Biology and Its Makers: With Portraits and Other IllustrationsLocy, William A. (William Albert)
History
Biology and Its Makers: With Portraits and Other Illustrations
Locy, William A. (William Albert)
Biology -- History
The injection of the blood-vessels of extremely small embryos has
made it possible to study advantageously the circulatory system. The
softening of bones by acid after the tissues are already embedded in
celloidin has offered a means of investigating the structure of the
internal ear by sections, and is widely applicable to other tissues.
With the advantage of the new appliances and the new methods, the
old problems of anatomy are being worked over on a higher level of
requirement. Still, it is doubtful whether even the old problems will
be solved in more than a relative way. It is characteristic of the
progress of research that as one proceeds the horizon broadens and
new questions spring up in the pathway of the investigator. He does
not solve the problems he sets out to solve, but opens a lot of new
ones. This is one of the features of scientific research that make its
votaries characteristically optimistic.
Experimental Work.--Among the recent influences tending to advance
biology, none is more important than the application of experiments to
biological studies. The experimental method is in reality applicable
to diverse fields of biological research, and its extensive use at
present indicates a movement in the right direction; that is, a growing
interest in the study of processes. One of the earliest problems of
the biologist is to investigate the architecture of living beings;
then there arise questions as to the processes that occur within
the organism, and the study of processes involves the employment of
experiments. In the pursuit of physiology experiments have been in
use since the time of Harvey, but even in that science, where they
are indispensable, experiments did not become comparative until the
nineteenth century. It now appears that various forms of experiment
give also a better insight into the structure of organisms, and the
practice of applying experiments to structural studies has given rise
to the new department of experimental morphology.
For the purpose of indicating some of the directions in which biology
has been furthered by the experimental method of investigation,
we designate the fields of heredity and evolution, changes in the
environment of organisms, studies on fertilization and on animal
behavior.
The recognition that both heredity and the process of evolution can
be subjected to experimental tests was a revelation. Darwin and
the early evolutionists thought the evolutionary changes too slow
to be appreciated, but now we know that many of the changes can be
investigated by experiment. Numerous experiments on heredity in
poultry (Davenport), in rats, in rabbits, and in guinea-pigs (Castle)
have been carried out--experiments that test the laws of ancestral
inheritance and throw great light upon the questions introduced by the
investigations of Mendel and De Vries. The investigations of De Vries
on the evolution of plant-life occupy a notable position among the
experimental studies.
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