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Biology and Unitary Principle
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
Extract
The candid student of scientific method will recognize that biology is not entirely a physical science, while acknowledging that it owes its present state of development largely or mainly to physical conceptions and methods. It is clear that the constant features of vital organization and activity presuppose the physical constancies as basis. Nevertheless the living organism has proved in many ways refractory to a purely physical analysis. This is not merely because the higher organisms have their psychical side and that psychological method differs from physical method; conceivably a properly unified science might apply equally to the physical and the psychical sides of nature. Nor is it entirely because vital behaviour is more individualized and less predictable than physical behaviour. It is rather that certain fundamental features of natural process, largely neglected by physics, are just those which are of chief importance in those flux-like entities which are living organisms. The traditional methods of physics, which analyze nature into combinations of invariant elements and processes, are ill-adapted to deal with the fluid, asymmetrical and largely indeterminate features of process as displayed so conspicuously in living organisms. This, put briefly, is the contention of L. L. Whyte, physicist and author of the recent remarkable book on the relations between physics and biology. In the present paper I propose first to consider especially those sections of the book which bear more particularly on the fundamental problems of biology; this part is paraphrase and commentary rather than summary, although never departing far from the subject of unitary principle as defined by Whyte. Later I shall consider some philosophical implications which seem important. For the details of Whyte's exposition the reader should refer to his book, which is notably clear, concise and critical in style and treatment, as well as comprehensive and fully realistic in its point of view.
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- Copyright © 1951, The Williams & Wilkins Company
References
1 Lancelot Law Whyte, “The Unitary Principle in Physics and Biology,” New York, Henry Holt and Company, 1949 (cited in text as UP).
2 Apparently this is the general condition to which C. S. Peirce referred as “dyadism.” Equilibrium is balance between two entities,—the part of nature under consideration and its environment. It implies a dialectic constitution of nature.
3 The relation between conformity and causation is discussed by Whitehead in his Symbolism, its Meaning and Effect, p. 41.
4 L. v. Bertalanffy, “The Theory of Open Systems in Physics and Biology.” Science (1950), Vol. 111, p. 23.
5 I.e., with the direction of polarization perpendicular to the length of the peptide chain.
6 For a general discussion of the relations between the degree of disturbance of a system and the kind of change which it undergoes cf. the section on Thresholds and Transformations (UP: p. 53).
7 Cf. especially the microdissection experiments of Professor C. V. Taylor on the neuromotor apparatus of the ciliate protozoon Euplotes, University of California Publications in Zoology, 1920, Vol. 19, p. 403.
8 It is a fact of observation that the new chromosomal material formed during cell-division makes its appearance at the surface of the chromosomal material already present. The two faces of the dividing chromosome are opposed; the daughter chromosomes illustrate the characteristic relation of symmetry. This gives rise to the impression that the original filament splits lengthwise, but the essential fact is the reduplication of material at the surface of the original chromosome.
9 A discussion (with diagrams) of the possible physical methods by which protein patterns are reduplicated in the organism is to be found in a recent paper by Felix Haurowitz, “Biological Problems and Immunochemistry,” Quarterly Review of Biology, 1949, Vol. 24, pp. 93–101. See also his book, “Progress in Biochemistry”, Interscience Publishers, Inc., New York, 1950, Section on “Growth and Self-reproduction,” pp. 364 ff.
10 Anymore than the existence of events spatially remote, as Bergson has pointed out (Matter and Memory, English Translation, New York: Macmillan, 1912, p. 191). Events of both kinds are inaccessible to experiment. Time and space are alike in sharing the property of distance, actual or potential—unidirectional in the case of time.
11 A good many years ago I discussed this type of asymmetry at somewhat greater length in a paper entitled “Types of Physical Determination and the Activities of Living Organisms,” Journal of Philosophy, 1931, Vol. 28, p. 561. Cf. also “The Directive Influence in Living Organisms,” ibid., 1932, Vol. 29, p. 477, e.g. pp. 480 ff.
12 I mention this speculative view because as a physiologist I am well aware how rigid and exact the physical determination of the living organism actually (and necessarily) is. Apparently the only avenue through which an internal source of independent control or directiveness could assert itself in the organism would be by way of the ultra-atomic units, especially those which are nearest to the limits of spatial divisibility. In general, as the spatial dimensions of a stable and integrated physical system increase, the more exact its physical (mechanical) determination becomes; for illustration contrast the path of a planet with that of a particle in Brownian motion. Our conceptions of space are derived from physical experience. No physical entities appear to be smaller than 10–12 to 10–13 centimeters; and it would seem to be meaningless to apply the concepts of geometry to existence below this limit. The conception of infinite spatial divisibility is patently a construct or artefact; the same applies to temporal divisibility.
13 Cf. my paper, “Randomness and Directiveness in the Evolution and Activity of Living Organisms.” American Naturalist, 1948, Vol. 82, p. 5.
14 Directiveness, being asymmetrical, tends toward diversity, while uncontrolled randomness, with its statistically symmetrical distribution of particles and events, makes for uniformity. Evidently the factual diversity of the world cannot be explained on the basis of uniformities.