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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLVI. No. 1178 



peculiarities and general characteristics. 

 These peculiarities can only be the object 

 of special physiological investigations and 

 the subject of special physiological knowl- 

 edge. But in great part the more general 

 characteristics are those of all organic regu- 

 lations, and at this very point organic regu- 

 lation is to-day best understood and 

 analj'zed. Accordingly, the description of 

 acidosis must rest upon a clear definition of 

 the nature of organization itself; it may 

 then, in turn, help to define the larger prob- 

 lem. 



This conclusion points straight back to 

 Aristotle, whose great attainments as a zool- 

 ogist together with his extreme virtuosity in 

 conceiving and applying abstract ideas and 

 formulas led him to an analysis of organi- 

 zation that remained the best for more than 

 two thousand years. The words of Aris- 

 totle are as follows : 



The animal organism must be conceived after 

 the similitude of a well-governed commonwealth. 

 When order is once established in it there is no 

 more need of a separate monarch to preside over 

 each several task. The individuals each play their 

 assigned part as it is ordered, and one thing fol- 

 lows another in its accustomed order. So in ani- 

 mals there is the same orderliness — nature taking 

 the place of custom — and each part naturally do- 

 ing his own work as nature has composed them. 

 There is no need then of a soul in each part, but 

 she resides in a kind of central governing place of 

 the body, and the remaining parts live by continu- 

 ity of natural structure, and play the parts Nature 

 would have them play. ["De motu animalium, " 

 II., 7031, 30-35, Oxford, 1912.] 



This statement surpasses the efforts of 

 the modern philosophers, who either have 

 not understood the problem at all, or, like 

 Leibnitz and Kant, have but imperfectly 

 conceived it. The earlier modern biologists 

 are also inferior to Aristotle, for when they 

 have perceived the riddle of organization, 

 it has led them into sterile vitalistic theo- 

 ries or mere bewilderment. But during 

 the last century there took place a steady 

 improvement in the biological analysis and 



lately the subject has been partly cleared 

 of misunderstanding, so that it is to-day in 

 the minds of most thoughtful investigators. 



In the nineteenth century the concept of 

 organization appears for the first time as an 

 explicit postulate of scientific research. 

 Of course there has never been a period 

 when the idea of function was absent from 

 physiological investigation. And it would 

 be an almost hopeless task to trace the 

 transformation of this idea, with widening 

 experience, into the larger one of organiza- 

 tion. Provisionally it may therefore suffice 

 to note the conscious and deliberate use of 

 the latter idea in Cuvier's so-called law. 

 According to this hypothesis it is possible 

 after a careful study of any one part of an 

 animal, for example a tooth, to reconstruct 

 the whole. Nothing could correspond more 

 perfectly with Aristotle's original position 

 concerning the organic relation between the 

 parts and the whole. 



Physiology was more deliberate in set- 

 ting up the principle, because organic ac- 

 tivity is harder to define and to describe. 

 At least as early as the time of Johannes 

 Miiller the idea was clearly grasped. But 

 not until the establishment of experimental 

 morphology did it become overtly a guiding 

 principle of physiological research. One 

 verj^ important influence toward this result 

 is to be found in the speculations of von 

 Baer. 



The truly Aristotelian idea of internal 

 teleology of the organism is at the bottom 

 of von Baer's biological philosophy. Bichat 

 and he are the first of the organicists. Their 

 successor is Claude Bernard. This great 

 man, whose purely mechanistic researches 

 stand at the foundation of many depart- 

 ments of phj^siology, steadily exerted all his 

 influence in favor of the idea of organiza- 

 tion. He recognized a directive and organ- 

 izing idea in the animal, and again and 

 again insisted upon it. Yet his analysis of 

 the problem, like that of von Baer, was not 



