https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/holism
" Holism
an idealist philosophy of “wholes.” The term was introduced by Jan Smuts in his
Holism and Evoltion (1926).
According to holism, the world is governed by a process of creative evolution,or the process of creating new “wholes".In the courseof evolution, the forms of matter are transformed and renewe, never remaining constant; the holistic process rejects the law of conservation of matter. An unperceived, non-material field, similar to Leibnitz’ monad, which remains constant throughout all of an organism’s changes, is consi-dered tobe the bearer of all organic attributes. The “whole” is interpreted in holism as the highest philosophical concept, which synthe sizes in itself the objectiveand the subjective; it is considered to be the “last reality of the universe.”
According to holism, the highest concrete form of organic “whole” is the human per-sonality.Imparting a mystical character to the “factor of wholeness,” holism considers it to be nonmaterial and unknowable.
Holistic ideas have been developed by Adolf Meyer-Abich in Germany and Leman in France. In modern Western literature the term is sometimes used to designate the principle of integrity.
REFERENCES
Bogomolov, A. S. Ideia razvitiia v burzhuaznoi filosofii 19 i 20 vekov. Moscow, 1962.
Kremianskii, V. I. Strukturnye urovni zhivoi materii. Moscow, 1969.
Haldane, J. S. The Philosophical Basis of Biology. London, 1931.
I. V. BLAUBERG
" Full text of "Holism And Evolution"
OSMANIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
Call No. 110/S^fiH Accession No. 1
Author Smuts, J. C.
Title Holism revolution
This book should be returned on or before the date last marked below.
HOLISM AND EVOLUTION
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA . MADRAS . MELBOURNE
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HOLISM AND EVOLUTION
BY GENERAL THE RIGHT HON. J. C. SMUTS
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1927
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First Edition . . 1926
Second Edition . . 1927
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION
IT is very gratifying that a book dealing with such abstruse topics as this work should within a comparatively short period of months call for a second edition. I am indeed grateful for this favourable reception. I had the fear at the beginning that this effort of one whose life-work had lain in other spheres might perhaps not be taken seriously. On the contrary, whatever its many shortcomings, it has been received seriously and considered on its merits not only by the general public but by many workers who occupy a foremost place in science and philosophy. The little seed seems really to have fallen into fruitful soil, and there I am content to leave it. Holism, whether old or new, is essentially a great idea and, like all great ideas, it will once it has appeared on the horizon move of its own momentum and reach its own fruition.
It must be clear to those who look below the surface of things that far-reaching chan-ges in our fundamental ideas and attitudes are setting in,and that the world of tomor- row will be a very different one from that which carried us into the abyss in 1914. In this connection a grave duty arises also for our science and philosophy. The higher thought of our day should not exhaust itself in fine-spun technicalities of speculation or research, but should regard itself as dedicated to service and should make its dis-tinctive contribution towards the upbuilding of a new constructive worldview. We are passing through one of the great transition epochs of history; we are threatened with reaction on the one hand and with disintegration on the other. The old beacon lights are growing dimmer, and the torch of new ideas has to be kindled for our guidance. The word is largely with our intellectual leaders.
vi PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION
In the last resort a civilisation depends on its general ideas;it is nothing but a spiritual structure of the dominant ideas expressing themselves in institutions and the subtle atmosphere of culture. If the soul of our civilisation is to be saved we shall have to find new and fuller expression for the great saving unities the unity of reality in all its range, the unity of life in all its forms,the unity of ideas throughout human civilisation, and the unity of man's spirit with the mystery of the Cosmos in religious faith and as-piration. Holism is in its own way a groping towards the new light and to new points of view. And I cannot help feeling that if the full extent of its implications is realised, both science and philosophy will enter into a more favourable atmosphere for further advance.
Several of my friendly critics have pointed out metaphysical difficulties and omis-sions in this book. The omissions are deliberate,the difficulties perhaps unavoidable.
I recognise that there is a Metaphysic or Logic of Holism which has still to be written; but it is not for me to write it.
There are others who are trained for the job and who, I feel sure, will do justice to it. All I have attempted is to explain the broad idea, to show some of its more important applications, and to create a general atmosphere favourable to it.
This I may fairly claim to do for Holism; I have felt its power, and I have found it an idea that works. I therefore believe in it and do not view it merely as an interesting bit of speculation.
It has been a cheering discovery since the publication of this book to see along how many different lines the idea of the whole is already inspiring research in science and thought. But few apparently have realised the wide scope of the idea.
And I hope this book has done some good in pointing out its fundamental and universal character. The more it is realised by workers along the new lines that they work under the impulse of a common idea and ideal, the sooner we shall attain to the great vision of the unity of knowledge, and through it of the unity of reality.
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION vii
No great alterations have been made in the body of the work. Minor slips or obscuri-ties of expression have been corrected, an additional sentence or paragraph here or there will, I hope, bring out more clearly the meaning. But the main principles and contentions of the book remain unafected.Special reference is made to the important work of Professor A. N. Whitehead, who is partly influenced by Professors Alexander and Lloyd Morgan, and who is evidently wrestling with the same problem as myself, though from a different standpoint and on different lines.
J. C. SMUTS.
February 1927.
x PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION
Even so, however, there is a striking similarity in the solutions suggested, more leisure than I can find in a busy public life. I have tried to sketch the general lines of reasoning in a way which, while I hope scientifically accurate so far as they go, are yet popular enough to be readily understood by readers with a fair average reading in general science.
It is my belief that Holism and the holistic point of view will prove important in their bearings on some of the main problems of science and philosophy, ethics, art and allied subjects. These bearings are, however, not fully discussed in this work, which is more of the nature of an introduction, and is concerned more with the laying of foundations than with the superstructure. I have no time at present to do more than write an introductory sketch ; but I hope in the years to come to find time to follow up the subject and to show how it affects the higher spiritual interests of mankind.
The old concepts and formulas are no longer adequate to express our modern outlook. The old bottles will no longer hold the new wine. The spiritual temple of the future, while it will be built largely of the old well-proved materials, will require new and ampler foundations in the light of the immense extension of our intellectual horizons. This little book indicates the lines along which my own mind has travelled in the search for new and more satisfactory concepts.
A generation ago, when I was an undergraduate at Cambridge, the subject of Perso-nality interested me greatly, and I wrote a short study on " Walt Whitman: a Study in the Evolution of Personality," in order to embody the results I had arrived at. This study was never published, but the subject continued at odd intervals to engage my attention.
Gradually I came to realise that Personality was only a special case of a much more universal phenomenon, namely, the existence of wholes and the tendency towards wholes and wholeness in nature. In 1910 I sought relief from heavy political labours in an attempt to embody my new results in a study called "An Inquiry into the Whole" which also was not published.
PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION xi
I had no time to return to the subject until, in 1924, a change of government released me from burdens which I had continuously borne for more than eighteen years. When I came to read once more the MS. of fourteen years earlier I found much of the scientific setting out of date and I found my conception of Holism had also altered in certain respects. I therefore decided once more to make a fresh start with my study of wholes and Holism in nature. The present work is the first-fruits of this fresh effort. The aspects and bearings of Holism in which I am mainly interested are not yet reached in this study, which, as I have said, is of an introductory character. But I feel that unless I now make a determined attempt to prepare at least a part of my inquiry for publication, it will in all probability never get beyond the incubation stage in which it has remained so many years. This I would personally regret, as I think that in Holism we have an idea which may perhaps prove valuable and fruitful, and which for better or worse should be lifted out of the obscurity in which it has so long remained in my mind. Whether my partiality for the idea, which has been my companion throughout a crowded life, will be shared by others, time alone will show.
The work has unfortunately had to be written in somewhat of a hurry and amid the pressure of many other calls on my time. Nor in writing it have I had the advantage of consulting any expert friends on details. This must be my excuse for any incidental mistakes or slips which may be found in it.
J. C. SMUTS.
Irene , Transvaal, September 1925.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION v
PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION ix
I. THE REFORM OF FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS . . i
II. THE REFORMED CONCEPTS OF SPACE AND TIME . 23
III. THE REFORMED CONCEPT OF MATTER ... 36
IV. THE CELL AND THE ORGANISM .... 60
V. GENERAL CONCEPT OF HOLISM .... 87
VI. SOME FUNCTIONS AND CATEGORIES OF HOLISM . 125
VII. MECHANISM AND HOLISM 152
VIII. DARWINISM AND HOLISM 190
IX. MIND AS AN ORGAN OF WHOLES . . . 233
X. PERSONALITY AS A WHOLE .... 270
XL SOME FUNCTIONS AND IDEALS OF PERSONALITY . 299
XII. THE HOLISTIC UNIVERSE 326
INDEX 354
xiii
HOLISM AND EVOLUTION
CHAPTER I
THE REFORM OF FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS
Summary.In spite of the great advances which have been made in knowledge, some fundamental gaps still remain; matter, life and mind still remain utterly disparate phe- nomena. Yet the concepts of all three arise in experience, and in the human all three meet and apparently intermingle, so that the last word about them has not yet been said. Reformed concepts of all three are wanted. This will come from fuller scientific knowledge, and especially from a re-survey of the material from new points of view. The fresh outlook must accompany the collection of further detailed knowledge, and nowhere is the new outlook more urgently required than in the survey of these great divisions of knowledge.
Take Evolution as a case in point. The acceptance of Evolution as a fact, the origin of life-structures from the inorganic, must mean a complete revolution in our idea of matter. If matter holds the promise and potency of life and mind it is no longer the old matter of the physical materialists. We have accepted Evolution, but have failed to make the fundamental readjustment in our views which that acceptance involves. The old mechanical viewpoints persist, and Natural Selection itself has come to be looked upon as a mere mechanical factor. But this is wrong : Sexual Selection is admittedly a psychical factor, and even Natural Selection has merely the appearance of a mechanical process, because it is viewed as a statistical average, from which the real character of struggle among the concrete individuals has been eliminated.
Nineteenth-century science went wrong mostly because of the hard and narrow concept of causation which dominated it. It was a fixed dogma that there could be no more in the effect than there was in the cause ; hence creativeness and real progress became impossible.
The narrow concept of causation again arose from a wider intellectual error of ab-straction, of narrowing down all concepts into hard definite contours and wiping out their indefinite surrounding "fields". The concept of "fields" is absolutely necessary in order to get back B to the fluid plastic facts of nature.
2 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
The elimination of their "fields" in which things and concepts alike meet and inter-mingle creatively made all understanding of real connections and interactions impos-sible. The double mistake of analysis, abstraction or generalisation has led to an departure in thought from the fluid procedure of nature. Abstract procedure with its narrowing of concepts and processes into hard and rigid outlines, and their rounding off into definite scientific counters, temporarily simplified the problems of science and thought, but we have outlived the utility of this procedure, and for further advance we have now to return to the more difficult but more correct view of the natural plasticity and fluidity of natural things and processes. From this new view-point a resurvey will be made in the sequel of our ideas relating to matter, life and mind, and an attempt will be made to reach the fundamental unity and continuity which underlie and connect all three.
We shall thus come to see all three as connected steps in the same great Process, the nature and functions of which will be investigated.
AMONG the great gaps in knowledge those which separate the phenomena of mat-ter, life, and mind still remain unbridged. Matter, life, and mind remain utterly unlike each other. Apparently indeed their differences are ultimate,and nowhere does there appear a bridge for thought from one to the other. And their utter difference and disparateness produce the great breaks in knowledge, and separate knowledge into three different kingdoms or rather worlds. And yet they are all three in experience, and cannot therefore be so utterly unlike and alien to each other. What is more, they actually intermingle and co-exist in the human, which is compounded of matter, life, and mind. If indeed there were no common basis to matter, life,and mind, their union in the human individual would be the greatest mystery of all. What is in fact united in human experience and existence cannot be so infinitely far asunder in human thought, unless thought and fact are absolutely incongruous. Not only do they actually co-exist and mingle in the human, they appear to be genetically related and to give rise to each other in a definite series in the stages of Evolution; life appearing to arise in or from matter, and mind in or from life. The actual transitions have not been observed, but are assumed to have taken place under certain conditions in the course of cosmic Evolution.
i FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS 3
Hence arise the three series in the real world: physical, biological and psychical or mental. These connections between them, which are based not on thought but on the facts of existence and experience, tend to show that they cannot be fundamen-tally alien and irreconcilable, and that some sort of a bridge between them must be possible, unless we are to assume that our human experience is indeed a mere chaotic jumble of disconnected elements.
As I have said, the problem does not arise from the facts either of experience or of existence. The problem is one for our thought and our science. It is for our thought that the mystery exists, and it is for knowledge that the great gaps between the phy-sical, the biological and the mental series arise. The solution must therefore ultima-tely depend on our more extended knowledge of these series and the discovery of interconnections between them. The great darknesses and gaps in experience are mostly due to ignorance.
Our experience is clear and luminous only at certain points which are separated by wide regions of obscurity; hence the apparent mystery of the luminous points and of their isolation and unlikeness. Hence also the still greater mystery of the actual union of the three series in the threefold incarnation which constitutes human personality.
But it is just this union which ought to warn us that the apparent separateness of these three fundamental concepts is not well founded in fact, and that a wider know-ledge and a deeper insight might be able to clear up the mystery, at least to some extent, and to lead to some sort of union or harmony of these apparently unrelated or independent elements in our real world. More knowledge is wanted. Our physical science ought to provide the solvent for our idea of hard impenetrable inert matter, and in the third chapter I shall inquire in how far there are already the materials for such a solvent. Again, our biological science should dispel the vagueness of the concept of life, and replace it by a more definite meaningful concept, which will yet not depend on purely material or physical elements. At present the concept of life is so indefinite and vague that, although the kingdom of life is fully recognised, its government is placed under the rule of physical force or Mechanism.
4 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
Life is practically banished from its own domain,and its throne is occupied by a usur- per. Biology thus becomes a subject province of physical science the kingdom of Beauty, the free artistic plastic kingdom of the universe, is inappropriately placed un-der the iron rule of force. Mind again, which is closest to us in experience, becomes farthest from us in exact thought. The concepts in which we envisage it are so vague and nebulous, compared with the hard and rigid contours of our concepts of matter, that the two appear poles asunder. Here too a reformed concept of mind might bring it much closer to a reformed concept of matter. And thus, out of the three at present utterly heterogeneous polar concepts of matter, life and mind it might be possible to develop concepts moulded more closely to fact and experience, freed of all adventi-tious and unnecessary elements of separateness and disparity, and forming (as in all true science they should rightly form) the co-operative elements and aspects in a wider, truer conception of Reality. It may be said that in making this demand for new concepts of matter, life, and mind we are imposing an impossible task on thought.
We are asking it to go beyond itself and deal with matters entirely beyond its own proper world. Matter, it may be urged, is essentially outside and beyond thought, something hard and impervious to thought, an object to thought which thought can only just barely reach up to in its utmost effort, and no more. Life is, of course, not alien to thought in the same sense as matter, but still it also falls outside the province of thought, it also has a reality of its own beyond thought, and it also is a terminus to thought. How then could thought embrace these provinces, how could it be a measure of these provinces beyond its ken ; how could the part envisage the whole? Our standard of measurement is inadequate, our task therefore impossible.
i FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS 5
The answer is that, while mind or thought may not have made matter, it has undoub-tedly assisted in making the concept of matter ; and this concept, based as it largely is on empirical tradition and inadequate knowledge, and covered with a thick over-burden of unsifted tradition, calls for a thorough overhauling. A reform of the concept of matter is urgently required, and is indeed amply justified by the unprecedented recent advances in physical science, and especially in our knowledge of the constitution of matter.
And a reform will, as I shall show in the third chapter, bring matter considerably nearer to the concept of life.
With regard again to the concept of life, what is most urgently required is that it should be rid of that haziness, indefiniteness, and vagueness which makes it practi-cally worthless for all exact scientific purposes. Biological science has not in recent years made the same gigantic strides forward in the knowledge of fundamentals that physical science has taken, and yet for Biology too the sky has considerably cleared, and what two or three decades ago was still hotly disputed is today generally accep- ted. Besides,the greatest development in Biology during this century has taken place in the science of Genetics, and the trend there has been steadily away from the hard mechanical conceptions which dominated Biology more than a generation ago. The time here too may be ripe for a reconsideration of some of the fundamental concepts and standpoints. I may express the hope that the masters of this science will not concentrate all their attention on special researches, however promising the clues at present followed may be, but that they will find time for a reconsideration of the wider conceptions which is becoming urgently necessary. Unless Biology can succeed in clarifying and harmonising her fundamental conceptions there is risk of great confu-sion in a science in which old general ideas have persisted in spite of great progress in detailed knowledge and the elaboration of a host of new fruitful ideas. If in the sequel I join in the discussion of the foundations of Biology, not as entitled of right to speak but more in the character of a friendly spectator urging the importance of a certain point of view, I hope my presumption in so doing may be forgiven me.
6 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
For welcome as any new and deeper knowledge would be on these high matters, the present situation calls even more urgently for fresh points of view. Matter, life, and mind are, so to speak, the original alphabet of knowledge, the original nuclei round which all experience, thought, and speculation have gathered. Their origin is purely empirical, their course has been shaped by tradition for thousands of years, and all sorts of discarded philosophies have gone towards the making of their popu-lar meanings. In spite, therefore, of the great fundamental aspects of truth which they embody, the kernel of truth in them has become overlaid by deep deposits of imperfect and erroneous knowledge.
Modern science and philosophy have repeatedly ventured on reforms, but the popu-lar use of these terms tends to obliterate all fine distinctions. I do not believe that an abiding scientific or philosophic advance in this respect will be possible until a more exact nomenclature has been adopted. A particular suggestion towards such a re-form I am going to advocate and develop in the sequel, but in the meantime I wish to emphasise how important it is, not merely to continue the acquisition of knowledge, but also to develop new view-points from which to envisage all our vast accumulated material of knowledge. The Copernican revolution was not so much a revolution in the acquisition of new knowledge, as in view-point and perspective in respect of existing knowledge. The most far-reaching revolutions in knowledge are often of this character. Evolution in the mind of Darwin was, like the Copernican revolution, a new view-point, from which vast masses of biological knowledge already existing fell into new alignments and became the illustrations of a great new Principle. And similarly Einstein's conception of General Relativity in the physical universe, whatever its final form may yet be, is a new view-point from which the whole universe and all its working mechanisms acquire a new perspective and meaning.
More knowledge is undoubtedly required, but its acquisition must go hand in hand with the exploration of new concepts and new points of view. It will not help merely to accumulate details of which, even in the special departments of the separate biologi-cal sciences, the masses are already becoming more than any individual mind can bear.
i FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS 7
New co-ordinations are required, new syntheses which will sum up and explain and illuminate the otherwise amorphous masses of material. While research is being pro-secuted as never before, while in biological science great, and in the physical scien-ces unprecedented, progress is being recorded, the call becomes ever more urgent for a reconsideration of fundamental concepts and the discovery of new view-points which might lead to the formulation of more general principles and wider generalisa-tions. Nowhere are new view-points more urgently called for than in respect of the fundamental concepts of matter,life,and mind, of which the reform is overdue and the present state is rapidly becoming a real obstacle to further progress. And I may point out that the formulation of new viewpoints will depend not so much on masses of mi-nute details,as on the consideration of the general principles in the light of recent ad- vances, the collation and comparison of large masses of fact, and the survey of fairly large areas of knowledge. The road is to be discovered, not so much by minute local inspection as by wide roaming and exploration and surveying over large districts.
Both methods are needed, and the question narrows itself down to one of compara-tive values. Just as happened in the cases of Newton and Einstein, so here too the new clues are more likely to be indicated by certain crucial dominant facts than by small increments of research. It would therefore be a great mistake to let the comp-letion of present detailed researches take precedence over the more general and urgent questions to which I am drawing attention.
Let me in this connection mention one matter of crucial significance to which I think sufficient importance has not yet been attached.Today I think it is generally accepted that life has in the process of cosmic Evolution developed from or in the bosom of matter, and that mind itself has its inalienable physical basis. I do not think that among those who have given thought and attention to these matters there are to-day any who seriously question this position.
8 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
Life is no dove that has flown to our shores from some world beyond this world; mind or soul is not an importation from some other universe. Life and mind are not mere visitants to this world, but not of this world. There is nothing alien in them to the substance of the universe ; they are with us and they are of us.
The popular view still looks upon the association of life and mind with matter as a sort of symbiosis,as the close living together of three different beings,as the dwelling of life and the soul in the body of matter, just as in the organic world one plant or ani-mal organism will be found normally living with and in another.This popular traditio-nal view comes from the hoary beginnings of human thought and speculation, but it is definitely abandoned by all those who have assimilated the modern view-point of Evolution. For them in some way not yet fully understood, but accepted as an un-doubted fact, both life and mind have developed from matter or the physical basis of existence. The acceptance of this fact must have far-reaching consequences for our world-view.
But before I refer to these consequences let me point out how this acceptance af-fects the grave issues over which our fathers fought a continuous battle royal during the latter half of the nineteenth century.The materialists contended for this very point, namely, that life and mind were born of matter. From this priority of matter they pro-ceeded (quite illegitimately) to infer its primacy and self-sufficiency in the order of the universe, and to reduce life and mind to a subsidiary and subordinate position as mere epiphenomena, as appearances on the surface of the one reality, matter.
To use the Platonic figure, to them matter was the lyre, and the soul was the music of that lyre ; the lyre was the substantive and abiding reality, and the music a mere passing product. And thus the priority and dominance of matter made of life and the soul merely transient and embarrassed phantoms on the stage of existence. This materialism was most hotly resented and contested by those who held to the spiritual values and realities. They denied not only the primacy of matter but also its priority or that life or mind sprang from it and were dependent on it in any real sense.
i FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS 9
In fact they denied the principle of Evolution as undermining all the spiritual and mo-ral values of life. Both sides, materialists and spiritualists alike, were under the influ-ence of the hard physical concepts of cause and effect which played such a great part in the science and philosophy of the nineteenth century.
There could be nothing more in the effect than there was already in the cause; and if matter caused the soul, there could be nothing more in the soul than there already was in matter. In other words, the soul was merely an apparent and no real substan-tial advance on matter. The general validity of this argument was never questioned and was thoroughly believed in by both sides. Hence those who affirmed the theory of Evolution logically tended to be materialists, and those who were spiritualists were logically forced to deny Evolution.
Without their knowing it the great battle raged, not over the facts of Evolution, but over a metaphysical theory of causation in which they both believed and were both wrong.
Such is the irony of history. To-day we pick the poppies on the old bloody battlefield of Evolution, and can afford to be fair to both sides. The essential terms have chan-ged their meaning for us. We believe in Evolution, but it is no more the mechanical Evolution of a generation or two ago, but a creative Evolution. We believe in the growth which is really such and becomes ever more and more in the process.
We believe in Genesis which by its very nature is epigenesis. For us there is no such thing as static evolution, a becoming which does not become but in its apparent per-mutations ever remains the same. The absolute equation of cause and effect, which was a dogma implicitly believed in by the men of that day, does not hold for us, as I shall in due course explain. The temperature has changed, the view-point has shif-ted, and to-day thoughtful men and women are sincere and convinced evolutionists, without troubling themselves over the dead and forgotten issue of materialism ver-sus spiritualism. We accept the theory of descent, of life from matter, and of the mind from both. For educated men and women to-day Evolution is just as much part and parcel of their general outlook, of their intellectual atmosphere, so to say, as is the Copernican theory.
io HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
As I said before, this is a fact with very far-reaching consequences. If we believe that life and mind come from matter, if they are evolved from matter, if matter holds the promise, the dread potencies of life and mind, it can for us no longer be the old mat-ter of the materialists or the physicists. The acceptance of the view for which the ma-terialists fought so hard means in effect a complete transformation of the simple situ-ation which they envisaged. Matter discloses a great secret; in the act of giving birth to life or mind it shows itself in an entirely unsuspected character,and it can never be the old matter again. The matter which holds the secret of life and mind is no longer the old matter which was merely the vehicle of motion and energy. The landmarks of the old order are shifting,the straight contours of the old ideas are curving, the whole situation which we are contemplating in the relations of matter, life and mind is beco-ming fluid instead of remaining rigid. The point to grasp and hold on to firmly is that the full and complete acceptance of Evolution must produce a great change in the significance of the fundamental concepts for us. Life and mind now, instead of being extraneous elements in the physical universe, become identified with the physical or-der, and they are all recognised as very much of a piece. This being so, it obviously becomes impossible thereupon to proceed to erect an all-embracing physical order in which life and mind are once more declared aliens.
This cat and mouse procedure is simply a case of logical confusion. This in-and-out game will not do. If Evolution is accepted, and life and mind are developments in and from the physical order, they are in that order, and it becomes impossible to continue to envisage the physical order as purely mechanical, as one in which they have no part or lot, in which they are no real factors, and from which they should be logically excluded. If Evolution is right, if life and mind have arisen in and from matter, then the universe ceases to be a purely physical mechanism, and the system which results must provide a real place for the factors of life and mind.
i FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS 11
To my mind
there is no escape from that argument,and its implications must have a very far-reaching effect on our ideas of the physical order, and on a biology in which mechanical views are still dominant.
The point I have been trying to make is that our ultimate concepts need reconsideration,and that above all new view-points are necessa-ry from which to re-survey the vast masses of physical and biologi-cal knowledge which have already accumulated. I have said that cer-tain large dominant facts may be sufficient to lead to a new orien-tation of our ideas. And I have taken the accepted fact of Evolution as a case in point.The older materialists and the present-day mecha-nical biologists have both fought hard for the acceptance of Evolu-tion as a fact,without realising that such an acceptance must inevi-tably mean a transformation of their view-points, and that both the meaning of the concept of matter and the idea of the part played by mechanism in biology must be seriously affected by such acceptance. It is clear that the full significance of the great dominant idea of Evolution and its effect on the ordering of our ultimate world-view are not yet fully realised, and that we are in" effect endeavouring simultaneously to go forward with two inconsistent sets of ideas, that is to say, with the idea of Evolution (not yet adequately rea-lised) and the pre-Evolution physical ideas (not yet quite abando-ned). This is, however, sheer confusion, and a clarification of our ideas and the realisation of new view-points have become necessary.
Let me now leave the general fact of Evolution as bearing on our worldview and call attention to another and somewhat similar case which arises in Darwin's theory of Descent. In that theory Natural Selection is usually but erroneously taken to be a purely mechanical factor.It is understood to operate as an external cause, eliminating the unfit in the struggle for existence, and leaving the fit in possession of the field to reproduce their kind and to continue the story of Evolution.
12 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
Natural Selection, from whatever cause arising and in whatever way operating, is on this view taken to be merely a mechanical cause or factor, just as is a hailstorm which kills plants and animals with hailstones, or a drought which kills them from want of water.
Whether the destruction arises from physical mechanical causes like storms or drought or lightning, or whether it arises from the action of living agencies in the organic struggle, makes no difference to the result, which is in either case the same. A broad generalised statistical view of the causes of elimination has been taken and Natural Selection, thus considered at large and in bulk, has assumed the appearance of a mere external mechanical factor. On this view of Natural Selection, therefore, Darwin's theory of Evolution has come powerfully to reinforce the generally prevalent mechanical position. The effect has been just the opposite to what one might have expec-ted from a great biological advance. The Kingdom of life, instead of fighting for its own rights and prerogatives, has tamely and blindly surrendered to the claims of physical force and actually joined hands with it and contributed to its supremacy. The acceptance of Darwinism, therefore, so far from stemming the tide of mechanical ideas, has actually furthered and assisted it, and raised it to full flood.Through too broad and abstract a view of Natural Selection the mechanical ideas have invaded the domain of life, where opposition might have been expected, and through the conquest and occupation of that domain the mechanical position, which would otherwise have been confined to the material physical sphere, has been extended and po-werfully consolidated. This result was due, as I say, to the genera-lised and abstract statistical concept of Natural Selection, irre-spective of the concrete manner in which the selection occurred in individual cases.
There is, however, one form of Selection which cannot be thus indis-criminately dealt with. It arises not only from organic causes, but still more narrowly and quite indisputably from psychical causes.
i FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS 13
Darwin called it Sexual Selection, and in spite of the opposition of A. R. Wallace and others he attached great importance to it, and as time went on and he saw his great vision more clearly, he gave it an ever-growing emphasis in his theory of Descent. Natural Selection operates on the unfit by destroying them or killing them off; Sexual Selection, on the contrary, has a more limited operation and applies only in respect of males, whose mating it promotes or handicaps by making them attractive or repulsive to females.
I In other words it is a struggle among males for the possession of females, and in this struggle males are assisted not only by their superior strength or fighting powers, but also by their superior po-wer of song or beauty or scent or general attractiveness or exci-tiveness to females. It is clear that the real motive power of this form of selection is mostly emotional and psychical. The female is stimulated, excited, and attracted by superior fighting force or superior artistic endowments among males competing for her favour.
And when one considers the degree of perfection to which the male forms have attained largely under this stimulus of the female sex instinct,one is struck with amazement at the emotional sensitiveness thus implied on the part of female insects,birds, and beasts, and at the wonderful subtlety and fineness of the emotional discrimination which has shaped the male forms. The beauty of form and colour which characterises, for instance,the peacock's feathers is such that even our human eye can scarcely do justice to it.And yet on the principle of Sexual Selection that perfection of beauty is due to the amazing emotional sensitiveness and appreciation of the peahen,which through countless generations must have been attracted by the minute superi-ority of the one male over others scarcely inferior in this respect.
And the same applies in regard to the wonderful power of song among male birds and all the other secondary male characters. And it makes no difference whether by his arts arid display the male makes a di-rect appeal to mating,or merely invites the female to his territory.
The psychical emotional powers implied on the part of the female on this theory are so wonderful as to be almost unintelligible; in many respects they are superhuman,and would appear to throw an astonish-ing light on the unconscious psychical developments of what we are pleased to call the lower creatures.
14 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
If secondary sexual characters with all their perfection of form and colour did originate and develop under the stimulus of Sexual Selec-tion,we shall have to revise our views radically as to the psychical sensitiveness and endowments of large classes of these lower animals .
If, for instance, the human female showed the same sensitive choice and discrimination for the superior male as the female bird or insect shows in her sensitive sex instinct, what supermen we sorry males in time would become ! I am afraid, however, that the theory of Sexual Selectionas ordinarily understood does not tell the whole story, and that there is more in the sexual situation than appears from that theory.I shall refer to the subject again in Chapter VIII.
But for my present purpose it is only necessary to emphasise that this form of selection is not mechanical but psychical. If Sexual Selection plays the great part in organic Evolution which Darwin, Weismann and many other great biologists assign to it, we can only conclude that to that extent at any rate the motive force in Evolution is essentially psychical and not merely mechanical.
I would go further and, in opposition to current views, I would con-tend that even Natural Selection, in so far as it is really an orga-nic struggle and not merely the pressure or age-long effect of the inorganic environment, is fundamentally psychical. The advance takes place generally because the more fit organism for its own purposes destroys the less fit organism. In its essence the organic struggle creates a psychical situation just as much as war among humans is a psychical situation. And it is only because we abstract from the si-tuation its real character of individual struggle and view the total statistical effect of innumerable situations as itself a sort of personified operative force in the form of Natural Selection, that the appearance of a mechanical external factor is created, operating on Evolution from the outside and determining its course mechanically.
i FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS 15
Looked at in general, and at a distance in which all concrete cases are blurred in the general view, the struggle for existence among animals and plants seems to operate blindly and mechanically without any reference to that improvement of species which results. But this general struggle is actually composed of infinite little concrete struggles in which the fit destroy the unfit, and the idea of im-provement is thus involved. And the trend of the struggle is towards organic progress actually because of the character of the little concrete struggles.
