Natural Philosophy

by Wilhelm Ostwald

It is comprehensible, therefore, that machines should have evolved in the organism for transforming the radiant energy of the sun into a permanent form, and, as we have already learned, chemical energy is permanent, while radiant energy is an extremely transitory form of energy, that is, it changes very readily. The very fact that, owing to the change from day to night, the supply of radiant energy periodically ceases, makes the storing-up of energy for the night necessary to the existence of a form dependent upon it. Thus, we recognize in the photochemical processes, that is, in the transformation of radiant energy into chemical energy, the foundation of life on earth.

This work is done by the plants, which thus provide a store of free energy not only for their own needs but also for all the other organisms which possess themselves directly or indirectly of the plant-chemical supplies in order to utilize them for their individual purposes. In this manner nourishment in the widest sense is secured for all organisms, being based upon the regular supply of free energy derived from the sun. This also explains the great chemical similarity of all organisms, which could not subsist if they were not so constructed as to be able to utilize the chemical energy in the form in which it is provided by the plants.

Of the great stream of free energy poured out from the sun into cosmic space the earth receives an extremely small portion (corresponding to the bit of space it occupies in the heavenly sphere as seen from the sun), and the plants collect and store up only a very small fraction of this portion received by the earth. Measurements have shown that in most favorable circumstances a plant leaf changes only about 1/50 of the radiant energy it receives into chemical energy. If we consider that only a small part of the surface of the earth is covered with plants and that during the winter no energy from the sun is stored up at all, we perceive what infinite possibilities for development there still are in arresting and storing up free energy. The part stored up by the plants flows from these into the countless streams, brooks, and veins of the other organisms, to end finally as used-up energy, or energy at rest. This energy is at rest, it is true, only in relation to the earth's surface. We do not know whether the radiation from the earth, which at present amounts to about as much as the radiation from the sun to the earth, is in its turn somewhere utilized.

While the free energy is poured out in such a stream in one direction, the ponderable substances of which the organisms are made up circulate through plants and animals and back again. This is especially true of carbon, which is freed from its combination with oxygen, that is, from carbonic acid, by the sun energy transformed in the plants. While carbon serves to build up the plant body and represents its supply of chemical energy, the oxygen is returned to the air. These two substances are again chemically combined in the various organisms and the quantities of energy which were necessary for their decomposition are again available for the manifold functions of life. The product of the chemical combination, carbonic acid, returns to the air and is ready for renewed decomposition in the plants.

Thus, the entire mechanism of life can be compared to a water-wheel. The free energy corresponds to the water, which must flow in one direction through the wheel in order to provide it with the necessary amount of work. The chemical elements of the organisms correspond to the wheel, which constantly turns in a circle as it transfers the energy of the falling water to the individual parts of the machine.

56. The Soul.

Our observations so far have shown the organisms to be extremely specialized individual instances of physico-chemical machines. Now we have to take into consideration a property which seems markedly to distinguish them from the lifeless machines, and which we have already encountered in the very beginning of our treatise.

It is the property which we there called memory, and which we will define in a very general way as the quality by virtue of which the repetition in organisms of a process which has taken place a number of times is preferred to new processes, because it originates more easily and proceeds more smoothly. It is readily apparent that by this property the organisms are enabled to travel on the sea of physical possibilities as if equipped with a keel, by which the voyage is made stable and the keeping of the course is assured.

If we ask whether this is exclusively a quality of organisms the question cannot be answered affirmatively. Inanimate bodies also have something like the quality of adaptation. An accurate clock attains its valuable qualities only after it has been going for some time, and the best violin is "raw" until it has been "broken in." An accumulator must be "formed" before it can do its normal amount of work. All these processes are due to the fact that the repetition of the same process improves the action, that is, it facilitates or increases it.

Adaptation or memory, then, is not limited to organisms. In inanimate things, however, this property is comparatively rare. Memory, therefore, is to be regarded as another property of organisms representing an extreme specialization of the inorganic possibilities. This is an important point of view for what follows.