Nutritional physiology / by Percy Goldthwait Stiles.

  • Percy Goldthwait Stiles
Date:
1931
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Nutritional physiology / by Percy Goldthwait Stiles. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The ear is a distance receptor. The energy which sets its intricate mechanism into vibration may have originated as far away as the thunder-cloud hanging near the horizon. The possession of an ear greatly extends the compass of the environment which can exert directing influences on the conduct of an animal. If this is true of the ear, how shall we estimate the widening of environment that comes with the addition to the receptor system of an eye! Our ability to see the stars means nothing less than this: that the reactions of the organism so endowed may be modified by energy proceeding from the incomprehensible distances of the stellar universe. Throughout this book we have held steadily to the point of view defined in its very first paragraphs: that all living things are transformers of energy, and engaged so long as they live in reacting according to the principles of mechan- ics and chemistry in response to external changes. A pres- entation in this spirit provokes resentment and protest from many readers. It seems to leave out of account all that is instinctively held to be highest and finest in human life. To this remonstrance we are glad to give place. The scientist is, after all, a man, and no scientist was ever so ruthlessly logical as to convince himself that his friend was no more than a reflex mechanism. The impression that the study of science deprives one of the philosophic outlook and of the conviction of moral responsibility belongs to the earlier stages of the student’s experience. Later it is seen that no incentive to right conduct and no worthy consolation is to be taken away. A few years ago a brilliant astronomer—Percival Lowell -was concluding a course of lectures in which he had traced the long story of planetary evolution. He had pictured the ages of formative process, the slow condensation and cooling of the globe, the gradual approach to conditions suitable for organic life. He had sketched the brief flourishing of that life, the remorseless chilling of the planet, and its frigid and sterile old age. His hearers were