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Some Aspects of Theoretical Biology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Ralph S. Lillie
Ralph S. Lillie*
Affiliation:
The University of Chicago
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Extract

A theory in natural science is a comprehensive formula or doctrine which describes and correlates in a unified abstract form of statement the general determining factors of some special group of natural facts. It is at once inclusive, realistic and understandable. If a theoretical statement holds good, the existence and characteristics of many individual events can be inferred deductively from it. It thus gives a logical basis for empirical fact. But it is based on experience of nature, and must conform to the facts of nature; these are primary, and a valid theory, no matter how broad it may be, is to be considered as itself a statement of fact, i.e., a true description of some condition which has a real and stable existence in the natural world. In its scientific usage, the term “fact” refers primarily to some datum of experience having the special character of permanence or regular recurrence; this is why scientific facts are verifiable; in this respect they differ from the passing individual events of history. Any scientific theory presupposes the stability and unequivocality of the natural facts. Hence if a theory is sound, it furnishes a reliable basis for prediction, discovery and invention. Scientific or technological creation then becomes possible; modern engineering and medicine could never have become what they are without a background of theoretical physics and biology. Obviously any natural science must always have at its disposal an ample body of observational and experimental data, but in most cases the work of collecting and verifying these is carried out under the guidance of theory.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , April 1948 , pp. 118 - 134
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1948

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References

1a Permanence is always a character of the condition defined by a scientific theory; but in nature this permanence may be a consequence of some historical event which itself is transient. An illustration is the tidal theory of the origin of the solar system. Again, in an evolving nature much that appears permanent is only relatively so. Science cannot be separated from history.

1 E.g., the other side of the moon, or the interior of stars or atoms. These are “inferables,” although not observable directly. But “observables” are also inferables—from sense impressions. …

2 To quote from an eminent modern philosopher: “No science, as science, can deal with individual situations as such.” (Bernard Bosanquet, Science and Philosophy, London, 1927, p. 175).

3 Leçons sur les phénomènes de la vie commune aux animaux et aux végétaux, Tome 1, p. 113.

4 E.g., Metaphysics, Book VII, 17, 1041b, 12. In J. E. Boodin's Three Interpretations of the Universe, Chapter 8, there is a full discussion of Aristotle's conception of creative emergence.

5 Mind, 1946, Vol. 55, p. 357.

6 I add the parenthetic clause, perhaps needlessly, in the last sentence, in a conscientious desire to stick closely to the actual evidence!

7 E. S. Russell: The Directiveness of Organic Activities, Cambridge University Press, 1945.

8 A survey of the facts on which the conception of orthogenesis is based is to be found in H. F. Osborn's book, The Origin and Evolution of Life (New York, Scribner's, 1918). See also his review, “Orthogenesis as Observed from Paleontologic Evidence”, American Naturalist, 1922. Vol. 56, p. 134.

9 “Why,” in the sense of assigning a more general determinative condition.

10 Which (it may be well to remember) also are individuals of a certain kind!

11 In Bergson's sense of the term.

12 “In sequent toil all forwards do contend” (Shakespeare, Sonnet 60).

13 In the introduction to Book I of the De Generatione, he says (Section 314a, Joachim's translation): “We are to distinguish the causes, and to state the definitions of these processes considered in general—as changes predicable uniformly of all things that come-to-be and pass-away in nature.”

14 Direct evidence that psychical factors may originate heritable variations is of course lacking. That they may perpetuate already existing variations is shown by the effects of artificial selection. Also they may influence development and growth as seen in the effects of education in human beings and some animals.

15 I.e., directive, but not necessarily reflected or represented in the integrated consciousness of the organism. The “unconscious” would come in here as possible factor.

16 Professor Reichenbach's conception of “interphenomena” (Philosophic Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, University of California Press, 1946, p. 21) is of interest in reference to this question. It would be a highly speculative extrapolation to regard the directive factors as acting through their influence on interphenomena alone, i.e., to regard the interphenomenal field as the field in which the individual behaviour of quanta is determined. But quanta are not observable between emission and reception. Is the quantum to be conceived as having continued existence and unchanging properties during this interval of transfer? Evidently some condition exists ensuring its constancy when it acts as physical factor. But what “happens” inside the interatomic field during the transfer?

17 Cf. the discussion in my General Biology and Philosophy of Organism (University of Chicago Press, 1945), pp. 129 seq.