I do not mean to say that the striving, struggling individual in na-ture intends to improve its species. But it does fight for itself or its family or its tribe; and in so far as it is more "fit" than its beaten opponent it is in effect fighting the battle of organic pro-gress. The psychical semi-purposive character of the little concrete struggles should thus impart a psychological almost purposive cha-racter to the generalised factor of Natural Selection. In fact the current view of Natural Selection is a very striking illustration of the way in which a so-called mechanical force or cause is gratui-tously constituted by abstraction and generalisation and statistical summation from elements which in their individual character and iso-lation are undoubtedly psychical and sometimes even purposive. And this only shows how careful we must be to scrutinise concrete de-tails and not to rest satisfied with large abstract generalisations, if we would know what really happens in nature. Abstraction and ge-neralisation, however useful and necessary for scientific purposes, do largely deprive real events of their true characters, which are vital to a correct understanding of reality.
To sum up, therefore: apart from the influence of the physical envi-ronment, the motive and directive forces of organic Descent in the form of Natural and Sexual Selection are largely psychical and not merely mechanical. And this result of the special Darwinian theory is therefore in complete accord with the more general result which we derived from the consideration of Evolution in general.
16 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
Both in Evolution as a whole and in Darwin's more special theory of organic Descent,life and mind are no mere shadows or unreal accompa-niments of some real mechanical process; they are there in their own right as true operative factors, and play a real and unmistakable part in determining both the advance and its specific direction.
From the point of view of Evolution each of them must be looked upon as essentially a real vera causa. This does not affect what I have already said about the vagueness and unsatisfactoriness of their present concepts and the necessity of looking for more definite and adequate concepts.
All I mean to say is that the things they stand for are real factors in nature and not mere words or appearances. In the sequel an effort will be made to give greater defmiteness to these concepts, and to determine the nature and character of the activity of these factors. Here it must suffice to emphasise that the nature of Evolution has been obscured by mechanistic conceptions, and that erroneous views as to the character and operation of causation have contributed to this misunderstanding.
And it may be useful, before concluding this introductory chapter, to add a few remarks on this subject,to which I have already briefly referred above.
The science of the nineteenth century was like its philosophy, its morals and its civilisation in general, distinguished by a certain hardness, primness and precise limitation and demarcation of ideas. Vagueness, indefinite and blurred outlines, anything savouring of mysticism, was abhorrent to that great age of limited exactitude.
The rigid categories of physics were applied to the indefinite and hazy phenomena of life and mind.Concepts were in logic as well as in science narrowed down to their most luminous points, and the rest of their contents treated as non-existent.Situations were not envisaged as a whole of clear and vague obscure elements alike,but were analy-sed merely into their clear,outstanding, luminous points. A "cause," for instance, was not taken as a whole situation which at a certain stage insensibly passes into another situation, called the effect. No, the most outstanding feature in the first situation was isolated and abstracted and treated as the cause of the most outstanding and striking feature of the next situation, which was called the effect.
i FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS 17
Everything between this cause and this effect was blotted out, and the two sharp ideas or rather situations of cause and effect were made to confront each other in every case of causation like two opposing forces.
This logical precision immediately had the effect of making it impossible to understand how the one passed into the other in actual causation. The efficient activity, which had of old been construed on the analogy of our voluntary muscular activity, was therefore re-sorted to in order to supply the explanation.As the voluntary muscu-lar movement produces external action,so material cause was supposed to produce a material effect. Even then the mind found it difficult to realise the passage from the one to the other.
Every causation seemed to imply some action at a distance, unless cause and effect were in absolute contact. But we know that there is no such thing as absolute contact even in the elements of the most closely packed situation. Hence causation of this rigid type really became unintelligible.
Not even the old fiction of an ether which embraced all material things, and as a vehicle made transmission of influence from one to the other possible, seemed able to overcome the contradictions into which thought had landed itself through its hard and narrow concepts of cause and effect. And in fact there is no way out of the impasse but by retracing our steps and recognising that these concepts are partial and misleading abstractions.We have to return to the fluidi-ty and plasticity of nature and experience in order to find the con-cepts of reality. When we do this we find that round every luminous point in experience there is a penumbra, a gradual shading off into haziness and obscurity. A "concept" is not merely its clear luminous centre, but embraces a surrounding sphere of meaning or influence of smaller or larger dimensions, in which the luminosity tails off and grows fainter until it disappears. Similarly a "thing" is not merely that which presents itself as such in clearest definite outline, but this central area is surrounded by a zone of vague sense-data and influences which shades c off into the region of the indefinite.
i8 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
The hard and abrupt contours of our ordinary conceptual system do not apply to reality and make reality inexplicable, not only in the case of causation,but in all cases of relations between things, qua-lities, and ideas.Conceive of a cause as a centre with a zone of ac-tivity or influence surrounding it and shading gradually off into indefiniteness. Next conceive of an effect as similarly surrounded.
It is easy in that way to understand their interaction, and to see that cause and effect are not at arm's length but interlocked, and embrace and influence each other through the interpenetration of their two fields. In fact the conception of Fields of force which has become customary in Electro-Magnetism is only a special case of a phenomenon which is quite universal in the realms of thought and reality alike.
Every " thing " has its field, like itself, only more attenuated; every concept has likewise its field.It is in these fields and these fields only that things really happen.
It is the intermingling of fields which is creative or causal in na-ture as well as in life.The hard secluded thing or concept is barren because abstract,and but for its field it could never come into real contact or into active or creative relations with any other thing or concept. Things,ideas,animals,plants,persons:all these,like physical forces, have their fields,and but for their fields they would be un-intelligible, their activities would be impossible, and their rela-tions barren and sterile. The abstract intelligence, in isolating things or ideas, and constituting them apart from their fields, and treating the latter as non-existent,has made the real concrete world of matter and of life quite unintelligible and inexplicable. The world is thus in abstraction constituted of entities which are abso-lutely discontinuous, with nothing between them to bridge the impas-sable gulfs, little or great, which separate them from each other.
The world becomes to us a mere collection of disjecta membra, drai-ned of all union or mutual relations, dead, barren, inactive, unin-telligible. And in order once more to bring active relations into this scrap-heap of disconnected entities, the mind has to conjure up spirits, influences, forces and what not from the vasty deep of its own imagination.
i FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS 19
And all this is due to the initial mistake of enclosing things or ideas or persons in hard contours which are purely artificial and are not in accordance with the natural shading-off continuities which are or should be well known to science and philosophy alike.
One of the most salutary reforms in thought which could be effected would be for people to accustom themselves to the idea of fields, and to look upon every concrete thing or person or even idea as merely a centre, surrounded by zones or aurae or penumbrae of the same nature as the centre, only more attenuated and shading off into indefiniteness.
The concept of "fields" will be developed in subsequent chapters.
There is one more remark I wish to make in regard to the activity of the abstract intelligence in construing our actual experience.I have already shown how in a special case this abstract activity has con-verted the psychical factor of Natural Selection into the semblance of a mechanical force. The risk of error is, however, much greater than that particular instance would serve to indicate. One may say that the analytical character of thought has a far-reaching effect in obscuring the nature of reality,which has to be carefully guarded against. In order to understand and explore any concrete situation, we analyse it into its factors or elements, whose separate operation and effects are then studied, in isolation so to say.
This procedure is not only quite legitimate, but the only one pos-sible,if we wish to understand and investigate the complex groupings of nature.It is the analytical method which science has applied with such outstanding success ; and but for this analysis of a complex phenomenon or situation into its separate elements and the study of these in isolation, it is fair to assume that very little progress would have been possible in the understanding of Nature with all her obscure processes. When the isolated elements or factors of the com-plex situation have been separately studied, they are recombined in order to reconstitute the original situation.
20 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
Two sources of error here become possible.In the first place, in the original analysis something may have escaped, so that in the recon-struction we have no longer all the original elements present, but something less. I have already shown how "fields" escape in the idea of things and even in concepts. The same happens in regard to the elements into which a situation is analysed. And it is certain that in every case of analysis and reconstitution of a concrete situation something escapes which makes the artificial situation as recon-structed different from the original situation which was to be ex-plored and explained. An element of more or less error has entered. This may be called the error of analysis.
In the second place, we are apt after the analysis and investigation of the isolated elements or factors to look upon them as the natural factors of the situation, and upon the situation itself as a sort of result brought about by them.
The abstract analytical elements thus become the real operative entities, while the concrete situation or phenomenon to be explained becomes their product or resultant. As a matter of fact,just the op-posite is the case. We start in nature with the complex situation or sensible phenomenon as the reality to be explained. The analytical elements or factors are merely the result of analysis,and might even be merely abstractions. But because they are simpler and admit of closer scrutiny and experiment, we have come to look upon them as real or constitutive,and upon the situation from which they were ab-stracted or analysed, as artificial or constituted. Thus it has come about that in physical science, for instance, the elements of matter or force into which bodies have been analysed have tended to become the reals. Thus scientific entities like electrons and protons, and the physical energies or forces which they represent,are taken to be the real entities in nature, and sensible matter or bodies as something derivative and merely resulting from their activities. The abstract thus becomes the real, the concrete is relegated to a secondary position.
I FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS 21
This inversion of reality is very much the same procedure as was condemned in the case of the scholastic and other philosophers who attributed reality to universals instead of to concrete particulars. This may be called the error of abstraction or generalisation. Against both these forms of error we have to guard, if we wish faithfully to interpret Nature as we experience her.
Analysis, abstraction and generalisation are indeed necessary as in-struments of scientific understanding, but they also necessarily in-volve a departure from the concrete, and thus a possible element of error which in its ultimate effects may produce a serious distortion in our general view of reality.
The concrete whole of a situation comes to be deduced from its ab-stract parts, and the principle of natural explanation thus proceeds by way of the parts to the whole. The whole as so understood is con-fined to its parts and comes to suffer from the same limitations as its parts. For the full concrete reality comes to be substituted a more limited scheme or pattern of parts, an aggregation rather than a natural organic synthesis.
Our object in studying and interpreting Nature is to be faithful to our experience of her. We do not want to, recreate Nature in our own image, and as far as possible we wish to eliminate errors of obser-vation or construction which are due to us as observers. We do not wish to spread Nature on a sort of Procrustes bed of our concepts and cut off here and there what appears surplus or unnecessary or even non-existent to our subjective standards.Our experience is lar-gely fluid and plastic, with little that is rigid and with much that is indefinite about it. We should as far as possible withstand the temptation to pour this plastic experience into the moulds of our hard and narrow pre-conceived notions, and even at the risk of fai-ling to explain precisely all that we experience we should be modest and loyal in the handling of that experience.In that way a good deal of what we have hitherto felt certain may once more become uncertain ; the solid and recognised landmarks may once more become blurred or shifting; the stable results of nineteenth-century science may once more become unstable and uncertain.
22 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP, i
But the way will be open for the truer constructions of the future, and the foundations of our future science will be more deeply and securely laid.
In the following chapters a modest effort will be made to apply the above ideas and principles to a new interpretation of Nature, inclu-ding, as it does, Matter, Life, Mind, and Personality. Matter, Life, and Mind, so far from being discontinuous and disparate, will appear as a more or less connected progressive series of the same great Process. And this Process will be shown to underlie and account for the characters of all three,and to give to Evolution, both inorganic and organic, both psychical and spiritual, a fundamental unity and continuity which it does not seem to possess according to current scientific and philosophical ideas. 1
1 It is interesting to note how Professor A. N. Whitehead in his Science and the Modern World deals with the situation which I have tried to meet by means of the concept of "fields". He also takes the view that the thing or event taken by itself in its spatial limits is a false simplification, which he calls the fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness. According to him, the mistake is due to the assumption of the simple location of things or events, in other words, to the mistaken belief that a thing or event, as it appears in a definite space at a certain time, is all there is of it, and that it has no-thing to do with other spaces or other times. This mistake of simple location is therefore identical with that pointed out above of con-fining a thing or event to its apparent spatial contours or bounda-ries, with nothing of it beyond them. 1 following the lead of physi-cal science attempt to remedy the mistake by extending the thing or event into its "field" beyond these contours or boundaries.
Professor Whitehead proceeds in a more radical and perhaps more cor-rect way by a re-examination of the status of Space-Time in relation to things and events. In this way he arrives at the result that a thing or event is not confined to its own simple Space-Time location , and is thus not itself alone, but that it reflects the aspects of all other things and events from its particular standpoint, and thus in a sense involves their locations also. In the larger context of nature the thing or event is, therefore, a synthesis ot itself with the aspects or perspectives of everything else as mirrored from its standpoint.
Whitehead's searching analysis leads to results which closely re-semble those of Leibniz's Monadology, and involve a radical trans-formation of current practical and scientific concepts. The alterna-tive concept of "fields," while less revolutionary and simpler to understand, seems to meet the purpose in view sufficiently well. On both views a thing or event transcends its apparent limits. That the popular view of "simple location" involves a most insidious and far-reaching error of abstraction is common ground to both Professor
CHAPTER II
THE REFORMED CONCEPTS OF SPACE AND TIME
Summary. It is not only in organic Evolution that the old fixed con-cepts and counters of thought are breaking down. Recent advances in physical science have extended the revolution to the domain of the inorganic ; the fixity of the atom has followed that of species into the limbo of the obsolete. In many directions new concepts, more in harmony with the fluid creative process of nature, are called for.
We begin with the new concepts of Space and Time,which in the system of Relativity are taking the place of the old Newtonian concepts still commonly accepted. The new ideas of Space and Time arose from researches in the higher mathematics and physics, and were primarily concerned with the relative character of all actual motion in the universe, and the mathematical and physical consequences of this re-lativity. Thus according to the mathematical physicists, to a moving observer a moving body appears to contract or to be shorter than it would be to a stationary observer, and the faster either of them moves the greater the contraction becomes.
Time varies similarly, but in the opposite direction ; while the space of the moving body appears to contract,its time appears to ex-pand,so that it takes a longer time to pass a point than it would do if viewed by a stationary observer.This joint and inseparable varia-tion of Space and Time was not only most important in itself,but led directly to the revolutionary conception that neither of them exis-ted independently, but that together they form the Space-Time medium of the real physical world.From this point of view bodies and things as merely spatial are not real but abstractions, while events, which involve both Space and Time, Action in Space-Time, are real and form the units of reality. The deposition of the old Space and Time and their replacement by Space-Time have been tested in the most search-ing way both in the immense world of astronomy and the most minute world of the atom,and in both cases the new concepts have been found to work - satisfactorily.
23
24 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
The variation of Space and Time has led to the further conclusion that in a world of relative motion such as ours, where all observers and all observed bodies are in motion, all standards of measurement and all clocks of Time are themselves variable and give no constant results. But a varying standard must produce a warped or twisted field. Applying this conclusion to gravitation and the rotational movements of the universe, we find that the Space-Time medium of the universe is curved and warped and not of the homogeneous character which was attributed to Space and Time according to the old ideas.
In all gravitational fields events happen in curves and follow the fundamental curves of the Space-Time universe.The result is that the entire universe acquires a definite structural character, and is not a diffuse homogeneity as was formerly supposed. According to the new Space-Time concept, structure, definite organised structure, becomes the essential characteristic of the physical universe, and this structural character accounts for many hitherto inexplicable phenomena.
Newton's and Kant's ideas of Space and Time compared with those of Einstein.
IN the preceding chapter I have tried to explain how the acceptance of the theory of Evolution must inevitably and profoundly affect our views as regards the nature of matter.
In this chapter I proceed to inquire what bearing recent far-reach-ing physical researches and speculations have on this position. Our problem is to break away from the hard and narrow conceptions of the Victorian age, to see Nature once more in her fluid and creative plasticity, and to formulate our conceptions afresh from this deeper point of view.
A great change has come over our views of Nature, a change great enough in the end to amount to one of the fundamental revolutions in human thought. But we are still in the process of that change, and it is therefore difficult for us to realise its full significance.
Three dates stand out in bold relief as inaugurating that change: 1859, when Darwin's Origin of Species was published; 1896, when Bec-querel discovered Radioactivity; and 1915, when Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity. Round these three great events other discoveries of profound interest have taken and are still ta-king place ; and in the result our entire viewpoints and standpoints as regards Nature and reality area undergoing a fundamental change which must in the end affect every province of human thought and conduct.
ii CONCEPTS OF SPACE AND TIME 25
The fixity of organic species is gone; the fixity of inorganic elements is going.The position is once more becoming fluid, the old rigid order is visibly dissolving, the fixed landmarks and beacon-points by which former generations steered their course in science are becoming submerged. And the task awaits the future out of this fluid situation and these instabilities once more to build a stable world of ideas, which will be in closer harmony with the reality around us and within us. One of the aspects of Darwin's Theory has already briefly engaged our attention in the last chapter, and other aspects of it will be considered in Chapter VIII. In the present chapter reference must be made to Einstein's General Theory of Rela-tivity and the bearing it has on our ideas of space and time as the framework in which events are located, and the medium in which Evo-lution takes place.The resulting view of the universe as structural, and of the element of structure as fundamental to the universe and all its forms, is important for the subject and the argument of this work.
People become frightened when they are invited to consider Ein-stein's theory. Its refined abstractions, its abstruse mathematical form, its complete novelty and reversal of ordinary common-sense view-points make it a terror to the, uninitiated. And yet I believe the Einstein view-point can be quite simply and intelligibly put.
Indeed it must be so put if it is ever to become part and parcel of ordinary educated thought.We must distinguish between the simple and clear view-point itself, and the recondite mathematical processes by which it was reached,and the technical mathematical form in which it is expressed, and from which for all ordinary purposes it can be se-parated. The understanding and appreciation of the Relativity view-point are not dependent on a knowledge of the process by which Eins-tein reached that view-point. The result is quite distinct from the process. It is like groping our way through a long, dark, rough tun-nel, and at the end emerging into the clear daylight beyond : it is not necessary for the appreciation of the new view that one should plunge back into the dark tunnel.
26 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
Besides,I must frankly state my own lay impression that the Einstein theory, as distinguished from the broad view-point attained, has not yet found its final expression.All great truths are in their essence simple; and the absence of simplicity of statement only shows that the ultimate form has not yet been reached.The day may yet come when the ten recondite Einstein equations of gravitation may appear as but the scaffolding of the simpler structure yet to arise, the natu-ralness and inevitableness of which will be as evident to every edu-cated person as the heliocentric conception of Copernicus has become .
The Einstein theory arose originally from researches in the higher mathematics and physics, and a brief reference to this mathematical origin will be useful. Galileo and Newton were the fathers of the modern classical mechanics; they (and especially Newton) formulated the laws of moving bodies in an exact mathematical science. Now the germ of the new Relativity mechanics is the almost obvious fact that the motion of a body is never absolute, but is always relative to some other body or point.
If this body or point of reference is stationary, Newton's laws of motion apply completely, and the geometry of Euclid also applies, so that the movements of bodies can be represented by geometrical figu-res. Such bodies are said to move in Euclidean space, which is the same and homogeneous all through and in all directions. Now since Newton's time a great deal of attention has been given to the case where the body of reference or the observer is not stationary but is also in motion. This case is important, because it is actually that of all bodies in our universe, in which all observers or points of reference are themselves in motion.A point on the earth,for instance , rotates with a certain velocity round the centre of the earth, while the earth again rotates with another velocity round the sun. The sun itself is not stationary but moving with reference to some star in the constellation Hercules, which is itself in motion with reference to the star stream of the Milky Way. It is this case of the moving observer or point of reference with which Einstein's theory deals, and it is therefore clear that this theory faces the problem of motion as it actually exists in the universe.
ii CONCEPTS OF SPACE AND TIME 27
The impression of rest or stationariness to us as observers in the universe is a mere illusion, and the great service of Einstein was to explore this illusion and to show in exact mathematical form to what extent it affects our vision and judgment of movement in the world. Let us therefore take the case of moving observers. Now when a moving object (say a train in motion) is viewed by an observer in motion (say an observer in a motor-car moving on a road parallel to the train), certain curious results have been worked out by Fitzge-rald and Lorentz, of which the following are two important samples:
(A) The train appears a little shorter than it would to a stationary observer.
(B) The time taken by the train to pass a point appears a little longer (or the train appears to move somewhat more slowly) than it would to a stationary observer.
In other words,to a moving observer the length or the space occupied by a moving body is smaller in the direction of its motion than it would appear to a stationary observer; and similarly the time taken by the observed body to pass a point will be longer. And the faster the observer or observed body moves, the more the space and time of the observed body will vary for him, compared to what they would do if he were at rest. These two variations of space and time are joint variations, happening simultaneously but in an opposite direction, the one becoming less in proportion as the other becomes more to the moving observer. Space contracts and time expands in inverse propor-tions according to the rate of motion of a moving body of reference or a moving observer. One may generalise this result and say that so long as several observers move at different rates but uniformly and in straight lines with regard to each other, the velocity or speed of the moving body which they are observing follows the same law for all of them, as the proportional covariations of their respective spaces and times cancel each other out, so to say.
28 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
This is a popular way of stating the main principle of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity > first published in 1905, in rigorous mathematical form. It explained the fact, which had been repeatedly confirmed by the most accurate experiments of Michelson and Morley, that the velocity of light is always the same, whatever the velocity of its source, and however great may be the difference in velocities of the moving observers who are trying to measure it.
An observer moving away from a flash of light at a rate which is half that of light will see the flash at the same time as a statio-nary observer,and not later as one might suppose. The reason is that the time and space measures of the moving observer have changed jointly so as to neutralise the results which his motion might have on his observation. For all bodies or observers moving at ordinary terrestrial rates the change is so small as to be negligible, and it is only when one or both of them move at a rate approaching that of light that the apparent contraction and expansion become important and have to be considered in actual calculations.
The two salient facts to bear in mind as a result of the above is: that to moving observers clocks and standards of measurement in mo-tion are no longer absolute but vary according to the rates of mo-tion of these observers or of the clocks or standards,and that there is this curious joint and opposite variation of the space and time measures of moving observers or bodies. In fact separately Space and Time must be mere abstractions, as in all actual movements they are always found in inseparable conjoint action.
From this co-variation of Space and Time it is but a step to Minkow-ski's great idea, first formulated in 1908, that in natural events Space and Time are not independent factors, and that in the mathema-tical representation of events the correct way is to introduce time as a fourth dimension, not of space, but of the Space-Time continuum in which events really take place.
ii CONCEPTS OF SPACE AND TIME 29
Time is, of course, in many ways unlike space and is not another di-mension of it, but this inseparable co-variation in all events which happen in nature makes it both feasible and proper that we should substitute the real Space-Time continuum of events for the old ab-stract three-dimensional space of bodies or points in space. In pas-sing it may here be pointed out that the old notion of the separate reality of space and of time involved both the errors of analysis and of abstraction to which attention was drawn in the last chapter, and Minkowski's brilliant idea has simply brought us back to the na-tural fact as it occurs in experience, where nothing ever happens in space alone or in time alone, but always in both together, and where objects are not observed by themselves, but always as elements or items in the stream of perceived events.
Nay more, it can be easily shown that the very ideas of Space and Time interpenetrate each other and are dependent on each other. Succession or the timeseries, and co-existence or the space-series, are necessary to each other and would not be even intelligible apart from each other. For the succession (time) would perish at each step and would not even form a series, unless it had enduringness or co-existence (space). And similarly the co-existence (space) would stop at its first step and would not be spread out or extended unless it had also succession (time).
To Einstein this concept of a Space-Time continuum proved most wel-come and fruitful,and he proceeded to apply it to the explanation of all movements in the universe, not only to uniform and rectilinear motions which take place in uniform Euclidean space, but also to rotating and accelerated motions which take place in a gravitational field of a non-Euclidean character.
His first step was to illustrate, by purely theoretical considera-tions, the fact that a body under the influence of a constant force, and therefore moving with a constantly increasing acceleration, would to an observer situated on it behave in exactly the same way as a body acted on by gravitation. Thus suppose a man enclosed in a cage so that he cannot observe any other body and cannot notice his own motion. And suppose this cage suspended in distant space where there is no gravitation.
30 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
And suppose further that this cage is drawn upward with a constant force, so that it moves faster and faster with a constantly increa-sing acceleration.In truth the case is therefore one of acceleration . But by the enclosed observer this motion and acceleration of the cage and himself will not be noticed. He would only feel like being pulled down by his own weight. If he loses any object from his hand, it will fall to the bottom of the cage like a stone dropped on the earth. What is more, the rate at which the object drops is the same, whatever its figure or size or amount of material. The fact italici-sed is distinctive of gravitation.In other words,the man in the cage will think that he and the cage and the object therein are all acted upon by gravitation. What is really due to acceleration appears to be a case purely and simply of gravitation. Thus we see acceleration and gravitation are really the same phenomena and only different in appearance to observers.
Acceleration and gravitation are, in fact, equivalent expressions. Einstein's closed cage may yet become as historic as Newton's falling apple.
Now take rotation, which is simply a special case of acceleration. And let us imagine an observer situated on a rotating or revolving plane circular disc and proceeding to measure the area of the disc and the rate at which it is revolving. He has two identical clocks, one of which he puts near the centre of the disc and the other near the circumference in order to take some time measurements. When he proceeds to take the time of the clock near the centre he finds that it moves faster than when he proceeds to read the clock placed near the circumference. We have already seen why this is so. The motion of the disc at the centre is nil,and its motion at the circumference quite marked,and the times of identical clocks near these two points will therefore vary to the observer. And similarly the rate of any identical clock will vary according to the distance of its position on the surface of the disc from the centre, as the motions of all points on the disc will differ according to their distance from the centre, where the motion is slower.
ii CONCEPTS OF SPACE AND TIME 31
He then proceeds to apply identical measuring rods and finds the same continual variation. He finds that the identical measuring rods vary in length according to their position on the disc; one placed on the circumference is shorter than one placed near the centre.
And the differing lengths of the rods will measure up different spa-ces. The observer will become utterly confused,and will finally con-clude that the spaces on the disc are not the same everywhere and in all directions, but appear to vary in all directions and to be twis-ted, warped and curved. Or, as we would say, the space of the disc is not straight-line homogeneous uniform Euclidean space, but curved and non-Euclidean. Taking the variations of the spaces and times on the rotating disc together, we conclude that the disc is not a Euclidean space but a non-Euclidean Space-Time continuum.
As we have seen that the phenomena of acceleration (including rota-tion) and gravitation are equivalent, these considerations in refe-rence to the rotating disc apply also to every gravitational body.
We know that gravitation acts at a distance from the centre of the gravitational body;in fact every such body is surrounded by a gravi-tational field far larger than itself. Therefore the non-Euclidean characters will also distinguish the Space-Time continuum in this field.In other words,movements and happenings in this field will not follow the law of a uniform time and a homogeneous identical space in all directions.
They will take place in curves, exactly as on our rotating disc. A body falling in space through such a field will on entering it and while in it follow,not a straight path,but the curve which coincides most closely with its original straight path; a ray of light passing through the field will similarly follow the nearest curve instead of a straight line.
And indeed any physical event within that field will, in so far as it is of a translational character, follow the curve on which it happens to take place.
These deductions from theory have been experimentally verified in the most important particulars.
32 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
According to this theory the mysterious "attractive" power of matter , which is called gravitation, assumes quite a different character. The apparent attraction is simply the curved or bent paths due to the movements in the universe of masses charged with energy, which (except as pushes and pulls on our bodies) we ourselves do not particularly notice as we happen to partake of the same movements as the observed phenomena. This, however, does not make of gravitation an unreality, due to the subjective vagaries of the observer.
Gravitation, as we have seen, now becomes the curves of the real Space-Time world;it marks the inevitable paths which all events must follow in the physical universe. So far from being subjective or merely relative to the observer, gravitation becomes the very struc-ture of the real world and connotes the stratification which charac-terises the vast fields of the Space-Time continuum. Our whole conception of the universe is altered. Instead of conceiving the universe as consisting of material bodies floating in a medium of uniform homogeneous space, we now look upon the vast variable masses of "matter" associated with high-speed energies as developing huge "fields" called Space-Time, in which the curves of the lines can be calculated and the course of events happening in them can be predic-ted.For events follow the curves and their future course can be cal-culated,once their position on the curves is determined. The physics of Nature thus becomes in part an annex of the geometry of Space-Time, and a new power is placed in the hands of man, limited only by the limitations of his mathematical insight and genius. The distance between mind and matter is immeasurably reduced, and matter appears to become plastic to the moulding power of mind.
The concept of the "field" becomes all-important in science and in thought. The "field" of matter is simply the curved structure of the real Space-Time, which extends far beyond sensible matter itself. Throughout its vast "fields" the universe assumes a form not very much unlike the curved contours and unevennesses which we associate with the physical appearance of this globe.
[i CONCEPTS OF SPACE AND TIME 33
The contours of the unseen universe of our field which surrounds us follow very much the lines which meet our eye on sea and land. But these lines are not mere empty form. They are not mere curves of beauty; they are real and causal, for they determine the course of events in the universe. The peripheries of rotating bodies are such curves, the planets move round the suns in such curves;light is pro-pagated along such curves; in fact these curves are the pathways of the physical universe which all physical events must follow. The in-most nature of the universe is active Energy or Action and involves the interplay of tremendous activities, whose result is expressed in these curves;and these curves are nothing but the actual orientation or direction of events in the Space-Time framework of the universe.
What is or would be the situation beyond the material universe and its vast fields ? There we pass beyond the bounds of gravitation, where there is neither rotation nor acceleration, where "bodies" (if such astral abstractions could be imagined)persist in their state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line according to Newton's First Law. There Space-Time, if it could be imagined to exist, would not be warped or curved,but would be homogeneous and continuous, and would be exactly the form of empty nothingness. In fact, homogeneous Euclidean Space-Time beyond all real fields is simply a limiting conception of thought and would correspond to nothing that we have any knowledge of in our universe, in which the great masses of matter everywhere produce curved fields.
It may be interesting, in conclusion, to point out the difference between this conception of Space-Time in the Relativity Theory and the conceptions of Space and Time formulated by Newton and Kant. For Newton both Space and Time were absolutes; that is to say, were real invariable permanent entities or characters of things and events. They were each homogeneous and continuous and therefore adequately expressible by the geometry of Euclid. There was nothing subjective about them.
34 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
For Kant,who in other respects profoundly admired the Newtonian sys-tem,the great problem of knowledge was how to determine the relative contributions made to our knowledge of the world by the subjective and objective factors respectively, and especially how much and what the mind brought into the common pool of knowledge and experience. His answer in effect was that the action of the mind was creative in experience and that it contributed to our knowledge
(a) the elements of Space and Time which are nothing but the mind's own sensuous forms of intuition or perception imposed on the materials of sense and experience, and
(b) the general conceptual system of knowledge which follows from the categories of the Understanding, and
(c) certain ultimate regulative principles of the human Reason. Ac-cording to this view, therefore, Space and Time are nothing but the necessary forms of man's sensuous perception ; they do not exist in external reality,but are imposed by the mind on all objects of sense . While accepting the homogeneous universal Euclidean characters which Newton ascribed to Space and Time, Kant denied that they were real entities or characters of things or events. If these characters belonged to things, Kant failed to understand how the a priori syn-thetic character of mathematical knowledge was possible,and he could only explain this fact by making the sensuous form of things a sub-jective contribution of the mind itself.According to him the univer-sal forms of Space and Time in experience were due,not to the things or the world to which they seemed to belong, but purely and simply to the perceiving mind which invested all things or events with them .
