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The Problem of Vital Organization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Ralph S. Lillie
Ralph S. Lillie*
Affiliation:
Department of Physiology, University of Chicago
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Extract

In considering this problem a distinction should first be made between its scientific and it philosophical aspects. The scientific problem is that of defining in exact understandable terms those conditions and factors (with their various types of combination and interplay) which make possible the synthesis of the living organism from the simpler elements of the non-living environment, and also its maintenance in the adult state as a fully developed and autonomous organic individual. The problem as thus stated is one to be approached by methods of observation and experiment, leading to verifiable results which are then expressed in systematic and intelligible form. The final statements or representations thus reached, the accepted scientific generalizations, inevitably take on a theoretical form, and as such are necessarily partial and abstract. Many of them, in fact, are to be regarded primarily as simplifications or models devised in the interest of clear representation or understanding. Their relation to concrete reality may range from attempts at exact portraiture to formulæ or diagrams having little more than heuristic significance. Any realistic philosophy of nature must always remember how incomplete and provisional are the theoretical conceptions of any natural science.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , July 1934 , pp. 296 - 312
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1934

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References

1. Process and Reality, pp. 30 seq.

2. American Naturalist, 1934 (in print).

3. Cf. the discussion by F. G. Donnan, Scientia, 1918, Vol. 24, p. 282; also Journal of General Physiology, 1927, Vol. 8, p. 685.

4. Cf. H. J. Muller : “Radiation and Genetics,” American Naturalist, 1930, Vol. 64, p. 220.

5. Cf. R. S. Lillie : “The Directive Influence in Living Organisms,” Journal of Philosophy, 1932, Vol. 29, p. 477; asymmetric chemical action and its relation to vital processes are more fully discussed in this paper.

6. Cf. N. Bohr, “Life and Light,” Nature, 1933, Vol. 131, pp. 421, 457.

7. H. Prinzhorn, “Psychotherapy,” London, J. Cape, 1932, p. 97.

8. Cf. Monadology, 66 seq.

9. Provisional or “scaffolding” structures are frequent in embryonic development, e.g. the amnion and allantois of the mammalian embryo, yolk-sacs, etc.

10. For a detailed account of the chemical side of embryonic development cf. the recent treatise of Joseph Needham, “Chemical Embryology,” 3 volumes, Macmillan, 1931.

11. Cf. Whitehead, “Science and the Modern World,” p. 111, as to the influence which the general unity of the organism exercises upon the behavior of the single electrons composing it.