The Mechanistic Conception of Life

Answers

• Q07LIFE

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

  No. physical and chemical processes suffice. Life phenomena, including development and instinct, can be explained by physics and chemistry, and experimental control of them removes the need for a vital principle.

  The contents of life from the cradle to the bier are wishes and hopes, efforts and struggles, and unfortunately also dis appointments and suffering. And this inner life should be amenable to a physico-chemical analysis? In spite of the gulf which separates us today from such an aim I believe that it is attainable. As long as a life phenomenon has not yet found a physico-chemical explanation it usually appears inexplicable. If the veil is once lifted we are always surprised that we did not guess from the first what was behind it. That in the case of our inner life a physico-chemical explana tion is not beyond the realm of possibility is proved by the fact that it is already possible for us to explain cases of simple mani festations of animal instinct and will on a physico-chemical basis; namely, the phenomena which I have discussed in former papers under the name of animal tropisms, As the most simple example we may mention the tendency of certain ani mals to fly or creep to the light. We are dealing in this case with the manifestation of an instinct or impulse which the animals cannot resist. It appears as if this blind instinct which these animals must follow, although it may cost them their life, might be explained by the same law of Bunsen and Roscoe, which explains the photochemical effects in inanimate nature.

  Archive.org records for the 1912 University of Chicago Press collection. Did not open the title essay.

• Q09LIFE

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

  Yes. development is mechanical. Argues from artificial parthenogenesis and tropism experiments that life processes, including the start of development of the egg, can be explained by physics and chemistry.

  Although we are not yet able to state how life originated in general, another, more modest problem, has been solved, that is, how the egg is caused by the sperm to develop into a new individual. Every animal originates from an egg and in the majority of animals a new individual can only then develop if a male sex-cell, a spermatozoon, enters into the egg. The question as to how a spermatozoon can cause an egg to develop into a new individual was twelve years ago still shrouded in that mystery which today surrounds the origin of life in general. But today we are able to state that the problem of the activation of the egg is for the most part reduced to physico-chemical terms.

  OCR corrected

  University of Chicago Press 1912; Internet Archive, Wellcome, NLM listings in search results.