In contradistinction to both these theories, Space and Time in the theory of Relativity as conjoint co-ordinate forms belong both to the mind and to things;and the whole effort of Einstein was to sepa-rate the subjective appearance from the objective reality, to sepa-rate the relative, variable and disturbing contribution made by the observing mind from the real permanent Space-Time factor which is inherent in the physical universe.
ii CONCEPTS OF SPACE AND TIME 35
If the confirmation of theory by facts means anything it must be ad-mitted that Einstein has been singularly successful in his analysis and evaluation of these two subjective and objective aspects of the Space-Time concept. That Space and Time were not, on the one hand, merely subjective conditions of experience as Kant held, nor, on the other, merely objectively given elements for experience as Newton held, but that they were both subjective and objective contributions to experience,might have been the discovery of a sound psychology or epistemology. But that these two factors of Space and Time have been fused into one synthesis, from which both the subjective and objec-tive elements have been properly sorted out and isolated and valued and rigorously determined, is an achievement of the most outstanding importance not only for science but also for philosophy. It is unne-cessary to point out that in the Theory of Relativity Space and Time are not metaphysical conceptions or forms. The infinite homogeneous Space and Time which to Kant were mental presuppositions and precon-ditions of all sensuous experience, and to Leibniz the pre-establi-shed permanent universal order of co-existence and succession among things, are to Einstein mere limiting pseudo-concepts, metaphysical abstractions without relation to our real experience. In our expe-rience Space and Time are given elements just as colour, weight and the rest. The task of science is to co-ordinate these elements in an intelligible form, and in doing so Einstein has simply explored them as if they were real physical experience likethe rest. The result is the elimination of certain historic errors from the concepts of Space and Time, and the determination of their physical qualities in line with the rest of our physical experience and concepts. The Space-Time continuum,instead of being a vague, homogeneous, formless , metaphysical concept, becomes a part of physical reality, becomes the "field" of the material world, with a definite structure of its own. Structure, real differentiated structure, becomes the inmost form of the real Space-Time world. The close bearing of this on the main argument of this work will appear from the following chapters.
CHAPTER III
THE REFORMED CONCEPT OF MATTER
Summary. Coming now from the Space Time continuum to Matter we find the feature of structure much more conspicuous and important. The physical and chemical constitution of matter is almost entirely a matter of structure. Chemistry has traced matter to its ultimate units or atoms, and to the combination of these into molecules and substances according to structural schemes dependent on the placing and spacing of the different units in the various chemical combina-tions. The New Physics has carried the process a step further back by analysing atoms into their constituent electrons and protons, or units of negative and positive electricity.
These units are so arranged structurally as to approximate to the form of more or less complicated solar systems,with central positive nuclei and revolving planetary electrons.The explanation of the physical and chemical properties of matter has been traced to the structural arrangements in these atomic systems and the number and changes in position of their various units. Matter is thus a struc-ture of energy units revolving with immense velocities in Space-Time, and the various elements arise from the number and arrangement of the units in an atom; as these can be varied, the transmutation of elements becomes possible, as in Radioactivity.
The peculiar serial character of the Periodic Table of the elements is thus due to the number of units and their architecture in the atoms.
Atomic Weights and Atomic Numbers reflect this inner arithmetical character of the atoms.
The states of matter, as gaseous, liquid or solid, are also the re-sults of the residual surface forces in atoms and molecules, due to their inner structure. Crystal structure is another result of inner atomic structure. But perhaps the most remarkable state of matter is a combination of the other states; this is called the colloid state, in which very minute particles of one material are dispersed throughout another. This colloid state is much more universal than is commonly thought, and is specially important because the proto-plasm of cells is organised in this state.The minuteness of the dis-persed particles means the exposure of a maximum surface area compa-red to their mass. These surfaces bring into play the surface forces and show peculiar affinities or selective properties of various kinds, and in this way certain chemical and physical reactions are facilitated at these surfaces, which make them useful in the industries as well as in the processes of organic life.
CHAP, in REFORMED CONCEPT OF MATTER 37
In fact, some reactions in the colloid state approximate strangely to the biological type.
From the above analysis of the structural energetic constitution of matter certain conclusions can be drawn which very much narrow the gulf between matter and life.
In the first place, the old view of matter as inert and passive dis-appears completely. Matter like life is intensely active, indeed is Action in the technical physical sense;the difference is not between deadness and activity, but between two different kinds of activity.
Through their common activities the fields of matter and life thus overlap and intermingle, and absolute separation disappears.
In the second place, Radioactivity in matter plays a somewhat analo-gous role to Organic Descent in life.Both render fluid the old fixed entities and forms ; although the difference between them must not be minimised. Especially must it be recognised that Radioactivity is regressive,while Organic Descent is progressive. But this may be due to the extreme age of matter as compared with the youth of life in the history of the earth.
In the third place, the Periodic Table of Chemistry has a distinct resemblance to the Systems of Botany and Zoology;the concepts of fa-milies, genera and species could be applied to both. This shows that the characters of activity, plasticity and probably of development and genetic relationships apply to both the organic and inorganic domains.
In the fourth place, the structural character of matter indicates that it is also creative, not of its own stuff,but of the forms, ar-rangements and patterns which constitute all its value in the physi-cal sphere. Just as life and mind are creative of values through the selective combinations and forms which they bring about, so matter also, instead of being dispersive, diffusive, and structureless, effects through its inner activities and forces structural groupings and combinations which are valuable, not merely to humans, but in the order of the universe. But for its dynamic structural creative character matter could not have been the mother of the universe.
In the fifth place,matter in its colloid state in protoplasm disclo-ses properties and manufactures substances, such as chlorophyll and haemoglobin,which are necessary for the functions of life, and which go far toward bridging the great gap between the two. In its colloid state we thus see matter reaching up to the very threshold of life.
A great leap may have taken place across what remained as a gap.
A great "mutation" may have occurred. But as life probably began on a much lower level than the lowest forms we know today, the mutation may after all not have been so great.In any case a close scrutiny of the nature of matter, as revealed by the New Physics, and especially colloid chemistry, brings it very near to the concept of life.
38 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
LET us now proceed to consider how recent advances in our knowledge of the constitution of matter have emphasised the importance of this same feature of structure in the physical universe.Chemistry had for a century been exploring with great success the structure and cons-titution of matter, but the New Physics of Radioactivity has during the last twenty years proved a most powerful aid to Chemistry and led to discoveries which are little short of revolutionary. To Che-mistry was due the analysis of matter into a certain number of ele-ments, each with its own physical and chemicalproperties; the disco-very of the atom as the ultimate unit of each element of matter; the union of atoms of each element into simple molecules of that element ,and the union of atoms of various elements into compound molecules.
The combinations of elements in definite quantitative proportions was explained as the union of one or more of the atoms of these elements with each other.From this it might be inferred that the combinations of Chemistry were like the combinations of Arithmetic, and that the whole numbers of Arithmetic might properly represent the atoms of Chemistry and their combinations into compounds. This inference has, however, only been actually verified by the recent physical discoveries.
It was not only the fact of numerical or quantitative structure that was important to Chemistry; the spatial or positional structure of matter,the order of placing and spacing of the atoms in the chemical substance,the architecture of matter became almost equally important , and in many cases the properties of a substance could only be explained on the basis of its real or supposed inner structure and configuration. Thus molecules of carbon could be either coal or gra-phite or diamond, and this great dissimilarity in the same chemical substance was explained as the result of the difference of structure in the placing and spacing of the atoms in the carbon molecule.
Sulphur and many other elements show a similar polymorphous or, as it is called, allotropic character. It was, however, when chemists had to explain the different characters of quite distinct chemical compounds, which yet had the same chemical composition, that the importance of "structure" and constitution became most highly accentuated.
in REFORMED CONCEPT OF MATTER 39
Such compounds are called isomers. So important is structure to matter that without it one may safely say that organic chemistry becomes unintelligible. The more complex the composition of substan-ces (as in organic chemistry), the larger the number of permutations and combinations that are possible in the relative positions and placings of atoms or groups of atoms in the make-up of matter, the more important does the phenomenon of isomerism become,and the greater is the part played by structure and configuration in the building up of matter.
The chemical formula is no longer sufficient, it is a mere abstract notational shorthand which may be thoroughly misleading in the absence of a diagrammatic representation of the constitution or structure of the compound substance.
The crystal forms of solids illustrate not only the structural cha-racter of chemical substances, but also the invariable way in which the same substance follows the same pattern of structure.To Chemist-ry structure, or the proper representation of relative positions of atoms or their groups in the three dimensions of space, has become indispensable. And the New Physics has now gone a step further and shown that this minute structure of the chemical atom and compound is not static in space, but dynamic and intensely active in that Space-Time continuum which we have already found dominant in the relations of astronomical bodies and events. Space-Time prevails at both ends of physical infinity and everywhere between.
To Chemistry the atom was a hard indivisible unit, the constitution of which (if there was any) could not be known; nor could it explain chemical affinity or why atoms combined into molecules; nor could it explain the strange serial character of the Periodic Law in reference to the atomic weights and the properties of atoms. These triumphs were reserved for the New Physics, and they have traced structure back into the innermost recesses of the atom.
40 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
The discovery of Radioactivity by Becquerel in 1896 at Paris was the first indication that the atom was not indivisible and could break up spontaneously in nature.The discovery in the previous year of the X-rays by Rontgen for the first time revealed the existence of invi-sible rays whose wave-length was as small as atoms, and the elabora-tion of the spectrum of these rays has provided an instrument of in-credible power and accuracy in the investigation of the almost infi-nitesimally small phenomena of atomic structure. Then followed in 1897 the isolation by Sir J.J. Thomson of the ultimate unit of nega-tive electricity in the electron; and in 1900 Max Planck of Berlin University discovered what came to be known as the quantum, the unit of radiant action emitted by all radiant bodies or even dark bodies.
The application of these new ideas and means of investigation by a number of brilliant researchers has led to the elucidation of the nature and constitution of the atom of matter in the theory which is specially associated with the names of Sir Ernest Rutherford and Professor Niels Bohr.Without entering into details which do not con-cern us,and simply to illustrate the element of " structure " in the atom with which we are dealing, I shall summarise the salient points in this theory. According to it, an atom is an electrical constella-tion somewhat like our gravitational solar system; the centre of the system being a minute very massive nucleus positively electrified, round which revolve equally minute electrons or negative particles of very small mass so small that in the Hydrogen atom, for instance, the nucleus has 1835 times the mass of the electron. The electrons revolve at various rates in their different orbits, all of which can be measured through their X-ray spectrum;and an electron can sudden-ly and all atonce jump from one orbit to another,increasing its or-bit when it receives one or more quanta of radiation from some out-side body, or decreasing its orbit and taking one nearer the central nucleus, and in the act of doing so releasing one or more quanta of radiation. It is these quanta of radiation, released when the elect-ron jumps to a narrower orbit in the atom,that account for the light which comes from the sun and the stars, and in fact all radiant bo-dies;and it is the definite quanta of radiation so emitted which ac-count for the peculiar spectrum of the elements in the spectroscope .
41 in REFORMED CONCEPT OF MATTER
Why atomic light should be emitted in these definite amounts or quanta is not yet known, but it is known that the quanta follow a scale somewhat similar to the notes in music, and we may therefore think of light as the music of the spheres,in which the total harmo-ny or light effect is made up of definite discontinuous notes in-stead of continuous variations of light. The wonderful thing is that in regard to all these matters we have the most minute and accurate knowledge: the amount of a quantum; the mass, velocity and orbits of an electron; the mass and velocity of rotation of a nucleus, and the total sphere of an atom,with its small nucleus and electrons and vast empty spaces,comparable to the empty spaces in our solar system . The electron is by now very well known, and indeed all electric currents are nothing but streams of free electrons. But of the cor-responding positive unit which is called a proton next to nothing is known, as the proton has never yet been isolated. Now the nucleus of an atom may be simple or complex; it may be a proton, as in the case of the Hydrogen atom,or it may consist of several protons, some of which, again, may be neutralised by closely associated electrons, and some remain unneutralised, so that the nucleus as a whole always remains positively electrified. In the Hydrogen atom there is one proton in the nucleus, and hence there is one electron revolving round it. In the Helium atom, again, there is a nucleus of four pro-tons, two of which have electrons in association with them, and two not ; the nucleus, therefore, has two positive units, to which cor-respond two electrons which revolve round the nucleus in the atom.
The combination of four protons and two electrons in the Helium nuc- leus appears to persist in other nuclei, so that the nuclei of the other elements appear to be a combination of simple (Hydrogen) and complex (Helium) nuclei.
42 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
The number of revolving electrons in an element always corresponds to the number of unsatisfied positive units in the nucleus, which is called the atomic number of the element, and which isalways an inte-ger; and thus the atomic numbers of the elements run from 1 in the case of Hydrogen to 2 in the case of Helium,6 in the case of Carbon, and so on to 92 in the case of Uranium, the heaviest of all the known elements. Of these 92 possible elements, very few have not yet been isolated, although their atomic numbers and weights and positions in the Periodic Table and their approximate properties are known. 1 Atomic weights are in every case integers, the apparent exceptions being cases where we have to do with isotopes or elements of which the atoms are not all identically the same but slightly different in their electron contents. Thus the New Physics has incidentally explained the mystery of the Periodic Table.
The mystery of the atom has now largely narrowed down to the nucleus , which consists of an inner revolving system of protons of which comparatively little is known except that they rotate round their centre with an enormous velocity probably not much less than that of light and that the quantum law as well as the mass law of Relativity holds with regard to them.As space or volume contracts with velocity in Space-Time,the mass of the nucleus increases with high speeds out of all proportion to its size, and the positive nucleus of the atom is therefore its virtual mass, the rest of the atom being either empty space or very light insubstantial electrons. Owing to its mas-siveness the nucleus of protons is therefore coming to be identified with matter, as if matter were ultimately only high-speed densely massed positive electricity. The proton may thus yet prove to be the fundamental unit of matter. The significance of this view is that it reduces matter simply to a form of energy, or rather Action, and therefore still further simplifies the scheme of the universe.
There is another fact which shows the intimate relation between energy on the one hand and structure or mass on the other. The mass or atomic weight of the free Hydrogen 1 If the claims to the recent discoveries of Hafnium, Masurium and Rhenium are allowed, only at most a couple of further elements await discovery in atom has been determined as 1-77.
REFORMED CONCEPT OF MATTER 43
In the Helium nucleus, as we have seen, there are four protons or Hydrogen nuclei, but here their mass only appears as one. In other words,the free Hydrogen atoms or protons (they are practically identical as regards mass) suffer a diminution of mass when they are concentrated into the Helium nucleus,as if in this nucleus, which is itself an inner constellation system, the protons and electrons are so close as to jam each other,and therefore move more slowly and thereby decrease their mass or matter. When the Helium nucleus is again split up into Hydrogen protons, this loss of mass would be re-coverable in the form of energy, which, small as it is in the Helium nucleus, must be enormous in the world, as in all matter the nuclei are composed either of Hydrogen protons or Helium protons (their compressed form) or both.Should this energy ever become economically available, the greatest potential source of energy in the universe will be opened up for the benefit of mankind.
This would involve the artificial breaking up of matter, and this is the phenomenon which we actually witness in a natural spontaneous form in Radioactivity. In Radioactivity the nuclei of the heavier elements (Uranium, Thorium, and Radium) spontaneously break up and eject Helium at an invariably slow rate, which is regular enough to be a geological clock, now being used as a measure to calculate the age of the oldest rock-formations of the earth. 1 Thus the Periodic Table shows that the expulsion of three Helium atoms from Uranium will convert it through Thorium into Radium; the expulsion of one more Helium atom will convert Radium into an element called Radium Emanation; and so on until eight Helium atoms have been expelled, when Lead will be reached. If the process of expulsion could be continued, Mercury will next be reached, and next after that Gold.
The alchemists were then not so far out when they guessed 1 The age of these oldest formations, the Algonkian mountains of Canada, has thus been calculated as approximately 1400 million years.
44 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
Thus on this basis we obtain the lowest limit for the age of the earth that Mercury could be transmuted into gold ! Unfortunately (or rather I should say fortunately as a citizen of the greatest gold-producing country) this spontaneous break-up of matter has not yet been observed to proceed beyond lead. And the artificial break-up of matter in the laboratory has only just begun in the experiments of Sir Ernest Rutherford,who by bombarding Nitrogen gas with a partic-les from Radium C has succeeded in splitting the Nitrogen atom into Hydrogen atoms and a residual apparent combination of Helium nuclei which might result in Carbon according to the Periodic Table, but which is more likely to split up into Helium atoms. To what extent this artificial destruction of the elements is possible,and whether, if possible, it would be economically feasible, are questions for the future to answer.
We have seen that the positive charges of the nucleus have to be ba-lanced by the corresponding number of negative electrons grouped in their orbits round the nucleus. On the number and grouping of these planetary electrons the external physical and chemical properties of the atom will depend.
If the orbits followed impose a strain on the equilibrium of the atom, a quantum adjustment to a different orbit will be made. If the number of electrons and their orbit distributions produce complete equilibrium the atom will be very stable internally and inert or in-active external!} 7;it will belong to one of the inert group (Helium ,Argon,Neon, Krypton),On either side of this inert group of elements in the Periodic Table we find elements whose atoms have one electron too many or too few ; in other words, they are not internally in equilibrium and have a negative or positive charge unsatisfied; they will therefore combine with any other element which has an opposite charge unsatisfied. At another remove from the inert elements in the Periodic Table we find elements with two negative or positive char-ges unsatisfied, which will again combine with another element which has two opposite charges unsatisfied.And so on to the elements which have three, four or five charges unsatisfied.
in REFORMED CONCEPT OF MATTER 45
In this way both chemical affinity and the valency(monovalency, divalency, etc.) of the elements are accounted for. In every case the external properties of the element are simply the expression of its internal structure and its condition of stable or unstable equilibrium in respect of its inner elements.
Not only the combination of atoms into molecules, but the formation of the most complex compounds rests on this condition of unstable equilibrium due to unsatisfied negative or positive charges in the combining elements. The compound, instead of being a single system of the solar type, is a far more complex affair, and represents the case where suns with their attendant planets again revolve round a greater central sun, or where several solar systems are linked toge-ther externally and not by a common centre. In either case the dis-tribution and equilibrium of the moving internal electric units de-termine the structure of the substance as matter as well as its phy- sical and chemical properties, while the movements of the substance as a whole and of its parts relatively to each other create the gra-vitational field or curved Space-Time system which forms the medium and the field of the substance. There is thus structure through and through,not only in matter or the energies which in their extreme concentration and velocity assume the massive form of matter, but also in the field which surrounds this matter.
The gaseous, liquid and solid forms of matter are also the result of this inner condition of electrical stability in the atom and mole-cule. If the positive and negative charges are quite equal and pro-perly distributed the result, as we have seen, is an inert element. And this element will also be a gas, as the inner satisfaction of the charges and balance of the system will make it inactive or inert externally. All gases are states of matter where the inner balance of equilibrium in the atoms and the molecules is such that there is no residual force to work externally; the atoms (in inert elements) and molecules (in others) therefore move freely and unhampered. If the inner balance of charges is not quite complete, there will be some external residual force as between the molecules, and the liquid state will result.
46 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
If this inner satisfaction is lessened still further, the resultant external strain among the molecules will increase, they will attract each other still more strongly and tend to closer aggregation, and thus the solid form will appear. The negative or positive electrical condition of the gas, liquid or solid will be an index of the still unsatisfied charges residing in the substance in that state.The free and unhampered movement of atoms in an inert gaseous element and of molecules in other gases makes the question of the particular forms of such elements or gases immaterial; they have as gases no particu-lar form. In the case of liquids, however, the resultant residual forces of the atoms and molecules will, as is the case in electrical bodies, act mostly at the surface, where the resulting force between the molecules of the surface layer, or the surface tension, as it is called, will give a particular form or shape to the liquid (as in a drop of water).
The molecules inside a liquid appear to be stratified into layers loosely superimposed on each other. And in the case of solids the still larger residual force will result in arranging the molecules in a definite crystal structure on the pattern of a lattice,which is the special and specific form of solid chemical substances. Crystal structure is to solid compounds what the planetary structure is to the atom not only a specific ordering of inner units, but the index and source of all external properties and activities. One of the most interesting recent discoveries is that in crystals there is a unit body or minute structure consisting of two or more molecules which is of atomic or radicle character in that it always acts as a unit in the upbuilding of the crystal.
Besides the gaseous,liquid,and solid phases of matter just discussed there is a fourth,to which in recent years an ever-increasing amount of attention has been and is being devoted.
This is the colloid state, in which one substance is dispersed throughout another in very minute particles which are yet larger than molecules. Originally substances were divided into colloids and non-colloids ; but more recently it has been shown that non-colloids (like mineral salts) can under certain conditions be reduced to the colloid state.
in REFORMED CONCEPT OF MATTER 47
And now this division has been abandoned, and the colloid state is recognised as a fourth form of material aggregation applying to sub- stances generally under certain conditions.Much of the earth and the air exists in the colloid state ; but the colloid state is specially important because it seems to be distinctive of all life-forms the protoplasm of all organic cells being organised in the colloid state . The protoplasm of the cells contains solid substances in most mi-nute form dispersed throughout its jelly-like fluid,and this colloid state seems to link the inorganic with the organic elements in the cell.
Owing to their minute size,particles in the colloid state expose the maximum surface area in comparison with their mass; and the colloid state in consequence brings into action the play of surface energies more than any other phase of matter. In all forms of aggregation the surface molecules of matter are specially orientated; the active sides of the molecules being turned inwards, and the outer surface thus consisting of the weak ends of these molecules.This orientation affects the surface tensions, chemical behaviour and energies of the surface molecules; and as colloids expose a maximum of such surfaces they show properties which are of a distinctive character. Thus at these surfaces loose unstable combinations with other special sub-stances are easily formed,and colloids appear in consequence to have a peculiar and almost mysterious selective action for other substances.
The phenomenon is called "adsorption"; the selected substances being adsorbed at the colloid surfaces. Colloids are thus used in many in-dustrial processes to separate other substances from each other, to remove impurities, and in other ways to act as a selective separator of mixed substances. They also act as catalysts; that is to say, at their surfaces chemical actions take place and combinations are effected which otherwise would not be brought about.
The colloid surface is apparently a special field of force or influence in which other chemical or physical reactions besides selective adsorption are facilitated.
48 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
The enzymes, for instance, in the protoplasm of the cell are complex chemical substances in very minute colloid form, with the surface molecules or radicles specially orientated so as to facilitate in a most marvellous way the chemical and physical processes which are necessary for the organic activities of life.
But enzymes are very particular in their action, and each particular process has its own particular enzyme to bring it about.Thus enzymes transform the sugar or sugar-like contents of certain plants into alcohol ; but each species of plant has its own enzyme, which will only operate on the material of that species. Similarly chlorophyll is probably a complex chemical compound probably in colloidal dis-persion in the protoplasm of leaf cells and other green cells, and its colloidal surfaces are "fields" in which the energy of sunlight can synthesise the carbon dioxide of the air into organic compounds which ultimately take the form of sugar,starch and cellulose. No la-boratory has ever been able to make sunlight perform this wonder; l but the colloidal surface "field" of chlorophyll can do it, and in that way provide for the sustenance of all organic life on this globe.
The marvellous behaviour of matter at its surfaces in the colloid state, and especially its mysterious "selective power,has raised the hope that here the bridge may yet be found between the inorganic and the organic.Thus Dr.E.F.Armstrong says:"Enough has been said to show how the conception of an orientated active structure at the surface of a colloid aggregate might endow it with selective power of so fine a nature as almost to merit the description of intelligence; the further prosecution of research on these lines may well serve to bridge the gap between us and the full understanding of vital activity/ 1 2
It has been usual to distinguish "physical from "chemical" combina-tion. The New Physics has, however, made it clear that there are two types of chemical change,involving two types of chemical combination and structure.
The one type, which prevails among the salts, acids,and bases of in-organic chemistry, is a much looser, less rigid combination or union than the other, which prevails among 1 See, however, p. 70 below. 1 Chemistry in trie Twentieth Century, p. 17. the carbon compounds of organic chemistry.
in REFORMED CONCEPT OF MATTER 49
Thus common salt, which is a combination of sodium and chlorine, is now understood to be a more or less loose aggregation of free posi-tive sodium atoms or ions held in equilibrium by an equal number of free negative chlorine atoms or ions; the equilibrium being fairly stable, without any actual union of the atoms such as was assumed by orthodox chemists.
In organic compounds,however,the linkage of the constituent atoms is real, and the compound is not a system of free ions in equilibrium, but a real combination or fixed structure of the atoms concerned. Organic compounds thus display an advance in respect of chemical structure in substances.
While in inorganic salts and similar substances the looser arrange-ment of the atoms or ions approximates to the type of "physical" combination, in organic substances, on the other hand, the chemical union is more thorough and intense, and leads to a closer structural character,linked together by common electrons. In this connection it is important to remember that organic compounds are the mechanisms of life: we may therefore say that as we approach life we witness a more intense element of structure in chemical compounds.
Life may have arisen in at least it now uses as its mechanisms chemical substances of a subtler structure than that which characterises inorganic compounds.
In connection with the explanation of the structure of the atom given above the question arises whether the structure of the atom is really as above indicated, or whether we have merely to do with a hypothesis to explain certain facts.
The question is important, because it raises one instance of the ge-neral method of scientific explanation. Science deals with sensible phenomena and tries to co-ordinate them in accordance with known physical laws, and in doing so has often to interpret the sensible phenomena in a particular way in order to effect the necessary intelligible co-ordination.
Thus, in the case of the atom, its existence as a fact is no longer disputed, but its structure on the model of a planetary system is no more than an inference from well-grounded sensible phenomena; and we cannot, therefore, say for certain that the above is the actual structure of the atom.
50 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
The sensible phenomena are quite different from the inferred struc-ture,but they are quite definite,and have been most mminutely measu-red or calculated. The electron and the nucleus have not been obser-ved, but certain light effects, which they accurately express, have been observed,and from these effects their mass and other properties have been calculated. The sensible phenomena actually observed in-clude light effects, which are explained on the hypothesis of their transmission in particular wave-lengths; these explanations accord with the observed effects, and again form the basis of the supposed velocities, rotations and orbits of the electrons and nuclei, which are not directly observed but calculated with extraordinary minuteness and accuracy on the basis of the observed light effects.
Similarly the light from the atom comes in definite observed quanti-ties, which it has hitherto only been possible to interpret intelli-gently as sudden changes in the orbits of the rotating electrons. The observed phenomena are light effects of various definite quali-ties and quantities; the rest is theory or hypothesis,in which the elements of quality and quantity in the sensible phenomena are so minutely analysed and translated into elements of time and space as to result in the structure of the atom above given. And this hypo-thetical structure is then tested by all the phenomena which call for explanation, and it is only finally accepted when it affords a complete explanation of them all.
The electrons, the nucleus, the revolutions of the electrons round the nucleus, the sudden leaps of the electrons from one orbit to the other: these are not observed realities or sensible phenomena, but they all rest on a basis of sensible light effects, which have been most meticulously determined and tested by reference to other obser-ved phenomena.They are therefore not sensible realities but scienti-fic realities. They are not directly observed, but deduced from ob-servations.
They are the reflection, so to say, of the sensible phenomena in the human mind with its particular conceptual equipment. And if they are not the actual forms of nature,they are so close to them and measure and represent them so completely, that for us humans they are accep-ted as true and correct, that is, in experimental accord with the deliverances of our senses.
in REFORMED CONCEPT OF MATTER 51
Thus the apparently unrelated and unintelligible data of sense in a particular case are by hypothesis construed into the structure of the atom; and the atoms with all their inner units and arrangements become the conceptual or scientific entities which correspond to, reproduce, and represent the data of sense. In other words, the con-ceptual or scientific order arises on the basis of the sensible ob-served order, and as long as the two are in complete accord we ac-cept them both together as the explanation of Nature. While thus according complete respect to both orders, we should always bear in mind that the sensible order is the governing factor to which the conceptual order has to conform.As long as it does so conform we ac-cept it, not as sensible reality, but as an accurate measure and ex-pression and completion of sensible reality. The hypothetical struc-ture of the atom reproduces and expresses the observed facts; with-out such structure the observed facts are unintelligible and inex-plicable. We therefore accept the structure as a true and accurate explanation of the observed facts, even though it has not been di-rectly observed as a structure. But the structure is really no more than a hypothesis, to be discarded as soon as it comes into conflict with new facts.
I conclude this chapter with a few general reflections on the nature of matter which will serve to emphasise and interpret the results of the foregoing discussion.
As indicated in the first chapter,the object of this work is to make a modest contribution towards the reform of the fundamental concepts of matter, life and mind,to assist in bridging the apparently impas-sable gaps between them and to interpret them in such a way as to present them as successive more or less continuous forms and phases of one great process, or as related progressive elements in one to-tal coherent reality. In pursuance of that general object my aim in this chapter is to pave the way for a reform of the concept of mat-ter,to break down the old concept of matter as something inert, pas-sive, barren, dead, as something with absolute contours and nothing beyond, as something presenting an impassable barrier to the kingdoms of life and mind beyond.
52 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
This cannot be done by general philosophical reflections on the nature of matter as an object of thought,nor by launching a general invective against it,but only by a careful consideration of the con-cept of matter by the light of all the available physical knowledge. This must be my excuse for having referred to the Relativity Theory and the New Physics at some length. Certain general results emerge from our discussion which have an important bearing on the concept of matter.
In the first place,the old concept of matter as dead, passive, inert is clearly inconsistent with the recent developments of physical science. The old contradictory notion of dead matter as the vehicle and carrier of life must disappear in the light of our new knowledge . The difference between matter and life is no longer measured by the distance between deadness or absolute passivity on the one hand, and activity on the other a distance so great as to constitute an impassable gulf in thought. The difference between them is merely a difference in the character of their activities. So far from matter being pure inertia or passivity,it is in reality a mass of seething, palpitating energies and activities. Its very dead-weight simply means the push of inner activities. Its inertia, which is apparently its most distinctive quality and has been consecrated by Newton in his First Law, has received its death-blow at the hands of Einstein.
From the new point of view the inertia of matter is simply the re-sult of the movement of Nature's internal energies;its apparent pas-sivityis merely the other side of its real activity.Matter itself is nothing but concentrated structural energy, energy stereotyped into structure. As space contracts with velocity, so mass or the inertia of matter increases through that contraction, and both the mass of matter and its quality of inertia or passiveness are therefore mere variable dependent aspects of Nature's high-speed energies.From this point of view matter is but a form of energy, concentrated by its exceeding velocity,and structured to appear massive or substantial.
53 in REFORMED CONCEPT OF MATTER
The very nature of the physical universe is activity or Action. The Law of the Quantum rules all.
