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Organicism in Biology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Joseph Needham
Joseph Needham
Affiliation:
Fellow of Caius CollegeCambridge
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Extract

THE word “ Organicism,” although it may seem unfamiliar to the younger generation of biologists, is not a new one, and has been heard of already in that shadowy limbo where philosophical and biological conceptions meet on common ground. The genius of its original minting is not known, but it figured largely in the great work of Yves Delage, the French zoologist, in which he attempted to survey and criticize every important biological theory which had ever been seriously produced. Hisl'Hérédité et les grands Problèmes de la Biologie appeared in 1903, and in it he classified all biological theories, past, present, and future, under the four heads of

Type
Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 3 , Issue 9 , January 1928 , pp. 29 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1928

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References

page 33 note 1 Morgan, C. Lloyd , “ The Concept of the Organism as Emergent and Resultant,” Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1927, p. 141.Google Scholar

page 33 note 2 In Life, Mind, and Spirit, p. 66.

page 34 note 1 Cf. Summer, F. B. , Scientific Monthly, 1922, 14, 233Google Scholar, and Lotka, A. , Physical Biology, 1926, p. 374Google Scholar, on the overlapping of co-ordinate reference frames.

page 34 note 2 This is the essence and kernel of that venerable controversy. Cf. the basis of reference of the American symposium on it : Journ. Phil. Ps ch. and Sci. Meth., 1918,15, 458.Google Scholar

page 36 note 1 See Science for 1911 and 1912, 33, 610, 927, 34, 75, 36, 434, 672,57, 104.

page 38 note 1 Murray, C. D. , “ The Physiological Principle of Minimum Work,” Proc, Nat. Acad. Sci., Washington, 1926, 12, 207 and 299.Google Scholar

page 38 note 2 Lillie, R. S. , “ What is Purposiveness from the Physiological Point of View? “ Journ. Phil. Psych, and Sci. Meth., 1915,12, 589.Google Scholar

page 39 note 1 Broad, C. D. , “ Mechanical Explanation and its Alternatives,” Proc. Aristot. Soc., 1919,19, 86.Google Scholar