Biological time / by Lecomte du Noüy.

  • Lecomte du Noüy, Pierre, 1883-1947. Temps et la vie. English
Date:
1936
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Biological time / by Lecomte du Noüy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    when taken separately, when taken successively and as a whole, they seem to reveal a special link. Some invisible contingency appears to lead them in the path which they follow and to impose the order in which they are bound. The synthetic chemical actions of organization and of nutrition thus manifest themselves as if they were dominated by an impulsive force which governs matter, creates a special chemistry appropriated to its end, and brings in contact the blind reagents of the laboratory just as the chemist himself would. We already know that this power of evolution, inherent in the ovule which is to reproduce the living being, covers the phenomena of generation as well as those of nutrition. They both, therefore, possess a basic evolutive character. ‘This power or property of evolution, which we can just mention here, would alone constitute the quid proprium of life, for it is clear that this evolutive property of the egg, which will produce a mammal, a bird, or a fish, is neither physics nor chemistry. Vitalistic conceptions can no longer reign over physiology as a whole. The evolutive force of the egg and the cells is therefore the last stronghold of vitalism. In taking refuge behind it, however, it is clear that vitalism transforms itself into a metaphysical concept and destroys the last link which bound it to the physical world and to physiological science. In stating that life is the directing idea, or evolutive force of the organism we simply express the idea of unity in the succession of all morphological and chemical changes linked together by the germs from the beginning to the end of life. Our mind grasps this unity as a concept which imposes itself, and we explain it by a force. It would be a mistake, however, to believe that this metaphysical force is active in the same way as a physical force. This conceptual force does not leave the intellectual realm in order to react upon the phenomena for the explanation of which it was created. Although an emanation of the physical world, it does not act upon it retroactively. In brief, the metaphysical force