AunusT 23, 1906] 



NA rURE 



42. 



;in<J tlio teiKicity with which he kept this essemial aspect 

 in view. The faculty which enables the mind to review 

 tile varied aspects of complex phenomena and to determine 

 which of these are mere incidents, or external trappings, 

 and which constitute the core of the subject, is one which 

 every scientific worker must possess in a hij;her or lower 

 degree ; it may, indeed, be confidently asserted that scien- 

 lilic training is successful only in so far as it develops 

 a nice and just discrimination of this character. Many 

 attain this capacity after several years of labour and 

 effort ; but in the case of rare and gifted individuals its 

 possession comes so early as to seem almost an intuitive 

 endowment. In 1S40, during his student days at Edin- 

 burgh, Burdon-Sanderson showed by the character of his 

 earliest scientific work that he viewed the proper aim of 

 physiological inquiry as essentially the study of processes. 

 At the present time it may appear superfluous to dwell 

 upon the importance of this standpoint, but fifty-seven 

 years ago this aspect of the subject was rarely, in this 

 country, a stimulating influence in physiological work, 

 whilst, as regards pathology, the point of view taken by 

 Burdon-Sanderson was, even in i860, probably unique. 



The obvious fact that living processes occur in connec- 

 tion with certain definite structural forms transferred 

 attention from the end to one of the means, and thus 

 education and research in physiology and pathology were 

 .ilmost entirely confined to the elucidation of that struc- 

 tural framework in which the essential processes were now 

 displayed and now concealed. Improved methods of micro- 

 scopic technique revealed the comple.xity of this struc- 

 ture, and minute anatomy absorbed the interest of the 

 few physiologists and pathologists who prosecuted re- 

 searches in this country. Even when attention was directed 

 to the living processes, it was with an unconscious 

 anatomical bias, and detailed descriptions of structural 

 framework were advanced as affording a sufficient scientific 

 explanation of the character of the subtle processes which 

 played within the structure. Vet upon the Continent the 

 great physiologists of that time had long realised that 

 physiological study must ascertain the characters of these 

 processes, and that research conducted along experimental 

 lines could alone advance scientific physiology as distinct 

 from scientific anatomy. In 1852 Burdon-Sanderson went 

 from Edinburgh to Paris to study the methods used in 

 physics and chemistry. Whilst there he came under the 

 inspiring influence of one of these great Continental physio- 

 logists, Claude Bernard, and his views as to the proper 

 end of physiological inquiry received from this master 

 ample confirmation. The sentence which I have quoted 

 from the York address sets forth with scientific precision 

 his enlarged conception of living phenomena, for whilst it 

 asserts that the characteristics of processes form the true 

 aim of all physiological investigation, it defines the par- 

 ticular processes which should be investigated as chemical 

 and physical, and it particularises two further aspects of 

 these, the machinery for their coordination described as 

 self-acting, that is automatic, and the raison d'etre of 

 their occurrence, which is said to be the welfare of the 

 whole organism. All these various aspects are strikingly 

 exemplified in the progress of physiology in this country 

 and in the researches now being carried on both at home 

 and abroad ; their consideration may thus be not in- 

 appropriate in a general address such as it is my privilege 

 to deliver to-day. 



At the outset it is desirable to refer to certain wide 

 issues which are involved in the statement that the busi- 

 ness of the physiologist is " to acquire an exact knowledge 

 of the chemical and physical processes of animal life." 

 The limitation of physiology to ascertainable characters of 

 a chemical and physical type does not commend itself to 

 certain physiologists, physicists and chemists, who have 

 revived under the term " neo-vitalism " the vitalistic con- 

 ceptions of older writers. They deny that physiological 

 phenomena can ever be adequately described in terms of 

 physics and chemistry, even if these terms are in the future 

 greatly enlarged in consequence of scientific progress. It 

 is undoubted that there are many aspects of living pheno- 

 mena which in the existing state of our knowledge defy 

 exact expression in accordance with chemical and physical 

 conceptions ; but the issues raised have a deeper significance 

 than the mere assertion of present ignorance, for those 



NO. 1 92 I, VOL. 74I 



who adopt " neo-viialism " are prepared to slate not only 

 that certain physiological phenomena are, from the chemical 

 and physical point of view, inexplicable to-day, but that 

 from the nature of things they must for ever remain so. 

