Problems of biology / by George Sandeman.

Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Problems of biology / by George Sandeman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    the method of any one of these theories be allowed for a moment, I cannot see any reason for either affirming or denying any one of them. And if one of these principles made my hand, I have no doubt that it made my foot also, and I cannot be sure that it did not make my argument. But it may be said that after all we have to some ex- tent moved in accordance with research. Bonnet’s belief that the image of the adult was contained in the germ in little, difference for difference, has been expelled by the progress of microscopic investigation. Lamarck s cause excitatrice has disappeared before physiological research. And on the other hand, Weismann’s idioplasm does cor- respond to granules which stain with logwood, and the struggle and selection of parts is certainly a fact so long as the parts are in any way related to one another. That is merely to say that hypothetical agents and hypothetical processes disappear before research; and that the theories invent new processes and new determinant agents in as )'et unexplored forms. We might point out that the agents which are at present in vogue are, in fact, unknown, but it is better to await the more conclusive demonstration that they are in necessity unknowable. These are some of the features of the inner confusion. They have made the very name of biology a by-word. And though the anarchy may not be obvious to a people delighting in formulae which may be applied with equal facility and barrenness to every- thing which is organic, it is so present to men of research that they leave the whole matter on one side as simply not pertinent to their occupation, and are not patient to bear even the mention of what they repudiate, with more justice than they are always aware, as metaphysics. The outer confusion is not less notable. I have indi- cated that the formality and abstractness of biological systems is such that they are not affected by the differences in their content; and that a particular fact has not its particular significance to them, but only its general signi-
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