128 ENERGY TRANSFORMATIONS IN LIVING MATTER 



old view of a mysterious vital force or vital energy, possessing no 

 connection or correlation with the forms of energy exhibited by 

 non-living transformers of energy, should have led to the equally 

 mischievous view of the present day, that no form of energy what- 

 ever is present in living cells save such forms as are seen in the case 

 of non-living matter. 



In order to avoid confusion with ancient fallacies, the use 

 of the term " biotic energy " may be suggested for the future to 

 represent that form of energy peculiar to living matter, and ex- 

 hibited only in those energy phenomena which are confined to 

 living matter and are indeed its intrinsic property, by which it is 

 differentiated and known to be alive. 



This point of view is equally different on the one hand from 

 the ancient one of vital force, which postulated something entirely 

 distinct from the forms of energy of the non-living world, and on 

 the other from the modern view that there exists in living matter no 

 form of energy which is not identical with the forms of energy 

 exhibited in non-living structures. 



The conception, in brief, is that biotic energy is just as closely, 

 and no more, related to the various forms of energy existing apart 

 from life, as these are to one another, and that in presence of the 

 proper and adapted energy transformer, the living cell, it is 

 capable of being formed from or converted into various of these 

 other forms of energy, the law of conservation of energy being 

 obeyed in the process just as it would be if an exchange were taking 

 place between any two or more of the inorganic forms. 



We know no more or no less of the intrinsic nature of this biotic 

 energy than we do of any of the non- vital forms; but we do know 

 that it is confined to living matter, which acts as a transformer 

 between it and other forms, and that the loss of this property 

 means the death of the living matter, that the phenomena are as 

 distinctive as those of other forms of energy, and that these pheno- 

 mena are studied by the same kinds of study as are applied in other 

 forms of energy. 



It is perhaps not as commonly recognised as it ought to be 

 that for all forms of energy the object of study of the chemist or 

 physicist is the transformation of one form of energy into another, 

 and the phenomena observable during such transformations. 



Our advances in natural science are made by studying 

 experimentally new transformers by which hitherto unobserved 



