The Universe a Vast Electric OrganismWarder, Geo. W. (George Woodward)
Science
The Universe a Vast Electric Organism
Warder, Geo. W. (George Woodward)
Science -- Miscellanea
These wonderful manifestations of electricity are used by these
pantheists to bolster up their theory of these being manifestations of
intelligence in nature. And so they are, but they should remember that
nature is the art of God, not God himself and God's art is wise and
perfect. We have a new definition of life given us which shows wonderful
intelligence in the various parts of man's body. It is by Prof. Justus
Gaule of Zurich. In the American Journal of Psychology, January, 1903.
He says: "The whole organism resembles a chemical laboratory with as
many apartments as there are organs or glands." As all chemical changes
are electric changes, a chemical laboratory is the same as an electric
laboratory. He continues: "The substances produced in each apartment
are those needed in others either for their construction or for their
work." According to him life consists partly in a continual process of
interchange and reconstruction, at times sufficiently violent to tear
muscles, mutilate nerves and cause stoppage of blood--a process that
goes on "in the interior of the organism without external excitement."
Herbert Spencer defines life as "the continuous adjustment of internal
relations to external relations," but Gaule's definition of life lays
stress on the vital interplay between the parts of the organism, which
makes it a machine transforming external energy. He asserts that the
living organism is more than a machine, because it does not create
energy directly from combustible materials, but only after building up
its own tissues.
He says a machine does work, but it does not create and repair itself
like living organisms. He would therefore modify the prevailing
definition of organic life, and make it not only a machine, but more
than a machine, and emphasize the fact that life is as much an
interaction between various parts of the organism as between the
organism and the world of exterior matter. He says one organ of the body
may lose in bulk, in order that others may increase. This he has studied
experimentally in the frog, and finds that at one time the organs of sex
grow at the expense of the muscles and liver, and at another time the
reverse is true, and he insists that "life is a continuous process of
reconstruction within the vital organism." This is an important addition
to the definition of life and tends to support the electric theory, for
every function of the body is adapted to generate the electric energy
needed for itself and other parts of its organism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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