NOTES AND LITERATURE 



GENERAL BIOLOGY 



The Philosophical Problem of Life.— Dr. Venvoni, Professor of 

 Physiology at Gottiiigen, has recently piibHshed a lecture upon the 

 investigation of life, delivered before the society of political science 

 at Berlin.^ At the outset he states that the search for a cause in 

 biology is unfruitful and unscientific. "There is no process in the 

 world which is determined by a single cause. Every process is always 

 dependent upon a number of other processes and it is unjustifiably 



arbitrary to select one of these and to account it the first cause 



A scientific investigator can only establish the several conditions 

 which are necessary for the occurrence of a process. If these are 

 known, the process is accounted for, — explained. The process is 

 nothing more than the expression of the sum of the concomitant con- 

 ditions. The conception of cause becomes therefore superfluous and 

 worthless." 



Accordingly one must regard as superficial such affirmations as 

 that an insect is colored green because it is thereby protected, or 

 that a mammalian embryo has gill clefts because its ancestors did. 



From the study of the conditions of life Professor Venvorn concludes 

 that, — "To produce life artificially we must know completely all 

 the elements of the fixing sub.tiuur We nui.t knoxx the n^iatixe 

 amounts. We must undtM-staJKl their an-angement in the <rll l.odv. 

 If Axe (oiiM ( ..nM.iu I h a .^ ni h.lf.lh.m all thr * o,„l.tiun. ot lit. . 

 theartlhnal («11 xxonl.l at on.* lu. It xx ouM . . na.nU l.e.Mnnuh 



and transmit its qualities — but the prospect of producing life is 

 a complete Uto[)ia. We have not learned to approach the complex 



conditions involved in a living organism The chemical fabric of 



a cell should first be so understood that it could be imagined a- a givat 

 machine shop, in which the mechanism of life could be observed bv 

 wandering among the atoms as among wheels and c^limlrr.-. 



Consciousness also is held to be a product of these < (.n.liii.ms. It. 

 according to DuRois-Kevniond, we could brink' t(.«r« tlier ai mu e aii.l 

 in their proper relations all the aioiiis i.t wliieli ( .esar \\a> e<.in|HiM d 



» Verworn, M. Di, Krj,. 

 45 pp. IMk. 80Pf. 