The repercussion of all this on the old concept of matter is deadly. Once the new point of view is thoroughly realised and assimilated into popular thought,the bugbear of matter will cease to trouble our peace. We shall no longer continue to stare at a hopeless irreconci-lable contradiction in experience. With the dissolution of the old traditional concept of matter the dead-weight of its utter passivity will disappear from men's minds,and one of the greatest partition walls in knowledge will fall down. The contacts with life may still be very difficult to establish. But at any rate the impassable gulf will have disappeared. With the contours of matter razed, its field will itself point the way for the transition to the kingdom of life beyond. For the fields of matter and life will overlap, intermingle, and interpenetrate each other, the fruitful contacts will be estab-lished, and the enriched and broadened concepts of matter and life will appear as what they are different phases in the evolution of an essential unity.The breakdown of the old concept of matter will have prepared the way for a great advance towards a new synthetic world-conception.
In the second place, another advance of the New Physics has perhaps even greater significance in effecting a rapprochement between mat-ter and life. I refer to the effect of Radioactivity in destroying the permanence of the natural elements,and in explaining the genesis of the elements from one another. Radioactivity has done a somewhat similar work for matter as Darwin's theory of Organic Descent did for life two generations ago. The fixity of the types of matter has followed the fixity of the types of life to the limbo of the obso-lete. Of course there are marked differences in the operation of Ra-dioactivity and Organic Descent.In one respect Radioactivity has not proved as powerful a factor as Organic Descent, for it holds out no promise of the creation of new species or elements beyond those already known.
The Periodic Table does indeed indicate the vacant places for one or two more guests yet to arrive.
54 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
But the numberof elements is definitely and narrowly limited, and we have no reason to look forward to any large increase beyond those already known. In another important respect Radioactivity differs from Organic Descent. Organic Descent professes to show how new and future species arise through variation and selection from those already existing. Radioactivity operates in the opposite direction and indicates how by elimination of certain unit constituents from a complex element there may be established a regress to another simp-ler known element. In the time-series Organic Descent professes to move forward, while the process of Radioactivity appears to be back-ward, or to retrace evolutionary steps taken in the past. In still another respect Radioactivity appears to be even more effective than Organic Descent, for it exhibits before our eyes the process of the transmutation of elements, while it is not yet definitely establi-shed that any natural species has yet been raised in the laboratory or will ever be raised in any period of time short of geological periods. In a final respect there is a striking similarity between the two factors in that they both appear to proceed by definite substantial increments or decrements in effecting transmutations.
Radioactivity expels definite numbers of Helium nuclei as steps in the transmutation of elements.According to De Vries and others the process of advance from old to new species or varieties is by way of definite marked mutations,and not by the slow summation of minute discontinuous variations. And the present day Geneticists emphasise this similarity still more by identifying all organic variations with differences of chromosomes or genes in the nuclei of varying or mutating species.
The above differences in the operation of the two factors of Radio-activity and Organic Descent arise partly no doubt from inherent differences between matter and life, but also partly from other possible differences in their circumstances of a less fundamental character. Thus life is a mere child on this globe and is yet in the heyday of its growth and increase.
As yet it recognises no limit or barrier in its first flush of youth.
55 in REFORMED CONCEPT OF MATTER
It spends with a lavish prodigality, which is in striking contrast to the frugality and conservatism of matter, for which the laws of Conservation and of Least Action have become the last word of wisdom and the unbroken rule of action. But then matter is old, old as the beginning, so old that its wrinkles are the fundamental curves of the Space-Time universe. Life has only just begun, since the yester-day of Eozoic times, in the upbuilding of its new forms and types, and in this task it can proceed for millions of years to come.
Matter, on the contrary, had completed its active race probably more than a thousand million years before life began. It had built up slowly and laboriously in nebular and solar heat,and amid conditions beyond the possibility of our knowledge or imagination,the elements from their simplest to their most complex forms,and from these again substances and compounds in rising complexity until at last proto-plasm was reached. And in the favouring bosom of protoplasm life could be nurtured from its simple chemical beginnings and launched on its great career, most of which is still before it. The work of matter is done ; in the great Space-Time curve it is now regressing from the more complex to the simpler types or elements, just as in organic Evolution we see a tendency for the most highly evolved and differentiated types to hark back for stability to simpler and stronger types. Radioactivity is doing today what Organic Descent (when it will indeed have become a descent) will do in the fullness of its time, when Life's spirit of adventure will have abated, and its aim will be safety andconservation rather than progress.
When all allowance has been made for the differences in character and operation of Radioactivity and Organic Descent, there still re-mains a striking and unmistakable similarity between them. And bet-ween the Periodic Table of Chemistry on the one hand and Systematic Botany and Zoology on the other there remains something very much like a family resemblance. The concepts of orders,genera and species could be applied to both ; and in both cases there is a fluidity and plasticity of types which proves that,although they are in different kingdoms, yet they are in the same world of forms and geneses.
56 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
One rises from a study of the Periodic Table and the New Physics with the feeling that matter can quite justifiably claim some dis-tant relationship with life, and that life need not be quite ashamed of the rock whence she was hewn.
The intimate character of structure which the material universe and its field disclose justifies another general observation as bearing on the concept of matter. We have already seen that, properly under-stood,the ideas of activity,plasticity and development apply to mat-ter in a sense not entirely dissimilar to that in which they apply to life.I am going to make a more daring suggestion and to indicate that in another even more important respect matter approximates to life. The structure of matter indicates that matter is also in a sense creative creative,that is to say, not of its own stuff, but of the forms, arrangements and patterns which constitute all its value in the physical sphere. It is creative in a sense analogous to that in which we call life or mind creative of values. Remember that ac-cording to the new point of view we have not to judge of matter from the outside and as indifferent external spectators.We have to iden-tify ourselves with the point of view of matter,so to speak. We have humbly to get into that closed cage;we have to take our post on that plane circular rotating disc. 1
We have to interpret matter from the inside, from a point of view which is that of matter and not remote from and indifferent to it. And from that intimate angle matter is seen to create its structures and patterns and values very much as life or mind does on another much higher plane. Hithertonthe idea of creativeness has been confi-ned to the organic and mental aspects of the universe. Those who have called the universe creative have implicitly referred to the activity of life and mind in creating new arrangements, meanings and values. It has not been suggested that, from another point of view, the physical universe is also creative.The principles of the conser-vation of matter and energy have effectively barred any such idea.
1 See pp. 30-31.
57 in REFORMED CONCEPT OF MATTER
Novelty,originativeness and creativeness are quite inconsistent with the ordinary point of view and the popular ideas of matter as well as the more rigid mechanistic conceptions of science.
Nobody, however, could have followed the above exposition of the structural character of matter without beginning to appreciate that in its evolution or creation of the forms, structures and types which characterise it from beginning to end, matter or the physical element in the universe is in a sense as truly creative as is orga-nism or mind, The "values" of matter or the physical universe arise purely from these structures and forms. If the stuff of matter or energy or action were not definitely structural but diffuse throughout space, the entropy of the universe would be absolute, and its value for this cosmos from all points of view would be nil. The efficiency, utility and beauty, in short the values of matter, arise from the structures which are the outcome and the expression of its own inherent activities.
In a very real sense the idea of value applies as truly and effecti-vely in the domain of the physical as in that of the biological or the psychical. In both cases value is a quality of the forms and combinations which are brought about. Whether they are structures resulting from the activities of matter, or works of art or genius resulting from the activities of the mind, makes no real difference to the application of the ideas of creativeness and value in either case. Once we get rid of the notion of the world as consisting of dead matter,into which activity has been introduced from some exter-nal or alien source;once we come to look upon matter not only as ac-tive, but as self-active,as active with its own activities,as indeed nothing else but Action, our whole conception of the physical order is revolutionised, and the great barriers between the physical and the organic begin to shrink and to shrivel.Organism has by its inner activities and the influences of the environment evolved its own forms and types, and this great life-process is still going on before our eyes. As I have already suggested, a similar evolution of material structures and elemental types may have gone on during the practically infinite period of past time.
58 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
And it may even be that,although new elements will no more be evol-ved,derived structures are still being created under suitable condi-tions. It is interesting to note, for instance, that under novel la-boratory conditions new substances are continually being syntheti-cally produced.The whole romance of the Aniline dyes is a tribute to the still active "creativeness" of matter under the proper external conditions.
These considerations,in so far as they have any force,must influence our concept of matter and tend towards reducing the utter heteroge-neity which marks our traditional concepts of matter and life. Of course a great difference remains between these two concepts, bet-ween the chemical compound on the one side and the organic cell on the other.
It would be futile to attempt to argue away this difference. It is and remains great, but its character has been fundamentally trans-formed. We may put the conclusion of our discussion in this way. In organic Evolution we come across mutations not absolute breaks with the past, but sudden long steps of advance on the past, where one species or variety leaps forward from and in advance of another.
In the advance from matter to life there is a leap forward, not as between species,but as between kingdoms. And we may conclude by say-ing that,instead of the old impassable gulf between matter and life, between the chemical compound and the cell, we have found on closer scrutiny only a mutation the greatest mutation of all undoubtedly in the whole range of science, but essentially nothing more than a mutation.
They present the faint lineaments of a family resemblance, and as science advances and our philosophy looks more deeply, the resemblance will become clearer and more unmistakable.
Lastly, we have seen that matter in its colloidal state discloses properties and shows a behaviour which seem in some way to antici-pate the processes and activities of life in its most primitive forms. In any case it begins to lay the basis of those physical and chemical reactions which are specially required for vital activities .
59 in REFORMED CONCEPT OF MATTER
It shows a certain power of selectiveness, which may be related to chemical affinity, but which seems to have a farther reach and to partake of the character of life.It begins to manufacture substances , such as chlorophyll and haemoglobin, which are the special mecha-nisms of life, and without which life as we know it could not be.
These substances are the links which connect material structure with the life structures which are to follow in the course of Evolution. They are themselves inorganic chemical substances, but they are the special instruments and the very basis of life, so to say. At their colloidal surfaces the energies of Nature are utilised to convert the inorganic material of Nature into the most complex organic sub-stances required for the sustenance of life; and the conversion is brought about by processes which, however simple and direct appa-rently, have hitherto defied all attempts at imitation in our most highly equipped laboratories.We therefore see matter in this colloi-dal state reaching up to the very threshold of life, so to speak. A gap remains; a great leap may have taken place across it. But beyond a doubt some forms of matter in their colloidal state are fairly close to life in their properties.And it may even be that life began with much more primitive forms and structures than any of which we have knowledge today.
Thus the gap may not have been so wide nor the leap so great as would appear to us today.
CHAPTER IV
THE CELL AND THE ORGANISM
Summary. The cell is the second fundamental structure of the uni-verse. It is possible that both before and after the origin of atoms and cells, as well as in between, other structures arose in the course of cosmic Evolution. If so,they have passed away,and we have now only these two permanent survivals which we can scrutinise for clues as to the basic character of the universe.
In the study of animate nature Evolution or Organic Descent has till recently attracted most attention.But more recently the study of the structure and functions of the cell has come rapidly to the front and now probably forms the principal centre of interest in Biology.
That all plants and animals consist of cells; that cells contain certain peculiar bodies called nuclei ; that all higher organisms arise from cell-fusions in which the nuclei play a prominent part all these facts have been discovered only in comparatively recent years; and our knowledge of cells is therefore stil in its earliest stage. But Cytology is now, with much-improved methods and applian-ces, making rapid strides, and great discoveries are confidently looked forward to.
Besides the nucleus the cell consists principally of a rapidly circulating jelly-like fluid, enclosed in a more or less well-marked wall or membrane of a permeable character; and the fluid contains numerous exceedingly complex chemical compounds in solution or in the colloid state.The structure of a cell is therefore most complex , and in fact comparatively little is yet definitely known about it. Its functions are even more mysterious, for they include practically all the activities which we see in developed organisms birth, growth , breathing, feeding, digestion,self-healing,reproduction and death.
Its most distinctive function is metabolism, which means that it thoroughly alters and transforms all food materials before assimila-ting them; and all its apparently physical activities are of this transformative metabolic character instead of being simple mechani-cal operations. It appears to form complex chemical compounds, cal-led enzymes,which in their colloid state enable these distinctive radical transformations to be effected. The apparently simple physi-cal processes such as osmosis, etc. in the cell are really much more complicated, as they are effected through enzyme action, which is a physico-chemical mechanism distinctive of organisms.
60
61 CHAP, iv THE CELL AND THE ORGANISM
The laboratory attempts to repeat organic processes throw, therefore , little light on the exact nature of these processes.
The origin of the cell is the origin of life and is still a pro-found mystery. However, the reproduction of cells seems to admit us to the inner secrets of life, and the cell-divisions which precede cell-fusions in reproduction have an extraordinary semblance to electrical situations, and seem somehow to connect the electrical structure of the atom with a possible electrical origin of the cell. It is now,however,impossible to follow up this clear semblance fur-ther,as the original electrical processes (if any) have probably be-come overlaid with other developments which have transformed them.
Judging from the action of sunlight in the growth of plants it is not improbable that the cell of life arose when the sun was both warmer and richer in chemically active rays, and when the waters of the earth still contained many substances in solution and colloid dispersal.The adhesion of cells to each other would account for the origin and development of multi-cellular organisms;and the divisions of cells, which we now see in growth and reproduction, may have arisen originally from the breakdown of cells or groups which had become too complex to be stable.
The reproduction of plants and animals, including the preparatory reduction division of the sexual cells, follows largely the same plan;and it is therefore probable that this wonderful organic mecha-nism was evolved before the bifurcation of life into the plant and animal forms took place, and thus dates back to the early beginnings of life on this globe. The plant type arose from its dependence for food on air and earth, which was consistent with fixed positions; while animals, needing organic foods, required mobility, and in con-sequence developed a motor system, with a nervous system to work it, and ultimately a brain to co-ordinate and control it.
The cell differs from the atom or molecule in its far greater com-plexity of structure and function,in the differentiation and specia-lisation of its parts and organs,and in the system of co-operation among all its parts which make them function for the whole. This co-operative system exists not only in the single cell but among the multitudinous cells of organisms. The system of organic regulation and co-ordination among an indefinitely large number of parts which makes all the parts function together for certain purposes is a great advance on the system of physical equilibrium in atoms and compounds, and is yet quite distinct from the control which, at a later stage of Evolution, Mind comes to exercise in animals and humans.
Mind as we know it should therefore not be ascribed to the cell or the lower organisms ; but organic regulation seems on that lower level to be even more effective than Mind is at a later stage.
62 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
This organic regulation and synthesis of functions is seen not only in all the ordinary functions of organisms, but more especially in their capacity for self-restoration in case of mutilation. In such phenomena there seems to be something more in actual operation than merely the parts; the parts appear to play a common part and to carry out some common purpose or to act for the common well-being.
They seem to respond to some central pressure. There seems to be a central regulator. We have seen a factor in matter making for struc-ture; we now see a factor in organism making for central regulation and co-ordination of all parts. We are evidently in the presence of some inner factor in Evolution which requires identification and description. That will be attempted in the next chapter.
THE atom and the cell are the two fundamental structures in the universe that we at present know of the atom being the unit of the world of matter, the cell the unit of the world of life. In the last chapter we considered the structure of the atom and showed how the external properties of the atom were the expression and resultant of its internal energies and their structural grouping inside the atom. We saw the atom as a little complex world of its own, underlying the outward properties as well as the field of that little world. We now pass on to consider the vastly more complicated little world of the cell and its field. In the science of life the two most significant conceptions are Evolution and the Cell,the one being the unit struc-ture and the other the general character and trend of the activi-ties or functions of life. Round the investigation and development of these two governing conceptions most of the progress and interest in biological science since the middle of the nineteenth century has centred; and the results hitherto obtained have been most important, and practically revolutionary for our entire world-conception.
And the end is by no means in sight yet. In the first chapter we saw that there were still deep-seated misunderstandings of the nature of Evolution, and that a proper appreciation of Evolution would mean a recasting not only of biological concepts but also, and above all, of our concept of matter. Let us now turn to the cell as the other and no doubt the real governing factor of the situation of life, and see what light it throws on the nature and concept of life.
63 iv THE CELL AND THE ORGANISM
A few introductory words in regard to the history of our knowledge of the cell may not be out of place here. It will be seen that ac-curate information even of what little we do know about the cell is of very recent date, and that we are only at the beginning of what may yet prove a great story.
In the second half of the seventeenth century Robert Hooke observed with the crude microscope then in use that cork and other vegetable substances had a vesicular appearance, and he called the apparent cavities "cells" 1 A few years later Grew and Malpighi independently observed in plant tissues these same cavities filled with fluid and surrounded with firm walls, as well as what appeared to them to be tubes likewise with walls and filled with fluid. Towards the end of the eighteenth century Treviranus showed that these tubes were cells placed in a row and elongated in the direction of the row and with the partitions between them lost. Then followed in 1831 Robert Brown's great discovery of the nucleus in the cell in plants, and in 1838 Schleiden's elucidation of the great part which the cell with its nucleus plays in the structure of plants, and shortly afterwards the application by Schwann of the new knowledge of the cell to the structure of animals also. Both Schleiden and Schwann attached great importance to the cell wall and looked upon the cells as having crystallised out of some mother substance.
The contents of the cells Schleiden called vaguely "vegetable slime" ;and it was not till about the middle of the nineteenth century that the great German biologist von Mohl correctly explained the contents of both vegetable and animal cells as nucleated masses of what he called " protoplasm," which was not a chemical crystallisation from other substances, but always came into being as the offspring or daughter cells from other pre-existing cells.Hence arose the formula : omnis cellula e cellula. This paved the way to the correct under-standing of sexual fertilisation as the union of two cells, the dis-covery of cell divisions,and the part played by the nucleus with its chromosomes in these divisions, and of the origin of embryos through repeated cell-divisions.
64 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
And finally a concentrated effort was made by many investigators in many countries to discover in cell-divisions and fusions, and espe-cially in the part played by the nucleus, the physical mechanism of heredity. During this century the re-discovery of Mendelism by De Vries and others, and the rise of the new science of Genetics, have led to redoubled efforts to find the explanation of the many pecu-liar phenomena of heredity in an analysis of the parts played by the nucleus and the other elements in the protoplasm of the cell, and at present experimental Cytology is being vigorously prosecuted with numerous improved methods and appliances.
Let us now consider the structure of the cell and the part it plays in organisms.I shall only summarise its most general and outstanding features,with a view to illustrating the considerations and specula-tions which will be advanced later. I am trying to find concepts for vital phenomena,which will be coherent not only with those phenomena but also with wider aspects of knowledge and reality, and a refe-rence to the scientific facts and results is therefore necessary. The time is past when a philosophy of life could be evolved without a knowledge of or reference to the scientific facts and view-points .
All plants and animals consist of cells, these cells being again usually composed of various chemical substances,some of which have a very complex constitution. The number of cells in an organism varies according to its size and complexity, some of the lowest, most pri-mitive organisms being unicellular or composed of comparatively few cells, while at the other end the higher plants and animals may con-tain untold millions of cells. The human brain alone is estimated to have about 9000 million cells! These cells again are of a most diverse character, the cells which build up the various parts and organs of the body being different from each other.
Thus the cells of the nerves and the bones and the muscles and indeed of all parts of the animal organism differ markedly from each other, and the number of the different kinds of cells that go to the making up of a body may be indefinitely large.
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All these almost innumerable cells of all kinds and degrees of dif-ferentiation and complexity are arranged in a table, orderly struc-ture in the plant or animal body;and his structure is not stationary but like its constituent cells in continual movement and development . The structural order which we have seen characterising the inorga-nic dement or compound is even more characteristic of the vastly more complex organic body with its continuous nobility and transformations.
A plant or an animal can be considered from the point of riew of its structure or its functions, that is to say, the ictivities performed by the structure as a whole or the parts if which it is composed.
Viewing it merely as a structure we see the same orderly combination and arrangement of Darts as in the inorganic body, only the consti-tuent parts and the structural arrangements are far more complex than in the inorganic body. In water, for instance, or any other: hemical compound, all molecules are more or less the same, and the body consists simply of a repetition of the fundanental molecule, and the structures in which the molecules are arranged are likewise of a repetitive character; while in inorganic body there may be an indefinite number and variety of cells, and the varieties of arran-gements and structures according to which these cells are combined in the several parts and organs of the body may also be indefinite in number.
But the difference between inorganic and organic bodies is not only in their structures,but even more in their functions, especially the functions of the organic cells, to which there is apparently nothing corresponding in thenorganic world. About these cells we at present know comparatively little,except that their functions and activities are the basis of the functions and activities of the organisms which they compose, all being co-ordinated into a single system of a new type called "life." In the march of Evolution from the inorganic to the organic the cell is the real innovation,to which nothing corres-ponding in the inorganic has yet been discovered. To use a metaphor, the cell is the point where matter or energy aroused itself from its slumbers and became active from within, with activities and functions which reveal its inner character and nature, so to say.
66 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
It is a new structure in which energy develops or acquires a new form of activity,becomes functional,becomes in some inexplicable way endowed with special characters of selectiveness and reproduction, of self-help and self-control,which constitute a unique departure in the universe.
Let us summarise briefly some of the points that are known of the structure and the functions of the cell; and as the plant cell is simpler than the animal cell let us take that as the type. It con-sists of chemically very complex substances called in the aggregate protoplasm,which is the physico-chemical basis of all forms of life. Comparatively little is known of its composition or chemical struc-ture. In the plant cell (less so in the animal cell) it secretes a containing wall or membrane for itself from which the cell derives its name.
Inside the wall the protoplasm appears as a jelly-like fluid and consists principally of a small nucleus,which contains certain chro-matin bodies of a rich protein character, and of a larger body of cytoplasm surrounding the nucleus and reticular in structure, that is to say, consisting of a network of spaces which contain various cell-saps and solutions and even minute particles of crystals and other inorganic bodies.
The whole constitutes a colloidal system, as we saw in the last chapter. The cell walls are semi-permeable, admitting of the osmosis through it of certain substances and not of others, so that suitable food and other substances can be passed through the cell walls from one cell to another. There is a constant circulation and agitation of the cell fluid, which gives it the appearance of a stream, and is much more than the usual promiscuous Brownian movement in inorganic colloidal mixtures. The movement of protoplasm, whether it is Brownian or something different, has much more of the character of definite specific direction; and this is probably only an expression of that selectiveness and directiveness which are inherent and universal characteristics of all life-forms.
iv THE CELL AND THE ORGANISM 67
Although little is definitely known of the details of cell-structure , the functions it performs are so many-sided, delicate and complex that one may safely say that the cellmust have an immensely complex organisation, and that the details of its constitution may never be fully known or even adequately pictured by the human mind. It repre-sents, at the one end of the scale of existence, a minute detailed complexity which is in some sense comparable to the wonders of the astronomical universe at the other end. And all this intricate and complex little system is maintained in a state of active, moving equilibrium;it is dynamic through and through and incessantly active in all its details, and its almost innumerable activities are finely adjusted to each other and co-ordinated into a harmonious process, which not only maintains its balanced functioning for its indivi-dual life, but increases and improves it in the duration of innume-rable generations. Looking at this baffling mystery of active, con-tinually changing and developing organisation, with its continuous delicate adjustments of innumerable moving parts into one co-ordina-ted forward movement, we find that ordinary physical categories of description fail us.We feel ourselves in the presence of an entirely new phenomenon, which we call life, and we may even feel tempted to go further and to say that the cell has not only life but also mind. To do so would, however, be going too far,as I shall explain later.
To appreciate the position more fully let us look at some of the functions of the cell. It is very difficult to realise it,and yet it is the fact, that the little microscopic or ultra-microscopic cell probably does all or most that the plant or animal is known to do.
It literally breathes or respires; it takes in, manipulates, digests and assimilates its food; it reproduces its kind; it grows, decays and dies; it heals itself when sick and restores itself when a brea-kage takes place.It develops special means and mechanisms to assist it in carrying out these operations,and it co-ordinates and regula-tes all its manifold activities in a way which implies some wonder-ful central control of all these functions. Let us look at these operations with a little more detail.
Unlike any other substance in nature, the protoplasm of the cell is vitally active and is in an incessant process of real creative change; parts are continually being destroyed and replaced by new protoplasm which is continually being formed.
68 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
No other substance has this power of making its own material, so to say. A crystal, for instance, builds itself up from its own material already existing in solution without any change being made in its constitution.The crystal serves merely as an attractive centre round which its material,already present in dissolved form,may be deposi-ted in solid form. With protoplasm the process of growth or renewal is quite different.The material taken in is entirely altered and re-combined into the substance of which the protoplasm is composed, and this material, so altered and transformed, is then by some yet un-known process taken up and assimilated into the protoplasm or living substance of the cell. This complete transformation and this myste-rious assimilation of its material is one of the most unique func-tions of the cell, and its far-reaching significance will later on be more particularly stressed.
The technical name for this complete transformation which the cell effects in the material it takes in is metabolism, and it may there-fore be said that metabolism is the process which above everything distinguishes living from non-living matter.
The cell is not a static or stationary organism; it is for ever be-ing built up by new material which it transforms into its substances , and it is for ever being broken down through the new cell substan-ces which it forms and gives off in order to build up the various parts of the complete plant or to supply the energy necessary for its functioning. And the activity by which the material is taken in in one form, then transformed and assimilated into the substance of the cell, and then again given off as different cell substances for the building up of the various parts of the plant or the energy sup-ply this activity,while apparently a series of chemical and physical processes, implies a co-ordinated system which is unlike anything seen in the purely physical or chemical domain.
The physical and chemical procedure seems to be merely the mecha-nisms or instrumentalities used by a deeper organic process, which means and does much more than the physical or chemical details which we can identify.
69 iv THE CELL AND THE ORGANISM
Not only is there control and organisation of these details, but the physico-chemical agencies themselves are of a new type.For instance ,oxygen and carbon dioxide appear to be taken in through the stomata of the leaves, but this is not merely a case of ordinary osmosis.
Again,liquid materials in the form of dissolved salts or other inor-ganic substances are taken in through the roots, but this also is not a case of ordinary physical osmosis.
Again, these liquids rise in the plant cells as if it were merely a case of surface tension or capillary action. But as a matter of fact these are all cases of metabolism in which subtle changes take place in the protoplasm, changes whose details are no doubt apparently all of a physico-chemical character, but whose distinctive character lies not in these details so much as in the new system of control in which they are organised and regulated. The theory which has been developed to account for the physico-chemical reactions which take place in all organic change and functioning is based on the assump-tion of very complex substances of the nature of ferments or enzymes being formed and acting in the protoplasm.It is,for instance through the agency of the enzymes in the protoplasm that all the secretions are formed which build up the different parts of the plant.
Thus also the transformation of the carbon dioxide in the green cells of the leaves into starch is not a chemical change of the ordinary type,but is effected in the presence of colloidal catalysts like chlorophyll and other enzymes, at whose surfaces sunlight can transform the carbon dioxide so as to form successively formaldehyde , dextrose, maltose, and finally soluble and insoluble starch. Mere physical and chemical reactions have been identified.But it is quite possible that there is much more, and that the organic process behind them is much more complicated and characteristic. Again, both respiration and metabolism are processes effected through enzyme action at colloid surfaces instead of being of the ordinary mechanical character.
yo HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP,
The enzymes are thus conceived as being catalytic agents existing in colloidal form in the cells and as having at their surfaces or in their "fields" the power of transforming other substances in the presence of the energy of sunlight or electricity. They do this ac-cording to the well-known chemical and physical laws, without them-selves being thereby used up or transformed. The cell has the power to build up or secrete these complex enzyme compounds; with the help of these, again, it manufactures other complex substances necessary for the plant or animal life. It carries on many other functions in addition to these manufacturing processes. Throughout it seems to follow simple physical and chemical rules but on a new plan.
All this will serve to emphasise how vastly complicated cell struc-tures and activities must be. A large number of the most complicated processes are carried on,scarcely one of which the best-equipped la-boratory in the world can perform,and all are carried on by a little cell which is microscopic or smaller in size!
During recent years resolute attempts have been made to repeat under artificial laboratory conditions what takes place in the living plants,and certain very interesting results have been obtained. Thus an attempt has been made by Professor Baly and others to imitate photo-synthesis in the laboratory. Light of a short wave-length from a mercury vapour lamp was made to act on water and carbon dioxide, and as a result formaldehyde was obtained and, as in the green leaf, oxygen was set free: CO2 + H2O = CH2 + O2.
Light with a somewhat longer wave-length was made to turn this formaldehyde into simple sugars. 1 However interesting and valuable these and similar results are, it is probable if not certain that they have only a distant resemblance to what takes place in the or-ganic process, where the physical factors of sunlight and electrical change acting in the field of colloid chlorophyll are quite diffe-rent,and the chemical results are brought about by mainly different processes.
1 It is claimed that sunlight has quite recently been successfully substituted for artificial light in these experiments.
iv THE CELL AND THE ORGANISM 71
From a scientific point of view, however, the laboratory work is of undoubted interest and importance, for the further it is prosecuted and the greater the success in the synthetic formation of organic substances, the easier it will become to differentiate clearly and unmistakably between the organic and the mechanical laboratory processes.
The origin of the cell is the origin of life, and we know nothing definite about it. But the question arises whether sufficient is not known about the cell and organic development to justify us in trying to form some general idea as to its possible origin.And here we find one set of phenomena which throws a special light on the nature and development of organisms and perhaps also on their origins.
The phenomena of reproduction seem to hold the very secret of life and, moreover, bring us close to the secret of matter. And this secret common to both, jealously guarded and preserved throughout the whole range of terrestrial evolution, shows a continuity unique in science,which brings together some of the apparently most diverse facts which confront us in the world of life.How well the secret has been guarded and kept and shielded from all outside influences is evidenced by the extraordinary fact that though plant and animal life must have diverged near the beginning of things, and must through many millions of years have been moving further apart in the history of this globe, yet the methods of reproduction in plants and animals are still very much alike.The romance of the reproduction of a flowering plant, which is one of the most wonderful in the world, is practically the same, down to many details,as that of the repro-duction of one of the higher animals. Going very far back, we find that it is very much the same in the simplest,most primitive alga as in the other members of the rising plant series the ferns,the cycads ,the conifers and the flowering plants.When we go still further back into the past and come to the case of unicellular organisms, which reproduce themselves not by cell-fusions but by cell-division, we come to the situation, or something very close to the situation, which must have arisen when matter first organised itself into life. For what do we see?
72 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
The cell when it proceeds to divide into two assumes the appearance of an electrical and polar system;its nuclear material arranges it-self in parallel bodies or chromosomes like an electrical or elect-ro-magnetic field;its centrosome (if any) splits up,as if under some unbearable electrical strain, just as is the case in Radioactivity, and two polar bodies are formed from it at opposite sides of the nucleus, from which lines of force proceed throughout the now disin-tegrating nucleus and cell; the nuclear bodies of the breaking-up cell divide themselves equally between the two polar bodies, and ag-gregate and concentrate towards them until finally the separation between the two systems is complete and the material of the nucleus and cell has split into two. The division of the cell into two cells is complete. It is apparent from this summary statement how the cell in division approximates to the character of the atom of matter described in the last chapter. Were they not in the beginning both electrical systems with their nuclei, their fields and their cata-clysmic behaviour? In the cell the original hypothetical electrical character of the division has become overlaid with and obscured by other factors so that the electrical character is no longer recogni-sable,except in the general appearance and scheme of division. But originally it possibly was electrical, as it still is in appearance.
