Hans Driesch

“ Biology, I hear some one say, is simply and solely an empirical science; in some sense it is nothing but applied physics and chemistry, perhaps applied mechanics. There are no fundamental principles in biology which could bring it in any close contact with philosophy. Even the one and only principle which might seem to be an innate principle of our experience about life, the principle of evolution, is only a combination of more simple factors of the physical and chemical type. ”

“ It will be my essential endeavour to convince you, in the course of these lectures, that such an aspect of the science of biology is wrong; that biology is an elemental natural science in the true sense of the word.
But if biology is an elemental science, then, and only then, it stands in close relations to epistemology and ontology—in the same relations to them, indeed, as every natural science does which deals with true elements of nature, and which is willing to abandon naïve realism and contribute its share to the whole of human knowledge. ”

“ In fact, we are well entitled to say that we have reached here the very heart of life and of biology. If nevertheless we do not call the sum of our facts a real proof of vitalism, it is only because we feel unable to formulate the analysis of what happens in such a manner as to make a machine as the basis of all reactions absolutely unimaginable and unthinkable. There might be a true machine in the organism producing immunity with all its adaptations. We cannot disprove such a doctrine by demonstrating that it would lead to a real absurdity, as we did in our analysis of differentiation of form ”

“ All our biology will be not for its own sake, but for the sake of philosophy.
Whilst regarding the whole of the biological material with such aims, it seems to me best to arrange the properly scientific material which is to be the basis of my discussions, not along the lines which biology as an independent science would select,2 but to start from the three different kinds of fundamental phenomena which living bodies offer to investigation, and to attach all systematics exclusively to one of them. For there will not be very much for philosophy to learn from biological systematics at present. ”

“ Natural sciences cannot originate before the given phenomena of nature have been investigated in at least a superficial and provisional manner, by and for the practical needs of man. But as soon as true science begins in any limited field, dealing, let us say, with animals or with minerals, or with the properties of bodies, it at once finds itself confronted by two very different kinds of problems, both of them—like all “problems”—created in the last resort by the logical organisation of the human mind, or, to speak still more correctly, of the Ego. ”

“ Strange to say, Darwinism, and the opinion of Charles Darwin about the descent of organisms, are two different things. Darwin, the very type of a man devoted to science alone and not to personal interests,—Darwin was anything but dogmatic, and yet Darwinism is dogmatism in one of its purest forms. Darwin, for instance, gave the greatest latitude to the nature of the variations which form the battleground of the struggle for existence and natural selection; and he made great allowances for other causal combinations also, which may come into account besides the indirect factors of transformism. ”

“ So in chemistry there has been found a systematic order in the long series of the compounds and of the elements; crystallography also has its different systems of crystals, and so on.
We have already employed the word by which we shall designate this second half of every natural science: it is the “systematic” side of science.
Nomothetic work on the one side and systematics on the other do, in fact, appear in every natural science, and besides them there are no other main parts. But “science” as a whole stands apart from another aspect of reality which is called “history.” ”

“ Taken as a simple enumeration or registration, history, of course, cannot claim to be a “science” unless we are prepared to denude that word of all specific meaning. But that would hardly be useful. As a matter of fact, what has actually claimed to be history, has always been more than a mere enumeration, even in biology proper. So-called phylogeny implies, as we have shown, that every one of its actual forms contains some rational elements. ”

“ But any transformistic theory, which locates the very principle of phylogeny in the organism itself, and to which therefore even organic forms would be not accidental but essential, might be forced to regard the descent of organisms as a true evolution. The singularities in phylogenetic history would thus become links in one whole: history proper would become more than history. But I only say that phylogeny might be evolution, and in fact I cannot admit more than this a priori, even on the basis of an internal transformistic principle, as has been assumed. ”

“ There are two kinds of outside factors of fundamental importance for all metabolic processes: food is one, and oxygen is the other. And metabolism as a whole is of two different aspects also: it both serves for assimilation proper—that is, building up—and it supplies the energy for driving the functional machine. It is clear that food alone—together of course with the assimilating means of the organism, can account for the first type of metabolism, while both food and oxygen, or some sort of substitute for the latter, as in certain bacteria, supply functional energy. ”

“ These highest questions themselves are the outcome of the combination of the highest results of all branches of philosophy, just as our philosophy of nature originated in the discussion of the results of all the separate natural sciences. Are those highest questions not only to be asked, are they to be also solved? To be solved in a way which does not exceed the limits of philosophy as the domain of actual understanding? ”

“ We shall not hesitate to call by its proper name what we believe we have proved about morphogenetic phenomena. What we have proved to be true has always been called vitalism, and so it may be called in our days again. But if you think a new and less ambitious term to be better for it, let us style it the doctrine of the autonomy of life, as proved at least in the field of morphogenesis. ”

“ If we took a narrower point of view, and if we only considered regeneration proper from the wound itself, we might probably at first be inclined to advocate the doctrine that the removing of some obstacles might in fact be the stimulus to the process of restoration; but, even then, why is it that just what is wanted grows out? Why is there not only growth, but specific growth, growth followed by specification? ”

“ Personally, I must confess that even its emotional and practical importance seems to me to be at least diminished by the retarding effects which all sorts of “historical” considerations—in science as well as in arts and in public life—carry with them. All real progress is non-historical—and its champions almost always have become martyrs: this fact seems not to recommend history as a means of education, except for persons of a very strong character. ”

