162 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXII. No. 554. 



Now the latest of the great sciences is 

 biology, and it could be so widely inter- 

 preted as to include many of the others, 

 for example, physiology, psychology, sociol- 

 ogy ; but chiefly it takes for itself the broad 

 general beginnings. 



These older sciences were really engaged 

 upon narrow domains, narrow ramifications 

 in the universe of biology ; and the general 

 has helped the preexistent special by -giving 

 the broader conceptions connoted by com- 

 parative physiology, comparative psychol- 

 ogy, comparative sociology. 



Since AA^ohler, the distinction between or- 

 ganic and inorganic matter has become 

 merely schematic; but the line drawn at 

 life has resisted obliteration. 



It is true that my friend Professor Her- 

 rera has said: 



I conceive the human organism as a machine 

 containing some five or six liters of blood em- 

 ployed in appropriating to itself the nutritious 

 principles of food, absorbing oxygen, and carrying 

 it to the nerve to make it vibrate by discharges 

 of carbon dioxide. 



Life is now to be defined as the result of the 

 physicochemical action of protoplasmic currents, 

 the cause of such currents being diffusion, heat 

 and some other secondary factors. 



But until some one sees such currents set 

 up in some way dilf ering from the natural 

 transmission of preexistent life, a thing 

 which no 'one at present even hopes for, the 

 old boundary remains undisturbed. 



If any benefit is obtainable from a 

 physico-chemical nomenclature and nota- 

 tion, science will not object to their use. 



Suppose, then, we put it in the boldest 

 form, that biology is now engaged in the 

 creation of an available representation of 

 the activities and laws of activity of these 

 wonderful protoplasmic currents. 



The definition then would be something 

 like this: Biology is the science created to 

 give understanding and mastery of the 

 protoplasmic activities on this earth; to 

 make easy the explanation and description 



of such activities and the transmission of 

 this mastery. 



The association, the suggestion, is im- 

 mediate : 



Beyond the microtome, the microscope, 

 the statistics of observation, of experiment, 

 of what instrument of world-conquest must 

 the new science avail herself ? The answer 

 is patent : of mathematics, that giant 

 pincers of scientific logic which showed 

 Newton the moon as simply a bigger apple 

 trying to fall straight down on his head, 

 flashed out in the mind of Adams the un- 

 seen planet Neptune, told Rayleigh that 

 the chemists had always been breathing 

 vast quantities of argon without knowing 

 it, pointed to Mendelieev the places of un- 

 known chemical elements, and through 

 Helmholtz and his pupil Hertz has given 

 us the Lenard rays, the Roentgen rays, 

 radium itself, and wireless telegraphy 

 based on Hertzian waves. 



In mathematics, the part which is being 

 recognized as pure deductive logic is ever 

 greater. The residuum takes from biolog- 

 ical advance itself new form and new state- 

 ment. / 



After the ciuestions, what are facts'? 

 what is reality? questions not to be 

 answered either by biology or mathematics, 

 there come, if we decide to retain as rough 

 working hypotheses the expressions, fact, 

 reality, subsequent questions, such as what 

 then is a geometric fact, a geometric 

 reality ? 



These latter questions involve a wrestling 

 with primitive origins in physiological psy- 

 chology, now entangled with metaphysical 

 constructions, all being studied at present 

 with help of the biologically given hypoth- 

 esis of evolution. 



To note the essential interrelation of biol- 

 ogy and mathematics it is only needful to 

 recall that evolution postulates a world in- 

 dependent of man, preceding man, and 



