The secret of this life force, or biotic energy, according to Professor
Moore, is in the keeping of matter itself. The steps or stages from the
depths of matter by which life arose, lead up from that imaginary
something, the electron, to the inorganic colloids, or to the
crystallo-colloids, which are the threshold of life, each stage showing
some new transformation of energy. There must be an all-potent energy
transformation before we can get chemical energy out of physical energy,
and then biotic energy out of chemical energy. This transformation of
inorganic energy into life energy cannot be traced or repeated in the
laboratory, yet science believes the secret will sometime be in its
hands. It is here that the materialistic philosophers, such as
Professors Moore and Loeb, differ from the spiritualistic philosophers,
such as Bergson, Sir Oliver Lodge, Professor Thompson, and others.
Professor Moore has no sympathy with those narrow mechanistic views that
see in the life processes "no problems save those of chemistry and
physics." "Each link in the living chain may be physico-chemical, but
the chain as a whole, and its purpose, is something else." He draws an
analogy from the production of music in which purely physical factors
are concerned; the laws of harmonics account for all; but back of all is
something that is not mechanical and chemical--there is the mind of the
composer, and the performers, and the auditors, and something that takes
cognizance of the whole effect. A complete human philosophy cannot be
built upon physical science alone. He thinks the evolution of life from
inert matter is of the same type as the evolution of one form of matter
from another, or the evolution of one form of energy from another--a
mystery, to be sure, but little more startling in the one case than in
the other. "The fundamental mystery lies in the existence of those
entities, or things, which we call matter and energy," out of the play
and interaction of which all life phenomena have arisen. Organic
evolution is a series of energy exchanges and transformations from lower
to higher, but science is powerless to go behind the phenomena presented
and name or verify the underlying mystery. Only philosophy can do this.
And Professor Moore turns philosopher when he says there is beauty and
design in it all, "and an eternal purpose which is ever progressing."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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