William E. Ritter

“ On the basis of experience science can-project itself far in advance of experience, but only on that basis can it thus project itself.
So much for the data, the starting places of biology. They are individual animals and plants, living in nature. It is wholesome for any domain of science to stop now and then and ask what its original data are. Such inquiry not only yields enlightenment, interesting and useful of itself, but it is further illuminating as to the way a science deals, and must deal, with its raw material—its "givens." ”

“ At a few places in this discussion it has seemed as though the course we were on would drag our physical science back to the primal chaos of mere sensations and facts from which it seems to have come. In truth, though, now that we can look at the whole situation as from a hilltop, how thoroughly familiar, how reassuring, how in accord with the best, most fruitful endeavor of all the ages of human history it is seen to be. ”

“ Surely I am not, for full definition comes at the end and not at the beginning of experiential knowledge. But however incomplete my definition be, here I am. "The proof of the pudding is the eating."
Why do the elementalists pin their faith to the invisible constituents of things rather than to the things themselves? Can it be that they deliberately deceive themselves as to the place where reality is located? Surely this can not be so. Some misguiding agent or agents there must be, and they must be subtle, otherwise they could not succeed as well as they do with so many earnest people. ”

“ We can not touch sodium with our knowledge of the properties of chlorine, nor vice versa. Similarly, we can not touch sodium with our knowledge of the properties of salt, nor salt with our knowledge of the properties of sodium, except, mark you, as we may say that one property of sodium is its power to unite with chlorine to produce salt. My familiar expression for this is that the external world and our minds are so constituted, are so articulated with each other, that every object in that world must be treated on its own merits. ”

“ Most of us would agree that we have to use both our senses and our minds in science. Most would agree too that that workman is the most efficient who uses his instruments the most intelligently—who is not a mere rule-of-thumb workman. How then do our minds and our senses work while we do science? Are there general principles of operation, to know which would enable us to use them more smoothly, more surely, more productively? Let us watch them while they work at some problem of chemistry, say. To be as objective as possible we will use common table salt. ”

“ If the completed organism does not lie as potency and promise in the germ and its natural environment, then where does it abide? If the qualities of the organism are not thus derived, then indeed is there something in man not derived from nature, just as a time-honored school of philosophy asserts. But for biology this would be vitalism, and vitalism means a walled city with the gates locked and the keys lost beyond recovery. ”

“ Organisms have their own special qualities and so present their own problems, exactly as do oceans and stars. Biology depends upon, but at the same time transcends, chemistry and physics, in exactly the same way that astronomy rests upon but transcends chemistry and physics. ”

“ There seems to be no question about what experience alone can do since there is no such thing so far as we can see. Nor is there any question about what faith alone can do since there is no such thing. ”

“ Science can no more live "to itself alone" than can a human being. The fallacy prevalent here is in reasoning that because science and because art each has an exalted intrinsic nature and worth, it therefore has a nature and worth quite apart from its relation to other things and to men. Somehow it seems difficult to grasp the truth that the worth of science is in deepest essence partly intrinsic or resident, and partly extrinsic and relative. ”

“ To understand any organism it must be studied as a whole and in all its relations. Taking man as a type, his life must be studied throughout the whole cycle of its existence on earth and in its relations to all other lives and things. Not only must the germ-cells, the chromosomes and all the rest be subjected to investigation as to their forms, vital activities and chemico- physical composition, but the whole gamut of his experiences, physical, intellectual and spiritual, must be likewise searched out, so far as it is possible for human minds to search. ”

“ I can not restrain my interest from going where I believe reality, to be. Contrariwise, I can not send it where I believe reality is not. Interest and attention, like natural forces generally, take the direction of least resistance; and the places of greatest belief in reality are those of least resistance for attention. With this psychological basis to go on, illustration will carry us forward more surely and steadily than further argument. ”

“ If we are privileged to suppose we shall sometime be possessed of infinite knowledge; shall be, in other words, infinite beings, then but not till then, shall we understand how chlorine and sodium produce common salt, how the germ-cells produce a common man. [4] Nature is through and through infinite in her forms and processes, so it seems from the experiential knowledge thus far gained. In just what ways science is being driven to the conclusion that nature is thus constituted is too long and hard a story to tell here. ”

“ My belief is that science must justify its right to live and flourish, not alone by its ministrations to physical well-being, but also to the higher and highest reaches of man's nature. While 1 do not for a moment subscribe to the view held by a few, that science is everything, that by and by it will supplant religion, philosophy, ethics, art and the rest, I am fully persuaded that as civilization advances it must become ever more and more an underpinning and ally of all these. ”

“ Not so with science in its relation to the higher, the spiritual, life of men. Looked at from this standpoint it is truly surprising that the value attached to science should be so largely that of physical utility. To be sure, there is a rather general recognition that science, or certain aspects of it, are valuable for mental discipline, especially of the powers of observation. It is allowed, too, that science has an important function in delivering men from superstition. Beyond this little is claimed for science as a contributor to the higher needs and life of humanity. ”

