4872.) 311 
(Hartshorne. 
ON ORGANIC PHYSICS 
By Henry HartsHorne, M. D. 
(Read before the American Philosophical Society, Jan. 19, 1872.) 
In the title chosen for this paper, there may appear to be something 
anomalous or contradictory : organic science and physical science being 
commonly regarded as almost incommunicable departments. But as we 
have long had, already, organic chemistry and animal mechanics, the ten- 
dencies of opinion, and to some extent the clearly rational interpretation 
of facts, now favor the re-inclusion of organic natural science under the 
wide term physics, from which it became long ago separated upon 
grounds of theory, and as it may still continue to be, for the classifica- 
tions of convenience. 
The proneness for unification, so natural to human intelligence, being 
methodically sanctioned under what is called the ‘law of pitaimony,? 
the question from period to period in all fields of thought is, how far can 
we legitimately get in our simplifications and unifications? Provisionally, 
at least, we must mark our steps; as, what is done in these unifications 
of science is to aim at the ‘‘reduction of our complex symbols of thought 
to the simplest possible’? appropriate ‘‘symbols.’? When the alchemists 
thought that they might transmute or reduce all elements to one, they 
did not succeed. There are now some theorists who would reduce all our 
ideas of law, order, and causation in nature to the one idea of continuity. 
I believe that they will not succeed, in the end, better than the alchemists. 
This endeavor is, just now, being made especially in the region of life ; 
and while, as already said, there is enough to sustain fully the proper 
inclusion of vital phenomena along with the other phenomena of nature 
.as physical, I hold that there is not enough to establish this ¢dentity or 
immediate continuity, in the sense in which it has been asserted by some 
biologists. Let us address ourselves for a few moments to the elements 
of this question in its recent aspects. 
First : What do we mean by life? What is it that we are to rae as 
differentiated from, or identified with, the other physical forces of nature ? 
We may drop out at once the old idea, that all actions of a living body, 
such as digestion, circulation, aeration, and the rest of the special func- 
tions, are properly called vital; or that these need to have any peculiar 
or specific force, or phase of force, to explain them. Digestion is chemi- 
cal ; circulation, mechanical, and so on. By proper exclusion, then, we 
come down to this: that only one (perhaps a two-fold) process is truly 
vital, in the sense that its facts come under the category of no other force 
of nature, under no other name hitherto known to science, but that of 
life. And this process is assimilation, with type-formation or definite 
organization as its result: the segregation of matter in a peculiar mo- 
jecular state, whence comes its assumption of peculiar though rapidly 
changing forms; the chemical instability of the matter being in direct 
