The Science and Philosophy of the Organism

Answers

• Q07LIFE

  Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?

  Yes. life requires entelechy. An embryo fragment can form a whole organism, which no machine could do, so development requires a non-physical ordering factor he calls entelechy.

  Summary disputed by reviewer: the passage gives the second proof (an egg that remains whole through repeated division), not the embryo-fragment experiment the summary describes, though the argument is the same in kind.

  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. … 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.

  Vol. 1, 'The Theory of the Harmonious-Equipotential System — First Proof of the Autonomy of Life' and ''Entelechy'' · Downloaded archive.org text of vol. 1 (Gifford Lectures 1907); table of contents lists the sections quoted. Written in English.

• Q08LIFE

  Does an organism's ability to repair itself distinguish it fundamentally from a machine?

  This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.

• Q09LIFE

  Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?

  No. development is not machine-like. Argues from sea-urchin experiments, where a half-egg still yields a whole larva, that development cannot be the work of a machine and requires a non-mechanical agent he calls entelechy.

  The chief result of the first main part of our lectures has been to prove that an autonomy of life phenomena exists at least in some departments of individual morphogenesis, and probably in all of them ; the real starting-point of all morphogenesis cannot be regarded as a machine, nor can the real process of differentiation, in all cases where it is based upon systems of the harmonious equipotential type. There cannot be any sort of machine in the cell from which the individual originates, because this cell, including both its protoplasm and its nucleus, has undergone a long series of divisions, all resulting in equal products, and because a machine cannot be divided and in spite of that remain what it was. There cannot be, on the other hand, any sort of machine as the real foundation of the whole of an harmonious system, including many cells and many nuclei, because the development of this system goes on normally, even if its parts are rearranged or partly removed, and because a machine would never remain what it had been in such cases.

  OCR corrected

  Gifford Lectures, Aberdeen 1907-08, published 1908 (2 vols, A. and C. Black); Gutenberg #44388 and Internet Archive copies listed in search results.