Our second reason is as follows. Biology is once more the link between
root and flower, between physics and chemistry and human affairs, in
regard to evolution. I say evolution: it would be better to broaden the
idea by saying the directional processes to be seen in the universe. So
far as a main direction is to be observed in physics and chemistry, it
is, as all authorities are agreed, towards the degradation of energy
and a final state in which not only life but all activity whatsoever
will be reduced to nothing, all the waters of energy run down into
a single dead level of moveless ocean. Biology, on the other hand,
presents us with the spectacle of an evolution in which the main
direction is the raising of the maximum level of certain qualities
of living beings, such as efficiency of organs, co-ordination, size,
accuracy and range of senses, capacity for knowledge, memory and
educability, emotional intensity,--qualities which in one way or
another lead to a more efficient control by the organism over the
external world, and to its greater independence.
A direction towards more mind is visible; and this development of
greater mental powers has been in all the later stages the chief
instrument of acquiring control and independence. More and more
of matter is embodied in living organisms, more and more becomes
subservient to life.
Thus, while in physics and chemistry we see a tendency towards the
extinction of life and activity, in biology we see a tendency towards
more life and more activity; and this latter tendency is accompanied
and largely made possible by the evolution of greater intensity of
mental process--of something, that is to say, of which we cannot as yet
take account in physics and chemistry.
The biologist may well ask himself the question--“Is it not possible
that this evolving mind, of whose achievements on its new level in
man we are only seeing the beginning, may continue to find more and
more ways of subordinating the inorganic to itself, and that it may
eventually retard or even prevent the attainment of this complete
degradation of energy prophesied by physico-chemical science? Is it
not possible that this great generalization only applies to phenomena
in their purely material aspect, and that when we learn to detect and
measure the mental aspects of phenomena we may find reason to modify
the universal applicability of this law of degradation?” We do not know
the answer to that question: but it is clearly a legitimate and useful
question to ask. In any event, we constatate two chief directions in
the universe; that seen in biology is in many ways opposed to that seen
in physics and chemistry; and both must be taken into account.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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