Produced by Frank van Drogen, Jeannie Howse and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) BIOLOGY BY EDMUND BEECHER WILSON PROFESSOR OF ZOOLOGY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY New York THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 1908 BIOLOGY A LECTURE DELIVERED AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE SERIES ON SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY AND ART NOVEMBER 20, 1907 BIOLOGY BY EDMUND BEECHER WILSON PROFESSOR OF ZOOLOGY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY New York THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 1908 COPYRIGHT, 1908, by THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS. Set up, and published March, 1908. BIOLOGY I must at the outset remark that among the many sciences that are occupied with the study of the living world there is no one that may properly lay exclusive claim to the name of Biology. The word does not, in fact, denote any particular science but is a generic term applied to a large group of biological sciences all of which alike are concerned with the phenomena of life. To present in a single address, even in rudimentary outline, the specific results of these sciences is obviously an impossible task, and one that I have no intention of attempting. I shall offer no more than a kind of preface or introduction to those who will speak after me on the biological sciences of physiology, botany and zoology; and I shall confine it to what seem to me the most essential and characteristic of the general problems towards which all lines of biological inquiry must sooner or later converge. It is the general aim of the biological sciences to learn something of the order of nature in the living world. Perhaps it is not amiss to remark that the biologist may not hope to solve the ultimate problems of life any more than the chemist and physicist may hope to penetrate the final mysteries of existence in the non-living world. What he can do is to observe, compare and experiment with phenomena, to resolve more complex phenomena into simpler components, and to this extent, as he says, to "explain" them; but he knows in advance that his explanations will never be in the full sense of the word final or complete. Investigation can do no more than push forward the limits of knowledge.