EEFLECTIONS ON THE AUTONOMY OF BIOLOG- 

 ICAL SCIENCE 



PROFESSOR OTTO GLASER 



Int 



If the knowledge of facts and comprehension of prin- 

 ciples by certain writers had been adequate, and others 

 had freed their minds from the survivals of animism, 

 the taxonomic position of biology in the scheme of knowl- 

 edge would appear uncertain to no one. Prolonged and 

 extensive inkshed however have surrounded this ques- 

 tion with much unnecessary difficulty and confusion. 

 Some claim that biology can not properly find a place 

 among the sciences at all; others, that if our science is 

 nothing more than physics and chemistry, it can have no 

 right to independent existence ; and finally, the vitalists 

 postulate an absolute autonomy based on a specific prin- 

 ciple. 



Biological. Peediction 

 Merz, Enriques, 1 and other present-day writers on the 

 systematics of biology dwell at length on the fact that 

 within the realm of the living, very strange and unex- 

 pected events take place. From the protozoans, human 

 beings can hardly be inferred; the chromosomal com- 

 plex, on account of the variations and surprising simi- 

 larities of its constituent elements, fails to tell us whether 

 we are dealing with sister species or with forms as re- 

 mote as snails, frogs, ferns and mice. Because one 

 crustacean is positively heliotropic, it does not follow 

 that the next one, even if the species be identical, will re- 

 spond in like manner, nor because one child in a family 

 has blue eyes can we conclude that its parents or broth- 

 ers and sisters have eyes of the same color. A dog or a 



' Merz, John Theodore, - A History of European Thought in the Nine- 

 teenth Century"; Enriques, Federigo, "Prebleme der Wissenschaf t. " 

 712 



