Natural process

“ In the process of generation, the natural product appears as species, in growth it appears as individual, and in the process of complete formation, every part of the individual shows itself. This natural organism cannot be explained from mechanical causes, but only through final causes, or teleologically. ”

“ We know that the unity which the evolutionary processes indicate is one that no simple scheme of the formal classification of natural processes into mechanical, chemical, and organic, or even into those of living and non-living nature, can any longer attempt at all exhaustively to characterize. ”

“ On the one side there is the conviction that the processes of life may be interpreted in terms of natural processes of a simple and obvious kind, indeed directly in terms of those which are most general and most intelligible—namely, the simplest movements of the smallest particles of matter, which are governed by the same laws as movement in general. ”

“ As soon, however, as we come to regard Nature from the standpoint of those sciences which explicitly recognise differences of quality, as well as differences in position and quantity, among the objects with which they deal, this narrowly mechanistic conception of natural processes becomes inadequate. ”

“ It is what one may speak of as the Biological Course. Just as the conception of Energy will be the central idea of the Natural Philosophy course, so the conception of Organic Evolution will be the central idea of the Biological Course. ”

“ He wished to be shown that changes in form caused evolution in force; that chemical or mechanical energy had, by natural selection and minute changes, under uniform conditions, converted itself into thought. ”

“ Organic or vegetative life consists essentially in chemical transformations and molecular motions, occurring under certain conditions and in a certain order. The matter, and the forces which act upon it, are for the most part known ”

“ According to this view, it is the object of natural research to show how the living originated by mechanical processes out of the inorganic, and how, out of this doubtless most simple life, the present organic nature has been mechanically developed. ”

“ Whenever we investigate any subject relative to Natural Science, we find the greatest regularity and order pervading every class of bodies, whether organized or unorganized, By the former we mean such as have the actions dependent on vitality, such as circulation, respiration, and transpiration, and the power of re-production ”

“ Here we have the indications of causes for a progress in the purification of the atmosphere and in the diffusion of light during the earlier ages of the earth’s history, with which the progress of organic life may have been conformable. ”

“ The old problem of Nature versus nurture that meets us in studying the life history of any organism becomes especially interesting in dealing with the biography of men of eminence. Are their achievements the inevitable expression of the natural forces innate in them at birth, or the product of environmental influences, or some resultant of these two factors? And how much may we in each case assign to one factor or to the other? ”

“ Darwin’s views aside, the whole analogy of natural operations furnishes so complete and crushing an argument against the intervention of any but what are termed secondary causes, in the production of all the phenomena of the universe; that, in view of the intimate relations between Man and the rest of the living world; and between the forces exerted by the latter and all other forces, I can see no excuse for doubting that all are co-ordinated terms of Nature’s great progression, from the formless to the formed—from the inorganic to the organic—from blind force to conscious intellect and will. ”

“ Thus the process is supposed to go on throughout all the countless forms of life continuously and simultaneously—the world of organic types being thus regarded as in a state of perpetual, though gradual, flux. ”

“ The production of all organic forms by the accumulation of modifications and of divergences by the continual addition of differences to differences, is mentally representable in outline, if not in detail. Various orders of our experiences enable us to conceive the process. ”

“ The various grades of life on our planet are the natural consequences of certain physical processes involved in the gradual transformations of the earth. Conscious life is viewed as conditioned by physical (organic and more especially nervous) processes, and as evolving itself in close correlation with organic evolution. ”

“ The theory divides itself into two parts—the production of organic life from the inorganic world; and the progressive development of the several species from the first simple elementary forms of life. ”

“ No doubt, it may be properly urged that the operation of human energy and intelligence, which has brought into existence and maintains the garden, by what I have called "the horticultural process," is, strictly speaking, part and parcel of the cosmic process. ”

“ L’établissement et le progrès des sociétés humaines, l’action des forces naturelles, peuvent changer notablement, et dans de vastes contrées, l’état de la surface du sol, la distribution des eaux, et les grands mouvemens de l’air. ”

“ THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION
The field of natural phenomena into which I would introduce my readers in the following chapters has a quite peculiar place in the broad realm of scientific inquiry. There is no object of investigation that touches man more closely, and the knowledge of which should be more acceptable to him, than his own frame. But among all the various branches of the natural history of mankind, or anthropology, the story of his development by natural means must excite the most lively interest. ”

“ In order to obtain a Science of Biology, we must analyse the Idea of Life. It has been proved by the biological speculations of past time, that Organic Life cannot rightly be solved into Mechanical or Chemical Forces, or the operation of a Vital Fluid, or of a Soul. ”

“ Now, if we examine the real nature of those two important properties of life, we find that we can trace them, like all physiological functions, to physical and chemical causes, to the properties and the phenomena of motion of those substances of which the bodies of animals and plants consist. ”

“ Such problems appear as soon as we pass from the facts of the case to their explanation; as soon as we pass from the statement, The organic world has arisen by development, to the question, But how has this been effected, by the action of what forces, by what means, and under what circumstances? ”

“ His wild notions about the way in which natural causes acted in the production of plants and animals, must not make us forget the merit of his intuition that animals and plants were produced by natural causes. ”

“ Nature’s Mode of Producing Organic Forms.
The general process by which the higher and more elaborate forms of life, and eventually man himself, have been produced has been shown by Darwin to depend upon two important properties of living matter manifested in connexion with the multiplication of individuals. ”

