434 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVI. No. 927 



istry, to succeed Professor Frank Fanning 

 Jewett, who retires on the Carnegie Founda- 

 tion after thirty-two years of service. Dr. 

 Menzies is an alumnus of the University of 

 Edinburgh and has been a graduate student 

 in Leipzig, Aberdeen and in the University of 

 Chicago. Among European appointments 

 Dr. Menzies was assistant professor of chem- 

 istry in Heriot-Watt College, Edinburgh, in 

 1898-1901, and professor of chemistry in St. 

 Mungo College, Glasgow, from 1902 to 1908. 

 He was research fellow in the Davy-Faraday 

 Laboratory, London, in 1901. He is a member 

 of the American Chemical Society, the Lon- 

 don Chemical Society and fellow of the 

 Eoyal Society of Edinburgh. Although re- 

 tired. Professor Jewett will have a laboratory 

 room in the chemistry building, and plans to 

 give the college service in some much needed 

 work on its mineralogical collections. 



Edith M. Twiss, Ph.D. (Chicago), has 

 been appointed head of the department of 

 botany, Washburn College, to succeed Dr. Ira 

 D. Cardiff. James P. Poole, E.G. (University 

 of Maine), has been appointed instructor in 

 the department. 



Dr. Harry Beal Toreey, formerly associ- 

 ate professor of zoology in the University of 

 California, has assumed the duties of profes- 

 sor of biology in Eeed College, Portland, 

 Oregon. 



A. B. McDaniel, of the University of South 

 Dakota, has been appointed assistant professor 

 of civil engineering at the University of Illi- 

 nois. 



DISCUSSION AND COSSESPONDENCE 

 driesch's vitalism and experimental indeter- 



MINISM 



In Science of June 16, 1911, I tried to point 

 out the relation of perhaps the most widely 

 known and most influential brand of vitalism 

 — that of Driesch — to experimentation. I set 

 forth that Driesch's vitalism results in " ex- 

 perimental indeterminism," such that " you 

 can not make a statement which will hold, that 

 a given arrangement of physical components 

 will act in a certain definite way (even after 



you have observed how it acts)," because with 

 the same physical configuration different en- 

 telechies, or the same entelechy in different 

 manifestations, may be at work, determining 

 diverse results in different cases. Thus I held 

 that it nullifies the fundamental postulate of 

 experimental work, that " when two cases dif- 

 fer in any respect there will always be found 

 a preceding difference to which the present 

 difference is (experimentally) due." I tried 

 to show what a radical difference this would 

 make between biology and other parts of sci- 

 ence, in respect to the theory and practise of 

 scientific work, holding it equivalent to an 

 " admission that the principle on which experi- 

 mental investigation is based breaks down 

 when applied to biology." 



In a following number of Science (July 21, 

 1911) Lovejoy takes sharp issue with my ex- 

 position of Driesch's vitalism, saying: 



A closer scrutiny of the doctrine's implications 

 will, I think, disclose in it no such anarchical 

 propensities (p. 78). I think Jennings miscon- 

 ceives Driesch's position in ascribing to him a 

 wholesale "experimental indeterminism" (p. 78). 



And after an exposition of Driesch's argu- 

 ment as he conceives it: 



There need in this be nothing arbitrary, noth- 

 ing to baflSe the purposes of the experimenter 

 (p. 78). In all this argument for the non- 

 mechanical nature of organic phenomena there is 

 nothing whatever that necessarily "exempts from 

 experimental determinism . . . that immense field 

 of developmental processes which lies between the 

 egg and the adult," or that necessarily nullifies 

 the experimentalist's postulate that "when two 

 cases differ in any respect there will always be 

 found a preceding difference to which the present 

 difference is (experimentally) due" (p. 80).^ 



And in the classifications of the kinds of 

 vitalism given by Lovejoy in earlier papers 

 (Science, November 26, 1909; and April 21, 

 1911), he does not so much as mention as one 

 of the possible kinds a vitalism which dis- 

 tinguishes the organic from the inorganic in 



' What Lovejoy gives here is in reality an ex- 

 position of the conclusions which he himself might 

 draw from Driesch's data — assuming these to be 

 the conclusions which Driesch draws. 