Arguing back from the analogy of cell-division to the probable original rise of the cell from inorganic matter, we may imagine the building up of very complex organic or hydrocarbon compounds under favourable external conditions, in which the influence of sunlight and other forms of electrical energy played an important part, just as sunlight in the presence of chlorophyll still plays a foremost part in the production of new cells and organic substances in plant-life. We know that millions of years ago,when life arose, the sun was much hotter than it is today, and sunlight contained much more of the chemically active rays which facilitate organic changes.The peculiar electrical energy of the sun may therefore have played a decisive part in the origin of life. In other words, the part which electrical changes appear to play in the process of cell-division may be somewhat analogous to the part they probably played in the original rise of the cell.
iv THE CELL AND THE ORGANISM 73
The basic electrical structure of matter would thus be paralleled by the more complex electrical origin of the cell. Reproduction of the most primitive forms takes place in a fluid medium, and all proto-plasm still has a fluid jelly-like consistency. It is therefore pro-bable that the most primitive forms of protoplasm might have arisen under favourable conditions of sunlight and warmth when the warm water still contained much of the crust in solution or dispersed in small particles in colloidal form, and thus presented conditions fa-vourable for the selective formation of complex substances, such as the predecessors of the present forms of protoplasm. Recent advances in bio-chemistry have led to the isolation and discovery in the ani-mal body of very complex substances (such as glutathione) whose ex-ternal surfaces absorb free Oxygen and whose interior undergoes the opposite change of setting free this Oxygen and building up higher organic structures.
Thus a continual chemical process is set going which is at the same time an electrical current from without inwards, transmitting the electrical energy of sunlight contained in the Oxygen of the air to the interior cell substances, where the Oxygen is deprived of its energy and set free,and where with this energy complex compounds are built up which again store the energy required for the nutrition and other functions of the living organism. The chemical electrical system which forms the fundamental mechanism of life in the last re-sort simply uses the energy of sunlight,stored in the free Oxygen of the air, for building from it the body of life;and there is thus the closest connection between sunlight and life-structures.In that con-nection, without a doubt,the origin of life must be sought. The cell structure having once been evolved from pre-cell structure, probably by way of prolonged trial and error or "natural selection" extending over long periods of time, its multiplication or reproduction would take place through the part that electrical tension would play.
74 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
Thus the complex unstable electrical structure or organic substance, whose internal equilibrium would pass through various crises and changes in its "development" would finally tend to break up and under certain conditions proceed to divide.This original haphazard division would gradually become stabilised and standardised, so to speak,until cell-division becomes the regular basis not only of all growth but also of all reproductive processes in both plant and animal.
At first there could have been no essential difference between growth and reproduction of cells. By division one cell was formed from another, and might either remain in association with the old cell, as is the case in all multi-cellular organisms (growth), or it might separate from the old cell and develop on its own as an inde-pendent organism (reproduction). This simple division still remains the process of growth in all organisms without distinction, and it remains the process of reproduction in all unicellular and the lo-west forms of multicellular organisms. In less primitive,more deve-loped multicellular organisms the process of reproduction has, how-ever, become more complex, and has altered to the union or fusion of two specialised cells or gametes to form a new cell; and in such cases another scheme, involving a double set of divisions, has taken the place of the simple division. While one of these simply halves the total contents of the old cell as between the two new cells, the other or reduction division separates out the individual chromo-some elements in the contents so that each of the two new cells has half of these elements.This halving is necessary to prevent the con-tinual and cumulative doubling of cell elements in the repeated re-production of the same type of organism, and to keep the chromosome contents of cells of similar organisms constant. The two cells or gametes, thus reduced in all respects to half the original cells, then unite to form the new cell, which has once more the full com-plement of chromosome elements. This reduction division in reproduc-tion is common to both plants and animals above the most undeveloped types, and we therefore seem to have some justification for the most remarkable conclusion that this phase of reproduction must have de-veloped before the separation of plant and animal forms took place.
75 iv THE CELL AND THE ORGANISM
It forms also the basis for that alternation of generations which isone of the most remarkable of all the phenomena of life.
Thus all organisms which are reproduced through cell fusion have a generation in which the cells have the single or haploid contents (after the reduction division) and another in which the cells have the double or diploid contents (before the reduction division). In the higher forms of plants and animals the generation of the single-content cell, or the gametophyte generation as it is called, is re-duced to a very subordinate role and a short life, as it covers the short period of the gametes or conjugating cells (the ripe sperm-cells and ova) in flowering plants and in the more developed animals . The generation of the double-contents cell, or the sporophyte ge-neration as it is called, has become dominant and appears as the de-veloped plant or animal which we see in nature today. But in some divisions of plants the gametophyte generation is still of some pro-minence. Thus the moss plant is the gametophyte generation, the spo-rophyte generation appearing as a sub-ordinate parasitic form. And in the ferns, where the sporophyte is the dominant form, the gameto-phyte appears as a distinct plant which is in some cases a perennial . And its relation to the fern was unknown until about the middle of the nineteenth century.
This generation of the single-content or haploid cell, or the game-tophyte in the developed plants and animals of to-day, is interes-ting because it is probably only another illustration of the well-known principle that ontogeny repeats phylogeny,that is to say, that the history of the individual organism recapitulates in its earlier or embryonic stages of development the various phases of development through which its types of ancestors have evolved in the past. Thus the gametophyte generation is a reminder of that earlier, simpler, more primitive phase in plant evolution when the more complex sporo-phyte generation, which is dominant today, had not yet been evolved through cell fusion in reproduction.
76 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
Another interesting deduction has also been made. The gametophyte reproduces in a liquid medium, and in this and in other ways carries us back to the time when life on this globe was still more or less aquatic, and the later land forms of the sporophyte had not yet arisen. And it is even possible that the form of the present gameto-phyte may throw light on the particular descent of plant forms. Thus the gametophyte of the fern is a flat thallus-like plant which both in form and character reminds one of an alga. And it is quite possible that this form of the fern may give the clue of its origin from some alga-like progenitor in the far-distant past.
May we not say that the prothallus of the fern appears to connect the alga and the fern, and thus to bridge widely separated epochs of the past in the evolution of plant forms?
I suggest the idea merely for further investigation.
From speculations as to the origin of the cell we pass on to consi-der the differentiations which have taken place among cells general-ly, and the particular differentiation of cells which has led to the divergence between plant and animal forms. It is commonly thought that the animal forms are a later development and advance on the earlier plant forms. This idea is largely due to the fact that in the animal there has been the special development of the new factor of mind which,rapidly rising through the higher animals, has reached its highest level in the human race. But although animal forms may have developed farther and come to attain to much higher levels than the plant forms, the question of origins stands on a different footing.And the evidence points rather to a common origin and to the earliest cells of life having been common to both plants and animals .
Thus the lowest forms of cell life are even now practically indis-tinguishable into plant and animal.And it is probable that this com-mon phase,prior to differentiation into plant and animal forms,must have lasted a very long time and have been marked by considerable advances in the development of the common cells, especially in view of the probable fact, already noted, that sexual reproduction of a fairly advanced type had perhaps been reached before the bifurcation took place and plants and animals were launched on their separate careers.
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What advance in cell development had been reached before this bifur-cation it is impossible to say, as only the very lowest unicellular organisms of a common character still survive,and the geological re-cord has no evidence to give.Differentiation in cells must have com-menced as soon as the daughter cells began to adhere to the parent cell and multicellular organisms were formed.
In the unicellular Pleurococcus, which is about the simplest plant form known, noticed as the green slime on the damp bark of trees or wooden posts, we see the beginnings of this process of cell aggrega-tion,as daughter cells adhere to the parent cell until several divi-sions have taken place and only then separate into individual cells.
The Pleurococcus cell is globular, but during this attachment the cells are flattened at the surfaces of contact.In the multicellular organisms a layer of cuticle covers the outer cell walls in contact with the air and retards the loss of water.Step by step other diffe-rentiations appear, and the plant body becomes more complex as we advance from alga to fern, and from fern to the higher seed-bearing plants.The differentiations into various organs, such as the root, stem, leaf and reproductive organs, are simply means towards the division of physiological labour. Thus in cells away from the light photo-synthesis is impossible, and they become dependent on the outer green cells; similarly the roots underground become dependent for starch on the green cells and in return absorb dissolved salts for supply to the rest of the plant. The water requirements render necessary the fibro-vascular cell system, while the reproductive functions become confined to special organs.All this differentiation means more organisation and a more elaborate structure of the plant. In addition to this division of labour the struggle for existence tests the structure in other directions, and means more modification in response to the stress of the struggle and the stimulus of the environment generally.
78 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
As a result the plant structure comes to be elaborated and adapted to the inner and external demands upon it, and to assume the forms which are known to us.
Besides this general differentiation and organisation, there are special causes which have brought about the divergence of plant and animal forms. A consideration of these matters falls outside the scope of our task. Generally it may be said that plant-life has been determined and stereotyped through the two processes of photo-syn-thesis and osmosis, the second of which has enabled it to get water and mineral salts direct from the soil, and the first of which has enabled it by the help of chlorophyll to utilise the energy of sun-light for making sugars, starch and cellulose from the carbon dio-xide of the air. The plant, being thus dependent for its food solely on the soil and the air, could afford to remain stationary and most-ly fixed in the soil; while animal forms, which are dependent on or-ganic foods, have had to be mobile in order to look for and find the necessary plant or animal substances on which to live. The struggle for food has been a much harder one for animals, which have in con-sequence not only had to be mobile and develop a complex motor sys-tem,but also to evolve in the nervous system a special co-ordinating mechanism with which to work the motor system.This mechanism, again, has led to unique developments in the direction of sensitiveness and consciousness, which in the case of man have come to over-shadow all that has gone before. But mind is a later development,the discussion of which should not be raised in connection with the cell.The primi-tive cell of life is on the way to Mind,but Mind in any proper sense of the term is at this stage still far off, and those who ascribe Mind or even potential Mind to the cell open the door to the most serious confusions.The cell undoubtedly presents a great mystery. And there is a strong temptation to ascribe its surprising activi-ties to an inner mentality ororganic psychism. But even the most highly evolved human intelligence finds it difficult to understand all that goes on in the cell. If psychism is the key, we should have to ascribe to the cell so large a measure of mentality as to reduce the whole supposition of psychism to absurdity.
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The cell has not yet mind. Mind as we know it,or anything at all resembling it, is a much later development in the process of organic Evolution, as will be shown in Chapter IX.
Enough has been said about the structure and the functions of the cell to give a rough general idea of what the cell is.
Let us now pass on to consider the inter-relations of elements in the cell, and among cells in the same organism, and especially the aspect of co-ordination in and among cells.
In the first place I ask: Is the cell and are cells in an organism a co-operative system, in which the parts and their functions are so ordered and arranged that they co-operate for common purposes, and do not merely subserve the separate ends of the individual parts?
There could be no doubt as to the answer. The whole meaning and sig-nificance of Metabolism is that the activities of the cell are not self-centred or self-regarding. The cell functions for other cells and for the plant as a whole. One element in the cell functions for other elements and for the whole cell organism.The secretions formed in one cell are intended to build up other cells or to serve the plant as a whole. The fibro-vascular cells carry liquid food from one part of the plant to the other parts. The carbohydrates formed in the green cells are transmitted and stored as food for all the other cells; the woody substances secreted from them are meant to strengthen other cells and the plant as a whole against the forces of the environment; the aroma and bloom which are secreted from them are meant to render attractive and adorn other parts of the plant with a view to the preservation of the plant species as a whole.
Indeed, all the processes of Metabolism go to prove that the plant is one vast co-operative system,in which the individual cells in their continuous functions and labours make their contribution to the common cause, and work so that other cells or the plant itself or the species to which it belongs may live. The cell is a delicate problem not only of structure but also of inter-related functions, so co-adapted that a real whole is thereby constituted.
80 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
The cell in its normal structure and functions is the very type of co-operative action. So far I believe we are still on firm ground in our description of cell activities,and the co-operative character of organic functioning will be generally admitted.Can we go further and characterise this co-operation more closely? What is the nature of this cell or organic co-operation? Is it spontaneous or controlled?
And if controlled, is it controlled internally or externally? Let me repeat the question in another form. Are the cells and the organs which they form in the same plant or animal free and independent, so that the co-operation which we observe in their functioning is a mere accidental result of their individual uncontrolled reactions and behaviour? Or is there some co-ordinating factor which influen-ces the cells and their organs in some specific direction, and thus co-ordinates and unifies their functions and produces the co-opera-tion we observe? And if the cells are not independent agents in the make-up of the organism but are under some form of unifying influ-ence or control, is their apparent co-operation due to an external factor, like Natural Selection as commonly understood? Or is there some internal element of co-ordination,the influence of which is felt by the different cells, and in response to which they react, so that their functions proceed generally on the lines of a plan or pattern given by the nature of the particular organism? In either case there would be co-operation on the basis of co-ordination, but in the one case there would be an external, and in the other an internal, factor at work in this co-ordination. It will be seen that the issue here raised as between the cells inside the organism is analogous to that which Darwinism has raised as between separate organisms in their struggle for existence. The answer,so far as the struggle among organisms is concerned, will be discussed in Chapter VIII. And the results there reached will probably apply also to the case of the cell or the cells in an organism which is here raised. The subject is not free from controversy, and in this chapter I wish to avoid controversy and simply to describe the facts in the ordina-ry language of metaphor which I trust will not prove misleading.
81 iv THE CELL AND THE ORGANISM
And looking at the facts in an unprejudiced way,and without a bias in favour of any particular theory, one cannot help being struck by the way in which the cells in an organism not only co-operate, but co-operate in a specific direction towards the fulfilment and main-tenance of the type of the particular organism which they constitute . At this stage we have to steer clear of all ideas of plan, purpose or teleology in the organic procedure. But, even so,the impression is irresistible that cell activities are co-operative, that they are inherently or through selective development co-ordinated in a speci-fic direction,and that the impress of the whole which forms the or-ganism is clearly stamped on all the details.The case is utterly un-like that of physical forces, which are alike, which are repetitions of each other, and which can be added or subtracted or otherwise ex-pressed arithmetically. The cells are different, they are differen-tiated in definite respects, and the totality of differentiations fit into a plan or scheme, the fulfilment of which constitutes the complete organism.
There are no repetitions, there is uniqueness everywhere,and the various unique entities and their functions fit into each other more or less so as to produce an organic whole,unlike any other organism. And in some indefinable way this whole is not an artificial result of its parts ; it is itself an active factor like its parts, and it appears to be in definite relation with them, influenced by them and again influencing them, and through this continuous interaction of parts and whole maintaining the moving equilibrium of structure and functions which is the organism.
Look, for instance, at the way in which organisms behave when some cells or organs, necessary for their maintenance, are removed or in-jured. It is well known that many plants and animals have the power of restitution in case of damage or mutilation. The newt forms a new leg in the place of the severed limb.The plant supplies the place of the severed branch with another. The regeneration may be effected from different organs and by different organs.
82 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
Thus if the crystalline lens is removed from the eye of a Triton, the iris will regenerate a new lens, although the lens and the iris in this case have been evolved from quite different parts.
Numerous similar curious facts of restoration could be mentioned. The broken whole in organic nature restores itself or is restored by the undamaged parts.
The cells of the remaining parts set themselves the novel task of restoring the missing parts.The power to do this varies with va-rious plants or animals,and varies also with the different parts in the same plant or animal. Generally one may say that the more highly differentiated and specialised an organism or a cell is, the smaller is its plasticity, or the power of the remaining cells to restore the whole in case of injury or mutilation.
But the fact that the power exists in numerous cases is a proof that not only can the cells through reproduction build up the original organism according to its specific type, but also that when this type is damaged, the remaining cells or some of them can restore it, and recomplete the whole. The normal power of the cells to build up an organism in reproduction or cmbryological development according to type is one thing, and it is marvellous enough even though one looks upon it as merely a case of inherited routine. But the abnor-mal power to do this in the very unusual case,so far removed from all idea of routine, where the type is accidentally broken down is something different, and shows how effective is the power of the or-ganism as a whole, and how strong is the tendency towards the whole even in the individual cells. In some subtle way the damage creates a need, and the need stimulates the remaining parts to perform the functions of the damaged parts or to restore them in whole or in part.The very nature of the cells is to function as parts of a whole , and when the whole is broken down an unusual extra task automati-cally arises for them to restore the breach, and their dormant po-wers are aroused to action. And this happens, so far as we can see, simply as a matter of interior economy and domestic regulation in the organism itself and without previous education for the new role .
iv THE CELL AND THE ORGANISM 83
The interaction between the organism and its cells is indeed most subtle and intimate; both seem to be active factors in the mainte-nance of the whole and in the restoration of any parts that may be missing and necessary for the whole. So intimate is their interac-tion that it is almost impossible to saywhere the influence of the one ends and the other begins.
The aspect of co-ordination or subordination of parts to the whole is also most significantly illustrated by the phenomena of reproduc-tion which I have already referred to in another connection.
Reproduction not only carries us back to the past and its riddles, but also forward to the future,and it is the reproductive system of organisms that we must scan most closely if we wish to understand this aspect of organic activities. For in reproduction the cell or the organism clearly appears to go beyond itself, its functions be-come transcendent, as far as it is itself concerned; its blind stri-vings and energies embrace objects and situations beyond itself. In fact, in reproduction the cell or the organism bears clear testimony to the fact that it is not itself alone, and that it is part of a larger whole of lifemtowards the fulfilment of which its most funda-mental functions are directed.As an illustration of the co-ordinated inter-relations of parts and whole in organism,nothing can therefore be more significant and important than the facts of organic repro-duction. Here more than anywhere else the importance of the whole as an operative factor appears, not merely the immediate whole or indi-vidual organism, but also the transcendent whole or the type which has to be reproduced and maintained at all costs.
Throughout the entire range of organic nature one is impressed with the essential selflessness, the disregard of self, and the transcen-dence of self in the reproductive process, which harnesses the indi-vidual to the needs of the race, exhausts its reserves of strength, and often costs it its life.
On that process is stamped,as on the very heart of Nature, the prin-ciple of sacrifice,of the subordination of the part to the whole, of the individual to the race or type.
84 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
The preceding analysis will have enabled us to realise that the plant or the animal is a whole consisting of millions of parts in the form of cells of all kinds, while the cells again are smaller wholes of indefinite complexity and marvellous activities. All these parts are co-ordinated and arranged down to the most minute details, and function with the most complete collaboration in support of each other and the whole organism.The organism is indeed a little living world in which law and order reign, and in which every part colla-borates with every other part, and subserves the common purposes of the whole,as a rule with the most perfect regularity.It is this per-fect community of functions and unity of action in a system consis-ting of innumerable parts and the most complex structural arrange-ments that makes the organism such a striking type of a whole. We have seen structural order as the characteristic of inorganic matter ; we now see active co-operation and unity of action super-added as the characteristic of the organism. We admire the order and co-ope-ration of a beehive or a community of ants; in the organism we see a more perfect order and a more wonderful co-operation in a situation which is perhaps not much less complex than either. And just as the individual bee or ant lives its own life and is not lost in the joint venture of the hive or nest, so the individual cell lives its own life and specialises and perfects itself for its role in the organism which it helps to form and to serve without loss or sacri-fice of its own identity.The organism embraces innumerable smaller organic units whose identity is not swallowed up in it, is expressed and not suppressed by it. The large organism does not only mean the union and co-operative harmony of its smaller units, but also as a rule the more perfect individuation and specialised development of these units in the harmony of the whole.The plant or animal body is a social community, but a community which allows a substantial deve-lopment to its individual members. And its nature and structure are such that it can only perfect itself through the differentiation and development of the members which compose it. But while this is so, while (as we shall see more clearly in the sequel) individuation is fundamental in Nature, we have to recognise that intensive co-operation plays a no less important and fundamental part.
85 iv THE CELL AND THE ORGANISM
An organism is fundamentally a society in which innumerable members co-operate in mutual help in a spirit of the most effective disinterested service and loyalty to each other.
Co-operation and mutual help are written large on the face of Nature . Nay, more, if cell structure and function can teach us anything, they are imprinted deep on the nature of the universe, they are the very meaning and soul of Nature.We may travel far through the realms of Evolution, but nowhere shall we find a more perfect co-operation or a more beautiful illustration of mutual help of one part for another, and of all parts for the whole, as well as of the whole for all its parts, than in the little insignificant cell, which seems to hold the very secret of the universe.
Anticipating the language of later developments, we may say that in the cell there is implicit an ideal of harmonious co-operation, of unselfish mutual service, of loyalty and duty of each to all, such as in our later more highly evolved human associations we can only aspire to and strive for.
When there was achieved the marvellous and mysterious stable constellation of electrical units in the atom, a miracle was wrought which saved the world of matter from utter chaos and chance. But a far greater miracle was wrought when from the atomic and the molecu-lar order there was evolved a still deeper and subtler order in the inner co-operative harmony of the cell.These two fundamental struc-tures are the great abiding achievements in the course of Evolution, before the advent of Mind, and though many other experiments were probably made before and in between these successes, they proved un-stable and were discarded and abandoned, and are now searched for in vain. We have to scrutinise these abiding peaks of achievement if we wish to understand the real nature of the Evolutionary process, and if we wish to form an idea of the naturemof the ground in between these permanent structures which has been washed away in the endless lapse of time.
86 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP, iv
And when we find the two to be not utterly different but expressions of a somewhat similar inner progressive tendency of Nature, and when we find later, on the mental and spiritual levels of development, still clearer expressions of a similar tendency, we shall be justi-fied in concluding that we are face to face with something real and causal in the form of a natural operative factor of a fundamental and universal character. The impression becomes so strong that it is not so much a matter of speculation as a recognition of clear simple facts before us. The permanent structures in Nature have been and are still being patiently investigated for us by Science. As I said in the last chapter, they present more than a faint family resem-blance and enable us to recognise the unity which underlies them all and to draw certain conclusions as to the origin of this unity.
In their constitution, functions and development they point strongly in the direction of some inner natural factor in Evolution of which they are the expression. The evidence in favour of such a natural factor of a synthetic ordering character has been accumulating in this and the two preceding chapters;it requires isolation, identifi-cation and exact formulation, if that were possible. And in the next chapter a preliminary attempt at such an identification and formulation will be made.
CHAPTER V
GENERAL CONCEPT OF HOLISM
Summary. The close approach to each other of the concepts of matter, life and mind, and their partial overflow of each other's domain, raises the further question whether back of them there is not a fun-damental principle of which they are the progressive outcome. That is the central problem of this work.
Two conceptions of genesis or development have prevailed.The one re-gards all reality as given in form and substance at the beginning, either actually or implicitly, and the subsequent history as merely the unfolding, explication, evolutio, of this implicit content.
This view puts creation in the past and makes it predetermine the whole future ; all fresh initiative, novelty or creativeness is consequently banned from a universe so created or evolved. The other view posits a minimum of the given at the beginning, and makes the process of Evolution creative of reality. Evolution on this view is really creative and not merely explicative of what was given before ; it involves the creative rise not only of new forms or groupings, but even of new materials in the process of Evolution. This is the view of Evolution to-day commonly held,and it marks a revolution in thought. It releases the present and the future from the bondage of the past, and makes freedom an inherent character of the universe.
Creative Evolution involves both general principles or tendencies and particular forms or structures;philosophy studies the former , while science has more exclusively concentrated on the latter.
Yet both are necessary to reality; and any universal formula of Evolution must include both the general activity or tendency and the particular structures, as one cannot be deduced from the other.
Bergsonmade an attempt to deduce Evolution with all its multitudi-nous forms from homogeneous, pure, undifferentiated Duration.
This was, however, not possible,and he had to call in the practical spatialising Intellect to infect and fertilise Duration in order to make hei productive; he thus made the Intellect play a one-sided and , at the same time,excessive role in the shaping of the forms of the universe.
It would be a better procedure to take some natural unit or sample section of Nature for our starting-point,and thus to keep as close to her and her concreteness as possible.The last two chapters give us a clue where to look for a beginning.
88 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
Both matter and life consistof unit structures whose ordered grou-ping produces natural wholes which we call bodies or organisms. This character of "wholeness" meets us everywhere and points to something fundamental in the universe. Holism (from ti\os = whole) is the term here coined for this fundamental factor operative towards the crea-tion of wholes in the universe. Its character is both general and specific or concrete, and it satisfies our double requirement for a natural evolutionary starting-point.
Wholes are not mere artificial constructions of thought; they actu-ally exist; they point to something real in the universe, and Holism is a real operative factor, a vera causa. There is behind Evolution no mere vague creative impulse or Elan vital, but something quite definite and specific in its operation, and thus productive of the real concrete character of cosmic Evolution.
The idea of wholes and wholeness should therefore not be confined to the biological domain;it covers both inorganic substances and mental structures as well as the highest manifestations of the human spirit .Taking a plant or an animal as a type of a whole,we notice the fun-damental holistic characters as a unity of parts which is so close and intense as to be more than the sum of its parts; which not only gives a particular conformation or structure to the parts, but so relates and determines them in their synthesis that their functions are altered;the synthesis affects and determines the parts, so that they function towards the "whole"; and the whole and the parts, therefore reciprocally influence and determine each other, and appear more or less to merge their individual characters:the whole is in the parts and the parts are in the whole, and this synthesis of whole and parts is reflected in the holistic character of the functions of the parts as well as of the whole.
There is a progressive grading of this holistic synthesis in Nature , so that we pass from
(a) mere physical mixtures, where the structure is almost negligible , and the parts largely preserve their separate characters and activities or functions, to
(b) chemical compounds,where the structure is more synthetic and the activities and functions are strongly influenced by the new struc-ture and can only with difficulty be traced to the individual parts; and, again, to
(c) organisms, where a still more intense synthesis of elements has been effected, which impresses the parts or organs far more intima-tely with a unified character, and a system of regulation and co-ordination, and finally of central control of all the parts and organs arises; and from organism, again, on to
(d) Minds or psychical organs, where the Central Control acquires consciousness and freedom and a creative power of the most far-reaching character;and finally to
(e) Personality, which is the highest, most evolved whole among the structures of theuniverse, and becomes a new orientative, originative centre of reality.
v GENERAL CONCEPT OF HOLISM 89
All through this progressive series the character of wholeness dee-pens; Holism is not only creative but self-creative, and its final structures are far more holistic than its initial structures. Natu-ral wholes are always composed of parts; in fact the whole is not something additional to the parts, but is just the parts in their synthesis, which may be physico-chemical or organic or psychical or personal.
As Holism is a process of creative synthesis, the resulting wholes are not static but dynamic, evolutionary, creative. Hence Evolution has an ever-deepening inward spiritual holistic character; and the wholes of Evolution and the evolutionary process itself can only be understood in reference to this fundamental character of wholeness.
This is a universe of whole-making. The explanation of Nature can therefore not be purely mechanical; and the mechanistic concept of Nature has its place and justification only in the wider setting of Holism.In its organic application,in particular,the "whole" will be found a much more useful term in science than "life" and will render the prevailing mechanistic interpretation largely unnecessary.
A natural whole has its "field," and the concept of fields will be found most important in this connection also. Just as a "thing" is really a synthesised ''event'' in the system of Relativity, so an organism is really a unified, synthesised section of history, which includes not only its present but much of its past and even some of its future. An organism can only be explained by reference to its past and its future as well as its present; the central structure is not sufficient and literally has not enough in it to go round in the way of explanation; the conception of the field therefore becomes necessary and will be found fruitful in biology and psychology no less than in physics.
IN this chapter we approach the central problem of our inquiry. In the preceding chapters we have seen the concept of matter coming closer to the concept of life; we have seen the concept of life, in the cell, and in organism, and in Evolution generally, tending towards the concept of mind.
We have seen these three fundamental concepts, at first apparently so utterly unlike and so far apart, approaching each other and over-flowing each other in the real structures and evolution of the uni-verse. The question now arises whether there is not something still more fundamental in the universe,something of which they are but the developing forms and phases,something out of which they crystallise at the various onward stages of its progress. And if there is this more fundamental principle, can it be formulated into a definite concept, and will it account for the specific concrete character of our universe?
90 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
That is our problem, in the consideration of which a commencement will be made in this chapter.
Throughout the history of human thought there have been two ultimate points of departure in the explanation of the universe, two contras-ted mental attitudes or view-points from which the universe has been envisaged and accounted for.
According to the one view everything is,in one way or another, given at the beginning;according to the other a minimum is assumed at the beginning, and the universe is a progressive creation or evolution from this minimum star ting-point.On the first view it makes no dif-ference whether the original creation was complete in all details or whether merely its logical or metaphysical scheme was complete while the contents were only implicitly given. In either case there can be nothing new in the course of the subsequent history of the world. If the original creation was complete and absolute, all subsequent events and changes can only be rearrangements, reshufflings of the original groupings: both the material elements and their principles or forms of arrangement are there as original data, and determine all subsequent events and arrangements.
If, again,the metaphysical scheme or structure of the universe must be taken as given, the evolution of the universe is merely a logical development in compliance with this scheme; or in other words, the logical development of the scheme will give us the material universe as a result. The development of Hegel's Idea is just such an attempt at a logical unfolding of the universe.In both cases the explanation of the universe is in the past, at the beginning: that beginning go-verns all and predetermines all. The past is the efficient cause of the future, and no new creation, nothing essentially new, can arise in the future. The full volume of reality was there at the beginning and continues to roll on, changing its forms and appearances by the way, but making no fresh addition to the original current. All real novelty and initiative, all real freedom of choice and development disappear from the universe.
v GENERAL CONCEPT OF HOLISM 91
The process of the world becomes at most an explication,an unfolding of what was implicitly given, and not a creative evolution of new forms.
This view-point has been dominant in Western science and philosophy from its early beginnings in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries until quite recently. In physical science it fits in naturally with the orthodox laws of conservation, which preclude either the crea-tion or the destruction of energy, mass or momentum. And in propor-tion as mechanistic ideas have prevailed in science and philosophy , all change has come to mean merely mechanical rearrangements with-out any substantial addition to or subtraction from the sum total of reality. Those thinkers, again,who (like Leibniz) did not subscribe to the mechanistic formula were led by their theological standpoints and their preformation ideas to look upon reality as completed in the past, and to leave to the future the merely sub-ordinate role of unfolding, evolving,explicating what was virtually contained in that past. This, therefore, is the very limited sense in which the terms development or evolution as used by them must be understood. Where they believed in a dynamic progressive universe, they meant merely a universe which was progressively unfolding what was implicitly con-tained in the past.The view-point of Evolution as creative,of a real progressive creation still going forward in the universe instead of having been completed in the past, of the sum of reality not as con-stant but as progressively increasing in the course of evolution, is a new departure of our own time, and it is perhaps one of the most significant departures in the whole range of human thought.
Not only has the old static view of reality with its fixed elements and species disappeared, the new dynamic view of Evolution does not merely negate the old static view, it has gone much further.
Evolution is not merely a process of change, of regrouping of the old into new forms; it is creative, its new forms are not merely fashioned out of the old materials;it creates both new materials and new forms from the synthesis of the new with the old materials. The creativeness of matter is, as we saw, confined to the aspect
92 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
of structure and to the refashioning of new structures out of the pre-existing material units:in that sense matter has only a limited though real creativeness . When we come to organisms we find a very much larger measure of creativeness in Evolution. For, as will be shown in Chapter VIII, the new qualities or characters which give rise to new varieties or species are really new in the sense that they have not been there before and are not mere reshufflings of characters which were there before.New characters are created, and on the basis of them new varietal or specific forms of a stable kind arise.A still larger measure of creativeness applies to mind both in its intellectual and ethical aspects; thought is creative in all its activities from the simplest sensation up to the most complex judgment; and the ethical or practical reason is creative of values, moral, spiritual and religious values,in the fullest sense.
