Biology

Biology, by Edmund Beecher
Wilson

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Title: Biology A lecture delivered at Columbia University in the series
on Science, Philosophy and Art November 20, 1907
Author: Edmund Beecher Wilson
Release Date: July 26, 2006 [EBook #18911]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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BIOLOGY

BY
EDMUND BEECHER WILSON PROFESSOR OF ZOOLOGY
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

New York THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 1908

BIOLOGY
A LECTURE DELIVERED AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE
SERIES ON SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY AND ART NOVEMBER 20,
1907

BIOLOGY
BY
EDMUND BEECHER WILSON PROFESSOR OF ZOOLOGY
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

New York THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 1908

COPYRIGHT, 1908, by THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS.
Set up, and published March, 1908.

BIOLOGY
I must at the outset remark that among the many sciences that are
occupied with the study of the living world there is no one that may

properly lay exclusive claim to the name of Biology. The word does
not, in fact, denote any particular science but is a generic term applied
to a large group of biological sciences all of which alike are concerned
with the phenomena of life. To present in a single address, even in
rudimentary outline, the specific results of these sciences is obviously
an impossible task, and one that I have no intention of attempting. I
shall offer no more than a kind of preface or introduction to those who
will speak after me on the biological sciences of physiology, botany
and zoology; and I shall confine it to what seem to me the most
essential and characteristic of the general problems towards which all
lines of biological inquiry must sooner or later converge.
It is the general aim of the biological sciences to learn something of the
order of nature in the living world. Perhaps it is not amiss to remark
that the biologist may not hope to solve the ultimate problems of life
any more than the chemist and physicist may hope to penetrate the final
mysteries of existence in the non-living world. What he can do is to
observe, compare and experiment with phenomena, to resolve more
complex phenomena into simpler components, and to this extent, as he
says, to "explain" them; but he knows in advance that his explanations
will never be in the full sense of the word final or complete.
Investigation can do no more than push forward the limits of
knowledge.
The task of the biologist is a double one. His more immediate effort is
to inquire into the nature of the existing organism, to ascertain in what
measure the complex phenomena of life as they now appear are capable
of resolution into simpler factors or components, and to determine as
far as he can what is the relation of these factors to other natural
phenomena. It is often practically convenient to consider the organism
as presenting two different aspects--a structural or morphological one,
and a functional or physiological--and biologists often call themselves
accordingly morphologists or physiologists. Morphological
investigation has in the past largely followed the method of observation
and comparison, physiological investigation that of experiment; but it is
one of the best signs of progress that in recent years the fact has come
clearly into view that morphology and physiology are really

inseparable, and in consequence the distinctions between them, in
respect both to subject matter and to method, have largely disappeared
in a greater community of aim. Morphology and physiology alike were
profoundly transformed by the introduction into biological studies of
the genetic or historical point of view by Darwin, who did more than
any other to establish the fact, suspected by many earlier naturalists,
that existing vital phenomena are the outcome of a definite process of
evolution; and it was he who first fully brought home to us how
defective and one-sided is our view of the organism so long as we do
not consider it as a product of the past. It is the second and perhaps
greater task of the biologist to study the organism from the historical
point of view, considering it as the product of a continuous process of
evolution that has been in operation since life began. In its widest scope
this genetic inquiry involves not only the evolution of higher forms
from