THE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF BIOLOGY 



suggests that the existence of rare disen- 

 tropic phases in living matter, where in- 

 fractions of the second law can go on 

 might account for the subjective persua- 

 sion of freedom which all men have and 

 so introduce a kind of free-will into the 

 structure of science itself. He points out 

 that if such intracellular phases may once 

 with reason be postulated, there is no 

 difficulty in imagining their effect on the 

 body as a whole, in view of the extra- 

 ordinary capacity which the body has of 

 transmitting changes of state from one 

 point in space to another. In this way a 

 voluntary action would arise from an 

 individual escape from the second law in 

 one of the ultramicroscopic intracellular 

 phases in the living being. But is 

 infraction of the second law the same 

 thing as a breakdown of scientific deter- 

 minism? Lillie passes by an insensible 

 transition from the latter to the former, 

 but perhaps this is not justified. Does 

 scientific determinism — in so far as it is 

 not confused with scientific naturalism — ■ 

 make any claim to be more than statisti- 

 cal? If in the scientific formulation of 

 things, the individual always escapes, 

 then anything that individual atoms may 

 do in the ultimate recesses of the animal 

 body is metaphysical in the truest and 

 most literal sense of the word. 



Lillie himself refers to the expression 

 "physical indeterminism" as a misnomer, 

 and admits that though the laws of the 

 microscopic may not be the same as the 

 laws of the macroscopic, there must be 

 laws of some sort there. And if that is 

 the case, it is difficult to see how on a 

 scientific basis alone there can be any 

 spontaneity or freedom. Thus if we 

 suppose that escape from the second law 

 regularly takes place in the intimate 

 structure of living organisms, it will 

 surely not be escape into freedom but into 

 the arms of some wider statistical law 



inevitably brought into existence by the 

 operation of the scientific way of thought. 

 Or, in other words, the inductive method 

 will again assert its supremacy and 

 nothing will escape from all this save 

 what always did escape, namely, individ- 

 uality. The unique is the only nut that 

 science cannot crack, and freedom implies 

 uniqueness. 



Lillie's paper may be said, then, to push 

 back individuality into the disentropic 

 phase, and not, as its title would imply, 

 to reconcile indeterminism with science. 

 But an altogether fresh wind blows 

 through his memoir in question, and it is 

 significant that he draws attention to the 

 importance of the quantum theory for 

 the philosophy of biology. 



Thermodynamical considerations have 

 recently led to the partial solution of one 

 problem which was brought greatly into 

 prominence in neo-vitalistic discussions. 

 The extraordinary fact that the swim- 

 bladder of fishes living at great depths 

 contains nearly pure oxygen was first 

 discovered by Biot (3), who analysed 

 the gas during a scientific expedition and 

 had his eudiometer broken by the ex- 

 plosion. "As nearly pure oxygen" said 

 Haldane (ro) "has been obtained from 

 the swim-bladders of fishes living at a 

 depth of 750 fathoms (4500 feet), it fol- 

 lows that oxygen may be secreted into the 

 swim-bladder and retained in it in the 

 gaseous form at a pressure of over izo 

 atmospheres, whereas the partial pressure 

 of oxygen in the surrounding sea-water 

 is only about one-fifth of an atmosphere. 

 It seems perfectly clear, therefore, that 

 the liberation of oxygen and its retention 

 by the semi-liquid wall of the swim- 

 bladder is the result of an active physio- 

 logical process in the living cells lining 

 its walls, and cannot be explained mechan- 

 ically." F. J. W. Roughton (47) has 

 recently suggested that on the contrary 