“ Our eyes must be opened in some way to the fact that education, taken in the full sweep of its meaning, is too life-and-death a matter for us as a nation to be left to the formalities of the schoolroom, the university lecture hall and the laboratory, even though these be excellent beyond the possibility of improvement. ”

“ Since we know absolutely nothing about the relation of the atoms in living substance, would it not be a reasonable hypothesis to say that the nature of that marvelous process called metabolism is due to just the fact that the atoms of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, etc., are undergoing perpetual change of valence? ”

“ Plants and animals, as nature presents them, are for him real in a way. They are of course what our naked, crass senses come in contact with, but the real essence of them, the thing we want to get at, lies far away in the germ-cells, in the chromosomes, in protoplasm. There is reality. ”

“ And more interesting still from the standpoint of method, verification and confirmation (almost always by more than one worker) are entirely essential to science. Science is as certainly communal as it is individual.
The communal functions of science on the material side are sufficiently recognized in what is known as modern civilization. The incalculable worth of "applied science," commonly so-called, for human life under this type of culture is questioned to only a negligible extent. There is no need of either exposition or apologetic on behalf of this aspect of science. ”

“ The very heart of that school of biology known as materialistic, or mechanistic, is its effort to interpret living beings by ascribing to invisible substances or bodies, located somewhere within the germ-cells and other cells of the body, reality and essentiality of a sort quite unique as contrasted with the visible substances, and the organisms themselves. ”

“ Atoms in modern chemistry are small bodies imagined to constitute visible substances, and they are imagined for the purpose of incarnating, if you will, the observed trait that substances have of combining with one another according to known rules. As to most of the other properties of atoms, their shape, color, hardness, etc., if atoms are conceived to be anything else than little particles of the substances, science knows no more to-day than did Newton and Democritus. ”

“ For my part, I am of opinion that biology has reached the point where the suggestions of such cosmically-minded men of science as Lord Kelvin and Professor Arrhenius, that life like matter and force is eternal, must be taken hold of seriously as the best working hypothesis that can be made on the basis of the biological data available. ”

“ An institution of pure science, on the other hand, should be one the primary aim of which is to extend the bounds of man's knowledge of nature in a specified field, and to show something of the significance of the new knowledge for the higher life of mankind. ”

“ The man and the nation have something in common as to their mode of development, but they also have something of difference. To ascertain the differences and the traits-in-common all along the line is exactly what the business of developmental biology is.
Those biologists whose creed is that explanation of nature consists in reducing her to a few simple principles will make wry faces if nothing worse at this. ”

“ It will increase your interest in every developed organism as contrasted with your interest in its germ, or any portion of the organism physical or psychical in almost direct proportion as the sensible complexity of the organism as a whole exceeds the sensible complexity of the germ or any part of the organism.
Here is the epistemological necessity for the conception of an "organism as a whole," the biological compulsion of which we speak later. The point is simply this: Every object in nature has some nature of its own. That is just what makes it belong to nature. ”

“ Even the simplest sensation, the starting point of experience, can not be conceived in any intelligible terminology that does not recognize it as belonging to some organism. What sane person would talk of a sensation absolutely independent of an organism? ”

“ All along the line, educators, publicists, clergymen, politicians, journalists and, surprisingly, scientific men themselves, appear to take it for granted that the office of science is primarily to minister to man's bodily needs, and secondarily to sharpen his wits. ”

“ The conception of "the reign of law" in the organic world ought to be much more widely and concretely established than it is in the public mind. Under stress of the necessity of dethroning notions of supernaturalism from living nature, biologists have up to now been so occupied with explaining phenomena in terms of natural causation that the orderliness of organic phenomena has had to take a back seat both in research and in speculation. ”

“ What we have to see is that all suck discussions are utterly futile for science; indeed, that they have no legitimate place in inductive science.
Has anybody ever seen an egg that was not produced by some organism; some function without structure, or vice versa; some life without organization, or organization independent of life? ”

“ THE data of biology are living plants and animals. These are what nature presents. To these we must always go in order to make a beginning at any investigation. Is one interested in ganglionic cells, or germ cells, or liver secretions, or degenerate organs? He must find some kind of animal that has, or produces, or can yield such things. In making a successful quest for "material," it always turns out that a particular individual plant or animal, one or more, furnishes it. ”

“ The chemical materialist conceives certain compounds, never well-known ones mark you, enzymes for example, to be thus supremely endowed. The biological materialist on the other hand, ascribes this exalted role to imaginary, invisible living bodies hidden deep within the germ and other cells. Biology of the last three decades has bestowed mighty powers upon such bodies under the designation "determinants." Only those familiar with the technical literature of the science during this time can have any notion of the influence these bodies have had. ”