Hence arises the view of Evolution as creative of the new, as an epigenesis instead of an explication, as displaying novelty and initiative, as opening up new paths and rendering possible new choices in the forward march, as creating freedom for the future and in a very real sense breaking the bondage of the past and its fixed predeterminations.
The view-point of creative Evolution is today embraced by scientists and philosophers generally,and this consensus between them in a matter of cardinal importance constitutes a most promising situation for the future, and may lead to far more fruitful co-operation bet-ween science and philosophy than we have known for some hundreds of years.
Let me point to one important direction in which this co-operation is called for.
In their actual procedure philosophers have occupied themselves with general principles, while scientists, except in the domain of Mathe-matics pure and applied,mostly occupy themselves with the investiga-tion of particular things, bodies,organisms and the like. Scientists have more and more buried themselves in details, exploring facts to their minutest details, and looking to ever greater specialisation to give the clues to the unsolved problems.
v GENERAL CONCEPT OF HOLISM 93
More than ever before they are occupying themselves with the prob-lems of structure,the structure of matter and the physical universe, the structure of cells and organisms as explaining the systems of life, the structure of the nervous system and the brain with a view to understanding the movement of Evolution in its higher reaches.
While science is thus preoccupied with the details of structure, philosophy continues very much on the old lines of exploring gene-ral points of view, general principles and tendencies and concepts.
Philosophy, in endeavouring to demarcate a province of her own and distinct from the special regions ruled by science, is more and more confining herself to the critical consideration of ultimate concepts and principles, and thus runs the risk of getting further away from science instead of drawing closer to it. The result of this divorce is lamentable in the extreme. For science, divorced from the view-points and principles which philosophy embraces, structure becomes merely mechanism. For philosophy,divorced from the actual structural facts which science studies, the general principles remain in the air, and never generate this specific concrete sensible world which is there to explain and understand.But the real world is neither a mere principle nor a mere structure,neither a disembodied soul nor a soulless mechanism. The creative Evolution which both scientist and philosopher embrace works as a general principle or tendency in and through particular concrete specific forms. Evolution is thus struc-ture plus principle, interpenetrating each other,reacting on and vi-talising each other. Individuation and universality are equally cha-racteristic of Evolution. The universal realises itself, not in idle self-contemplation, not in isolation from the actual, but in and through individual bodies,in particular things and facts. The temple of the Spirit is the structure of matter;the universal dwells in the concrete particular; neither is real nor true apart from the other. All this sounds like truisms and platitudes.
But yet it is most important, for it means this, that the pursuit of the separate paths of science and philosophy will not bring us to our goal.
94 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
Their paths must be made to converge. Concepts must be developed which will include the material and the view-points of both science and philosophy. The pathway of the real is neither abstract general principles nor the wilderness of details; and if we wish to under-stand Evolution,we must develop concepts adequate to its actual pro-cess, concepts which will be representative of its real characters of concreteness and universality. In other words,we must form a con-ceptual model which will as accurately as possible reproduce what actually goes on in the process of cosmic Evolution,our main concern being to make our explanation of Nature's process as true to actual observed facts as possible. Abstract principles alone cannot carry us to the understanding of the concrete procedure of Evolution.
Structures by themselves, again, cannot generalise themselves into a universal process such as Evolution.Mere structure is not enough, because it misses the generic, the universal in reality.
General principles or tendencies are not enough, because they are not concrete such as natural reality is.The two must be blended in a new concept. And it may be found that the new concept is actually not a blend of them, but the original unity from which they have been dissociated, and that the synthesis produces more than a mere concept,reveals in fact an operative causal principle of fundamental significance,
To illustrate how philosophers operate with general principles or tendencies which refuse to produce particularity, and therefore fail to explain the concrete character of reality, let us glance for a moment at Bergson's system. Any other would have served perhaps equally well, but Bergson has the great merit of being the most influential and brillianl exponent of the philosophy of Evolution in our time,and a reference to his work will therefore keep us close to our own subject matter.Bergson singles out the principle of Duration as both ultimate and all-embracing and as thus capable of both gene-rating and explaining reality. He reaches the concept of Duration by going back into the depths of subjective experience until he comes to the point where we feel ourselves most intimately within our own life.
v GENERAL CONCEPT OF HOLISM 95
He divests this experience of all elements of change or differen-tiated features ; all subjective and objective items of experience are eliminated; and there remains the bare flow or passage of the inner life. This is Duration; this homogeneous flow or passage is for him the creative principle in the universe.
It underlies and generates our idea of time. But time is not pure Duration, it has become infected with the Intellect, and instead of being a continuous enduring process it has become a summation of units, or points,or small unit lengths of happening. In other words, time has become spatialised,analytical and arithmetical in character in proportion as it has become divorced from its original pure form as uniform flow or process or Duration. This creative Duration is not only the tap-root of time, but also of Evolution, and is the source of all the multiplicity of forms and activities which we see in the universe. Bergson's Creative Evolution is an attempt to show how this fundamental principle, beginning as nothing but bare flow or passage, builds up the concrete universe within us and around us.
To him belongs the signal merit of having elucidated the concept of Time more clearly than has been done before in philosophy.The theory of Evolution has made the aspect of time in the universe more impor-tant than ever before, and Bergson has rescued the concept of time from the confusions in which it had become entangled, not only in our empirical experience, but even in our scientific and philosophic ideas.But while freely conceding this great merit to Bergson I must confess that I fail to see how from pure Duration he has produced concrete reality.It simply cannot be done.From bare, undifferentia-ted, homogeneous unity you cannot reach out to multiplicity. You may call pure Duration creative,but it will create nothing until it is mixed with something very different from itself. And indeed Bergson has had to summon to his rescue another principle, which he has in-vested with all the characters of which he had so carefully deprived Duration.
96 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
This is the Intellect. The Intellect is practical,differential, ana-lytical,selective,purposive;it is at once the principle and the in-strument of action; it can analyse the material before it and choose what is useful for its purpose.It is spatial,it converts pure Dura-tion into impure Time. Nor is Time its only offspring. From its mar-riage with pure Duration the Intellect has produced all the sensible forms in the universe.
Bodies and things are simply our lines of action on matter.
The practical Intellect selects what it wants for action and ignores or simply does not notice the rest.The sensible qualities it distin-guishes are those which attract its attention by their practical usefulness or serviceableness for its purposes.The forms of bodies and things are therefore merely the result of this selective action on matter. 1 Structure is thus the creature of Intellect; in fact in its forms the sensible universe is an intellect-made universe.He ad-mits that the result is a hopelessly lop-sided affair,and he has to call in the assistance of Instinct and Intuition another twin of this marriage who partake more of the pure and gentle character of the maternal Duration to correct this lop-sidedness and to prevent reality and truth in the universe from being distorted beyond recog-nition.Intuition and instinct do indeed help to soften and tone down the hard lines drawn by the selective intellect. But even they do not avail to reproduce the continuous curve of Duration, but only an approximation to it. Such is a very summary statement of what seems to me the essential point in Bergsonism. For my present purpose I have only two criticisms to make. In the first place, as already in-dicated, the principle of pure Duration fails either to generate or to explain impure concrete reality.In the second place, there is far more in structure than the mere creation of the Intellect. Admitting the practical instrumental selective character of the Intellect, it would yet be a profound mistake to make it the sole cause of the forms and structures of sensible bodies or things. The Intellect is not creative in that fundamental sense.
1 Creative Evolution, p. 102.
97 v GENERAL CONCEPT OF HOLISM
To make of Intellect what Kant made of Space and Time the framework or the forms imposed ab extra on sensible reality by the activity of the mind would be a travesty of psychology and nature alike.
Intellect selects and orders,but not arbitrarily;it is itself mere-ly an element in a greater, more universal order.Structure is the creature of experience,and experience is an interaction of the sub-jective and objective factors so intimate and unanalysable that it is impossible to say how much of the result is due to one factor and how much to the other. Structure is as much objective as subjective in its psychological origin.
To put the forms,the structures, the order of Nature to the sole account of the Intellect or subjective factor in experience is most seriously misleading and is subjective Idealism in its most dange-rous form. As we have seen in the preceding chapters, structure or something in the nature of structure is inherent in the objective order of Nature, just as it is inherent in the orders of life and mind.
Where Bergson seems to me to have gone wrong was in his impoverish-ment of the creative principle by reducing it to the bare empty form of Duration.In order after that false step to set his Creation going it was inevitable that another mistake should be made,and that a re-latively subordinate factor,like the Intellect, should be overloaded with importance.
Thus the Intellect, which is a sort of Machiavelli or Mephistopheles in the Bergsonian system, has a role assigned to it which is accentuated both unduly and in a one-sided manner.
In order to understand Nature we have to proceed more modestly and in closer touch with our ordinary observation of her ways.
Let me try to make my point clear by stating it in another way. I wish to get as near as possible to what one might call Nature's point of view in our explanation of her.To understand Nature we must take one of her own units,and not an abstract one of our own making.
We must as it were take a small sample section of Nature which will include as one and indivisible both the element of activity or prin-ciple and the element of structure or concreteness in her. Our con-cept must correspond to such a section as our starting-point, and we must then proceed to apply it as a sort of standard with which to measure up the whole range of Evolution.
98 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
In this way we shall try to explain Nature by reference to herself and her own standards, so to say, instead of by reference to intellectual abstractions of our own devising.
It may be objected that in taking such a small section or unit of Nature as our starting-point I am implicitly assuming all that fol-lows;that I am taking a small section of the evolved in order to ex-plain Evolution;l that I am therefore begging the question; and that I shall be only finding hereafter what I have posited at the begin-ning. This, however, is not so. The criticism would have force if Evolution was merely explicative and not creative,and if my natural unit would by mere unfolding produce all the rest in the course of time.
We have, however,seen that Evolution is creative. The assumption of an evolving unit is therefore by no means an assumption of the evol-ved results which follow . This is so because the evolution of an assumed unit would by no means unfold the implicit contents of that unit, but would proceed creatively, and would thus in the end far transcend the elementary unit which was the starting-point. Let us therefore proceed in the way I propose and try to reach a concept of Nature and her progress which will not be imposed on her from with-out, but which will keep as close as possible to her own natural evolving units, structures or standards,so far as we have experience of them.
At this stage we return to the difficult question which was asked at the beginning of this chapter. We are trying to dig down to the very roots of reality and to raise an issue the solving of which will be no light task. The issue has indeed become inevitable as the result of the preceding chapters.
In Chapters II and III we found the physical properties of matter were geometrically, that is in a sense mentally, determinable. We found also that matter, instead of the inertness, fixity and conser-vatism traditionally associated with it, was in reality plastic, mobile and transmutable in its types, and in a sense creative of its forms and values.
1 Bergson's criticism of Herbert Spencer; see Creative Evolution, p. xiv.
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How have we to understand this? Is life or mind implicit in matter, and are the characters just referred to an appeal of the human mind to immanent mind imprisoned in matter? Has Science gone so far in her long search for truth that at last mind greets mind in the inner nature of things? Have the rescuers reached the imprisoned in the long dark tunnel of Nature?
Again, in Chapter IV we found in the organism and even in the cell a perfectly adjusted system of co-operation so closely approaching the social in character, a complicated system of controls so closely ap-proaching the mental in character as once more to raise the question of mind on a really extensive scale implicit in Nature. As we find life on the one hand encroaching on the domain of matter,so again we find mind encroaching far beyond its own proper domain on that usu-ally assigned to life. Is life implicit mind, mind asleep and almost waking? Is life latent in matter, and is mind latent in life?
What is the answer to these questions, and how have we to conceive matter, life and mind to explain this overflow into each other's do-main ? Is it possible to have a concept which will embrace all these facts as phases of its own creative development ? Is it possible to develop the concept of a principle which is successively physical, biological and mental in its evolving phases, in other words, of which matter, life and mind are the growing manifestations? Is it possible to have a fundamental concept of Evolution,of which matter, life and mind would be the successive stages?
This is the sort of question which naturally arises as a result of the point which we have reached in our discussion.
And the answer which one ventures to bring forward must not only have reference to fundamental principles, but also to that requisite of concrete character which we have just now seen to be essential in any solution which professes to be true to nature.
The last two chapters have not only raised the question but prepared the way for the answer which will be given in the sequel.
1oo HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
We there saw that reality is not diffuse and dispersive; on the con-trary, it is aggregative, ordered, structural. Both matter and life consist, in the atom and the cell, of unit structures whose ordered grouping produces the natural wholes which we call bodies or orga-nisms. This character or feature of "wholeness" which we found in the case of matter and life has a far more general application and points to something fundamental in the universe, fundamental in the sense that it is practically universal, that it is a real operative factor, and that its shaping influence is felt ever more deeply and widely with the advance of Evolution. Holism is the term here coined (from 6'Xo<?=whole) to designate this whole-ward tendency in Nature , this fundamental factor operative towards the making or creation of wholes in the universe. Let us first try to get some general idea of what Holism is and what "wholes" are; thereafter I shall try to define these terms more closely.
We are all familiar in the domain of life with what is here called wholes. Every organism, every plant or animal, is a whole, with a certain internal organisation and a measure of self -direction, and an individual specific character of its own. This is true of the lowest micro-organism no less than of the most highly developed and complex human personality. What is not generally recognised is that themconception of wholes covers a much wider field than that of life, that its beginnings are traceable already in the inorganic order of Nature, and that beyond the ordinary domain of biology it applies in a sense to human associations like the State,and to the creations of the human spirit in all its greatest and most signifi-cant activities. Not only are plants and animals wholes, but in a certain limited sense the natural collocations of matter in the uni-verse are wholes;atoms,molecules and chemical compounds are limited wholes; while in another closely related sense human characters, works of art and the great ideals of the higher life are or partake of the character of wholes. In popular use the word "whole" is often made to cover some of these higher creations.A poem or a picture for instance,is praised because it is a "whole" because it is not a mere
v GENERAL CONCEPT OF HOLISM 101
artificial construction,but an organic whole, in which all the parts appear in a subtle indefinable way to subserve and contribute to and carry out the main purpose or idea. Artistic creations are, in fact, mainly judged and appraised by the extent to which they realise the character of wholes. But there is much more in the term "whole" than is covered by its popular use. In the view here presented "wholes" are basic to the character of the universe, and Holism, as the ope-rative factor in the evolution of wholes, is the ultimate principle of the universe.
The creation of wholes, and ever more highly organised wholes,and of wholeness generally as characteristic of existence, is an inherent character of the universe.
There is not a mere vague indefinite creative energy or tendency at work in the world. This energy or tendency has specific characters, the most fundamental of which is whole-making. And the progressive development of the resulting wholes at all stages from the most in-choate, imperfect, inorganic wholes to the most highly developed and organised is what we call Evolution. The whole-making, holistic ten-dency, or Holism,operating in and through particular wholes, is seen at all stages of existence, and is by no means confined to the bio-logical domain to which science has hitherto restricted the concept of wholes.
With its roots in the inorganic, this universal tendency attains clear expression in the organic biological world, and reaches its highest expressions and results on the mental and spiritual planes of existence. Wholes of various grades are the real units of Nature. Wholeness is the most characteristic expression of the nature of the universe in its forward movement in time.It marks the line of evolu-tionary progress. And Holism is the inner driving forcembehind that progress.
It is evident that if this view is correct, very important results must follow for our conceptions of knowledge and life.
Wholes are not mere artificial constructions of thought, they point to something real in the universe; and Holism as the creative principle in them is a real vera causa.
102 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
It is the motive force behind Evolution. We thus have behind Evolu-tion not a mere vague and indefinable creative impulse or ilan vital, the bare idea of passage or duration without any quality or character other than that of uniform flow,and to which no value or character could be attached,but something quite definite.Holism is a specific tendency, with a definite character, and creative of all characters in the universe, and thus fruitful of results and explanations in regard to the entire course of cosmic development.
It is possible that some may think I have pressed the claims of Ho-lism and the whole too far;that they are not real operative factors, but only useful methodological concepts or categories of research and explanation.There is no doubt that the whole is a useful and po-werful concept under which to range the phenomena of life especially . But to my mind there is clearly something more in the idea. The whole as a real character is writ large on the face of Nature.
It is dominant in biology; it is everywhere noticeable in the higher mental and spiritual developments; and science, if it had not been so largely analytical and mechanical, would long ago have seen and read it in inorganic nature also.
The whole as an operative factor requires careful exploration. That there are wholes in Nature seems to me incontestable.That they cover a very much wider field than is generally thought and are of funda-mental significance is the view here presented. But the idea of the whole is one of the neglected matters of science and to a large ex-tent of philosophy also. It is curious that, while the general view-point of philosophy is necessarily largely holistic, it has never made real use of the idea of the whole. The idea runs indeed as a thread all through philosophy, but mostly in a vague intangible way.
The only definite application of the idea has been made by the Absolutists, who have applied the expression of "the whole" to the all of existence, to the cosmic whole, to the tout ensemble of the universe, considered as a unity or a being.
This particular use of the idea does not interest us at this stage of our inquiry.
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The great whole may be theultimate terminus, but it is not the line which we are following. It is the small natural centres of wholeness which we are going to study,and the principle of which they are the expression. And I should have thought that the matter would be of profound interest to philosophers and scientists alike. But no real use has been made of this great concept even by philosophers, while by scientists it has been steadily neglected or ignored under the iron rule of the mechanistic regime. And yet the stone rejected by the builders may become the corner-stone of the building.
Let us now proceed to consider the idea of a whole more closely; and let us once more begin with natural biological wholes,such as plants or animals. An organism, like a plant or animal, is a natural whole.
It is self-acting and self-moving. Its principle of movement or action is not external to itself but internal. It is not actuated or moved by some external principle or force, like a machine or an artificial construction. The source of its activity is internal and of a piece with itself,is indeed itself.It consists of parts, but its parts are not merely put together. Their togetherness is not mechanical, but rests on a different basis.
The organism consists of parts, but it is more than the sum of its parts, and if these parts are taken to pieces the organism is dest-royed and cannot be reconstituted by again putting together the se-vered parts.These parts are in active relations to each other, which vary with the parts and the organisms; but in no case is there any-thing inactive or inert about the relations of these parts to each other or to the whole organism.The organism further has the power of maintaining itself by taking in other parts,such as food, but again, as we saw in the last chapter, it does so not by mere mechanical ad-dition,but by a complete transformation,assimilation and appropria-tion into its own peculiar system of the material so taken in. More-over, the organism is creative in that it is capable, under certain conditions, of renewing itself and of reproducing itself in closely similar wholes.
This rough summary is sufficient to indicate the main general characters of biological wholes.
104 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
When we reach the more advanced levels of development in the higher animals and man, we are confronted with additional characters of a psychological nature,such as intelligence,will, consciousness, cent-ral control and direction of a more or less voluntary and deliberate kind.For our present purpose of a preliminary survey in this chapter we need not consider these characters more closely. But it is neces-sary that we should form a clearer conception of the differences which distinguish a whole in the above sense from something which is not a whole.
In the first place,I wish to emphasise that a whole according to the view here presented is not simple, but composite and consists of parts.Natural wholes such as organisms are not simple but complex or composite, consisting of many parts in active relation and interac-tion of one kind or another, and the parts may be themselves lesser wholes, such as cells in an organism. Wholes are composites and not simples. The idea of a whole as a simple unique individual entity is a metaphysical view which we have to guard against. Philosophy has elaborated the concept of a unique whole which is really an absolute , indestructible and unchangeable.Plato in the Phcedo,for instance, presented the human soul as such a whole,and from its indivisibility derived an argument in favour of its immortality. What is simple, indivisible and ultimate must necessarily also be indestructible. Natural wholes according to my view, however, are not such simple indivisible entities, which are really philosophic abstractions.
Then, again, the philosophic conception leaves no room for change, movement or development of a whole. The whole or absolute of philo-sophy is necessarily static. The simple unique ultimate whole cannot change or develop.
It is what it is unchangeably. It negatives the idea of Evolution which is essential to the conception of wholes as here presented. The view of the universe as a whole or an absolute in the philoso-phic sense leaves no room for progress or development, and is in conflict with all the teachings of experience and all the most significant results of science.
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The parts indeed (if any) may move and change, their relations inter se may show a flux to which the name of development may be given. But it will not be real creative development.
The absolute whole of philosophy is immutable, withdrawn in itself, and unlike anything of which we have experience in this world. The idea of Evolution as creative is the very antithesis of this static absoluteness. And this idea must be decisive for us. Anything which militates against the idea of the universe as progressive and crea-tive must be discarded by us. The creative whole or Holism must not be confused with the philosophic whole or absolute.
Having warned against a philosophical misconception, let me proceed to guard against a still more dangerous scientific misconception. The mechanical view of the universe which has been, and to a large extent still is, dominant in science is in one degree or another at variance with the conception here brought forward.
The whole is not a mere mechanical system,that is, a system of parts externally related to each other.It consists indeed of parts, but it is more than the sum of its parts, which a purely mechanical system necessarily is. The essence of a mechanical system is pure externa-lity or the absence of all inwardness, of all inner tendencies and relations and activities of the system or its parts.
All action in a mechanical system is external, being either the external action of the mechanical body on some other body, or the external action of the latter on the former. And similarly when the parts of the body or system are considered, the only action of which they are capable is their external action on each other or on the body generally. There is no inwardness of action or function either on the part of the body or its parts. Such is a mechanical body, and only such bodies have been assumed to exist on the mechanistic hypo-thesis. A whole, which is more than the sum of its parts, has some-thing internal, some inwardness of structure and function, some spe-cific inner relations,some internality of character or nature, which constitutes that more.
106 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
And it is for us in this inquiry to try to elucidate what that more is. The point to grasp at this stage is that, while the mechanical theory assumes only external action as alone capable of measurement and mathematical treatment, and banishes all inner action, relation or function, the theory of the whole, on the contrary, is based on the assumption that in addition to external action between bodies, there is also an additional interior element or action of bodies which are wholes, and that this element or action is of a specific ascertainable character.
Wholes are therefore composites which have an internal structure, function or character which clearly differentiates them from mere mechanical additions or aggregates or constructions, such as science assumes on the mechanical hypothesis.And this internal element which transforms a mere mechanical addition or sum of parts into a whole shows a progressive development in Nature. Wholes are dynamic, orga-nic, evolutionary, creative. The character of creativeness should (if true) be enough to negative the purely mechanical conception of the universe.
It is very important to recognise that the whole is not something additional to the parts : it is the parts in a definite structural arrangement and with mutual activities that constitute the whole. 1 The structure and the activities differ in character according to the stage of development of the whole; but the whole is just this specific structure of parts with their appropriate activities and functions. Thus water as a chemical compound is, as we have seen, a whole in a limited sense,an incipient whole,differing qualitative-ly from its uncompounded elements Hydrogen and Oxygen in a mere state of mixture; it is a new specific structure with new physical and chemical properties.
1 A friendly critic, Mgr. F.C.Kolbe, in a valuable review of this work in the Southern Cross, has pointed out the striking similarity between this doctrine of Holism and the Aristotelianism of St. Thomas Aquinas, from whom he quotes the following sentence: "Forma substantial totius non superadditur partibus, sed est totum complectans materiam et formam cum prsecisione aliorum."
v GENERAL CONCEPT OF HOLISM 107
The whole as a biological organism is an immensely more complex structure with vastly more complex activities and functions than a mere chemical compound. But it must not be conceived as something over and above its parts in their structural synthesis, including the unique activities and functions which accompany this synthesis.
It is the very essence of the concept of the whole that the parts are together in a unique specific combination,in a specific internal relatedness, in a creative synthesis which differentiates it from all other forms of combination or togetherness. The combination of the elements into this structure is in a sense creative, that is to say, creative of new structure and new properties and functions.
These properties and functions have themselves a creative or holis-tic character, as we shall see in the sequel. At the start the fact of structure is all-important in wholes, but as we ascend the scale of wholes, we see structure becoming secondary to function, we see function becoming the dominant feature of wholes,we see it as a cor-relation of all the activities of the structure and effecting new syntheses which are more and more of a creative character. The parts in a whole are also affected by the structure and are different and behave differently from what they would have done apart from such a whole. It is the very essence of a whole that while it is formed of its parts it in turn influences the parts and affects their relations and functions. This reciprocal influence constitutes the internality or interior character of a whole.
There is a creative activity,progress and development of wholes, and the successive phases of this creative Evolution are marked by the rise of ever more complex and significant wholes.Thus there arises a progressive scale of wholes, extending from the material bodies of inorganic nature through the plant and animal kingdoms to man and the great ideal and artistic creations of the spiritual world. How-ever much the wholes may increase in complexity and fruitful signi-ficance as we go upward, the fundamental activity which produces these results retains its specific holistic character all through.
108 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
At first,according to our present knowledge,it appears only as a de-finite material structure of energy units,as a specific synthesis or arrangement of material parts, for instance, in a chemical compound or a crystal or a colloid. We have already seen how this structure approaches in several respects the more holistic characters of life, and it may well be that the future progress of science will add greatly to our evidence on this point. But even as it is now known, the specific structure and character of the chemical compound make it a sort of whole, quite distinct from mere physical or mechanical mixtures. As we proceed in the rise of Nature we see in plants how this specific structure, this synthesis and arrangement of parts and characters, assumes a new co-operative character the character of groups of related activities which are all co-ordinated into intimate relations and functions so as to preserve the plant and maintain its activities as a whole.
As we proceed to animals we find not only this intimate structural synthesis of parts and characters on a co-operative basis and with co-ordinated functions, but in the emergence of the central nervous system and brain we see a new element of control and direction, which transforms the entire system, makes its co-operation more complex and efficient and gives it an entirely new range of meaning and activity. When we come to the human stage we find the highest flowering of this central control in the human personality. We find a range of values and activities undreamt of at the earlier stages.
And we find these values and activities themselves tending to become wholes in the higher ranges of spiritual and artistic production. The wholeness which was only structural, inchoate, partial at the beginning of the scale of Nature, here becomes to a large extent dominant and all-pervasive.
Holism, which on the lower levels was working against almost insu-perable obstructions and difficulties, here emerges in a sense vic-torious. It is as yet only a very partial victory.Even the most com-plete human personality and the most perfect artistic creation are still full of imperfections, and are only an approximation to the ideal wholeness. Holism has still a long way to go.
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From the high human level it points the way to the future, and shows that in wholeness, in the creation of ever more perfect and signifi-cant wholes, lies the inner meaning and trend of the universe. It is as if the Great Creative Spirit hath said:"Behold, I make all things whole."
The ascending order of wholes or the stages in which Holism expres-ses itself in the progressive phases of reality may therefore be roughly and provisionally summarised as follows:
1. Definite material structure or synthesis of parts in natural bodies but with no more internal activity known at present than that of mere physical or chemical forces or energies: e.g. in a chemical compound.
2. Functional structure in living bodies, where the parts in this specific synthesis become actively co-operative and function jointly for the maintenance of the body: e.g. in a plant.
3. This specific co-operative activity becomes co-ordinated or regu-lated by some marked central control which is still mostly implicit and unconscious: e.g. in an animal.
4. The central control becomes conscious and culminates in Persona-lity; at the same time it emerges in more composite holistic groups in Society.
5. In human associations this central control becomes super-individual in the State and similar group organisations.
6. Finally, there emerge the ideal wholes, or holistic Ideals, or absolute Values, disengaged and set free from human personality, and operating as creative factors on their own account in the upbuilding of a spiritual world.
Such are the Ideals of Truth, Beauty and Goodness, which lay the foundations of a new order in the universe.
Through all these stages we see the ever-deepening nature of the Whole as a specific structural synthesis of parts with inner activi-ties of its own which co-operate and function in harmony, either naturally or instinctively or consciously.
110 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
The parts so co-operate and co-function towards a definite inherent inner end or purpose that together they constitute and form a whole more or less of a distinctive character, with an identity and an ever-increasing measure of individuality of its own. The functioning of the parts is influenced by their place in the milieu of the other parts,and whole and parts thus reciprocally constitute and determine each other. And the whole thus formed is creative of new development at all stages, even at the first, although this is only an inchoate, immature stage. We thus arrive at the conception of a universe which is not a collection of accidents externally put together like an ar-tificial patchwork,but which is synthetic, structural, active, vital and creative in increasing measure all through,the progressive deve-lopment of which is shaped by one unique holistic activity opera-tive from the humblest inorganic beginnings to the most exalted creations and ideals of the human and of the universal Spirit.
We find thus a great unifying creative tendency of a specific holis-tic character in the universe, operating through and sustaining the forces and activities of Nature and life and mind, and giving ever more of a distinctive holistic character to the universe. This crea-tive tendency or principle we call Holism. Holism in all its endless forms is the principle which works up the raw material or unorgani-sed energy units of the world, utilises, assimilates and organises them, endows them with specific structure and character and indivi-duality, and finally with personality, and creates beauty and truth and value from them. And it does all this through a definite method of whole-making,which it pursues with ever-increasing intensity from the beginning to the end, through things and plants and beasts and men.
Thus it is that a scale of wholes forms the ladder of Evolution. It is through a continuous and universal process of whole-making that reality rises step by step, until from the poor, empty, worthless stuff of its humble beginnings it builds the spiritual world beyond our greatest dreams.
The concept of the whole as a means of tracing the evolution of reality has several advantages.
v GENERAL CONCEPT OF HOLISM in
In the first place, as the whole is at once both structural and ex-pressive of an inner general principle or tendency,its concept is as it were a working model of the natural wholes we find in the uni-verse, and is as near as we could get to that concrete character of reality to which we should have the closest regard. The concept of Holism and the whole is as nearly as possible a replica of Nature's observed process, and its application will prevent us from appearing to run the stuff of reality into a mould alien to Nature. It will, therefore, enable us to explain Nature from herself, so to say, and by her own standards. In this way justice can be done to the concrete character of natural phenomena.
In the second place, the fundamental concept of Holism will bring us nearer to that unitary or monistic conception of the universe which is the immanent ideal of all scientific and philosophic explanation. At the same time it will enable us to bridge the chasms and to resolve the antinomies which divide the concepts of matter, life and mind inter se. Their absolute separateness as concepts is overcome, and their actual overlapping (in the way we have seen) is explained, by viewing them as phases of the development of a more fundamental activity in the universe.The concept of Holism, so to say, dissolves the heterogeneous concepts of matter, life and mind,and then recrys-tallises them out as polymorphous forms of itself. The monism which results is not static or barren,as monism necessarily is in the phi-losophy of Absolutism, but progressive, creative and pluralistic in accordance with the demands of scientific theory and practical com-mon sense. We shall thus be prepared to find more of life in matter, and more of mind in life,because the hard-and-fast demarcations bet-ween them have fallen away.While accepting these terms (matter,life and mind) as generally and roughly marking off the main divisions of reality, we shall not be tempted to force their application too far, and we shall be prepared for such limits to their extensions as science may show to be necessary.
In the third place, a very real advantage will accrue from the substitution of a more definite concept for the vague and unsatisfactory popular idea of life.
112 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
The vagueness and indefiniteness of the idea of life have proved a serious stumbling-block and have largely influenced biologists to look for the way out in the direction of mechanism. The concept of life has no definite content which makes it of any scientific value. Its value is roughly to demarcate an area from other areas; it is a name for a class of phenomena which differ generally from other classes. As such it will remain useful in Science, in addition to its popular use, which of course no amount of criticism will ever affect.
