RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF 



BIOLOGY 



By JOSEPH NEEDHAM 

 Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge 



INTRODUCTION 



The immutability of philosophical 

 thought meets the changefulness of the 

 science of biology in that difficult region, 

 which is yet so attractive, the abstract 

 aspects of the study of living things . The 

 philosophy of biology, as it is usually 

 called, is a most unsatisfactory name, for 

 it implies that the philosopher may be 

 defined as the reverse of the specialist who 

 knows continually more and more about 

 less and less. But philosophy is to be 

 understood here in a much wider sense 

 than metaphysics, and must be thought of 

 as part of the theory of scientific investi- 

 gation as a whole, the self-criticism of the 

 scientific method, and the fascinating 

 attempt to prophesy before the event 

 whether indeed all the realm of living 

 phenomena will follow the inorganic 

 world into the obedience of mathematics. 

 Nobody doubts that Laplace's calculator 

 could have known all about the geology 

 of our era, but whether he could have 

 predicted the constitution and behavior of 

 our standard white rats, and what they 

 think of our feeding experiments, is 

 another matter, and a point of faith on 

 which many a biologist would prefer to 

 be silent. 



Reassessments in philosophy are only 

 needed once or twice in a century, though 

 in biology special journals called Reviews 

 have to be provided entirely for them. 



Progress in the theory of biology stands 

 midway between these extremes. Unlike 

 philosophy proper, the theory of biology 

 is by no means independent of experi- 

 mental results, although it is true that it 

 needs a very well-aimed stone to trouble 

 her remoter waters. But as will be seen 

 in the reassessment that I propose to make 

 in this paper, now and then experimental 

 results do appear that exercise a very 

 definite influence on the development of 

 the philosophy of biology. Indeed, in 

 the last resort, since we deal here with 

 matters that are more scientific than 

 metaphysical, the final appeal will be to 

 the facts and not to reason, for the biolo- 

 gist like any other scientific worker must 

 be an empiricist to the end. 



THE CONCEPT OF THE ORGANISM 



The theoretical standpoint that can best 

 be called "Organicism" is probably the 

 most important factor in these considera- 

 tions at the present time. The word was 

 originally coined by Delage (n) for his 

 great work on biological theory and was 

 used by him in connection with the ideas 

 of Bichat, von Baer and Roux. It was, 

 however, given an entirely new lease of 

 life in 1917 by J. S. Haldane (19), who then 

 used it to describe his own views. These 

 are so familiar to biologists that there 

 cannot be any necessity to repeat them 

 here; it will suffice to say that for him the 



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