Organism

“ Under certain conditions, however, those of forming part of a so-called living organism, they present phenomena of mechanical movement and molecular change, and of transformation or transmission of force, which enable them to transform themselves into various kinds of tissues, to nourish these when formed, and to establish a consensus of action between different parts of the organism; and these properties are vastly varied in detail according to the kind of organism in which they take place, and the conditions under which the organism exists. ”

“ ESSENTIAL NATURE OF THE ORGANISM.
The essential nature of a thing is the sum total of its causes and effects. Organisms arise from a germ cell which consists of idioplasm and in turn they produce like germ cells. Their nature depends also on their idioplasm, i.e., on the sum total of their idioplasmic determinants. Observation of organisms, even in their fullest life history, gives us an imperfect and even false conception of their true nature. ”

“ There is an ensemble of vital phenomena presented by each organism in the course of its growth, development, and decay; and there is an ensemble of vital phenomena presented by the organic world as a whole. Neither of these can be properly dealt with apart from the other. But the last of them may be separately treated more conveniently than the first. What interpretation we put on the facts of structure and function in each living body, depends entirely on our conception of the mode in which living bodies in general have originated. ”

“ The proposed definition of organic life supplies an answer. If organic life be the co-ordination of actions, then an organism may be primarily divided into parts whose actions are co-ordinated, and parts which co-ordinate them—organs which are made to work in concert, and the apparatus which makes them so work—or, in other words, the assimilative, vascular, excretory, and muscular systems on the one hand, and the nervous system on the other. ”

“ Just in the same way that the growth of an entire organism is carried on by abstracting from the environment substances like those composing the organism; so the production of each organ within the organism is carried on by abstracting from the substances contained in the organism, those required by this particular organ. ”

“ Now, as in an animal a piece of bone, muscle, or skin, and in a plant a fragment of the wood, leaf, or fruit, may be considered as organic, but cannot be called an organism, all substances, except plants and animals, observable in and upon the body of the earth, so far indeed as they are parts of the terrestrial organism, are to be regarded as organic and as parts of a living thing, but not as organisms possessing an independent life. ”

“ If the law of the animal cell, and of the animal organism, which is built up of such cells, is like that of the vegetable, we might expect that we should treat all morbid conditions of any of the vital unities belonging to an animal in the same way, by increasing, diminishing, or changing its natural food or stimuli. ”

“ It will be needful to fix with precision the terms, Organism, Life, Property, and Function.
An organism, although usually signifying a more or less complex unity of organs, because the structures which first attracted scientific attention were all thus markedly distinguished from inorganic bodies, has by the gradual extensions of research been necessarily generalized, till it now stands for any organized substance capable of independent vitality: in other words, any substance having the specific combination of elements which manifests the serial phenomena of growth, development, and decay. ”

“ Now the first thing that strikes us in beginning to think about the activities of an organism is that they are naturally distinguishable into two kinds, according as we consider the action of the whole organism in its relation to the external world or to other organisms, or the action of the parts or organs in their relation to each other. ”

“ We turn thus from the RESULTS of the selection of favorable variations to the biological PROCESSES by which organisms become accommodated to their conditions of life.
At once the old questions arise. Are these processes fundamentally peculiar to the life of organisms? Does the capacity of the organism thus to adjust itself to its environment involve factors not found in the operations of inorganic nature? Our answers will be determined essentially by the nature of our interest in the organism—whether we regard its existence as the END or merely an incidental EFFECT of its activities. ”

“ An organ (Εργον, meaning work) is any part that does a special work, as the leaves, the stem of a plant, and the eye, the ear of animals. An organism is a living being made up of such organs. The inorganic world contains the mineral kingdom; the organic world includes the vegetable and animal kingdoms.
One's aim in these lessons should always be to tell the pupils as little as possible. Try to lead them to think out these things for themselves. ”

“ We may be sure that a search for the influences determining the maintenance and multiplication of living organisms, cannot be successfully carried out unless we understand what is the peculiar property of a living organism—what is the widest generalization of the phenomena that indicate life. ”

“ Grouping together the cases first named, in which a particular change in the circumstances of an organism is followed by a particular change in it, and the cases last named, in which the constant actions occurring within an organism imply some constant actions occurring without it; we see that in both, the changes or processes displayed by a living body are specially related to the changes or processes in its environment. And here we have the needful supplement to our conception of Life. ”

“ All variations and modifications in an organism are directly or indirectly due to its environments; that is to say, they are either produced by some direct influence acting upon the organism itself, or by some more subtle and mysterious action on its parents ”

“ At present, every individual animal or plant commences its existence as an organism of extremely simple anatomical structure; and it acquires all the complexity it ultimately possesses by gradual differentiation into parts of various structure and function. ”

“ So far as this theory is based upon the existence of a physical organism, whose functions liberate from the food supplied to it certain forces, which are distributed by the activities of the organism, we may accept it as a statement of what actually takes place in the form of physical phenomena. ”

“ And the presence, in all kinds of animals and plants, of functionally-useless parts corresponding to parts that are functionally-useful in allied animals and plants, while it is totally incongruous with the belief in a construction of each organism by miraculous interposition, is just what we are led to expect by the belief that organisms have arisen by progression. ”

“ But if this is the answer we have passed at once from the realm of observation to the realm of fancy—to a realm that is foreign to our experience; for such a view assumes that chemical and physical reactions are guided by the needs of the organism when the reactions take place inside living beings. ”