 This attitude implies that it is a hopeless business for the 

 physiologist to try by the use of more appropriate methods 

 to remove existing discrepancies between living and non- 

 living phenomena, and this is accentuated by the use of 

 a peculiar nomenclature which, in attributing certain 

 phenomena to vital directive forces, leaves them cloaked 

 with a barren and, from the investigator's point of view, 

 a forbidding qualification. 



It is of course possible in describing phenomena to 

 employ a new and special terminology, but since many 

 aspects of the phenomena of living processes can be de- 

 scribed in accordance with physical and chemical concep- 

 tions, the creation of a vitalistic nomenclature duplicates 

 our terminology. A double terminology is always 

 embarrassing, but it becomes obstructive when it is of 

 such diversity that description in the one can never in 

 any circumstances bear any scientific relation to that in 

 the other. In this connection it is somewhat significant 

 that the one kind, namely vitalistic, is abandoned as soon 

 as the observed phenomena to which it referred have been 

 found to be capable of expression in terms of the other. 

 The reason for this abandonment raises questions of prin- 

 ciple, which appear to me to render it impossible for a 

 scientific physiologist seriously to employ vitalistic nomen- 

 clature in describing physiological phenomena. Science is 

 not the mere catalogue of a number of observed pheno- 

 mena ; such a miscellaneous encyclopjedia may constitute 

 what many people would describe as knowledge ; but 

 science is more than this. It is the intellectual arrange- 

 ment of recognised phenomena in a certain orderly array, 

 and the recognition of any phenomenon is only the first 

 step towards the achievement of this end. The potent 

 element in science is an intellectual one essentially con- 

 nected with mental grouping along one particular line, 

 that which tends to satisfy our craving for causative ex- 

 planation. Mence it involves the intellectual recognition 

 of widespread characteristics, so general in their distribu- 

 tion that they are termed fundamental. The most funda- 

 mental of such characteristics are those which possess the' 

 widest intellectual sphere, and in natural science these 

 are the broad conceptions of matter and motion which 

 form the essential basis of both chemistry and physics. 

 If this grouping is, in regard to any phenomenon, at pre- 

 sent impracticable, then this subject-matter cannot be 

 justly regarded as forming a part of natural science, 

 though it might be considered as natural knowledge, and 

 in so far as this is the case in physiology it appears to 

 me to be a confession of present scientific ignorance. If, 

 however, it is boldly asserted that the nature of any 

 phenomenon is such that it can never by any possibility 

 be brought into accord with the bro.ad conceptions which 

 I have indicated, then I fail to understand how it can 

 claim to bear any relation to natural science, since, 

 ex hypothesi, it can never take its proper place in the 

 causative chain which man forges as a limited but in- 

 telligible explanation of the world in which he lives. 

 Only in so far as physiological phenomena are capable 

 of this particular intellectual treatment and take part in 

 this intellectual construction can we hope to obtain, how- 

 ever dimly, a knowledge of permanent backgrounds among 

 the shifting scenes of the living stage, and thus, _ by 

 gradually introducing order amidst seeming confusion, 

 claim that gift of prevision which has long been enjoyed 

 bv other br.anches of natural science. 



Neo-vitalism, like its parent vitalism, is fostered by the 

 imperfect and prejudiced view which man is prone to take 

 in regard to his own material existence. This existence 

 is, for him, the most momentous of all problems, and it 

 is therefore not surprising that he should assume that 

 in physiology, pathology, and, to a lesser degree, in 

 biology, events are dealt with of a peculiarly my.stic 

 character, since many of these events forin the basis of 

 his sensory experience and occur in a material which he 

 regards with a special proprietary interest. He is reluc- 

 tant to believe that those phenomena which constitute the 

 material part of his existence can be intellectuallv re- 

 garded as processes of a physicochemical type, differing 



