The Science and Philosophy of the Organism

It is at this point that potentialities regarded as realities enter the field of the second principle of energetics in the 1 This is the language of dogmatic energetics. As a matter of fact, in chemical becoming for instance, the decreasing intensity probably always causes the increase of another intensity by means of heat. The increase is smaller than the corresponding decrease, because part of that heat is " dis sipated." same manner as they did that of the first. Intensities can be actually measured only in very few cases, in all other cases they are imaginary and subsidiary. All reasoning proceeds in a circle here. If, for instance, nothing is happen ing in a system of chemical compounds or of different states of aggregation, we say that " equilibrium " exists ; if anything happens then there were " diversities of potentials." But all this is known only post factum ; in other words, the potentials and their diversities are created only after we know what happens, and in what amount. And the leading principle of such creations is always the aprioristic convic tion that there must have been diversities — of intensities — in order that anything could happen.

Let us now study the relation of vital phenomena to the true second aprioristic principle of energetics ; the third empirical principle is to enter into our discussions only occasionally. Empirical as it is, it of course offers no special ontological problem with regard to entelechy. That an " equilibrium " of some sort must have been disturbed if, for instance, a process of regeneration is going on, is absolutely self-evident, and does not throw any light on the problem whatever. To say " there is no equilibrium," and to say " there is happening," are identical phrases in the logical sense. Strange to say, there have been certain biological authors * who have thought they were

1 The word "equilibrium" has been misused in biology in the most terrible manner, especially by certain physiologists (Verwoni, Jensen, etc.). uttering profoundest wisdom in saying that vital pheno mena, such as restitution, are due to a " disturbance of equilibrium " ! The true problem is : " ly what single acts does the restoration of ' equilibrium ' take place here, especially in those cases in which it is proved that entelechy is at work, and that physico-chemical diversities and potentials of themselves are not able to offer a sufficient explanation of what happens ? "

Any one who felt able to assume some kind of vital energy would have little difficulty in solving this problem. The " intensity " of his vital energy would have to come into " catenation " with the intensities of the inorganic energies, either causing them to increase or making them decrease by increasing itself. But hitherto a vital energy has appeared to us to be a simple impossibility, and it becomes even more so at this point. For, though always one and the same " kind " of subsidiary energy, the " entelechian energy " of an individual would have to be endowed with variable intensities with regard to one and the same inorganic intensity, in exact correspondence to different states of disturbance of the organism. In other

An argument often employed by these authors is this : — All organic events are the consequence of a disturbance of equilibrium, all inorganic events are the consequence of a disturbance of equilibrium, therefore organic events are inorganic (mechanical). This argument rests upon the "logical" formula: — All A are C, all B are C, therefore all A are B ; or in words : — All men are bipeds, all birds are bipeds, " therefore " all men are birds. I am sorry to say so, but it is true that this sort of "logic " really has been employed in biology.

words, it would be an energy with differences in itself, which is contradictory to the concept of energy. Therefore we cannot speak of intensities of a subsidiary " entelechian energy " in any sense. But in spite of that our study of the true second principle of energetics has been of some use to us. Even though it be not comparable to an energy in any sense, entelechy, as far as it comes into connexion with the energies of inorganic nature, can do so only through the aid of those factors which are concerned in any kind of connexion of the inorganic energies with one another. The intensities of inorganic energies, therefore, are the point at which any possible relation between the living and the non-living must be set up, for upon the intensities depends all spatial becoming exclusively.

Now intensities of inorganic energies, as we know, if standing in any sort of possible exchange at all, stand either in the relative state of equilibrium or compensation, or in the state of mutual appearing and disappearing. It is clear from what we have said that entelechy also can act only upon the state of compensation or non-compensa tion of the inorganic intensities. Let us try to fix this fundamental relation in a more concrete manner, which will illustrate at the same time, in the clearest manner, how we wish the differences between the vital and the inorganic to be understood. Imagine a non-living system of a specific number of specific chemical compounds in specific states of aggregation

and in a specific arrangement ; then it is absolutely determined, by the so-called " potential " and by the mass of each of these constituents, what is to happen until equilibrium is reached. We have chosen a chemical and aggregative system as our instance, because in the organism the single phenomena of becoming that can actually be observed are such as to consist in chemical and aggregative specificities. Let us now study the behaviour of a system consisting of chemical and aggregative constituents, as before, but forming at the same time part of a living organism. Our doctrine of entelechy teaches us that the behaviour of this system is not exclusively dependent on the potential and mass of the constituents, but on something further. In what possible relation is this something able to stand with regard to the potentials of the constituents of the system ? It is of the greatest importance to find an adequate answer to this question, and I hope to be able to give at least the beginning of such an answer in what follows.

