Page:On growth and form (IA ongrowthform1917thom).pdf/22

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
2
INTRODUCTORY
[CH.

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,

As soon as we adventure on the paths of the physicist, we learn to weigh and to measure, to deal with time and space and mass and their related concepts, and to find more and more our knowledge expressed and our needs satisfied through the concept of number, as in the dreams and visions of Plato and Pythagoras; for modern chemistry would have gladdened the hearts of those great philosophic dreamers.

But the zoologist or morphologist has been slow, where the physiologist has long been eager, to invoke the aid of the physical or mathematical sciences; and the reasons for this difference lie deep, and m part are rooted in old traditions. 'The zoologist has scarce begun to dream of defining, in mathematical language, even the simpler organic forms. When he finds a simple geometrical construction, for instance in the honey-comb, he would fain refer it to psychical instinct or design rather than to the operation of physical forces; when he sees in snail, or nautilus, or tiny foraminiferal or radiolarian shell, a close approach to the perfect sphere or spiral, he is prone, of old habit, to believe that it is alter all something more than a spiral or a sphere, and that in this "something more" there lies what neither physics nor mathematics can explain. In short he is deeply reluctant to compare the living with the dead, or to explain by geometry or by dynamics the things which have their part in the mystery of lite. Moreover he is little inclined to feel the need of such explanations or of such extension of his field of thought. He is not without some justification if he feels that in admiration of nature's handiwork he hag an horizon open before his eyes as wide as any man requires. He has the help of many fascinating theories within the bounds of his own science, which, though a little lacking in precision, serve the purpose of ordering his thoughts and of suggesting new objects of enquiry. His art of classification becomes a ceaseless and an endless search after the blood-relationships of things living, and the pedigrees of things