The Physical Basis of Mind: Being the Second Series of Problems of Life and Mind.Lewes, George Henry
Philosophy
The Physical Basis of Mind: Being the Second Series of Problems of Life and Mind.
Lewes, George Henry
Mind and body; Psychophysiology
there any real similarity to the actions of a bird, because the machine
was unlike an organism in action. The antithesis of mechanism and
organism will be treated of in § 78.
23. We conclude, then, that defining physical phenomena as the
movements which take place _without_ change of structure, and chemical
phenomena as the movements _with_ change of structure, although
both classes may be said to take place in the organism, and to be
the primary conditions on which organic phenomena depend, they do
not embrace the whole of the conditions, nor are the sciences which
formulate them capable of formulating either the special phenomena
characteristic of organisms or their special modes of production. The
biologist will employ chemical and physical analysis as an essential
part of his method; but he will always rectify what is artificial in
this procedure, by subordinating the laws of Physics and Chemistry
to the laws of Biology revealed in the synthetic observation of
the organism as a whole. The rectification, here insisted on, will
be recognized as peculiarly urgent in Psychology, which has greatly
suffered from the misdirection of Analysis.
24. No one will misunderstand this specialization of Biology to mean
a separation of Life from the series of objective phenomena, and
the introduction of a new entity; the specialization points to a
Mode of Existence. All classifications are artifices, but they have
their objective grounds; the ground of difference on which Biology
is separated from Chemistry and Physics, though all three may be
merged in a common identity, is such as to justify the term radical.
A vital process is no more to be considered physico-chemical, because
physico-chemical conditions are presupposed in it, than a feeling is
to be considered a nutritive process, because Nutrition is presupposed
in all Feeling. Organic substances have been made by chemists, and
inorganic “cells” have also been made; but these substances were not
organized, these “cells” would not live. The germ-cell is the workshop
of generation, the secreting-cell the workshop of secretion, the
muscle-cell the workshop of contraction. What is required over and
above organic substances and cell-forms, is that special state called
_organization_. See § 49.
Those who contemplate the manifestations without also taking into
account their modes of production may see nothing but physico-chemical
facts in vital facts. It is by a similar limitation of the point of
view that Vitality is often confounded with Movement, and portions
of organic matter are said to live, simply on the evidence of their
movements.[7]
CHAPTER II.
DEFINITIONS OF LIFE.
25. Biology, the science of Life, being thus assigned its place in the
hierarchy of objective laws, we now proceed to consider what the term
Life symbolizes.
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