Entelechy is not able to change the chemical potentials of the elemental constituents of the system in a qualitative way : at least we have no grounds for such an assumption, which would imply, for instance, that entelechy could make sulphuric acid (H2S04) if it had only the chlorides of sodium and potassium at its disposal. Entelechy, as far as we know, at least, is limited in its acting by many specificities of inorganic nature, among which are the specificities included under the phrase " chemical element."

Entelechy is also unable to cause reactions between chemical compounds which never are known to react in the inorganic world. In short, entelechy is altogether unable to create differences of intensity of any kind. But entelechy is able, so far as we know from the facts concerned in restitution and adaptation, to suspend for as long a period as it wants any one of all the reactions which are possible with such compounds as are present, and which would happen without entelechy. And entelechy may regulate this suspending of reactions now in one direction and now in the other, suspending and permitting possible becoming whenever required for its purposes. Now, after all we have said, this suspending of affinity, so to say, is to be considered as a temporary compensation of factors of " intensity " which would otherwise be uncompensated, and would lead to immediate becoming. This faculty of a temporary suspension of inorganic becoming is to be regarded as the most essential ontological characteristic of entelechy. Because it possesses this faculty without being of the nature of an energy at the same time, entelechy is the non-physico-chemical agent.

Let it be well understood : we do not admit that entelechy may transform potentials into actual happening by means of a so-called " Auslosung " in any sense. Entelechy, according to our view, is quite unable to remove any kind of an " obstacle " to happening, such as is removed in catalysis ; for such a removal would require energy, and entelechy is non-energetical. We only admit that entelechy may set free into actuality what it has itself prevented from actuality, what it has suspended hitherto.

This statement implies a very important consequence. If entelechy always must have done something in order that it may do anything in the present and future, there can, of course, never be any real beginning of its acting, but this acting must be continuous. And this is what the fact of inheritance teaches us. Life is indeed continuous : a certain portion of matter that stands under the control of entelechy is handed down from generation to generation. And thus entelechy always has already * acted !

Unfortunately, as will be seen later on, we are unable to escape this regressus ad infinitum in any way ; at least we know nothing about a " first " arid really primordial act of suspension of inorganic becoming on the part of entelechy. Of course we can only affirm the possibility of a temporary suspending of reactions on the part of entelechy in those cases where there is an empirical reason for doing so ; and that is only the case at present in the spheres of chemical and of aggregative events.

1 It might be objected here that the continuity of entelechian control would imply a decrease of the amount of possible becoming, according to the principle of dissipation ; and that for this reason life, i.e. the suspending action of entelechy, would soon come to an end. But the principle of dissi pation is a purely empirical principle of inorganic science, and nobody is able to say a priori that the regulating acts of entelechy in relaxing sus pension must be subject to it. Decrease and increase between coupled inten sities therefore may amount to the same value in the sphere of vitalistic happening.

In these spheres there is indeed a sort of " overcoming " of inorganic nature by the Organic, an overcoming that is no more strange, of course, than is, for instance, the over coming of gravity by electricity when small balls of elder pith are attracted by a rubbed glass rod — though, of course, in the latter case two real " energetical " intensities are in action against each other. If spiritualistic facts should prove to be true — a matter about which I have no personal experience at all — or if it were really true that Indian fakirs are able to overcome gravitation and to rise from the ground, there would be a far larger field of inorganic intensities where becoming, on the basis of diversities of intensity, might be temporarily suspended by entelechy.

