CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
Of the chemistry of his day and generation, Kant declared that it was "a science, but not science,"—"eine Wissenschaft, aber nicht Wissenschaft"; for that the criterion of physical science lay in its relation to mathematics. And a hundred years later Du Bois Reymond, profound student of the many sciences on which physiology is based, recalled and reiterated the old saying, declaring that chemistry would only reach the rank of science, in the high and strict sense, when it should be found possible to explain chemical reactions in the light of their causal relation to the velocities, tensions and conditions of equilibrium of the component molecules; that, in short, the chemistry of the future must deal with molecular mechanics, by the methods and in the strict language of mathematics, as the astronomy of Newton and Laplace dealt with the stars in their courses. We know how great a step has been made towards this distant and once hopeless goal, as Kant defined it, since van't Hoff laid the firm foundations of a mathematical chemistry, and earned his proud epitaph, Physicam chemiae adiunxit[1]
We need not wait for the full realisation of Kant's desire, in order to apply to the natural sciences the principle which he urged. Though chemistry fall short of its ultimate goal in mathematical mechanics, nevertheless physiology is vastly strengthened and enlarged by making use of the chemistry, as of the physics, of the age. Little by little it draws nearer to our conception of a true science, with each branch of physical science which it brings into relation with itself: with every physical law and every mathematical theorem which it learns to take into its employ. Between the physiology of Haller, fine as it was, and that of Helmholtz, Ludwig, Claude Bernard, there was all the difference in the world.
- ↑ These sayings of Kant and of Du Bois, and others like to them, have been the text of many discourses: see, for instance, Stallo's Concepts, p. 21, 1882; Höber, Biol. Centralbl. xix, p. 284, 1890, etc. Cf. also Jellett, Rep. Brit. Ass. 1874, p. 1.