“ And now we turn to the last possibility which is left to us in our endeavour to “understand” the localisation of the differentiation in our harmonious-equipotential systems by the means of physics and chemistry. Outside causes have failed to account for it, chemical disintegration of a compound has failed too. But could there not exist some sort of complicated interactions amongst the parts of the harmonious system themselves? Could there not exist some kind of a real machine in the system, which, if once set going, would result in the differentiations that are to take place? ”

“ It seems to me important to press this point very emphatically, since we often hear that physiology is from the very beginning a much higher sort of knowledge than morphology, inasmuch as it is rational. That is not at all true of the beginning of physiology: what the functions of the liver or of the root are has simply to be described just as the organisation of the brain or of the leaf, and it makes no difference logically that one species of description has to use the experimental method, while the other has not. ”

“ But even if it is granted that, in the presence of such phenomena of life, our endeavour seems to be like a child’s play on the shores of the ocean, I do not see any other way for us to go, so long, at least, as our goal is human science—that is, a study of facts as demanded by our mental organisation. ”

“ Now there are different branches of the physiology of morphogenesis or physiology of form. We may study, and indeed we at first shall study, what are the laws of the morphogenetic processes leading from the egg to the adult: that may be properly called physiology of development. But living forms are not only able to originate in one unchangeable way: they may restore themselves, if disturbed, and thus we get the physiology of restoration or restitution as a second branch of the science of morphogenesis. ”

“ Our science is the highest of all natural sciences, for it embraces as its final object the actions of man, at least in so far as actions also are phenomena observable on living bodies.
But biology is also the most difficult of all natural sciences, not only from the complexity of the phenomena, which it studies, but in particular for another reason which is seldom properly emphasised, and therefore will well repay us for a few words devoted to it. ”

“ Turning now to a sort of short outline of what is to be discussed in the whole of our future lectures, this summer and next, it seems clear, without further analysis, that biology as a science has its nomothetic and its systematic part also; respiration and assimilation, for instance, have proved to be types of natural laws among living phenomena, and that there is a “system” of animals and plants is too commonly known to require further explanation here. Therefore we might study first biological laws, and after that biological systematics, and in the third place perhaps biological history. ”

“ The biologist is not able to “make” life, as the physicist has made red rays or electromagnetism, or as the chemist has made a certain compound of carbon. The biologist is almost always in that strange plight in which the physicist would be if he always had to go to volcanoes in order to study the conductivity of heat, or if he had to wait for thunderstorms in order to study electricity. The biologist is dependent on the specificity of living objects as they occur in nature. ”

“ Systematics, under such a view, must lose, of course, any really fundamental importance. “There is no rational system about organisms”: that is the ultimate statement of Darwinism and of Lamarckism on this doubtful question. Systematics is a mere catalogue, not at present only, but for ever, by the very nature of the organisms. ”

“ But now let us study in a more systematic manner the possible relations of the natural sciences to natural theology as a science.
How is it possible for a natural scientist to contribute to the science of the highest and ultimate subject of human knowledge?
Almost all natural sciences have a sort of naïveté in their own spheres; they all stand on the ground of what has been called a naïve realism, as long as they are, so to say, at home. ”

“ Thus the problem of systematics remains, no matter whether the theory of descent be right or wrong. There always remains the question about the totality of diversities in life: whether it may be understood by a general principle, and of what kind that principle would be. As, in fact, it is most probably by history, by descent, that organic systematics is brought about, it of course most probably will happen some day that the analysis of the causal factors concerned in the history will serve to discover the principle of systematics also. ”

“ Would it be possible to connect our new concept of an adaptation with our well-established concept of a means of morphogenesis in such a way that we might speak of a morphological “adaptation” whenever any specific feature about morphogenesis proves to be immediately dependent for its success on some specific means, though it does not owe its localisation to that means as its “cause”? It seems to me that such a view would also fall wide of the mark. It is well known, for instance, that the flowers of many plants never fully develop in the dark; light is necessary for their morphogenesis. ”

“ Now, as the consecutive phases of history have been shown to be true cumulations, it follows that the rules which are revealed by our analysis, are rules relating to the very origin of cumulations also. The real element upon which the cumulation-phases, and the cumulation-rules together rest, is the human individual as the bearer of its psychology. Nobody, it seems to me, has shown more clearly than Simmel that it is the human individual, qua individual, which is concerned in every kind of history. ”

“ Now, there can be no doubt that a priori it would seem to be very useful for the organism, if it never would let enter into its blood, lymph, etc., be it through the skin or through the intestine, any chemical compound that would prove to be a poison afterwards. In fact, a man, judging on the principle of the general usefulness of all the phenomena of the living, might suppose that there would exist a sort of adaptation against all poisons to the extent that they would never be allowed to enter the real interior of the body. ”

“ We have analysed morphogenesis into elementary processes, means, potency, formative stimulus, just as the physicist analyses mechanics into time, velocity, mass, and force; we have then rearranged our elements into “systems”—the equipotential systems, the harmonious-equipotential system in particular, just as the physicist composes his elements into the concepts of momentum or of kinetic energy or of work. And finally, we have discussed our compositions and have obtained our result, just as the physicist gets his ultimate results by discussing work and kinetic energy and momentum. ”