An explanation of the Limits of Regulability and of Life in General If we understand that the action of entelechy is only an action of suspending that which, but for this, would happen — an action of regulating by suspending — we at once understand two very important features which appear in all phenomena of life : the dependence of life on the conditions of the medium, and the limits of its reguldbility. We know that life is impossible without food and oxygen, without a certain amount of heat and without a specific composition of the medium — all within rather narrow limits. We have frequently remarked, moreover, in our purely biological discussions that there exist great differences in the faculty both of restitution and of adapta-

tion. One plant is able to live in water as well as in the open air, whilst another one is killed if submerged under the surface of water ; the newt regenerates the foot with the utmost perfection, whilst mammals are only capable of healing up their wounds. Even these facts, it seems to me, are understood without difficulty, if we assume that entelechy can only suspend the compensation of differences of energetical intensities or potentials which exist already, but that it is not able to create such differences. The acting of entelechy thus be comes dependent on the potentials of the single parts of the body, which are themselves of an inorganic character, and on the potentials of the surrounding medium.

Now somebody might say that the medium always con tains potentials of the highest possible value, as exhibited, for instance, in the temperature of the medium and in the intensity of the rays emanating from the sun. These potentials certainly are of the greatest importance for the permanence of life, because, thanks to them, life is not ex clusively dependent on the internal potentials of the material the organisms consist of. But we know, on the other hand, that there must be not only " differences " of potentials as such, in order that becoming may be possible, but also differences in potentials of energy which are " coupled " with each other, which may be transformed one into the other. It is, moreover, a well-known fact that most chemical and aggregative processes are almost absolutely beyond the influence of radiant energy of even the strongest intensity.

Entelechy then is limited in its operation to the differ ences of potentials already existing, so far as the organism is at the same time an inorganic system surrounded by an energetical medium. This limitation1 will explain not only the limits of regulability, but also disease and death,2 at least in principle. The limits of regulability may be founded upon some rather insignificant feature, and may be in spite of that very marked in their effects. The fragmental development of the isolated blastomeres of some sorts of eggs is a good example of what I have said. It may depend on some very unimportant peculiarity in the consistency of the protoplasm that the isolated blastomere of the Ctenophore egg is not able to restitute its simple intimate protoplasmatic structure into a small new whole. From the impossibility of performing this rather simple regulation it follows that not a whole but a half animal develops from the isolated cell.

We have tried to formulate the relation between entelechy and inorganic elemental agents in such a manner that nothing may seem to be postulated which is not founded on experimental facts, and that at the same time the amount of specific performance burdened upon entelechy may appear as small as possible. Our personal belief is 1 The discontinuity of physical phenomena upon which the so-called "theories of matter " are based, is, of course, also one of the conditions that entelechy is limited by. Maxwell, MacKendrick, and ErreVa have discussed the lowest possible size of an organism from this point of view. Compare Errera, Bull. soc. roy. sc. m6d. et nat., Bruxelles, Janvier 1903; other references will be found in this paper.

2 It will be understood from our discussion of morphogenetic teleology (page 134) that death, though practically the end of the individual's life, is by no means its rAos — at least not from the point of view of a philosophy of nature. that we have charged it with too little, that future experience will enlarge the sphere of its acting. But it always is the best scientific method not to assume more of the new than is absolutely necessary. In attributing to entelechy the suspending of possible becoming exclusively, though in a changeable and regulable way, we at the same time, I believe, have avoided one very bad mistake that has been very often a reproach to vitalists. We have not imputed any action to entelechy that might seem to represent any amount of energy in itself, and in fact we could not do so, as we had most strictly refuted any kind of theory regarding entelechy itself as a sort of energy. Suspending the compensation of uncompensated differences of intensities among coupled kinds of energies and relaxing that suspension are in fact not acts that would require any amount of energy. For, we repeat, our hypothetic act of suspending and setting free actually uncompensated potentials by no means relates to a removal of obstacles, such as occurs in catalysis,1 for example.

We must always very carefully discriminate between creating differences of potential and suspending the compen sation of existing differences. The former can only happen by an actual transfer of energy, whereas for suspending and for relaxing of suspension no transfer of energy is required, but simply a transformation of energy from actuality into a potential form, and vice versa. 1 On the theory of "intermediate reactions" the part played by the catalyser would also require no extra amount of energy.

