The Science and Philosophy of the Organism

by Hans Driesch

After we had established the concept of the harmonious-equipotential system in a former chapter, we went on to study the phenomena of the differentiation of it, and in particular the problem of the localisation of all differentiations. Our new concept of the complex-equipotential system is to lead us to an analysis of a different kind: we shall pay special attention to the origin, to the genesis of our complex systems that show equipotentiality.

If we review the process of ontogenesis, we are able to trace back every complex system to a very small group of cells, and this small group of cells again to one single cell. So in plants the cambium may be shown to have originated in a sort of tissue-rudiment, established at a very early period, and the ovary may be demonstrated to be the outcome of a group of but a few cells, constituting the first visible “Anlage” of the reproductive organs. At the end then, or from another point of view at the beginning, a single cellular element represents the very primordial egg-cell.

The whole cambium, there can be no doubt, must be regarded as the result of a consecutive number of cell-divisions of the one cell from which it originates. So must it be with the ovary. The primordial egg-cell has undergone a long line of consecutive divisions; the single eggs are the last result of them.

We now proceed to some considerations which have a certain logical similarity to those which inaugurated our analysis of the differentiation of the harmonious-equipotential systems, though the facts in question are very different.

Viewed by itself without any kind of prepossessions, as it might be by any one who faces a new problem with the single postulate of introducing new natural entities—to use the scholastic phrase—as little as possible, the development of the single egg might be regarded as proceeding on the foundation of a very complicated sort of machine, exhibiting a different kind of construction in the three chief dimensions of space, as does also the organism which is to be its result.

But could such a theory—irrespective of all the experimental facts which contradict it—could such a theory stand before the one fact, that there occurs a genesis of that complex-equipotential system, of which our one single egg forms a part? Can you imagine a very complicated machine, differing in the three dimensions of space, to be divided hundreds and hundreds of times and in spite of that to remain always the same whole? You may reply that during the period of cell-divisions there is still no machine, that the machine is established only after all the divisions are complete. Good; but what then constructs this machine in the definitive cells of our systems, say in the eggs? Another sort of machine perhaps? That could hardly be said to be of much use. Or that entelechy of which we have spoken? Then you would recur to our first proof of vitalism and would burden entelechy with a specific performance, that is with the construction of the hypothetic machine which you are postulating in every single egg. But of course you would break the bounds of physics and chemistry even then.

It seems to me that it is more simple, and so to say more natural, not to recur to our first proof of life-autonomy in order to keep to the “machine theory” in this new branch of inquiry, but to consider facts as they offer themselves to analysis.

But then indeed we are entitled to draw an independent second proof of the autonomy of life from our analysis of the genesis of systems of the complex-equipotential type. We say it is a mere absurdity to assume that a complicated machine, typically different in the three dimensions of space, could be divided many many times, and in spite of that always be the whole: therefore there cannot exist any sort of machine as the starting-point and basis of development.

Let us again apply the name entelechy to that which lies at the very beginning of all individual morphogenesis.

Entelechy thus proves to be also that which may be said to lie at the very root of inheritance,[128] or at least of the outcome of inheritance; the individual formation of the next generation is shown not to be performed by a machine but by a natural agent per se.