The question of the relationship of the making of value judgments in a typically ethical sense to the methods and procedures of science has been discussed in the literature at least to that point which e. e. cummings somewhere refers to as “The Mystical Moment of Dullness.” Nevertheless, albeit with some trepidation, I feel that something more may fruitfully be said on the subject.

The book of Bergson (1) underlying the present study appeared in 1896. It is entitled “Matter and Memory” and is a philosophical disquisition into the relation and mutual limitations of organic life and inert matter. Bergson proposes to deal with this very general problem under the special aspect of a theory of the functioning of the human brain and the mechanism of ordinary memory. Such use of the inductive method, which starts from a special problem in order to arrive at results that might be generalized later, might endear him to the exact scientist who has a healthy skepticism toward pure generalities. But let us for a moment remain in the realm of generalities in order to better circumscribe the subject: Few people would agree to an entirely mechanistic interpretation of organic life; hence there should be some point in biology at which the deviations from pure mechanism appear explicitly and in their fulness. For the present we shall adopt an intentionally oversimplified mode of expression. Let us say that mechanistic description is causal and that as our analysis progresses we must eventually arrive at a point where we can no longer trace the causal chains in their entirety. At that point we must replace causal “classical” physics by quantum mechanics and form our pictures of microscopic realities of organic matter in terms of the latter. Some of the pertinent problems have been pointed out by the present writer (4) among others, following earlier suggestions by Niels Bohr (2). Suffice it here to say that certain processes of the atomic scale going on in a complex system such as the organic tissue essentially escape detailed observation that would allow us to determine the continuity of an entirely causal nexus. It is possible to make such observations, but they result in physical destruction of the very coherence of the organic tissue upon which the biological functioning depends. Bohr describes this condition by the term “generalized complementarity.” We cannot enter into a discussion of these problems here; let us adopt deliberately the oversimplified and somewhat vague expression that at some point indeterminacies become significant in the microscopic processes that take place in the organic body. We shall try to limit ourselves in this paper to the simplistic notion of a multiplicity of indeterminate events inserted (in a very crude manner of speaking) into the play of molecular reactions that constitute the functioning of the organism from the viewpoint of the physicist and chemist.

When people talk about the “present crisis,” they probably mean some significant turning point in history. If they fear or resent it, it is a dangerous crisis, anti-American, anti-Christian, and antidemocratic. If they welcome it, they may call it the “wave of the future,” or some kind of a “deal,” new, square, or fair; prosperity is just around the corner. Only unwanted change produces the “dangerous crisis.”

Although Whitehead did not develop a general theory of meaning, his most systematic account of topics related to meaning is found in his discussion of ‘symbolic reference’ (4), (5). But these latter discussions, however basic they might be in terms of Whitehead's theory of symbolism, yet constitute but a small part of the general theory of meaning that is implicit in the philosophy of organism, as a whole.

While recent studies have shed some light on the significance of the electrical activity of the nervous system, there has been no adequate explanation for the wave formation or synchronization of this electrical activity. Adrian (1) sums up the problem. “The origin of the 10-a-second rhythm is still uncertain, though the evidence points to some widespread organization, probably involving the central masses as well as the cortex. There are abundant nervous connexions for coordinating the beat, and when the rhythm is well developed it is possible to record impulse discharges in phase with it passing to and fro in the nerve fibers of the white matter below the cortex. But in some areas no impulse could be detected entering or leaving the cell layers, though the potential waves keep more or less in step with those elsewhere. There is no proof that the waves are kept in phase by some means which does not involve nervous signalling, for impulses in axons of small diameter might well be missed, but it is not altogether unlikely that the synchronization is due in part to a direct electrical influence of one group of nerve cells on another. Gerard and Libet have shown that synchronization can occur between the two halves of a frog's brain cut in two and then placed in contact, and more recently Arvanitaki has shown that individual nerve cells may influence one another if they are brought close together in a conducting medium. At all events there are many examples of synchronized rhythmic activity in large collections of nerve-or-muscle cells. In the optic ganglion of the water beetle, for instance, there may be both a slow rhythm when the eye is in darkness and a rapid one when the eye is exposed to a bright light. The change from a slow to a fast rhythm is curiously reminiscent of that in the cerebral cortex when a sensory stimulus abolishes the 10-a-second rhythm and substitutes one at 40–60 a second. Such resemblances in preparations of quite different structures may be quite fortuitous, but they make it difficult to resist the suggestion that the rhythms of the brain may be dependent on the general properties of cell masses rather than on any special anatomical arrangement of them. Whatever its origin, the 10-a-second rhythm of the cortex corresponds to the resting, drowsy, or inattentive state and there is no such uniform pulsation when the brain is alert.”

What is operations research? What is sufficiently new about it to constitute it a “new science”? And how is it related to philosophy?

1. What it is. MOR's definition, based on Kittel's, runs as follows:

Operations research is a scientific method of providing executive departments with a quantitative basis for decisions regarding the operations under their control (7: 1.)

It is the objective of this paper to point out that discussions about cause and effect, and particularly those which bear upon their temporal relationship, are often blurred by failure to make use of the time-honored distinction between transeunt and immanent (also called “extrinsic” and “intrinsic”) causes. Transeunt causes are in evidence whenever we discern two systems, S1 and S2, spatially separated (at least in the beginning of the process), but locked in interaction. In this perspective, cotemporaneous changes can be asserted both of S1 and S2. S1 has an effect on S2, and vice versa. Both effects take place simultaneously but are, as a rule, of different nature. Whether we read the causal relationship from S1, as the cause, to the changes of S2, as the effect, or the other way, from S2 to S1, depends on nothing more objective than the momentary direction of our interest. Immanent causes get into focus whenever we compare the internal conditions C1 and C2 which characterize a system S0 at two different moments t1 and t2. If t1 is earlier than t2, there is a sense in which we can say that C1 is a cause, and C2 its effect.

In the interesting discussion between Margenau (1) and Werkmeister (2) a baffling dilemma arises:

The writer, who—as a positivist—cannot accept a transcendental reality, as Werkmeister seemingly does, is not disturbed by a multitude of realities. He identifies reality with the most familiar and most generalized cognition. As such it varies with the mechanism of cognition and with the type and degree of integration.