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.” History deals with particulars, with particular events at such and such a place, whilst science always abstracts from the particular, even in its systematic half.[1]
General Plan of these Lectures
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. But that would hardly correspond to the philosophical aims of our lectures: our chief object is not biology as a regular science, as treated in text-books and in ordinary university lectures; our chief object is the Philosophy of the Organism, as aided and supported by scientific biology. Therefore a general acquaintance with biology must be assumed in these lectures, and the biological materials must be arranged according to their bearing on further, that is on philosophical, analysis.
That will be done, not, of course, to the extent of my regarding every one of my audience as a competent biologist; on the contrary, I shall explain most fully all points of biology proper, and even of the most simple and descriptive kind of biology, which serve as bases for philosophical analysis. But I shall do so only if they indeed do serve as such bases. 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.
Life is unknown to us except in association with bodies: we only know living bodies and call them organisms. It is the final object of all biology to tell us what it ultimately means to say that a body is “living,” and in what sorts of relation body and life stand one to the other.
But at present it is enough to understand the terms “body” and “living” in the ordinary and popular sense.
Regarding living bodies in this unpretentious manner, and recollecting what the principal characters are of all bodies we know as living ones, we easily find that there are three features which are never wanting wherever life in bodies occurs. All living bodies are specific as to form—they “have” a specific form, as we are accustomed to say. All living bodies also exhibit metabolism; that is to say, they stand in a relation of interchange of materials with the surrounding medium, they take in and give out materials, but their form can remain unchanged during these processes. And, in the last place, we can say that all living bodies move; though this faculty is more commonly known among animals only, even elementary science teaches the student that it also belongs to plants.
Therefore we may ask for “laws of nature” in biology about form, about metabolism, and about movements. In fact, it is according to this scheme that we shall arrange the materials of the biological part of our lectures, though, as we cannot regard the three divisions as equally important in their bearing on our ultimate purposes, we shall not treat them quite on equal terms. It will appear that, at least in the present state of science, the problems of organic form and of organic movement have come into much closer relation to philosophical analysis than have most of the empirical data on metabolism.