CURRENT LITERATURE 
BOOK REVIEWS 
Individuality in organisms 
Continuing his important and illuminating contributions to philosophical 
animals. e book deals with the very fundamental problem of the nature 
of the unity and order in the organism, the constancy and course of develop- 
ment, the maintenance of individuality in a changing environment, and the 
processes by which physiological isolation and reproduction occur. As the new 
theory of individuality applies to plants as: well as to animals, and as much 
supporting evidence has been obtained from the study of plants, the discussion 
will prove to be extremely valuable to botanists as well as zoologists, and to 
all who are interested in the philosophical aspects of biological discussion. 
The first chapter discusses the problem of the nature of individuality, which 
resolves itself into the problem of the nature, origin, and maintenance of the 
definite space and time rélations existing among the reactions occurring in 
the fundamental reaction system, the protoplasm. A new dynamic theory 
of the origin and nature of organic individuality is presented in the second 
chapter. The way is prepared for it by a critical consideration of various 
theories which have been advanced in the past, such as the corpuscular theories 
of WEISMANN and others, which necessitate the assumption of an ordering 
principle or entelechy, the dualistic theories, physico-chemical hypotheses, 
chemical correlation hypotheses, theories of polarity and. symmetry, etc 
The organic individual is conceived to be a system of relations between 
the protoplasmic substratum and the chemical reactions of metabolism; and 
the foundation of organic unity, accor to CHILD, is the transmission of 
dynamic change of some kind through the protoplasm. The essential features _ 
of this dynamic conception of individuality are simple, and are presented with 
convincing force and clearness. An undifferentiated mass of protoplasm which 
has a uniform rate of metabolism in all its parts, and which is capable of 
becoming an individual, forms the starting-point. This mass is acted upon 
at some point by external factors which act as stimuli, with the result that 
metabolism is increased at the point of stimulation. In this purely mechanistic 
t Curzp, C. M., Individuality in organisms. 12mo. pp. x+213. The University 
of Chicago Press. 1915. $1.25. 
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