The term "matter" will remain in popular use in spite of the fact that Science may completely change its meaning; its connotation may be revolutionised while it remains in use to denote a class of sen-sible phenomena for which there is no other equally convenient name. Similarly with the use of the term " life." It will remain useful to denote a class of phenomena,without it remaining or being useful in describing them, which will have to be done through more rigorous concepts. The concept of life is too vague to be definable and pin-ned down to a definite content;at the same time,and perhaps for that very reason, it is liable to be hypostatised into a substance or a force apart from the organism which it denotes. It is this abuse, in addition to its indefiniteness, which has led to its abandonment by the great majority of biologists,who have preferred to see in life nothing but a specific type of mechanism. I suggest that the substi-tution, for scientific and philosophic purposes, of the concept of the whole for life would give far more precision to the underlying idea.
Thus a definite concept, whose properties could be investigated and defined, would take the place of a vague expression, already ruined by popular use and abuse. A living organism is not an organism plus life,as if life were something different and additional to it; it is just the organism in its unique character as a whole, which can be closely defined. The sense in which it differs from a chemical com-pound considered as a whole is also capable of accurate definition; and thus it is quite unnecessary to resort to the dubious concept of mechanism in order to describe the living organism or, as I prefer to call it, the holistic organism.
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The concept of the whole enables us to use a technical scientific terminology, which is not vitiated by popular usage, and which is capable of accurate definition and description.
The substitution of the concept or the category of the whole for that of life will probably be found a solvent for many of the most perplexing problems in biology as well as the philosophy of life.
The whole connects not only with the physical on the one side and the psychical on the other, thus maintaining the contacts of Nature ; it brings to bear a perfectly definite and intelligible concept on the phenomena of " life," for which hitherto no other definite cate-gory has been found except the other misleading and misplaced one of mechanism.
In the foregoing I have tried to give some preliminary and introduc-tory sketch of the concept of the whole, which will be further developed and filled in as this inquiry proceeds.
For the sake of simplicity I have omitted reference to an important feature in that concept which I must now proceed to mention and ex-plain. I have stated that by the whole I mean, not the All-Whole of Absolutist philosophy, but the whole as exemplified and operative in small natural centres or empirical wholes such as we observe in Nature. I must now add that by the whole I mean this whole plus its field,its field not as something different and additional to it but as the continuation of it beyond the sensible contours of experience . I have before drawn attention to the vital importance of this concept, and I now proceed to explain and emphasise this point more fully.
Perhaps the most important contribution which the Theory of Relati-vity has made to our understanding of reality is the integration of time with our spatial conceptions of the sensible world. We are too prone to look at things merely in their spatial relations, to consi-der them merely as objects in space. They are just as much events in time,coming from the past,enduring through the present,and reaching out into the future. As we have seen,they are not static but dynamic in their inmost structure, they are moving and active in Space-Time; and indeed their active energy is their very essence, much more than the mere static spatial appearance which they present to the observer.
114 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
As merely extended,spatial and external,objects are barren abstract concepts and not the sections of concrete reality which we know them to be. It is the time-factor that makes the difference; Time integ-rated with Space is active and creative, and productive of reality. The sensible objects and things of which we are aware in Nature are active energy systems in Space-Time; they are events even more than objects and things; they are concentrated centres of happening in the physical sense just as, at a higher stage of evolution, we find minds as active concentrated centres of experience.
To understand Nature properly it is essential that we should habi-tuate ourselves to look upon material bodies or things literally as events, as centres of happening,and upon the time element in them as being no less important than the sensible space element. The limita-tion of objects or things to their space relations or aspects obscu-res and distorts their real character for us and has to be got rid of at all costs.
The effect of another serious limiting factor in our sensible expe-rience has to be recognised and eliminated. I have already referred to Bergson's description of the intelligence as a selective, discri-minative,eliminative,limiting factor in our experience of the world. But the trouble really goes deeper than that. Not only our intellect but our senses also show the same tendency and defects. All our sen-ses are definitely limited and reveal to us directly only a limited narrow range of the properties of things.It is one of the main tasks of Science to construct instruments which will supplement the limi-tations of our senses. An object just visible to the naked eye pre-sents a very different appearance when seen through a powerful mic-roscope. The microscope, the telescope, the spectroscope, photomic-rography, the X-ray spectrum with its revelation of the constitution of the atom all these and many more are devices to extend our senses beyond their limited natural range.
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The combined effect of our limited sensibility and the practical se- lective character of our intelligence accounts in part for the fact that things appear to us limited in size and form,with definite con-tours and margins and surfaces beyond which they do not go and come to a dead stop. This dead stop is an illusion largely due to the defects of our natural apparatus of observation.
The activities which constitute the thing go beyond the sensible contours. The material part which we popularly call the thing is merely the concentrated sensible focus which discloses itself to our limited sensibility and selective intelligence; beyond that it is the dark "field" which is formed by the activities and properties of the thing beyond its sensible focal centre. We have seen in Chapter III how the inner structure of matter results in certain physical and chemical properties which constitute its field. The field is as much an integral part of matter as the sensible part which it sur-rounds.Anything coming within that field will be affected by it; the field shows the same properties as the thing. The field may either be viewed as activities or as structure as elements of force or as curves.
Indeed from many points of view structure and function, curve and force are convertible terms for the purpose of describing physical effects. The essential point is that the physical field is an exten-sion of the active energy system of the thing beyond its sensible outlines, an extension which shows the same properties and has the same effects on other things within that field as the thing itself, though with everdiminishing force or strength as the field recedes from the thing. I have already explained how this concept of the field renders intelligible the phenomena of physical action at a distance as well as of physical causation. So far as a body acts or is acted upon by external bodies this process takes place in its field and nowhere else. In their fields bodies interpenetrate each other and thus secure that continuity between them which supplies the bridge for the passage of change between them.
So much for purely physical fields.In the consideration of organisms as wholes the question of the field becomes much more important than in the case of physical bodies.
116 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
What is the field of an organism? Many will be tempted to reply off-hand that it is its environment. That answer will, however, be too wide and may be seriously misleading.
The environment is a confused complex concept,and there is much more in it than belongs to the field of a particular organism. The field of an organism is its extension beyond its sensible limits,it is the more there is in the organism beyond these limits. To get to the field of an organism we Jiave to answer this question:In order fully to understand the nature, functions and activities of an organism, what more is necessary to its concept beyond its sensible data? An organism appears a mystery because the sensible data are insuffi-cient to account for its character and properties.Biologists dissect and ransack its sensible structure to find there the physical basis and explanation of its activities; but in doing so they put a weight upon that structure which is often more than it can bear. For the fact is that the sensible structure is not the whole structure, and is too narrow a base for the superstructure of organic activities which seem to grow from out of the sensible structure. For the full explanation of these activities we have to search another part of the structure which is not sensible and has on that account been ig-nored hitherto; I refer to the field. Biologists have tried to find in the organic structure physical elements or mechanisms to account for all the properties and functions of the organism. But there are literally not sufficient sensible elements to go round; the infinity of variations which take place in organic life vastly transcend the apparent physiological elements.
A minute speck of protoplasm is supposed to carry in its structure, on a sort of point to point correspondence,the hereditary experience of the race for untold millions of years, and this structure is in addition required to account for much more besides in the individual life. The industry and ingenuity which have been displayed in this search for the inner mechanisms are above praise, but beyond a certain point the search is certain to be vain; results become mere guess-work, and the very existence of the structures and mechanisms sought for is more than problematic.
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The concept of the field overcomes this difficulty.According to this view the sensible structure is a narrow concentrated sensible focus beyond which is indefinitely extended an insensible structural field as the carrier of organic properties. And the question arises how we have to conceive this field and what there is in it. What has been said of the Time factor in the physical field applies with tenfold more force here. The organism much more than the physical body is an historic event, a focus of happening,a gateway through which the in-finite stream of change flows ceaselessly. The sensible organism is only a point, a sort of transit station which stands for an infinite past of development, for the history and experience of untold millions of ancestors, and in a vague indefinite way for the future which will include an indefinite number of descendants.The past, the present, the future all meet in that little structural centre, that little wayside station on the infinite trail of life. But they only meet there, without its being able to contain them all. From that centre radiates off a field of ever-decreasing intensity of struc-ture or force, which represents what has endured of that past, and what is vaguely anticipated of the futre. The organism and its field is one continuous structure which, beginning with an articulated sensible central area, gradually shades off into indefiniteness.
In this continuum is contained all of the past which has been con-served and still operates to influence the present and the future of the organism ; in it also is contained all that the organism is and does in the present; and finally, in it is contained all that the organism vaguely points to in its own future development and that of its offspring. In other words, the organism and its field,or the or-ganism as a "whole" the holistic organism contains its past and much of its future in its present.These elements are in it as ac-tive factors, the future and the past interacting with the present.
118 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
The whole is there, carrying all its time with it, but clear and de-finite only for a small central area, and beyond that more and more fading away in respect of the dim past and the dimmer future. And this time is not the abstract time of mechanics, but real creative passage or duration in the Bergsonian sense.
The biological whole is fully explained not merely in the light of its past and its present but also of its future. The force which it exerts in its field is the expression of its total time factor. It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of this time factor in the development and consequently in the explanation of organism.
An organism is a continuous autogenesis: behind it is its phylogeny, which it partially repeats in its individual history, and which in any case is a powerful factor in its individual development; before it, again, is the future to which it points, not only as general orientation of coming development,but more specially as the realisa-tion of the potentialities which it holds as the seeds of the future .
The pull of the future is almost as much upon it as the push of the past, and both are essential to the character, functions and activities which it displays in the present.
But without the concept and the imagery of the field, which contains both the future and the past in the whole, it would be difficult to render the presence and the operation of the future as a factor in organic activity and development intelligible. The current view of structure restricts it entirely to the past and explains it as a product of the past, and therefore fails to give a complete view of it.
A word of explanation may here be said about the nature of an orga-nic field. The functioning of individual structures in an organism is not the isolated business of these structures alone, but takes place in the milieu of other structures and their functions and is influenced and modified by them.
This functioning, so influenced and modified, again becomes in due course incorporated into structure.Thus structure and function react on each other and develop in the general dynamic make-up of the or-ganism with its field. All functioning takes place in a field, that is to say, in a milieu of other functionings.
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Every organic happening takes place, not in isolation, but in a ge-neral modifying atmosphere of happenings.This subtle interdependence of functionings in an organic field forms an essential part in the inner laboratory of change and advance. The analysis of living forms merely into elements with their functions misses the real mark. In the cell and the organism everything functions as influenced and mo-dified internally by everything else; and the result is not so much due to this or that element, this or that factor or gene by itself, as to the inter-relations between the factors in the general struc-ture and field. The whole is as operative a factor as the parts and should always be kept in view by the researcher. Besides this inter-nal organic field constituted by the reciprocal inter-relations of the parts in the cell or the organism, there is the external field which connects the organism with the environment.
In this field there is a continual interchange of external stimulus and inner response. The close adaptation of organisms to their envi-ronment is a proof of the close connection between this external and the internal field of the organism. The structural and functional evolution of organisms takes place largely in response to this ex-ternal environmental influence. The external field forms the exten-sion of the internal field, and together they form the total milieu for all happening and change in connection with organisms. And what-ever takes place in this total field does so holistically,that is to say, not in isolation but in reciprocal and mutual association with all other functioning within that field. The past, the future, the internal elements in the organic structure as well as its external environment, all form integral features in the total field of an organism, influencing its functioning and its evolution.
It is unnecessary at this stage to explore further into the field of organism, as we shall have to recur to the concept of the field when we come to consider the principles of organic Evolution in Chapter VIII. Enough has been said to show that in biology,perhaps even more than in physics, the concept may prove helpful in the elucidation of phenomena which it is almost impossible to explain on the narrow and confined basis of the existing organic concepts.
120 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
In explaining the important topics with which this chapter deals I do not know in how far I have succeeded in making my meaning clear. Nor do I feel sure that the ideas here developed have been presented in their best or final form.
It is quite possible that in more expert hands they may prove ca-pable of better statement and more skilful development.I trust, how-ever, that what seems unclear and doubtful at this stage will become both intelligible and acceptable in the following chapters, where the concepts of this chapter will be further developed and applied in the explanation of organic and psychic Evolution.
Let me conclude with a word on nomenclature, intended to prevent ambiguity and misconception in the sequel. According to the view expounded in this chapter the whole in each individual case is the centre and creative source of reality. It is the real factor from which the rest in each case follows.But there is an infinity of such wholes comprising all the grades of existence in the universe; and it becomes necessary to have a general term which will include and cover all wholes as such under one concept. For this the term Holism has been coined; Holism thus comprises all wholes in the universe. It is thus both a concept and a factor : a concept as standing for all wholes, a factor because the wholes it denotes are the real fac-tors in the universe. We speak of matter as including all particles of matter in the universe: in the same way we shall speak of Holism as including all wholes which are the ultimate creative centres of reality in the world.
Difficulty may arise because Holism will sometimes also be used in another sense, to denote a theory of the universe. Thus while matter and spirit are taken as real or substantive factors,and materialism and spiritual-ism or ideal-ism as concepts or theories in reference to them respectively, it would by analogy not be improper to use the term Hoi-ism to express the view that the ultimate reality of the universe is neither matter nor spirit but wholes as defined in this book.
v GENERAL CONCEPT OF HOLISM 121
And sometimes Holism will be used in that wider sense as a theory of reality. But its primary and proper use is to denote the totality of wholes which operate as real factors and give to reality its dynamic evolutionary creative character. No confusion need arise if these two distinct applications of the term are borne in mind.
NOTE
WHITEHEAD'S DOCTRINE OF ORGANIC MECHANISM
So far as I am aware, the principle of Holism as here formulated is of all philosophers approached most closely by Professor A.N. White- head in his Science and the Modern World. In an earlier note (at the end of Chapter I) it was explained that in the fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness due to simple location he wrestles with the same prob-lem of concealed abstraction which I have sought to overcome by the concept of the "field." We envisage the same problem though arriving at alternative solutions. In regard to what is here called Holism we again envisage the same situation and reach results which are very close to each other. Our procedures are different.
In arriving at the concept of Holism I follow the lead of Science along a route suggested naturally by the accepted facts of physical and biological science. Professor Whitehead, on the other hand, is guided more particularly by psychological and philosophical analysis . He thinks that the current scientific scheme is at fault in that "it provides none of the elements which compose the immediate psy-chological experiences of mankind. Nor does it provide any elementa-ry trace of the organic unity of a whole,from which the organic uni-ties of electrons, protons, molecules,and living bodies can emerge" (p. 108).
Professor Whitehead therefore assumes on the analogy of Spinoza's ultimate Substance that there is in the universe "one underlying activity of realisation, individualising itself in an interlocked plurality of modes" (p.108).We must here understand that Whitehead's modes (unlike Spinoza's) are "simple locations" taken in their sepa-rateness. Now, as was explained in the note at the end of Chapter I, the mistake of simple location is, according to Whitehead, overcome if we conceive a thing or event as embracing in its apparent spatial limits, not only its own intrinsic characters, but also the perspec-tives, from it, of all other things or events. The concrete thing or event is thus a synthesised unity which transcends its simple spatial appearance and includes a little unified world, so to say.
122 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
These are the concrete events. The actual world is a complex of such concrete finite entities or events."Space and Time exhibit the gene-ral scheme of their interlocked relations. You cannot tear any one of them out of its context. Yet each one of them within the context has all the reality which attaches to the whole complex.
Conversely, the totality has the same reality as each event,for each event unifies the modalities to be ascribed, from its standpoint, to every part of the whole.A prehension(event) is a process of unifying .Accordingly,nature is a process of expansive development, a struc-ture of evolving processes.The reality is the process" (pp. 107-8).
Thus Whitehead arrives at the result that there is a fundamental process in the world which realises and actualises individual syntheses or unities, which are for him the real concrete events of the world.
The things, entities or objects of physical science are for him ab-stractions, deprived of their essential relations, connections, and perspectives with the rest of the world.
Whitehead then proceeds to point out (p. 115) that these abstract entities of science underlie the whole concept of scientific materi-alism, and that for these entities has to be substituted the concept of organisms, which emerges from his analysis. His doctrine of orga-nisms he then proceeds to formulate as follows: "The concrete endu-ring entities are organisms, so that the plan of the whole influen-ces the very characters of the various subordinate organisms which enter into it. In the case of an animal,the mental states enter into the plan of the total organism and thus modify the plans of the suc-cessive subordinate organisms until the smallest organisms, such as electrons, are reached.Thus an electron within a living body is dif-ferent from an electron outside it,by reason of the plan of the body . The electron blindly runs either within or without the body, but it runs within the body in accordance with the general plan of the body, and this plan includes the mental state. But the principle of modification is perfectly general throughout nature, and represents no property peculiar to living bodies. This doctrine involves the abandonment of the traditional scientific materialism, and the sub-stitution of an alternative doctrine of organism. I would term the doctrine the theory of organic mechanism. In this theory, the mole-cules may blindly occur in accordance with general laws, but the mo-lecules differ in their intrinsic characters according to the gene-ral organic plans of the situations in which they find themselves " (pp. 115-16).
Again: "An individual entity,whose own life-history is a part within the life-history of some larger, deeper, more complete pattern, is liable to have aspects of that larger pattern dominating its own being,and to experience modifications of that larger pattern reflec-ted in itself as modifications of its own being. This is the theory of organic mechanism..."
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" The general state of the universe, as it now is, partly determines the very essences of the entities whose modes of functioning the laws of nature express. The general principle is that in a new environment there is an evolution of the old entities into new forms" (p. 156). Again: "The whole point of the doctrine is the evolution of the complex organisms from antecedent states of less complex organisms. The doctrine thus cries aloud for a conception of organism as fundamental for nature.
It also requires an underlying activity substantial activity expressing itself in individual embodiments, and evolving in achievements of organisms. The organism is a unit of emergent value, a real fusion of the characters of external objects, emerging for its own sake " (p. 157).
It will be seen from the above quotations how close the theory of Organic Mechanism is to that of Holism. In both there is the fundamental natural activity, which is of a real substantial character and no mere general descriptive formula of the evolutionary process.
In both there is an evolution of forms, structures, patterns and their functions in accordance with the law of the whole. The nature of the whole prescribes the modus operandi of evolution, that is to say, the complex structure or pattern, and its parts reciprocally influence and modify and constitute each other. My treatment brings out more clearly the holistic character of the process and its results, and emphasises the character of wholeness more than does Whitehead's exposition. I also extend the application of the whole as a formative principle to the entire range of reality, including personality and the ideal spiritual sphere, whereas Whitehead discusses the new idea merely in its application to the domain of the physical and the biological. In spite, however, of these minor differences of treatment, our underlying ideas seem to come very closely together, if not to coincide. This is indeed a most remarkable circumstance, in view not only of the difference of the methods we have followed, but also and especially of the fact that our ideas have been worked out quite independently, and indeed mine had been formed and formulated as far back as 1910. I venture to hope that this convergence of views points to something really significant in the new theory or theories.
They certainly touch the most important issues in our outlook on science and philosophy.
I have great admiration for Professor Whitehead's penetrating analysis, to which he brings an equipment rare since the "century of genius." But in one respect I submit that my treatment has perhaps an advantage over his. My wider application of the main idea has compelled me to look upon the concept of "organism" as itself subordinate and sectional and to call the underlying process by a different, more significant name.
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Holism as the principle of the whole can be so defined in its progressive applications that it fits inorganic as well as organic situations, and mental, personal, and spiritual situations no less well. I am afraid " organism " will not do in its application to the inorganic, and still less when used in reference to the phenomena of Personality and the ideal spiritual values. A theory of organism or organic mechanism which raises the inorganic to the same level as organisms may in the end prove almost as faulty or misleading as the opposite scientific view which depresses organisms to the level of the inorganic and purely physical.
To call an atom an organism, as Professor Whitehead does, seems to me to open the door to serious confusions, to break down scientific distinctions which are really valuable, and to render the ordinary reader liable to the pitfalls of metaphors in matters calling for accurate description. Professor Whitehead's chapter on the Quantum is to me a proof that the new terminology proposed by him will largely tend to obscurity, to forced expressions and possibly to misunderstanding. The atom has a different structure or pattern different in kind from that of the organism, and it is not really helpful to use the same descriptive, or worse, explanatory term for both. Nor could the soul or a personality, or the Supreme Good be rightly or usefully called an organism. I would put in a strong plea for the term Holism, which, uncouth though it has been called, has no confusing associations, and is wide and significant enough to cover all the groups of emergent synthetic entities and values in the universe, and throughout points to the basic character constituting all of them.
CHAPTER VI
SOME FUNCTIONS AND CATEGORIES OF HOLISM
Summary. Avoiding as far as possible philosophical categories and confining ourselves to scientific view-points, we shall now try to consider more closely the concept of the whole and the results flowing from it. We have already seen that the concept of the whole means not a general tendency but a type of structure, a schema or framework, which, however, can only be filled with concrete details by actual experience. A whole is then a synthesis or structure of parts in which the synthesis becomes ever closer so as materially to affect the character of the functions or activities which become correspondingly more unified (or holistic). It is, however, important to realise that the whole is not some tertium quid over and above the parts which compose it; it is the parts in their intimate union, and the new reactions which result from that union. But in that union the parts themselves are more or less affected and altered towards the type represented by the union, so that the whole is evidenced in a change of parts as well as a change of resulting functions.
The whole thus appears as a marked power of regulation and co-ordination in respect of both the structure and the functioning of the parts. This is probably the most striking feature of organisms that they involve a balanced correlation of organs and functions. All the various activities of the several parts and organs seem directed to central ends ; there is thus co-operation and unified action of the organism as a whole instead of the separate mechanical activities of the parts. The whole thus becomes synonymous with unified (or holistic) action.
This intense synthesis and unification in the action of a whole involve a corresponding transformation of concepts and categories.
Thus while in a mechanical aggregate each part acts as a separate cause, and the resultant activity is a sum of the component activities, in organic activity or the activity of the whole this separate action or causation disappears in a real synthesis or unity which makes the components unrecognisable in the unified result. Yet even here we must realise that the whole does not act as a separate cause, distinct from its parts, no more than it is itself something additional over and above its parts. Holism is of the parts and acts through the parts, but the parts in their new relation of intimate synthesis which gives them their unified action.
125
126 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
The whole, therefore, completely transforms the concept of Causality. When an external cause acts on a whole, the resultant effect is not merely traceable to the cause, but has become transformed in the process. The whole seems to absorb and metabolise the external stimulus and to assimilate it into its own activity; and the resultant response is no longer the passive effect of the stimulus or cause, but appears as the activity of the whole. This holistic transformation of causality takes place in all organic stimuli and responses.
The cause or stimulus applied does not issue in its own passive effect, but in an active response which seems more clearly traceable to the organism or whole itself. In fact the physical category of " cause " undergoes a far-reaching change in its application to organisms or wholes generally. The whole appears as the real cause of the response, and not the external stimulus, which seems to play the quite minor r61e of a mere excitant or condition.
The most important result of the idea of the whole is, however, the appearance of the concept of Creativeness. It is the synthesis involved in the concept of the whole which is the source of creativeness in Nature. Nature is creative, Evolution is creative, just in proportion as it consists of wholes which bring about new structural groupings and syntheses. The whole evolves these new structural groupings out of the old materials; and thus arises the "creativeness" of Evolution, as well as the novelty and initiative which we see in organic Nature. The concept of creativeness which flows from that of the whole has the most far-reaching effects in its application to Nature. Once we grasp firmly the fact that Nature and Evolution are really creative, we are out of the bonds of the old crude mechanical ideas, and we enter an altogether new zone of ideas and categories. But the important point for our purpose is that " creativeness " is simply a deduction from the concept of the whole and is characteristic of the order of wholes in the universe.
It is wholes and wholes only that are creative. The formula omne vivum e vivo could therefore be generalised and applied to wholes generally. This creativeness issues not only in the origin of new organic species, but also in the great Values which are the creations of the whole on the spiritual level.
From this it is clear how also the concept of Freedom is rooted in that of the whole, organic or other. For the external causation is absorbed and transformed by the subtle metabolism of the whole into something of itself; otherness becomes selfness; the pressure of the external is transformed into the action of itself. Necessity or external determination is transformed into self-determination or Freedom.
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And as the series of wholes progresses the element of Freedom increases in the universe, until finally at the human stage Freedom takes conscious control of the process and begins to create the free ethical world of the spirit. Holism thus becomes basic to the entire universe of organic progress and free creative advance, to the Values and Ideals which ultimately give life all of worth it has, and to the Freedom which is the condition of all spiritual as well as organic progress.
But Holism is seen not only in the advance, in the changes and variations for ever going forward. It is seen just as much in the stability of the great Types. The new always arrives in the bosom of the pre-existing structure, and at its prompting and largely in harmony with it. Its novelty is small compared to its essential conservatism. Variation is infinitesimal compared to Heredity.
It is this fundamental unity or unitariness and wholeness in organisms and organic Evolution generally which seems to explain their essential stability as well as the regulation and co-ordination of the whole process, its conservative self-control if one may use a metaphor.
Individuality and purposiveness, as holistic categories, are referred to more especially in Chapter IX.
The chapter concludes with a summary of the functions which Holism exercises in the shaping of Evolution.
IN the last chapter the ideas of the whole and Holism were sketched in a general and preliminary way. Before we proceed to test the working value of the new ideas it will be necessary to explore somewhat more deeply into them. It is the vagueness of the concept of Life which makes it unsatisfactory for scientific purposes, and we should make certain that the concept of the whole, which is intended to make it definite for scientific purposes, be made as clear as possible.
Let me here say a word about the method we are pursuing. Hitherto we have as closely as possible followed the results of science; we have studied the fundamental structures of physical and biological science in the atom and the cell, and endeavoured to frame a concept of the whole on the basis of those structures. I propose to continue to pursue this course, and to explore and build up the concept of the whole from the results of the analysis of Nature.
128 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
We shall try to understand what is involved and implied in the processes of the small centres of unity in Nature, and derive as much aid and illumination from them as possible; in that way we shall try to proceed as a matter of method from the apparently simple to the complex. We are trying to build up a natural concept of the whole, and for that as well as other reasons we are avoiding a recourse to philosophical considerations.
The temptation is very strong for investigators when they approach the domains of life and mind, so different apparently from that of physical science, to abandon the scientific categories of research for philosophical categories, and to seek for an explanation of the phenomena of life in concepts which sound strange and alien to science.
No wonder that most biologists, frightened by this procedure and by this appeal to ideas and methods of which they are traditionally suspicious, react in the opposite direction, and seek refuge in purely mechanical ideas and explanations of the phenomena of life. At first sight the concept of the whole may appear to wear a metaphysical garb; but whatever its occasional use in other connections, the intention here is to eschew metaphysics and to hammer out a concept which will supply a real and deeply felt want in the explanation of organic processes, and which will at the same time give expression to the natural affiliations of the phenomena of life with those of matter on the one hand and of mind on the other. We shall follow the scientific clues as far as is in any way possible in the carrying out of this intention.
Above all it is necessary to make the concept of the whole as simple, clear and definite as possible.
I wish to guard against the impression that philosophy has no contribution to make to the consideration of the whole and Holism generally. On the contrary, here as elsewhere the last word will probably be with philosophy. There is a Metaphysic or Logic of Holism still to be written, which will lay bare the ultimate ideas involved and their relations and validity. That task is not attempted here.
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Avoiding the metaphysical implications, I am in this book merely endeavouring to elucidate as clearly and simply as possible the idea of the whole with its most obvious general consequences, and to state the broad effect which its clear realisation must have on our methods of thought and research.
Let me repeat what was said in the last chapter; the whole is not a general principle or tendency; it is a structure or schema. A natural body or organism can be analysed into two factors; the form, structure or schema, and the concrete characters or qualities which fill up that form or structure. For these concrete characters or qualities we have in every case to rely on experience; the colour, feel or smell of a thing or the characters of an animal can only be learnt from observation or experience in any particular case. But the form or structure involves features which can be most conveniently generalised into concepts, and if these concepts are clear and definite, results can again be deduced from them which make them most useful as counters of thought and explanation. The generalised concepts of space and time as developed, not so much by the philosophers as by the mathematicians, have these qualities of clearness and definiteness which make them specially fruitful for investigating the structure of the physical world, as we have seen in the discussion of the Theory of Relativity.
And similarly the concept of the whole, if clearly apprehended and firmly held, may become a powerful means of exploring the intricate phenomena of life and mind.
The concept of the whole is a generalised structure or schema, a framework to be filled in in any particular case; and it is this structural or schematic character which brings it close to that concrete character which distinguishes all natural objects in the world of experience. For the sake of clearness let us proceed to analyse the fundamental characters of a whole as we see it exemplified in, say, a simple organism.
130 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP,
A whole is a synthesis or unity of parts, so close that it affects the activities and interactions of those parts, impresses on them a special character, and makes them different from what they would have been in a combination devoid of such unity or synthesis. That is the fundamental element in the concept of the whole. It is a complex of parts, but so close and intimate, so unified, that the characters and relations and activities of the parts are affected and changed by the synthesis. The analogy of a physical mixture and a chemical compound is very useful and instructive in this connection, and we have already seen that in a real though limited sense a chemical compound is a whole. A whole is not some tertium quid over and above the parts which compose it; it is these parts in their intimate union and the new reactions and functions which result from that union. It is a new structure of those parts, with the altered activities and functions which flow from this structure. The parts are not lost or destroyed in the new structure into which they enter; the atoms or molecules persist in the new compound, just as the cells persist in the organism. But their independent functions and activities are, just as themselves, grouped, related, correlated and unified in the structural whole. A new bent is impressed on these functions. They follow a new modus operandi in the new pattern of the whole. To the structural unity of the parts in the whole corresponds an equally and perhaps even more significant functional unity or correlation of activities. Just as in dynamics a body subject to pulls in various directions moves with one resultant velocity in one definite direction, so the functions and the activities of the parts in the whole are all co-ordinated and unified into one complex character which belongs or appears to belong to the whole as such. With this difference, again (just as in the difference between a physical mixture and a chemical compound), that the resultant function is not a mere addition and composition of the unaltered composing functional elements, but the change involves both these elements and their final result.
vi FUNCTIONS AND CATEGORIES 131
Thus taking x to represent a mixture and x l to represent a whole, we cannot say that a + b + c + d x (mixture) in the one case and = x l (whole) in the other; but in the synthesis which results in x l the functions of the parts themselves are changed into a v b v c v d v so that corresponding to the formula of mixture a + b+c+d = x we have the holistic formula a x + b + q + d v = x v It is most important to realise this point ; both the individual functions of the parts (cells, organs, etc.) and their composition or correlation in the complex are affected and altered by the synthesis which is the whole. Not only does the synthesis of the parts influence and indeed constitute the whole; the whole in its turn impresses its character on each individual part, which feels its influence in the most real and intimate manner. The whole-ward tendency and activity of the parts are most deeply characteristic of the nature of the whole. This, then, is the primary and most important element in the concept of the whole: the synthetic unity of structure and its functions which affects the parts and their functions or activities without their loss or destruction.
The unity, although so close and intimate and so deeply affecting the parts and their functions, is not such as to merge the parts completely, but to leave them a latitude which varies with individual wholes at the same state of development, and still more at different stages of development.
From this fundamental unification of the parts which constitute the whole, and the intimate reciprocal influence which parts and whole exert on each other, follow certain results of great importance for our general concept of the whole.