A few words seem desirable about the specific nature of the potentials of the Inorganic with which entelechy is especially connected. We have said already several times that the field of chemistry and of the states of aggregation is the proper sphere for the activity of entelechy, and it is for this reason that all researches on the chemical and aggregative nature of so-called " living matter " are of so much scientific interest. But I think we can attain still greater certainty as to the exact point where entelechy is chiefly at work. We already know that the process of catalysis plays a leading role not only in normal but also in regulative life processes. Now it is of no import to our present purpose which theory of catalytical processes is right, though personally we believe that catalysers not only accelerate reactions but that without them the reactions in question would never take place.1 Let us also grant that the effect of the ready made ferment or enzyme is inorganic, just like that of the inorganic ferments studied by Bredig2 and others. In any case the formation of catalysers or their so-called " activation " is the chief pro cess concerned in regulation and adaptation phenomena, " activation " of ferments out of the state of " preferments "

1 The difference between the two theories would practically disappear, if all processes "accelerated" by catalysers were regarded as happening "infinitely slowly" without them. In this form their occurring without the ferments would only be assumed in deference to a certain innate property of the mind, namely, its inability to conceive beginning. All the applications of the infinitesimal calculus to physics rest upon this property of the mind. being also, of course, a formation in the sense that ferments definitively become by this very process what they actually are.

In the formation or activation of ferments we hypothetically see the fundamental role played by entelechy. Our theory of the mere suspending action of entelechy, of course, forbids us to regard entelechy as really creating catalytic materials. We think it right to assume that on the basis of the chemical system actually present in the organism an indefinite though not strictly infinite variety of reactions regarding the production of ferments is possible. It is this sum of possible reactions that entelechy takes part in, suspending and relaxing suspension according to its purposes of regulation.

We now have said, it seems to me, all that can be said at present about the relations of entelechy to the true second principle of energetics, which deals with diversities of intensities and the coupling of them, and which is aprioristic in its foundations. This principle is fully observed in life processes, and because it is observed we see that life depends on inorganic processes. Indeed, to some extent there cannot be any contradiction between the second principle and the doctrine of entelechy on account of the partly aprioristic character of the former. In this sense we can say that the principle was bound to hold and that it was only the special form of reconciling the doctrine of entelechy with it that was the problem.

second principle holds for the organism or not, but to make out in what sense it holds, its purely inorganic form being insufficient for the explanation of life. But what entelechy really "is" has not yet been made out at all by these rather complicated considerations. Individual organic development in general, and the differentiation of the harmonious-equipotential systems in particular, seem to contradict the second and the third principle of energetics at the first glance, and some features which at least may be connected with acting seem to contradict these principles also. Therefore the problem of the relation of entelechy to the second and the third principle of energetics requires yet further consideration.1

An harmonious-equipotential system, before differentia tion occurs, consists of elements which are equal to each other in actuality, and equal in potentiality also, and out of the sum of these elements there is formed by differentia tion another system, which shows an enormous diversity of its constituents in actuality and perhaps in potentiality 1 The fundamental problem to be discussed in this chapter was first seen in my Naturbegriffe, p. 180. But I only found a very unsatisfactory solution when I wrote that book.

too. There are, as we know, no specified and localised external causes that could be responsible for every single one of the resulting diversities. Entelechy, on the other hand, as we have seen, cannot be regarded as being of the nature of an energy, though it is able to suspend energetical processes. What does that mean ? Does it not seem as if, in the differentiation of harmonious-equipotential systems, a state of diversity were created out of the homogeneous state of a system by the sole agency of this system itself? Indeed, as far as the originating of diversities as such is concerned that seems to be the case, even though energetical potentials between the medium and the system play their part in this process; for these potentials only relate to becoming in general, but not to becoming which leads to diversity in the different parts of the system.

Such a state of things seems to contradict the second and the third principle of energetics at the same time. Now, of course, it must well be kept in mind that an harmonious-equipotential system is far from being homo geneous in the strictest sense of the word. It is composed of cells, and each of these cells is probably composed of an enormous sum of chemical and aggregative constituents, both in its protoplasm and its nucleus. Part of the problem propounded here may be said to have been solved by this statement, but part of it remains.