Life and the equivalence of force / by J. Drysdale.

  • Drysdale, John James, 1817-1892.
Date:
[between 1870 and 1879]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Life and the equivalence of force / by J. Drysdale. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    187/204 (page 187)
    instance, as that universal refuge electricity, and the like [lie would probably now say a vague use of the word Force] ; but an explanation by means of powers which operate like the physical powers in accordance with strict laws of blind necessity, whether they be also to be found in inorganic nature or not (190). This agrees completely with Fletcher's idea of the living matter being merely a com- pound, although its properties are entirely sui generis; but as if to make the argument still more complete he adds, As the elementary materials of organic nature are not different from those of the inorganic kingdom, the source of the organic phenomena can only reside in another combina- tion of these materials/'' He does not merely mean a vague statement that in the living state the elements, or even protein-compounds, are in a somewhat modified state of combination, but, like Fletcher, that that difference of combination is all-sufficient to produce the phenomena of life. Both these authors wrote before the promulgation of the new doctrine of force, and the question now is whether that may help to reconcile the different parties by discriminating between true and false physical theories of life. At pre- sent we see Fletcher agreeing entirely with Liebig, Bence Jones, and the physio-chemical school, in the physical view, as distinguished from the animist and all teleological views, while, as a vitalist, he entirely disagrees with the particular physio-chemical theory of that school. In this last respect Beale is entirely at one with Fletcher, but refuses to admit any such thing as life without a special teleological power. If we test the theory of the chemicalist school by the laws of matter and force applied rigidly, it will, I think, appear that it does not fulfil the conditions of a true physical theory, because the directing idea or agency, or vital force, which they are all compelled to fall back upon, sooner or later resolves itself into a teleological cause, either of the nature of the horror vacui or of a substantial prin- ciple. Unless, therefore, we admit the sufficiency of the meta- bolic or vital state of affinity, we cannot uphold the physical view; but if we do, then Beale's animism becomes superfluous.