“ In the next place, however minute the supposed gradations which you trace backward from a recognizable organism to the primal protoplasmic substance, out of which you suppose it to have been gradually evolved, and through whatever extent of time you imagine these gradations to have been worked out by the operation of the forces of Nature, modifying successive beings, you must find an organism to which you can attribute life. ”

“ It is the second and perhaps greater task of the biologist to study the organism from the historical point of view, considering it as the product of a continuous process of evolution that has been in operation since life began. ”

“ The Medium in which the organism lives. Every individual object, organic or inorganic, is the product of two factors:—first, the relation of its constituent molecules to each other; secondly, the relation of its substance to all surrounding objects. Its properties, as an object or an organism, are the results of its constituent molecules, and of its relation to external conditions. Organisms are the results of a peculiar group of forces, exhibiting a peculiar group of46 phenomena. ”

“ All other things continuing the same, every additional faculty by which an organism is brought into relation with external objects, as well as every improvement in such faculty, becomes a means of subjecting the organism to a greater number and variety of external stimuli, and to new combinations of external stimuli. ”

“ This, of course, is purposely chosen as a very simple illustration; but it exemplifies the general fact that thepg. 23 guiding principle of scientific classification is the comparing of organism with organism, with the view of seeing which of the constituent organs are of the most invariable occurrence, and therefore of the most typical signification. ”

“ On the hypothesis of Evolution these specializations of tissues and accompanying concentrations of functions, must, like the specializations of shape in an organism and its component divisions, be due to the actions and reactions which its intercourse with the environment involves ”

“ Let us summarize our study of man's physical organism. We have learned that the human body is a confederation of various groups of living cells; that in the earliest stages of man's evolution, these cells were all of the same general type ”

“ But in every living organism, from the lowest and simplest to the highest and most complex, all bioplastic spinners of filamentous tissue, all plastide weavers of membranous or spun matter, all epithelial bobbin-runners, and other anatomical helpers and workers, perform their respective tasks under the special supervision we have named, that is, under the higher unit of life. ”

“ Both plants and animals have certain parts called organs which have each a definite work, or function; hence animals and plants are said to be organized. For example, men and most other animals have a certain organ (the mouth) for taking in nourishment; another (the food tube) , for its digestion.
Because of its organization, each animal or plant is said to be an organism. Living things constitute the organic kingdom. Things without life and not formed by life constitute the inorganic, or mineral, kingdom. ”

“ Life depending on, or consisting in, an incessant play of the most complex forces, it would appear that their action is in some way stimulated by slight changes in the circumstances to which each organism is exposed. ”

“ The accumulated interest gathered around the direct and collateral investigations bearing on the development of species, has naturally turned greatly increased attention on man's position in the universe. As has been shown by study of the nervous system belonging to animal life, all organism has been constructed on a uniform plan, advancing in complication as the organism becomes more intricate in structure, having separate parts assigned to distinct functions. ”

“ But although similar alterations in the medium notoriously influence the organism, yet, because a great many variations in external conditions are unaccompanied by appreciable changes in the organism, there are biologists who regard this as a proof of Life being independent of physical and chemical laws ”

“ The vital activities taking place in the bodies of higher animals are too complicated and too intricately mixed to admit of clear analysis, and, long ago, physiologists learned that the quest for explanations of living activities lay along the line of investigating them in their most rudimentary expression. The practical recognition of this is seen in our recent text-books upon human physiology, which commonly begin with discussions of the life of these simplest organisms. ”

“ Such is the ultimate structure, and such are the fundamental activities or functions of living organisms, as far as they can here be described, from the lowest animalcule and unicellular plant, up to the most complex organisms and the body of man himself. ”

“ If now we descend lower, and suppose an organism with no centres whatever, but which nevertheless displays evidence of Sensibility—feelings and combinations of movements—we must then conclude that the property specialized in a particular tissue of the224 highly differentiated organism is here diffused throughout. ”

“ I desire only to indicate in what way it affects the practical efforts of biologists to gain a better understanding of the living organism, whether regarded as a group of existing phenomena or as a product of the evolutionary process ”

“ Finally, that this highly-sensitive and active living organism absorbs, will not be doubted when it is proved to digest, that is, to dissolve otherwise insoluble animal matter by the aid of special secretions. ”

“ The Domain of Biology.—The history of the transformation of opinion in reference to living organisms is an interesting part of the story of intellectual development. The central subject that embraces it all is biology. This is one of the fundamental sciences, since it embraces all questions relating to life in its different phases and manifestations. Everything pertaining to the structure, the development, and the evolution of living organisms, as well as to their physiology, belongs to biology. ”

“ The determination of the nature, whether animal or vegetable, of organisms, either as a whole or in respect to their anatomical parts, assimilative or reproductive, is a problem which has been capable of solution for a quarter of a century. ”

“ The factors of the second class which we have to keep in view throughout our interpretations, are the formative tendencies of organisms themselves—the proclivities inherited by them from antecedent organisms, and which past processes of evolution have bequeathed. We have seen it to be inferable from various orders of facts (§§ 65, 84, 97–97g) , that organisms are built up of certain highly-complex molecules, which we distinguished as physiological units [or constitutional units as they might otherwise be called] —each kind of organism being built up of units peculiar to itself. ”