“ It is the interaction and resultant of all the forces of Nature, both favourable and unfavourable to life, that determine the development and growth of every individual organism. And so the form and characteristics of every living being depend on the nature and strength of these contending forces. ”

“ This is the first great attempt to construct a scientific, physiological theory of the development of organic life and to prove that the physiological laws and the chemical and physical forces that rule in nature to-day must also have been at work in the world of yesterday. ”

“ We clearly conceive the manner how, and the conditions by which, motility, this most prominent vital manifestation, constitutes an inherent property of the living substance. Do we as yet comprehend in the same way the intimate modes of activity which constitute the properties appertaining to inorganic substances? Is any kind of those peculiar motions which form the scientific essence of the various forces of inorganic Nature so strictly and deeply intelligible as has now become that specific motion which forms the scientific essence of the force of life? ”

“ To the observer, organic activity is but the product of combined inorganic forces. The same processes are at work, and in the same manner, in living and in so-called dead matter. Life, to all appearance, is but the 12 result of combined chemical and mechanical processes. ”

“ The first sketches of an animal or a vegetable growth being begun under favourable conditions, the faculties of commencing life and of organic movement thus established have gradually developed little by little the various parts and organs, which in process of time have become diversified. ”

“ That it is therefore the same nature, which, by the same forces, produces organic phenomena, and the universal phenomena of Nature, and that these forces are in a heightened conditioned in organic nature. ”

“ But it is within the realm of what we call Nature, — namely, within the realm of finite experience, with its various phenomenal distinctions of organic and inorganic, of apparently living and apparently lifeless beings, — it is, I say, in case of Nature, that the diversified processes, present to our ordinary experience, arouse questions as to the special kinds of causal linkage that, in any particular case, bind one fact to another. ”

“ The theory applied to organic being is substantially this: there is, potentially, in every organism a higher manifestation. Its evolution is secured by the relation of its organic tendency to its environment. ”

“ This, for our present purposes, is the best view of the present condition of organic nature which I can lay before you: it gives you the great outlines of a vast picture, which you must fill up by your own study. ”

“ THE development of all living organisms is effected through certain energies and substances that are conducive to the growth and manifestation of life. It is the environment and physical surroundings that supply these life-sustaining factors to the organisms. And this physical universe is not only the feeder and sustainer of living beings, it is also the field of their activity as well as the abode in which they grow and reproduce themselves. Hence the action and reaction between the living organism and the environment regulate all the conditions of its life-history. ”

“ Nature, to the modern eye, stands broken in two. The physical laws may explain the inorganic world; the biological laws may account for inorganic. But of the point where they meet, of that living borderland between the dead and the living, Science is silent. ”

“ Rather, it is the continual revelation of these new qualities which constitutes evolution, chemical affinity and all its consequences in chemistry, spontaneous variation and all its consequences in the evolution of organic life. ”

“ The organic combinations, and the physical powers by which these unions of matter are effected and retained, have a direct action over that ethereality which is life, and the powers of life again control these more material forces. ”

“ The science of life has been, and is still, exhibiting a like series of steps; the evolution of organic forms at large is being affiliated on physical actions in operation from the beginning; and the vital phenomena each organism presents, are coming to be understood as connected sets of changes, in parts formed of matters that are affected by certain forces, and disengage other forces. ”

“ The laws of nature comprise nurture, growth, and propagation, with their powers and all conditions attached thereto. This is particularly the case with plants and animals, to the exclusion of earth, stones, metals, and elements. ”

“ But of the particular molecular changes or other processes which accompany the evolution of ideas in the mind, we know no more than we do of the particular molecular changes and other processes which accompany the evolution of life in nature, or the changes in chemistry. ”

“ To regard all things and principles of things as inconstant modes or fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought. Let us begin with that which is without—our physical life. Fix upon it in one of its more exquisite intervals, the moment, for instance, of delicious recoil from the flood of water in summer heat. What is the whole physical life in that moment but a combination of natural elements to which science gives their names? But these elements, phosphorus and lime and delicate fibres, are present not in the human body alone: ”

“ In the lecture which I delivered last Monday evening, I endeavoured to sketch in a very brief manner, but as well as the time at my disposal would permit, the present condition of organic nature, meaning by that large title simply an indication of the great, broad, and general principles which are to be discovered by those who look attentively at the phenomena of organic nature as at present displayed. ”

“ Every department and sub-department of Nature, whether it be the solar system or the earth, or the organic kingdom, or human society, or the human body, is such a system of correlated parts, and is therefore subject to evolution. We can best make this thought clear by examples:
1. Take, then, the human body. This complex and beautiful system of correlated and nicely-adjusted parts may be studied in a state of maturity and equilibrium, in which all the organs and functions by action and reaction co-operate to produce perfect stability, health, and physical happiness. ”

“ The Dynamic and Process Relations of the Environment
“Of all the truths relating to phenomena, the most valuable to us are those which relate to the order of succession. On a knowledge of these is founded every reasonable anticipation of future facts, and whatever power we possess of influencing those facts to our advantage.”—John Stuart Mill.
“To study life we must consider three things: first, the orderly sequence of external nature; second, the living organism and the changes which take place in it ”