Naturalism and Religion

by Rudolf Otto

In the “Analytische Theorie der organischen Entwicklung” (1894) Driesch picks up the thread where he dropped it in the book before, and spins it farther, “traversing” his previous theoretical and experimental results. In this work the author still strives to remain within the frame of the tectonic and machine-theory, but the edges are already showing signs of giving way. Life, he says, is a mechanism based upon a given structure (it is however a machine which is constantly modifying and developing itself). Ontogenesis[98] is a strictly causal nexus, but following “a natural law the workings of which are entirely enigmatical” (with Wigand). Causality fulfils itself through “liberations,” that is to say, cause and effect are not quantitatively equivalent; and all effect is, notwithstanding its causal conditioning, something absolutely new and not to be calculated from the cause, so that there can be no question [pg 264] of mechanism in the strict sense. And the whole is directed by purpose.[99] The vital processes compel us to admit that it seems “as if intelligence determined quality and order.” Driesch still tries to reconcile causes and purposes as different “modes of regarding things,” but this device he afterwards abandons. We cannot penetrate to the nature of things either by the causal or by the teleological method. But they are—as Kant maintained—two modes of looking at things, both of which are postulates of our capacity for knowing. Each must stand by itself, and neither can have its sequence disturbed by the interpolation of pieces from the other. In the domain of the causal there can be no teleological explanation, and conversely; one might as well seek for an optical explanation of the synthesis of water; but both are true in their own place. The Madonna della Sedia, looked at microscopically, is a mass of blots, looked at macroscopically it is a picture. And it “is” both of these.

Driesch's conclusions continue to advance, led steadily onwards by his experimental studies. In the “Maschinentheorie des Lebens,”[100] he attacks his own earlier theories with praiseworthy determination, and remorselessly pursues them to the monstrous conclusions to which they lead, and shows that they necessarily perish [pg 265] because of these. He had previously declared, at first emphatically, later with hesitation (we have already seen why), that every single vital process is of a physico-chemical kind, on the basis of a given “structure” of living beings. But now he considers the living organism as itself a result of vital processes—that is, of development. If this also is to be explained mechanically (as physico-chemical processes based on material structure), then the ovum must possess in parvo this infinitely fine structure, by virtue of which it fulfils its own physiological processes of maintenance, and also becomes the efficient cause of the subsequent development. It must bear the type of the individual and of the species, as a rudiment (or primordium) within its own structure. Every specific type must, however, according to the theory of descent, be derived through an endless process of evolution, by gradual stages, from some primitive organism. Just as in the mechanical becoming of the individual organism, so the primitive protovum must also be extraordinarily intricate and complex in its organisation if it is to give rise to all the processes of evolution and development involved in the succeeding ontogenies, phylogenies, regenerations, and so forth. This is a necessary conclusion if the machine-theory be correct, and if we refuse to admit that vital phenomena are governed by specific laws. This consequence is monstrous, and the theory of the tectonists therefore false. But if it be false, what then?

Driesch answers this question in the books published in subsequent years.[101] In these he attains his final standpoint, and makes it more and more secure. The “machine-theory,” and all others like it, are now definitely abandoned. They represent the uncritical dogmatism of a materialistic mode of thought, which binds all phenomena to substance, and refuses to admit any immaterial or dynamic phenomena. The alleged initial structure is nowhere to be found. The pursuit of things into the most minute details leads to no indication of it. The chromatin, in which the most important vital processes have their basis, is very far from having this machine-like structure; it is homogeneous. The formation of the skeleton, for instance, of a Plubeus larva is due to migratory spontaneously moving cells (comparable to the leucocytes of our own body, whose migrations and activities remind one much more of a social organism than of a machine). The organism arises, not from mechanical, but from “harmoniously-equipotential systems”: that is to say, from systems every element of which has equal functional efficiency; so that each individual part bears within itself in an equal degree the potentiality of the whole—an impossibility from the mechanical point of view.

Driesch had given an experimental basis for this theory at an earlier stage, in his experiments on the initial stages of the development of sea-urchins, starfishes, zoophytes, and the like. A Planarian worm cut into pieces developed a new worm of smaller size from each part. A mutilated Pluteus larva developed a new food-canal, and restored the whole typical form. His experiment of 1892 went farther still, for he succeeded in separating the first four segmentation-cells of the sea-urchin's egg; and from each cell obtained a developing embryo. These facts, he maintains, compel us to assume a mode of occurrence which is dynamically sui generis, a “prospective tendency” which is a sub-concept in the Aristotelian “Dynamis.” And the essential difference between this kind of operation and a mechanical operation is, that the same typical effect is always reached, even if the whole normal causal nexus be disturbed. Even when forced into circuitous paths the embryo advances towards the same goal. Thus “vitalism,” that is, the independence and autonomy of the vital processes, is proved. The effect required is attained through “action at a distance,” a mode of happening which is specifically different from anything to be found in the inorganic world, and which has its directive, for instance, in the regeneration of lost parts, [pg 268] not in anything corporeal or substantial, but in the end to be attained.

