56: 



NATURE 



[Oct. ii, 1883 



we have before us the facts of organisation and deve- 

 lopment. But it is one thing to consider a single 

 set of relations, such as those of causation, to the 

 exclusion of the rest, for the sake of clearness of 

 knowledge, and quite another to say that this particular 

 aspect of the object exclusively constitutes it. Mr. 

 Romanes thinks that biologists do not require any trans- 

 cendental analytic to inform them that an organism is 

 something more than a mechanism. But he finds it 

 startling to be told that in the investigation of an organism 

 we are to rise above the category of causality, and carry 

 into our inquiry the conception of teleology. Surely the 

 latter proposition is the logical consequence of the former. 

 No one says that the category of causation is not to be 

 used in the investigation of the phenomena of organisa- 

 tion. In anatomy, and in its dynamical correlative physio- 

 logy, the parts of the organism are constantly treated as 

 independent of each other, and related as cause and 

 effect. But this is an abstract point of view employed 

 for a special purpose — the obtaining of measurements — 

 and is qualified by the recognition of the complete con- 

 ception of the organs as part of a self- conserving whole 

 or system. This is all that is implied by the unfortunate 

 term "teleology" when used in the theory of knowledge. 

 What Kant professes to show is that this fact of nature 

 cannot be reduced to orexpressed in terms of the dynamical 

 and statical relations of time and space. No doubt the 

 laws of matter and energy apply in biology as strictly as 

 elsewhere, but they do not express, much less exhaust, 

 biological phenomena. And therefore we must be careful 

 in biology not to distort those conceptions or hypotheses 

 which are, despite assertions to the contrary, the neces- 

 sary guides and interpreters of observation and experi- 

 ments by the exclusive employment of categories which, 

 like causation, neither are drawn from, nor are adequate 

 to, the facts. The subject of the detailed effect of 

 the neglect in this reference of Kant's warning I will 

 not pursue here, as my brother has treated it at some 

 length, with special reference to the objections made by 

 Mr. Romanes, in a paper which will appear elsewhere. It 

 ought to be borne in mind, as illustrating the point of 

 view here emphasised, that Kant himself was one of the 

 first to advance the nebular hypothesis. The truth is 

 that, in speaking of the universe as having presumably 

 originated from a mass of incandescent vapour, Kant, 

 and everybody else, so far from reducing life to mecha- 

 nism, is really raising mechanism to life. Kant would 

 have told us that in the phenomena of such a developing 

 mass there were potentially pre-ent all the relations of 

 the universe as we know it. No doubt the approximate 

 conceptions for the advance of knowledge are at this 

 point the laws of matter and energy. But these do not 

 exhaust the object, and if we h.ive abstracted from the 

 others we have done so in just the same way as we have 

 abstracted from fact that the phenomena are there only 

 for a percipient subject. 



Such considerations and the doubts they raise may 

 seem remote. But the number of those is increasing who 

 think that they should be better known to and understood 

 by men of science. It will not do to say that such criti- 

 cism has no bearing on scientific inquiry until it has been 

 ascertained whether its neglect has not already — even in 

 matters of minute detail — misled and stultified certain 



phases of such inquiry. Fact and theory are not so very 

 easy to distinguish. With scientific method no one 

 wishes to interfere. But we would subject to closer in- 

 vestigation the question whether what are commonly 

 taken to be the legitimate problems of science are really 

 what they profess to be. It is not to the " Hannibals" 

 of science, but to her Don Quixotes that Kant addresses 

 himself. R. B. Haldane 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 



[ The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions expressed 

 by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake to return, 

 or to correspond with the writers of, rejected manuscripts. 

 No notice is taken of anonymous communications. 



[ The Editor urgently requests correspondents to keep their letters 

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The " Transmission Eastwards Round the Globe of 

 Barometric Abnormal Movements " 



The following questions suggest themselves in connection 

 with the above matter : — (1) Is it a fact that atmospheric move- 

 ments of such small amplitude take the form of waves, and, if 

 so, that the waves have so slow a rate of travel? (2) How is it 

 to be accounted for that the waves travel eastward more slowly 

 than westward? And (3) How can it be explained that they 

 appear at an eastward station with a greater amplitude than at a 

 westward ? 



With regard to the first question, it may be said that almost 

 absolute proof of the existence of such waves can be brought 

 forward. A recent investigation, the results of which are not 

 Vet published, has shown that a barometric wave measuring from 

 maximum to minimum only '1 08 inch, which occurred in Western 

 India in 1877-78, was accurately reproduced over the same 

 region three years later, namely, in 1880-81. The wave at the 

 time of its reappearance had all the larger details which it 

 ;sed during its original appearance, these details agreeing 

 in many cases to within less than 'ooi inch. But whereas the 

 amplitude in 1S77-7S was 108 inch, in 1SS0-S1 it was only 

 04S inch. Waves have also been recognised which appear in 

 the summer half of the year at the northern part of Western 

 India and travel southwards, arriving at the southern parts 

 between two and three months after their appearance in the 

 north ; and also waves which appear in the winter half of the 

 year at the south and travel northwards. This movement from 

 north to south and from south to north during alternate halves 

 of the year has been traced regularly since 1869 ; and indeed is 

 so constant that in many cases it has been possible by means of 

 it to calculate quantitatively the average position of the barometer 

 during the next three months. 



The second question was answered in my paper which you 

 were good enough to publish in your issues of the 9th and 16th 

 ult. Owing to the upper air currents travelling from equatorial 

 to higher latitudes, and the lower air currents travelling equator- 

 wards, 'here must be in high latitudes a general movement of 

 the atmosphere eastwards, whereas in tropical and subtropical 

 regions there must be a general movement westwards. This 

 at once explains why in tropical and subtropical regions the 

 atmospheric waves should travel more rapidly westwards than 

 eastwards. 



The third question is a difficult one, and the answer not per- 

 haps quite sati-factory. If it were the case that undulations in 

 fluid bodies become heaped up and increased in amplitude 

 when travelling in a direction opposite to that of a current, and 

 are affected in a contrary way when travelling with the current, 

 a satisfactory answer might be furnished. 



But an explanation may be sought in a different direction. If 

 the circumstances of any latitude situated a little way from the 

 equator be considered, it will be noticed that two principal air 

 currents are flowing there — a lower one with a "westward com- 

 ponent of a certain velocity, and an upper one with an eastward 

 component of a less velocity. Now it may be supposed that 

 these two currents are affected by waves of two kinds, the first 

 being waves common to the two currents, the second being 

 ' waves which have been generated in the two currents in regions 

 from which they are proceeding. And there are two reasons 