In the first place, unity of action, which is characteristic of the whole, shows itself in the marked power of regulation and correlation which the whole appears to possess in respect of its parts. This is perhaps the most striking feature of organic wholes; however complex they are, a certain balanced correlation of functions is maintained.
If there is any disturbance among the parts which upsets the routine of the whole, then either this disturbance is eliminated by the co-operative effort of many or all the parts, or the functions of the other parts are so readjusted that a new balance and routine is established.
132 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
The synthetic unity of the whole produces synthetic or holistic action
throughout the whole; the activities and functions of the
parts also become holistic, so that in addition to their
ordinary routine they have a whole-ward aspect or tendency
which becomes active whenever the balance of the whole
is disturbed. It is this holistic character distinguishing
the activity and functions not only of the whole but also
of its parts which underlies the remarkable phenomena of
co-operation among cells to which attention was drawn in
the fourth chapter. The co-operation is not so much the
interaction of independent units as in truth and really the
pressure of the whole on the parts. Indeed the entire
function or system of the organism is holistic ; the synthetic
unity of the whole is so deeply stamped on the parts and
reflected in the activities of the parts, that they all appear
to " play up " to each other, and to co-operate in maintaining
or, in case of disturbance, restoring the balance of equilibrium
of activities which is characteristic of the particular whole.
From the synthetic unity of the whole follows the holistic
action of all its parts, as well as the characteristic power of
correlating and regulating which the whole seems to exert
in respect of the parts. All these properties really flow from
the idea and nature of the whole ; once this idea is clearly
realised, the true principle of organic explanation is found,
and the application of the ideas and methods of mechanism
or vitalism becomes superfluous, as we shall see later.
In order to assist us in rendering clear our ideas of the
whole and holistic action, as distinguished from those of a
mechanical aggregate and mechanical action, let us consider
a material system in dynamic equilibrium, which has many
analogies to the ideas we are exploring. The character
of such a system is that within certain limits it will maintain
its equilibrium against disturbance and interference. If it
meets with any disturbance, such as an external impact
or any interference with its internal movements, its equi-
librium will for a moment be disturbed; but immediately
readjustments will take place, the effects of the disturbance
will become distributed throughout the system, new positions
vi FUNCTIONS AND CATEGORIES 133
of the parts and new movements of these parts will result,
with the effect that a fresh equilibrium is established, and
the system, with a somewhat altered arrangement of parts
and movements, will once more be in dynamic equilibrium.
When we pass from this physical system to an organic
whole a transformation of ideas takes place : the system
becomes a synthesis qualitatively different from the system,
a synthesis so intense that a new unity arises and a different
order of ideas becomes necessary for its explanation. To
the mechanical readjustment of the parts correspond the
regulation and correlation which the organic whole exercises
in respect of its parts; with this difference, again, that,
while the new mechanical equilibrium is the exact mathe-
matical resultant of the component forces, in the organic
whole, parts and whole reciprocally influence and alter
each other instead of merely the parts making up the whole,
and in the end it is practically impossible to say where the
whole ends and the parts begin, so intimate is their inter-
action and so profound their mutual influence. In fact so
intense is the union that the differentiation into parts and
whole becomes in practice impossible, and the whole seems
to be in each part, just as the parts are in the whole. There*
is an intensification of synthesis or unity, as we rise from
the mechanical composition to the chemical compound,
and from this again to the organic whole ; an intensification
which is already qualitatively different as between the first
two, but which becomes entirely sui generis in the last. To
mistake the unity of the whole for the mere mechanical
system of dynamics, and the holistic action which shows
itself in organic regulation, correlation and co-operative
interaction for the readjustment of forces and self-mainten-
ance of equilibrium in the dynamic system, is to confound
two quite different orders of ideas and facts. The whole
differs essentially from the mechanical system; holistic
action or function differs even more essentially from the
" action " or " reaction " of dynamics, and from the mean-
ing of those terms as used in Newton's Laws of Motion
and still current in the physical science of to-day.
134 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
Watch the activities of an animal. See how innumerable
movements are blended in one definite action. The unity
and specificity of the action are not reducible to mechanical
terms ; it is not the dynamical equivalent of its components,
it follows a quite different pattern or plan. Its unity is
indeed unique and only explicable by resort to new categories.
In other words, organic action is holistic and not merely
mechanical.
In other directions too the nature of the whole brings
about this intensive transformation of concepts. Let us
take the idea of cause and see how it is affected by the
concept of the whole. The causal idea is quite an interest-
ing test to apply to the whole, and it will help to elucidate
the point we are dealing with, as well as some other points
that concern the nature of the whole. The question, for
instance, whether the whole is something different from
and additional to its parts is paralleled by the question
whether the whole acts as a cause as distinct from its parts ;
in other words, is the causality of the whole exhausted by
the causal operation of its parts, or is there something over
and above the influence of the parts which must be attributed
to the whole as such? I have already explained that the
whole is nothing but the specific synthesis of the parts and
not something additional to them. Similarly the causality
of the whole is not an additional factor, but simply the
causality of the parts in their intimate synthesis in the
whole. In mechanical composites each element in opera-
tion or action has its own effect and is a separate cause;
and the final result is the resultant blending of all these
separate effects. In the whole, as we have seen, there is
not this individual separate action of the parts; there is
a synthesis which makes the elements or parts act as one
or holistically ; and the action or function is an inseparable
holistic unity just in proportion as the synthesis is a
whole or realises the character of wholeness. It is in
this sense, and in this sense only, that the whole is a cause ;
it is a cause not apart from its parts, but solely through
their synthesis in action. The whole fuses the action of
vi FUNCTIONS AND CATEGORIES 135
its elements into a real synthesis, into a unity which makes
the result quite different from what it would have been as
the separate activities of the parts. The structural synthesis
of the whole results in a similar synthesis of activity or
function. Just as the whole as a structural unity, and
only as such, is something different, something new com-
pared with its parts in their separateness or isolation, so
too its action is radically different from the blending of
their separate actions.
Thus the causality of the whole is explained, and from
this explanation one can appreciate how immensely com-
plicated the action or functioning of an organism must be.
When a stimulus is applied to an organism a whole is
set in motion, and the response which results is not merely
an affair of the original stimulus, but of the entire whole
in all its unique complication of parts and functions which
has been set in motion. The comparatively simple, isolable
phenomenon of causation as observed in the interaction of
material bodies undergoes a complete and radical trans-
formation when observed in the case of an organism ; and
the difference is not a mystery, but is deducible from the
nature of the whole as exemplified by an organism. I shall
return to this matter immediately, and pass on to another
important result of the nature of a whole.
In the preceding chapters I have more than once
used the word " creative/' I have called the whole
" creative " ; I have called Evolution " creative " ; I have
even applied the term to matter in its structural char-
acterisation. It is important to see in what sense wholes,
or Evolution generally, or even matter is called " creative/ 1
and the foregoing discussion will have prepared us for
the explanation which follows. There is a sense in
which the word " creation " falls outside the scope of
an intelligible science or philosophy. I refer to abso-
lute creation creation, that is to say, out of nothing.
Absolute creation just as absolute annihilation cannot be
comprehended by the human mind. E nihilo nihil fit is a
fundamental principle of thought as well as of Nature.
136 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
But there is another form of creation which is not only
intelligible but follows directly from the explanation of
holistic action which I have already given. Holistic action
is creative, and is the only form of creation or creativeness
which is intelligible to us. Here again the distinction
between mere physical mixtures and chemical compounds
illustrates the difference between what is and what is not
creative. A mere mechanical aggregate is nothing new,
and is no more than the sum of the mixed ingredients, while
the chemical compound is new in the sense that out of the
constituent materials another qualitatively different sub-
stance has been made. A new structure has been formed
in the chemical compound. In the same way a new struc-
ture and substance is made in the atom out of the quali-
tatively different electrons and protons. It was on this
account and in this sense that we called matter creative;
creative, that is to say, of structures and substances different
from their constituent elements or parts.
It is, however, when we come to consider organisms that
we see the whole creative in a full and proper sense. In
thought we distinguish between the deductive and the
inductive between the deduction of the particular from
the general, the drawing out, unfolding, or explicating what
is given, and the reverse inductive process, the integration
or synthesis of the given parts or elements into a new,
more complex content. The action of organisms proceeds
on the analogy of induction. We have seen how the char-
acteristic feature of organic process is metabolism, the
transformation of the given materials into something
different, of the inorganic into the organic, of the organic
material of one kind into that of another kind. Creative
synthesis is characteristic of all organic actions and functions.
But it is not in metabolism only that this creative trans-
formation is exemplified ; perhaps the phenomena of growth
and development afford even more characteristic and
significant examples of the creative synthesis which is
the clearest expression of the nature of Holism. Creation
is stamped on the face of organic nature; the differences
vi FUNCTIONS AND CATEGORIES 137
which separate individuals into species, genera, orders and
so forth are real differences which were either originally
created in one great creative Act at the beginning, or were
creatively evolved in the gradual process of organic descent,
so that the Process is creative. Everywhere we meet the
new, which is irreducible to the old elements from whicli
it seems to have sprung; the qualities and characters on
which new stable varieties or species are founded cannot
be explained on the basis of known pre-existing qualities
or characters. And even where it is possible to recognise
certain of the old elements in the new, the new is some-
thing different and contains something more than the old
elements. We may say that the creative synthesis consists
in the making of a new arrangement of old elements, that
the old elements have been fixed in a new structure which
has different qualities from the old pre-existing structure ;
in this case it would only be the synthesis which is really
new. But to my mind if we take big stretches of organic
descent and compare the main great Types which distinguish
the Vegetable and Animal kingdoms, we must inevitably
come to the conclusion that there is more than this in the
creative process of evolution. Compare a protozoon with
a vertebrate animal, or one of the higher animals with
man, and it surely becomes foolish to say that the elementary
units are the same in both cases, and only their arrange-
ment or synthesis into structures is different. Mere re-
arrangement of supposed unalterable pre-existing elements,
mere reshufflings of the old cards, will give us a sort of
chemistry of Evolution, but not the vast range of real
effective advance which we know. The process of creative
Evolution is not a mechanical rearrangement of old
material; it involves the qualitatively new at every stage,
from the most minute elements to the most complex struc-
ture. It is not merely the structure which is new and
different from what has gone before, some of the materials
are also new ; the details of the new structure also involve
new smaller structures along with the old inherited
structures ; and in the final analysis (if that were possible)
138 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
we would find among the elementary units also new ones
in addition to the old ones carried forward in the process
of descent. There is the creation of the new variety or
species (the new structure) ; there is the creation of new
unit characters (parts of the structure) which justify the
new species or variety ; and there is behind the new unit
characters not mere re-arrangements of elements of old
character units, but an integration of new materials or
quality elements with the old elements in the formation
of the new unit characters. The process is creative of
the new at every step and at every stage, and in the
smallest quality elements no less than in the large or
total structures. Starting from imaginary elements a, 6, c,
d, we find in organic advance in no case a mere struc-
tural regrouping of these elements only, but everywhere
an element of qualitative newness, x, incorporated along
with the old elements into the new structure. In every
advance we would find not merely a new structure but also
an % in one form or another. I have used the concept of
units or elements for the purpose of illustration ; but really
the creative process of Evolution is holistic, and in the last
resort unanalysable into definite units; the blending of
inherited with new structures and characters is so close
that no dissociation is possible, and it is impossible to say
where the old elements end and the new begin. But beyond
any manner of doubt in the advance the new is there along
with the old in such a way that we can only understand the
process, both in its entirety and in its minutest detail, as a
real creative one.
It may be argued that my view of organic creativeness as
meaning, not merely new grouping or structures but also
new character units and quality elements, brings us back
to that conception of absolute creation which I have already
declared to be incomprehensible. Is it not better then, it
may be asked, to fall back on the idea of potentiality rather
than creativeness, and to conceive the organic advance as
the rendering actual what was implicit and potential in the
organism in the beginning? In this way new characters
vi FUNCTIONS AND CATEGORIES 139
which emerge in the course of organic descent would not
be taken as absolutely new, but as the appearance or emerg-
ence of potential characters which were there all along in the
ancestors of the new organism. My answer would be that the
concept of potentiality is quite useful but not applicable
here ; the expression of the implicit new is usually a very
long process which may occupy an indefinite number of
generations before its actual emergence in a new sensible
character or species. During this process of subsensible
growth or incubation the character may be fairly described
as potential in the ancestors of the new species. But to
go further back and to say that the new is there in potential
form from the very beginning is to fall back into the pre-
formation view of Evolution which we have already in the
last chapter discarded as making a farce of all real organic
advance. Potentiality presupposes that the real creative
work is already done, and that the slow finishing touches of
expression alone remain to be put on. We have simply to
face the facts of Nature frankly as we find them ; and to my
mind there is no doubt, however hard it is to picture to our-
selves the underlying idea of creation, that the emergence of
the really new, in other words, the creativeness of the
evolutionary process, is the only view which is in harmony
with our scientific knowledge. Real creativeness is a
fundamental characteristic of holistic structure and action.
It necessarily means such integration of structures and
activities as results in new characters not there before and
which cannot be reduced to pre-existing elements. Holistic
action, therefore, necessarily issues in real progress and
creative Evolution.
There is no doubt that the concept of creativeness raises
a fundamental issue in respect both of reality and know-
ledge. If there is this evolution or making not only of
new wholes or structures, but also of new quality elements
therein, the whole fabric of Mechanism as ordinarily under-
stood is shaken to its foundations. The iron rule of the
past is broken; the future is not a mere rehearsal of the
past; in many cases the new effect is more than its
i 4 o HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
pre-existing cause. The universe ceases to be a hide-bound,
cast-iron, completely closed system from which real progress
and freedom are excluded. It is open in one direction,
the direction in which time is moving; the future faces an
open gateway, and the universe is the highway of the
creative movement, of that great march in which all the unit
wholes and formations of Reality take their part and advance
towards a fuller measure of wholeness. The freedom is
limited, the movement is slow, the character of the universe
is essentially conservative. But at any rate conservatism
is not the last word to be said about it. It does not
go like a clock, completely manufactured, and once for all
wound up at the beginning to mark a time fixed and pre-
determined for it. It is slowly making itself, it is slowly
winding itself up, it is slowly making its own time. It is
a slow, tentative, perhaps in details a somewhat blundering
process ; but it is real and creative ; the new successful
effort is for ever issuing out of the old mistakes, and a
slow advance is being laboriously recorded and continuously
maintained. This figurative language, although perhaps
somewhat highly coloured, is really no exaggeration.
" Creativeness " is the key- word, and it is also the key
position in the great battle which is now being fought out
between the nineteenth-century and the twentieth-century
conceptions of the nature and trend of the universe, between
Mechanism as ordinarily understood and what is here called
Holism. Those who wish to defend the old position of
Mechanism (and they are still the great majority in the
army of Science) will have to concentrate their forces at
this point. If the concept of creativeness, of the emergent
new in the Evolution of the universe, really wins through,
Mechanism as a scientific and philosophical category will
be reduced to very modest proportions.
The creativeness of Evolution at all stages has indeed the
most profound effect on our views of Nature and her order
and on all our methods of explaining her processes. To
illustrate this let us revert once more to the oft-quoted
difference between a mere physical mixture and a chemical
vi FUNCTIONS AND CATEGORIES 141
compound. The mixture is, like the compound, a structure,
much looser, of course, than the compound, but still a
structure of sorts. But the compound differs from it in
being a radically different structure, a new structure has
emerged in the compound, a creative moment has entered
into the process which was not there before. And the result
is a complete difference in all the pertinent phenomena of
the two. Even our very categories of description have to
undergo a corresponding transformation. If we tried
to describe the properties and actions of a chemical com-
pound on the same principles as those of a mechanical
mixture, we would go grievously wrong, and the real facts
would be hopelessly distorted. The creative moment which
has entered into the chemical compound in its passage from
a mere physical mixture, the new structure which has
resulted from the change, requires new concepts and principles
of description. And this is freely admitted by chemists
and physicists alike. The case for new categories of descrip-
tion becomes far stronger at the next creative advance,
where chemical structure is transformed into organic struc-
ture. In both cases new wholes are produced, and we
may therefore say that Holism is at work ; in the organic
structure the creative advance is admittedly far greater
than in the chemical compound. The concentration
and intensification of structure which we call the whole
in the organism are comparatively far greater and higher
than the similar phenomena in the chemical compound
as compared to the mere mixture. Something indisputably
new has been produced; there has been creation; a
new structure has arisen which has its own categories
of description; and to apply mere chemical and physical
concepts of action and description to this new structure
is to ignore the creative advance which has taken
place and to confound two entirely different, however
closely related, structures and stages of Evolution. The
physico-chemical view and explanation of organism there-
fore rest on a fundamental misconception and on a denial
or disregard of the creative advance in natural Evolution.
i 4 2 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
There is the physical description of the mixture; there is
the chemical description of the compound; and there is
what I call the holistic description of the organism, which
recognises the qualitative newness and sui generis nature
of the structure which bears the characters of what we call
life. The apparent materials may even be the same in all
three cases ; but the character and intensity of their union
in each case varies in such a way that entirely different
structures with entirely different characters result. There is
a rising element of wholeness in all three structures, and the
holistic character is by no means confined to the third or
organic structure. But its wholeness is much more marked
and pronounced than that of the other two; it is, in fact,
the very type and exemplar of a whole; and a purely
physico-chemical explanation of its nature and functions
cannot possibly do justice to this unique holistic character.
This is but another way of affirming the creative character
of the advance from the mere physical mixture to the
chemical structure, and still more in the advance from the
chemical to the organic structure in Nature. The creative
advance is the fact, to which our conceptual theories of
explanation have to conform. The creativeness consists
in the progressive advance in respect of the character of
wholeness which distinguishes the three stages of structure ;
and the advance is in a geometrical rather than an arith-
metical progression, that is to say, the ratio of wholeness
increases with the advance. The physical and chemical
categories still apply, but they are not sufficient, and have to
be supplemented by the holistic categories which correspond
to and express the greater and qualitatively more intense
wholeness which characterises the organism as distinguished
from the mixture or the compound.
Let me here point out that it is not all causation which
is creative ; much of the causation in the universe is purely
mechanical and produces nothing new. Only wholes are
creative ; only the causality of wholes produces effects which
are really new. Structure in fact and in Nature arises from
pre-existing structures whether in the organic or inorganic
vi FUNCTIONS AND CATEGORIES 143
domain. Omne vivum e vivo is a formula which applies to
all wholes and not merely to organic wholes. Only wholes
produce wholes, and only in wholes does the new emerge ;
wholes form the pathway of creative reality; only the
causality of wholes is creative of the new.
This is so because of what I have already pointed out
above when discussing how a whole transforms a " cause "
or stimulus applied to it into something quite different from
what it was before. If an external " cause " is applied to
an organism or a living body it will become internalised and
transformed, and will be experienced as a stimulus, which
in its turn will be followed by a response. The response is
not the mere mechanical effect of the cause, and this is due
to the complete transformation which the latter has under-
gone. In the moment which elapses between stimulus and
response a miracle is performed; a vast series of organic
changes is set going of which comparatively little is known
as yet. The inorganic becomes organic, the alien stuff of
the environment is recreated into the stuff of the living
organism. The organic changes which take place are
assumed to have their physical and chemical equivalents ; but
even though that is so, they are much more than the mere
physico-chemical tale they tell. The stimulus has been
transformed and absorbed and become a series of states
of the organism; the organism has made the stimulus
its own, as it were. And as a result the response is not
the mere passive effect of the stimulus, but is the free and
spontaneous movement of the organism itself under the
influence of the appropriate stimulus. The passive external
stimulus has been recreated into an active, free response
of the organism. Anything passing through the organic
whole thereby becomes completely changed. Any action
issuing from it has the stamp of the whole upon it. The
procedure is transformative, synthetic, recreative, holistic,
and the result is " new " in one degree or another.
From this it will be seen that if the concept of causation
is to be retained in connection with organic or psychical
activities, it will have to be substantially recast. The
144 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
resultant activity of an organism under a stimulus is never
the effect of that stimulus, as it would be in the case of
mechanical action, but always of the stimulus as trans-
formed by the organism; the organism appears as the
dominant element in the causal concept, and the stimulus
appears in a minor role. The more active the state of the
organism, and the more thorough its reaction to the stimulus,
the less is the influence of the stimulus on the response,
which appears as the free and almost original action of the
organism. The organic response is often so great com-
pared to the stimulus, it is so out of all proportion to it and
so transcends it in every way, that the organism appears
clearly as the real cause, and the stimulus merely as a
minor condition or excitation.
It is thus seen that the organism is a new system, with its
own activities and laws and categories of action and descrip-
tion. It is a new centre, with a large measure of inde-
pendence of the environment. This does not mean that
the environment does not influence it, but it means that
the environment influences it only indirectly and after a
more or less complete transformation and metabolism of
such influence. Vis-d-vis the environment the organism is
something apart and unique, something sui generis, which
does not passively accept and reproduce the influence of the
environment, but utilises and appropriates it for its own
purposes and in its own ways, as if it were some superior
arbiter and disposer of the whole situation. The concepts of
dominion, of mastery, of creation which the orthodox view
places at the beginning of things are now distributed and
assigned to all organisms, whose inmost nature it is only
possible to express through these concepts. In other words,
organism is not so much an effect of external causes ; nor
are its states and characters merely effects of external causes ;
it is in a large measure its own cause causa sui and the
cause of its own states and functions. External environ-
mental influences are merely the rough material with which
it works and builds up its own system. And in the act of
building the material is itself more or less completely
vi FUNCTIONS AND CATEGORIES 145
changed into the character of the structure built. I say
" more or less," because this character of creative mastery
and transformation which organism displays in respect of
external influences and materials is itself of a progressive
character. In the lower organisms there is much more of
passive acceptance and response than in the higher; and
the whole process of Evolution is largely a continuous growth
towards organic independence and self -regulation ; in other
words, towards wholeness. The concept of wholeness
contains and explains all the distinguishing organic attributes
in their various grades throughout the wide range of organic
Evolution.
Thus it is that the creative element in Evolution, the
emergent new, is associated with the nature and action of
wholes, and is confined to them. Not only is the activity
of wholes holistic and creative, as yet it is the only creative
activity of which we have knowledge.
From this discussion it is clear how the concept of Free-
dom is rooted in that of the organic whole. The whole is
free, the parts are bound : such would be a formula of
metaphysics. For beyond the whole there is nothing ex-
ternal to determine it, and it is therefore free ; while the parts
are necessarily bound by their relation to the whole and
to each other in the whole. But we are not concerned with
metaphysical wholes, but with those of reality, such as
organisms. And we have seen how the functioning of an
organic whole releases it from the domination, the causation
of the external, and conduces to its freedom. The external
causation, the stimulus which operates on it ab extra, is
transformed by its subtle metabolism into something of
itself; otherness becomes self ness; the pressure of the
external or the other is transformed into the action of itself.
The organism is largely detached from its surroundings and
centres in itself. Necessity is transformed into freedom.
The causal chain of physics becomes the new badge of
freedom. The whole, therefore, even in its most humble
organic forms, lays the foundations of the new world of
freedom. We can arrive at the same result by another
L
146 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
process of reasoning, based on the creative activity of
Holism. Under the physical system the effect equals the
cause, and is therefore completely determined by the cause.
Causa = effectum. But we have seen how this formula
disappears before creative Holism ; how the effect comes to
contain the new and therefore to transcend its cause. The
element of newness, of novelty in the holistic order of the
world, means a release from the complete bondage of matter
and its causality and necessity. It means a certain latitude
for expansion and growth. It widens the range of possi-
bilities; the straight and narrow path of physics becomes
the prospect which ultimately widens into the great horizons
of life and mind. Freedom broadens out into a world of
opportunities. The animal finds that it is no longer im-
prisoned in its cell like the plant ; it begins to move about.
Gradually it learns the great lessons of direction and self-
direction. The great Experiment of life assumes ever-
widening degrees of freedom, until finally at the human
stage freedom takes conscious control and begins to
create the free ethical world of the Spirit. With that
development we shall deal at a later stage of this work.
Here it must suffice to have pointed out the humble begin-
nings of Freedom. And even at this stage it is important
to bear in mind that the domain of life is largely distinguished
from that of matter and energy by its greater degrees of
freedom. Scientists speak of the degrees of freedom even
in an inorganic situation. And by this they mean the
element of contingency which seems inseparable even from
the purely physical order. The causal chain of Nature,
the necessity which characterises the procession of physical
events, does not exclude elements of chance or contingency.
An event may happen in this way or that way; there are
alternatives between which only the actual fact can decide.
To these possibilities or alternatives the phrase " degrees
of freedom " is applied. But in the domain of life it acquires
an added meaning, or rather, let me say, a real meaning.
Life is not entirely bound, even in its most primitive forms.
Hence its trials and experiments, its variations, its novelties
vi FUNCTIONS AND CATEGORIES 147
and its creativeness, which become ever more accentuated
in its progress. Evolution traces the grand line of escape
from the prison of matter to the full freedom of the Spirit.
It is clear that the beginnings of freedom are laid far back
in the early dawn of life itself, if not earlier.
The above discussion of unified organic functioning, or
unity of action, causation, creation, and freedom will suffice to
indicate how the whole as factor and concept involves a trans-
formation of physical actions and categories. They have
been selected as samples of holistic functions and categories
and are not intended to be in any sense an exhaustive
enumeration of such functions and categories. A full
list would, for instance, include " individuality " and " pur-
posiveness " as essential features, functions, and categories
of wholes. They are, however, referred to in Chapter IX
in connection with Mind as an organ of Holism. At this
stage it is only necessary to make the briefest reference to
them. Thus with regard to the character and category of
individuality it is only necessary to point out here that
individuality is distinctive of wholes. Wholes are not
arbitrarily divisible and the divided parts are not arbitrarily
interchangeable. Every whole has a real character, a
unique identity, and an irreversible orientation which
distinguishes it from everything else and is the very essence
of individuality. And this character of individuality rises
with the rise of wholes in the scale of Evolution, and acquires
decisive importance at the ultimate level of human Per-
sonality. Purposiveness, again, is a special form of that
unified organic action which has already been discussed.
It means a correlation and unification of actions towards
an end, whether this is consciously conceived or apprehended
or not. On the animal plane and especially on the psychical
level of Evolution it is quite distinctive of wholes. In an
exhaustive treatment of holistic characters and categories
individuality and purposiveness would have no less impor-
tant a place than those above discussed.
Let us now pass on to consider organism as a centre of
internal regulation, adjustment and co-ordination of its
148 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
own functions and activities. The phenomena that meet
us here are indeed most wonderful. No cunningly devised
machine of human contrivance can rival or even approach
in delicacy of co-ordination or fineness as well as complexity
of adjustment the organic wholes we see in Nature. Pro-
fessor Haldane has described the wonderful combination of
processes which go to make up the physiology of breathing l
a combination which is marvellous enough under normal
conditions, but which becomes far more so when we see how
curiously breathing adjusts itself to abnormal conditions, to
situations artificially brought about, which it has probably
never had to face in all time. No " experience " or here-
ditary " memory " can guide it here; and yet it rises to
the occasion every time, within a wonderfully wide range of
adaptability and plasticity. Practically every major physio-
logical function shows the same power of co-ordination of
various organs and activities, and the same delicacy and
ingenuity of adjustment to novel situations. Any one of
the functional features involved would be a wonder in
itself; but when the co-ordinated combination of all is
studied, when, moreover, the great variety of adjustments
of this combination to unusual situations is considered, the
marvel becomes baffling to our human intelligence. The
most delicate processes, involving vast numbers of co-
operating factors, happen not clumsily or slowly, but most
finely and as it were in less than the twinkling of an eye.
What guides and controls such a complex physiological
process? Intelligence such as we know it is clearly not
equal to the task; nor have we any reason to ascribe
intelligence to organic processes. The assumption of a
vital force explains nothing, as our problem concerns some-
thing far more subtle and directive than force. Again,
to look upon it as a marvellous self-working mechanism
does not meet the real situation, which is more than
one of mechanism, however marvellous. The theory of
Evolution presupposes an original start from simple
beginnings, which have multiplied, evolved and become
1 Organism and Environment, 1917.
vi FUNCTIONS AND CATEGORIES 149
complex in the course of Evolution. The pure chance
presupposed by Mechanists has never ruled the world.
There has never been a blind sorting out of possibilities
according to the laws of probability; and if there had
been, the chances against the present organic situation
in the world would have been infinite. Not thus has the
new arisen and gone forward. The new has always arisen
in the bosom of the old, and under its aegis and influence.
Not blind chance or contingency but the existing state of
affairs has always shaped the course and direction of Evolu-
tion. The new arises from the old and largely at its prompt-
ing, and thus in harmony with it. Its novelty is very small
compared to its essential conservatism. Variation is infini-
tesimal compared to Heredity. It is this fundamental
character of unity, unitariness and wholeness as distinct
from mechanical aggregation of parts which seems to me
to explain the phenomena of organic regulation and co-
ordination. Organisms, of course, contain a great deal of
mechanism; the detailed processes and functions are
largely carried out by what one might call organic mechan-
isms, structures with particular functions assigned to them.
But the unification of the entire system and its self-regulating
character; its plasticity of co-ordination and adjustment
under all the situations of the environment which it has to
face and to which it has to adapt itself ; its creative move-
ment in time, so different from what one would expect on
the second law of thermodynamics; the unique facts of
growth, restitution and reproduction, which not even a
strained application of the mechanistic scheme would fit
these are facts and features distinctive of wholes which
Holism alone can properly justify and explain.
It may be convenient if, before concluding this chapter,
I give a summary of the various functions which are here
assigned to Holism in the shaping of reality.
(A) i. In the first place, Holism is a creative factor,
and as such shows itself in the upbuilding and differentia-
tion of organic structures and their functions. These may
be modifications or variations or mutations. They may
150 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION CHAP.
be ordinary specific differences such as explain the origin of
different species. These differences may include new organs
and structures, or merely the general complexifying of
existing structures which makes organisms as a whole more
complex. All these aspects of Holism are discussed in
Chapter VIII.
2. This creative Holism is, of course, responsible for
the whole course of Evolution, inorganic as well as organic.
All the great main types of existence are therefore due to
it, such as the atom, molecule, cell, organism, the great
groups of plant types, the great groups of animal types,
and finally the human type. Creative Holism is thus
responsible for all the great divisions of Science. The
cursory discussion of these aspects of Holism is spread over
various chapters.
(B) i. In the second place, apart from the detailed
structural and functional differentiations above referred
to, Holism is a general organising, co-ordinating or regulating
factor in organisms over which it exercises a measure of
guidance, direction and control. The nature of this regu-
lative or controlling activity is discussed in this chapter,
and the difficulties it gives rise to in its relation to the
body or the energy system generally are discussed in Chapters
VII and X.
2. This regulation and control is exercised over the
structures and functions of organisms generally, but some-
times special holistic organs are evolved, which seem
specially destined to assist in the exercise of this regulation
and control. Such special holistic organs are the ductless
glands which pour regulative secretions into the general
system, the nervous system, and especially the brain with
its correlate mind. These and other holistic organs are
special aids to Holism in its regulative activity. Various
aspects of these holistic organs are discussed in different
chapters.
(C) In the third place, in order to express and explain
these activities of Holism at the different grades of Evolu-
tion and at the various levels of differentiation of types
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