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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVII. No. 942 



of it a constitutive or explanatory principle. 

 It affords no means of analysis; it determines 

 no specific change; it contributes no formula 

 of relation. At whatever level it appears this 

 conception stands only for the unresolved 

 residuum by vrhich reflection is faced. 



Thus in the study of organic life it may be 

 that the biologist is unable to state the facts 

 of development in terms of the known chem- 

 istry of the cells, or of the local relation of 

 parts in the segmented ovum and their polari- 

 ties and bilateralities, or of the influence of 

 external agents upon the organisms; but it 

 is nevertheless inadmissible to formulate the 

 problem in terms of a conception which falls 

 without this whole system of principles and to 

 say that, since the chemical and mechanical 

 conceptions which we are now able to apply 

 to organic development have proved inade- 

 quate to the statement of that process in its 

 entirety, we must conceive it as autonomous 

 and treat it in terms of entelechles. Autono- 

 mousness is a conception which falls without 

 the domain of science altogether, because it 

 applies to the thing only in its self-dependent 

 totality — with which philosophy deals — and 

 not to the thing in its relations to other 

 things, as science must conceive it. Only in 

 terms of their interaction can the empirical 

 reason explain things at all; and in the case 

 of organic development, as of all other proc- 

 esses, explanation must be through the deter- 

 mination of specific causal relations. 



This mechanistic conception of science is of 

 course a purely methodological assumption 

 into which no ontological meaning is to be 

 read. Its nature is misunderstood when, for 

 example, it is called materialistic. The 

 mechanistic conception applies to all facts 

 which fall within the domain of science, what- 

 ever the metaphysical interpretation which 

 may be given to them. 



Egbert MacDougall 



New York Univeesity, 

 October 14, 1912 



A PROTEST 



To THE Editor of Science: Permit me to 

 offer an emphatic protest against the closing 



paragraph of Dr. Dorsey's letter in this week's 

 Science (December 6). It is Dr. Dorsey's 

 right, if conscience and judgment impel him, 

 to express disapproval of missionaries in re- 

 spect to either their purpose or methods or 

 both, but to accuse them of " distortions," 

 made from mercenary motives, is an utterly 

 unjustifiable bit of spite. It not only reveals 

 lamentable ignorance of facts, but betrays that 

 intolerant and biased attitude of mind against 

 which scientific men are supposed to particu- 

 larly guard, and which in my judgment viti- 

 ates Dr. Dorsey's whole argument. 



Hubert Lyman Clark 



QUOTATIONS 



THE EFFICIENCY NOSTRUM AT HARVARD 



There has been a great deal of groping in 

 the dark over the problem of raising the qual- 

 ity of our universities and colleges. But light 

 has appeared at last. There will no longer be 

 any futile casting about for improvements 

 here and changes there, no more mere scratch- 

 ing of the surface. Somebody at Harvard has 

 gone straight to the heart of the matter. In- 

 deed, he has solved the whole problem in point 

 of principle, though of course the details of 

 the beneficent revolution he has started re- 

 main to be worked out. What has been needed 

 all along has been some simple and yet pro- 

 found g-uiding principle, and this is what the 

 new move at Harvard supplies. See that you 

 get your money's worth out of each professor 

 — this is the philosopher's stone, which, firmly 

 and steadily applied, is going to transmute 

 into gold all the baser metal of our university 

 faculties. 



Seldom has a great reform been ushered in 

 so noiselessly. " Harvard professors and in- 

 stuctors," so goes a newspaper account, " are 

 thoughtfully rubbing troubled brows to-day 

 while they ponder over an intricate network 

 of blanks and spaces whereon Assistant Con- 

 troller Taylor has requested them to record 

 the exact disposition which they make of all 

 time spent in the interests of the university." 

 The assistant controller states that he desires 

 these data for the purpose of using them " as 



