Septembee 17, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



381 



tions relating to them can be ordered in terms 

 of the conception of a living organism. Where, 

 and in so far as, the conception of a mere 

 organism fails, as in the facts relating to con- 

 scious activity, we must have recourse to an- 

 other conception, that of personality." 



" It is evident that in applying the concep- 

 tion of personality to man or animal we leave 

 out of account the details of organic activity. 

 But the details are there, and the only account 

 we are in a position to give of them is in terms 

 of the lower or less concrete conception of 

 mere organic activity. If we go still further 

 into detail we are reduced to a still more ab- 

 stract account in terms of physics and chemis- 

 try. Hence although in giving an account of 

 perception and volition as a whole we make 

 use of the conception of personality, and can 

 not otherwise state the facts, there is abundant 

 room left for a physiological account of the 

 sense organs, nervous system, muscular activ- 

 ity, etc., provided that we recognize that such 

 an account always deals abstractly with the 

 phenomena, for the sufficient reason that a 

 fuller and more concrete account can not at 

 present be given. In the same way we treat 

 the action of the muscles on the limbs, or of 

 the limbs on the environment, or of the envi- 

 ronment on the sensory organs, from the merely 

 physical standpoint. This is an abstract 

 method of treatment, as we have already seen; 

 but it is to some extent the only method avail- 

 able. Provided we do not make the mistake of 

 confusing the physical account of the world 

 with reality, we are perfectly justified in ma- 

 king all the use we can of this physical 

 account." 



It is no light task for a man of science to 

 form a critical judgment of this book, for I 

 believe that its weakness is on the philosophical 

 side. Certain it is that there is great justice 

 in Haldane's strictures upon the supporters of 

 the mechanistic view. Not only have mech- 

 anistic theories of physiological actions been 

 almost uniformly of a childish crudeness, fall- 

 ing far beneath the complexity of the facts, but 

 the mechanists have indeed, in the past, failed 



to recognize the significance of organization. 

 And for my part I think that Haldane is quite 

 right in establishing organization as something 

 of a different order from mechanism, and 

 elevating it into a category. The mechanists, 

 having been obliged to isolate the phenomena, 

 because such is the necessary condition for the 

 physical and chemical study of them, have for- 

 gotten what they have done, and have not 

 thought about organization at all. 



It is, however, one thing to recognize the 

 weakness of particular mechanistic theories of 

 the past, or the difficulty, or even the incon- 

 ceivability, of a mechanistic theory of heredity, 

 and it is quite another thing to conclude that 

 such a theory is impossible, especially in the 

 face of Morgan's recent researches. The ex- 

 planation of that which Darwin explained was 

 once inconceivable. And one wonders what 

 Galileo or Newton would have done with an 

 electric battery if he had been asked to explain 

 it as a mechanism. It is quite true that we 

 possess no clue to the mechanism of the cell in 

 general as distinguished from important par- 

 ticulars; it is perhaps probable that the task 

 is too great for the human mind, but it is not 

 possible by such a discussion as Haldane has 

 given in the first part of his book to prove its 

 ideal impossibility. The cell is a contrivance 

 unlike anything which we understand, but so 

 for Newton would have been an electric bat- 

 tery, and without further information he 

 simply could not have begun to think about it. 

 When we turn to Haldane's philosophical 

 objections to the mechanistic standpoint we 

 encounter, as I believe, grave inconsistencies 

 in his argument. True it is that " we can not 

 base physics " exclusively " on the purely 

 mathematical conceptions of extension," but 

 physics would be in a very bad way indeed in 

 an ungeometrical universe, or if it we're obliged 

 to get on without geometry. Geometry has no 

 need of physics, it is true, though Archimedes 

 showed how to solve geometrical problems by 

 means of mechanics, but physics has imperative 

 need of geometry. Geometry knows neither 

 mass nor energy, but physics knows and uses 

 points and lines. 



