The philosophy of biology

by James Johnstone

In the case of the synthesis of water we have an example of an exothermic chemical reaction. We are to think of the mixture of oxygen and hydrogen as existing in a condition of “false equilibrium.” It may be compared with a weight resting on an inclined plane.

Fig. 8.

Suppose that the plane is a sheet of smoothly polished glass, and that the weight is a smooth block of glass. By canting the plane more and more an angle will be found at which the slightest push starts the weight sliding down. Now in the case of the explosive mixture of oxygen and hydrogen we have a chemical analogue. Either the gases do not combine at all at the ordinary temperature or they combine “infinitely slowly.” But the slightest impulse, an electric spark requiring an almost infinitesimally small quantity of energy, starts the combination of the gases, and this continues until all is changed into water vapour. In this reaction a large quantity of energy is liberated in the form of heat. This heat becomes transformed into the kinetic energy of the water particles which condense from the steam formed in the explosion, and these particles assume the temperature of their surroundings. The energy which was potential in the explosive mixture, and which was capable of doing work, still exists as the kinetic energy of the water formed, but it has become unavailable for any natural process of work.

We have seen what is the general character of the reaction series in the course of which carbon dioxide and water become starch; and then this, becoming first soluble, and becoming associated with the ammonia or nitrate taken into the plant, becomes protoplasm. It is a reaction which differs from that just described, in that available energy becomes absorbed and accumulated, and retains the power of doing work. It is not a reaction which can be initiated by an infinitesimal stimulus, but one in which just as much energy is required in order that it may happen as is represented in the energy which becomes potential in the living substance generated. The first reaction is one which may take place by itself;[17] the other is one which requires a compensatory energy-transformation in order that it may happen. In the first reaction energy is dissipated; in the second one it is accumulated.

We are thus led to the consideration of the second principle of energetics and its limitations, but before entering upon this discussion we must consider the nature of the activities of the organism.

By the term “metabolism” we understand the totality of the physico-chemical changes which occur in the living substance of the organism. In physiological writings we usually find that two categories of metabolic changes are described: (1) anabolic processes, in the course of which simple chemical compounds possessing relatively little energy are built up into much more complex substances, containing a relatively large quantity of available energy, and therefore capable of doing work. The transformations constituting an anabolic change must be accompanied by corresponding compensatory energy-transformations, to account for the energy which becomes potential in the substances formed. The formation of starch from carbon dioxide and water, by the green plant, is such an anabolic change, and the compensatory energy-transformation is the absorption of radiation from the ether by the cells of the plant. A further anabolic change in the plant organism is the formation of amido-substances from the ammonia or nitrate absorbed from the soil, and from the soluble carbohydrates formed from the starch manufactured in the green cells.

The typical activities of the chlorophyll-containing organism are of this nature; they are anabolic. The organism may be a green land-plant; a marine green, red, or brown alga; a yellow-green diatom, a yellow, green, red, or brown peridinian or other holophytic protozoan; an ascidian, mollusc, echinoderm, polyzoan, worm, or coral containing “symbiotic algæ” (that is the chlorophyll-containing cells of some plant organism which have become associated with the animal and incorporated in its tissues). In all these cases the presence of this chlorophyllian substance confers on the organism the power of effecting the compensatory energy-transformation, by the aid of which carbon dioxide and water are built up into starch. What this transformation is, and what are the steps by which the carbon dioxide and water become carbohydrate we do not exactly know. Solar radiation impinging upon an inorganic substance is partly reflected and partly absorbed. The absorbed fraction may become transformed in such a way as to render the substance phosphorescent, or it may transform into chemical energy, as when light impinges on a photographic plate, but as a general rule it is transformed into heat. In the green plant, however, the transformation of radiation into heat does not occur—at least the heating is very small—and it passes directly or indirectly into the potential chemical energy of the starch which is synthesised. We must regard this power of absorbing radiation and utilising it in compensatory transformations as a general character of protoplasm. It is true that it is now specialised in the cells containing the chlorophyll bodies, but there are indications that it may be present in the tissues of the animal devoid of chlorophyll.

Other anabolic transformations occur in the animal. The food-stuffs which are absorbed from the intestine are substances which have undergone dissociations, the nature of which is such as to render them capable of absorption and of reconstruction. These anabolic changes in the higher animal are exceptional, and their usefulness lies in the fact that by their means substances become capable of being transported by the tissue fluids of the body.