In his work on “Organic Regulations,” Driesch collects from the most diverse biological fields more and more astonishing proofs of the activity of the living as contrasted with physico-chemical phenomena, and of the marvellous power the organism has to “help itself” and to attain the typical form and reach the end aimed at, even under the greatest diversity in the chain of conditions. The material here brought forward is enormous, and the author's grasp of it very remarkable; and not the least of the merits of the book is, that the bewildering wealth and diversity of these phenomena, which are usually presented to us as isolated and uncoordinated instances, is here definitely systematised according to their characteristic peculiarities, and from the point of view of the increasing distinctness of the “autonomy” of the processes. The system begins with the active regulatory functions of living matter in the chemistry of metabolism (see particularly the phenomena of immunisation), and ascends through different stages up to the regulations of regeneration. There could be no more impressive way of showing how little life and its “regulations” can be compared to the “self-regulations” of machines, or to the restoring of typical states of equilibrium and of form in the physical and chemical domain, to which the mechanists are fond of referring.

The facts thus empirically brought together are then [pg 269] linked together in a theory, and considered epistemologically. We may leave out of account all that is included in the treatment of modern idealism, immanence-philosophy, and solipsism. All this does not arise directly out of the vitalistic ideas, though the latter are fitted into an idealistic framework. Extremely vivid is the excursus on respiration and assimilation. (All processes of building up and breaking down take place within the organism under conditions notoriously different from those obtaining in the laboratory. It is radically impossible to speak of a living “substance” according to the formula CxHyOz, which assimilates and disassimilates itself [sibi].) Excellent, too, are Driesch's remarks on materialistic elucidations of inheritance and morphogenesis. It is quite impossible to succeed with epigenetic speculations on a material basis (cf. Haacke). Weismann is so far right, he admits, from his materialistic premisses when he starts with preformations. But his theory, and all others of the kind, can do nothing more than make an infinitely small photograph of the difficulty. They “explain” the processes of form-development and the regeneration of animals and plants, by constructing infinitely small animals and plants, which develop their form and regenerate lost parts. And Driesch holds it to be impossible to distribute a complicated tectonic among the elements of an equipotential system. In denying the materialistic theory of development, Driesch again determinedly “traverses” [pg 270] his own earlier views. He does this, too, when he now rejects the reconciliation between causality and teleology as different modes of looking at things. The teleological now seems to him itself a factor playing a part in the chain of causes, and thus making it teleological. The key-word of all is to him the “entelechy” of Aristotle.

In his last work on “The Soul,” Driesch follows the impossibilities of the mechanical theories from the domain of vital processes into that of behaviour and voluntary actions.

The Views of Albrecht and Schneider.

An outlook and interpretation which Driesch[102] maintained for a while, but afterwards abandoned, has been developed in an original and peculiar fashion by Eugen Albrecht, Prosector and Pathologist in Munich.[103] It is the theory of different ways of looking at things. Albrecht indeed firmly adheres to the chemical and physical interpretation of vital processes, regards [pg 271] approximate completeness along these lines as the ideal of science, and maintains their essential sufficiency. But he holds that the mechanists have been mistaken and one-sided in that they have upheld this interpretation and mode of considering things as the sole and the “true” one. According to our subjective attitude to things and their changes, they appear to us in quite different series of associations, each of which forms a complete series in itself, running parallel to the others, but not intruding to fill up gaps in them. Microscopic and macroscopic study of things illustrate such separate and complete series. The classical example for the whole theory is the psycho-physical parallelism. Psychical phenomena are not “explained” when the correlated line of material changes and the phenomena of the nervous system have been traced out. Similarly with the series of “vital” phenomena, “vital” interpretation from the point of view of the “living organism,” runs parallel to, but distinct from the chemical and physical analyses of vital processes. But each of these parallel ways of regarding things is “true.” For the current separation of the “appearance” and “nature” of things is false, since it assumes that only one of the possible ways of regarding things, e.g., the mechanical-causal mode of interpretation is essential, and that all the others deal only with associated appearance.