The Nature of Living Matter

PART I. Vitalism and Mechanism

VITALISM AND MECHANISM

SUMMARY

An uneasy recognition of the conflict between science and common sense in our generation has rekindled interest in the relation of science to moral philosophy. In this awakening the physicists have assumed the leading part. It will not be possible to predict the outcome, until the contribution of contemporary biology to natural philosophy is taken into consideration. Some writers have expressed the hope that the influence of biological concepts may assist to a reconciliation of the claims of natural science and moral philosophy. This hope is based on a failure to recognize that modern experimental biology is an ethically neutral body of enquiry. The merits of a mechanistic or vitalistic outlook in biology have been too often discussed from an ontological rather than an epistemological standpoint. Our estimate of the influence of biological concepts on the future of natural philosophy must be guided by a recognition of the essential similarity of method in biology and physics. This similarity is nowhere more evident than in those branches of physiology which lie most conspicuously outside the realm of applicability of physico-chemical hypotheses. Traditional mechanistic physiology has accepted the Cartesian dualism of mind and matter. The modern physiology of the conditioned reflex has undermined the distinction between reflex and voluntary behaviour. There is thus no nicely defined boundary at which physiology ends and philosophy begins. Biology is annexing regions of enquiry which have hitherto remained the province of moral philosophy. As a concept of biology Mind is replaced by Behaviour. Since modern biology claims to interpret the characteristics of conscious behaviour as properties of physical objects, the advance of biological science cannot be expected to reinforce the claims of moral philosophy. How far it is possible to reduce the interpretation of behaviour to purely physico-chemical hypotheses, we have no means of predicting. At present we can foresee no limit to progress in that direction. The significant issue is not the completeness of the mechanistic solution, but whether there exists any definable method of arriving at a more complete solution than the mechanistic outlook permits.

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“It is our happiness to live in one of those eventful periods of intellectual and moral history when the fast-closed gates of discovery and reform stand open at their widest. How long these good days may last we cannot tell. It may be that the increasing power and range of scientific method with its stringency of argument and constant check of fact may start the world in a more steady and continuous course of progress than it has moved on heretofore. But if history is to repeat itself according to precedent, we must look forward to stiffer, duller ages of traditionalists and commentators, when the great thinkers of our time will be appealed to by men who slavishly accept their tenets, yet cannot or dare not follow their methods through better evidence to higher ends. In either case it is for those among us whose minds are set on the advancement of civilization to make the most of present opportunities that, even when in future years progress is arrested, it may be arrested at a higher level.”

Tylor’s Primitive Culture

INTRODUCTION

No one who is familiar with contemporary thought can have failed to recognize two characteristics which have emerged into prominence during the past two decades. With increasing elaboration of its logical technique, science has been brought into apparently irreconcilable conflict with common sense. The result is that scientists, uneasy in the realization of this conflict, are seeking to establish a new working relation between science and philosophy. This rapprochement has been brought about especially through recent progress in physics. It will not be possible to predict its outcome so long as the physicist claims to speak for science as a whole. In this introductory essay I propose to discuss in a somewhat discursive and preliminary way how far the conflict between science and common sense is apparent rather than real, and to indicate the special need for reviewing the progress of modern biology in its philosophical bearings.

At the present time few biologists are anxious to court publicity in the field of philosophic controversy. Those who do so are rarely numbered among the ranks of those who are still actively contributing to contemporary progress in biological enquiry. Those who are actively contributing to the advancement of biological knowledge show little disposition to commit themselves to far-reaching generalizations. There has emerged from the morass of speculation associated with the rise of the evolutionary hypothesis a recognition of the paramount importance of painstaking quantitative study of limited aspects of vital phenomena. This attitude is a salutary one. It does not signify that biology is passing through a phase of stagnation. On the contrary current biological discoveries contain the germ of philosophical issues which may prove to be as revolutionary as Relativity and as repugnant to common sense. In the essays which follow I shall confine myself to accredited experimental data. I do not pretend that all or even a majority of biologists will agree with my interpretation of their philosophic significance.

There is no novelty in asserting the need for incorporating the contribution of biological science in a modern philosophical outlook. Herbert Spencer and the Evolutionists prepared the ground fifty years ago; but they failed to lay emphasis on the methodological aspect of biological enquiry. The methods and not the results of biological science are specially significant to philosophical discussion. In putting forward my own views upon the nature of life, it is not the results of biological enquiry, but the methods which I propose to discuss in the first series of essays in this volume. In contrasting the methods and concepts of physical and biological science, I shall sometimes draw inferences which will not commend themselves to the judgment of biologists for whose contributions I entertain a lively respect. I shall not be surprised to be told that my forecast of the outcome of biological enquiry is pretentious, and that my philosophical conclusions are in conflict with common sense.

At an early age I abandoned the conviction that scientific hypotheses must conform to the requirements of common sense. When I was a boy, there used to be in Portsmouth, the town of my nativity, a public figure by name Ebenezer Breach. Mr. Breach was a philosopher. To be precise he described himself as “Natural Astronomer and Poet.” In that he belittled his gifts. Of his poetry I shall say nothing, save that he stated the qualification “poet by Royal Patronage” in his fascinating brochure Twenty Reasons against Newtonianism or The Universal Challenge to Unnatural Science. This was sold for the modest price of twopence sterling. As his contribution to modern thought may be unfamiliar to many cultivated people who were not born in Portsmouth, I propose to quote the first of his twenty reasons as representative of the system he develops:

“Because the earth has no axis, therefore nothing on which to revolve, an imaginary mathematical line is substituted. But no solid body could revolve on an imaginary axis or line. It is an imaginary cause which can only produce an imaginary effect, so all that follows the cause must be imaginary. If anything be placed on the top of a revolving body it will fly off at a tangent.”

From this you might infer, wrongly it happens, that Mr. Ebenezer Breach earned a comfortable livelihood as Regius Professor of Moral Philosophy in an authentic University. He had in fact chosen to bear witness to the hope that was in him by the only alternative which a harsher economic destiny had imposed. Every Saturday night he addressed a handful of half-intoxicated seamen, tired commercial travellers, adventurous nursery maids and irreverent pupil teachers foregathered on the sea-front. There he occasionally succeeded in selling a copy of the Twenty Reasons, and beyond this obtained, as far as I am aware, no reward in the life that now is. In spite of his erudition and distinction of person, Mr. Breach, the prophet of common sense, did not make many converts. He was less successful in his popular appeal than an evangelical competitor who used to minister to Portsmouth beach before a banner whose legend stated, “the wages of sin is death.” This banner I can still recall as, in its way, a work of art. On the foreground were displayed the theatre, race-course, public-house, dancing saloon and gaming tables along the edge of a precipice over which poor folk in a semi-incandescent condition were tumbling into a lake of brimstone and fire. It invariably drew a large crowd. I had early imbibed the notion that science like Sunday travelling, whist and dramatic entertainment is worldly, so that the gospel of Mr. Breach, who condemned science on account of its essential unworldliness, presented a new and arresting point of view. On the whole the inhabitants of Portsmouth were more interested in their souls and what would become of them after death. Mr. Breach had another competitor with more peculiar views about the soul and about life. As far as I can remember he held that the brain secretes consciousness in much the same way as the liver secretes bile, and he asserted that the soul was the shadow cast by the machine. My nurse held very definite views about his domestic life. He was a materialist, and in all probability a polygamist, if not worse. Mr. Breach who was a bachelor, the evangelist who was certainly not a polygamist, and the Secularist who was undoubtedly a bad man all agreed in one particular. Each believed that the gospel he proclaimed was common sense.

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