of action arise when a mass of brass 

 and iron is arranged in the form of a clock. How, then, can 

 it fail to be true in the case of organisms ? . . . . Hence we can- 

 not expect to find in the physics and chemistry of inorganic 

 matter the full explanation of the properties of organisms ; 

 those who expect to do this are following a will-o'-the-wisp." 

 The writer of these sentences, however, apparently does not 

 advance them as an argument against the possibility of unify- 

 ing biology and chemistry or physics ; on the contrary, he ad- 

 vances them as a reply to the arguments of those who assert 

 such impossibility. Every distinct kind of phenomenon, every 

 new arrangement of matter, involves a new method of action, 

 not reducible to any other; this is as true within the limits of 

 a single science, as it is of phenomena belonging to what as 

 yet are commonly regarded as separate and relatively discon- 

 nected sciences. Hence in the alleged uniqueness or novelty 

 of those movements of matter which we call vital processes, 

 there is after all nothing which need forbid their resumption 

 under the laws of chemistry, nothing inconsistent with "a 

 physico-chemical view of life." 



Now, what I take to be the oversight here consists in a 

 disregard of the nature and the use of a scientific generaliza- 

 tion or law. It is entirely true that every single phenomenon 

 is, in part, unique, and that, therefore, no generalization can 

 adequately describe it. But it does not follow from this that 

 there are not fundamental differences between different in- 

 dividual phenomena with respect to the possibility of bringing 

 them under a given law. The relation of the action of the 

 works of a clock, for example, to the laws of mechanics, is 

 extremely different from the relation (from the point of view- 



