The Mechanistic Conception of Life

Those who are concerned about the materialistic indoctrination rammed down people's throats under the guise of science should pause to consider this article from 1911. As you can see, this ideology, which these days calls itself "science", actually has a name of its own: Monism.

These are excerpts from Mechanistic Conception of Life, an address delivered at the First International Congress of Monists (Hamburg, 1911). Reprinted in Mechanistic Conception of Life: Biological Essays, University of Chicago Press, 1912.

It is the object of this paper to discuss the question whether our present knowledge gives us any hope that ultimately life, i.e., the sum of all life phenomena, can be unequivocally explained in physico-chemical terms. If on the basis of a serious survey this question can be answered in the affirmative our social and ethical life will have to be put on a scientific basis and our rules of conduct must be brought into harmony with the results of scientific biology.

It is seemingly often taken for granted by laymen that "truth" in biology, or science in general, is of the same order as "truth" in certain of the mental sciences; that is to say, that everything rests on argument or rhetoric and that what is regarded as true today may be expected with some probability to be considered untrue tomorrow. It happens in science, especially in the descriptive sciences like paleontology or zoology, that hypotheses are forwarded, discussed, and then abandoned. It should, however, be remembered that modern biology is fundamentally an experimental and not a descriptive science; and that its results are not rhetorical, but always assume one of two forms: it is either possible to control a life phenomenon to such an extent that we can produce it at desire (as, e.g., the contraction of an excised muscle); or we succeed in finding the numerical relation between the conditions of the experiment and the biological result (e.g., Mendel s law of heredity). Biology as far as it is based on these two principles cannot retrogress, but must advance.

By the "riddle of life" not everybody will understand the same thing. We all, however, desire to know how life originates and what death is, since our ethics must be influenced to a large extent through the answer to this ques tion. We are not yet able to give an answer to the question as to how life originated on the earth. We know that every living being is able to transform food-stuffs into living matter; and we also know that not only the compounds which are formed in the animal body can be produced artificially, but that chemical reactions which take place in living organisms can also be repeated at the same rate and temperature in the laboratory. The gap in our knowledge which we feel most keenly is the fact that the chemical character of the catalyzers (the enzymes or ferments) is still unknown. Nothing indicates, however, at present that the artificial production of living matter is beyond the possibilities of science.

This view does not stand in opposition to the idea of Arrhenius that germs of sufficiently small dimensions are driven by radiation-pressure through space; and that these germs, if they fall upon new cosmic bodies possessing water, salts, and oxygen, and the proper temperature, give rise to a new evolution of organisms. Biology will certainly retain this idea, but I believe that we must also follow out the other problem: namely, we must either succeed in producing living matter artificially, or we must find the reasons why this is impossible.

The nature of life and of death are questions which occupy the interest of the layman to a greater extent than possibly any other purely theoretical problem; and we can well understand that humanity did not wait for experimental biology to furnish an answer. The answer assumed the anthropomorphic form characteristic of all explanations of nature in the prescientific period. Life was assumed to begin with the entrance of a "life principle" into the body; that individual life begins with the egg was of course unknown to primitive or prescientific man. Death was assumed to be due to the departure of this "life principle" from the body.

Scientifically, however, individual life begins (in the case of the sea-urchin and possibly in general) with the acceleration of the rate of oxidation in the egg, and this acceleration begins after the destruction of its cortical layer. Life of warm-blooded animals--man included--ends with the cessation of oxidation in the body. As soon as oxidations have ceased for some time, the surface films of the cells, if they contain enough water and if the temperature is sufficiently high, become permeable for bacteria, and the body destroyed by micro-organisms. The problem of the beginning and end of individual life is physico-chemically clear. It is, therefore, unwarranted to continue the statement that in addition to the acceleration of oxidations the beginning of individual life is determined by the entrance of a metaphysical "life principle" into the egg; and that death is determined, aside from the cessation of oxidations, by the departure of this "principle" from the body. In the case of the evaporation of water we are satisfied with the explanation given by the kinetic theory of gases and do not demand that to repeat a well-known jest of Huxley the disappearance of the "aquosity" be also taken into consideration.

While until twelve years ago the field of heredity was the stamping ground for the rhetorician and metaphysician it is today perhaps the most exact and rationalistic part of biology, whore facts cannot only be predicted qualitatively, but also quantitatively.

It is not possible to prove in a short address that all life phenomena will yield to a physico-chemical analysis. We have selected only the phenomena of fertilization and heredity, since these phenomena are specific for living organisms and without analogues in inanimate nature; and if we can convince our selves that these processes can be explained physico-chemically we may safely expect the same of such processes for which there exist a-priori analogies in inanimate nature, as, e.g., for absorption and secretion.

We must, however, settle a question which offers itself not only to the layman but also to every biologist, namely, how we shall conceive that wonderful "adaptation of each part to the whole" by which an organism becomes possible. In the answer to this question the metaphysician finds an opportunity to put above the purely chemical and physical processes something specific which is characteristic of life only: the "Zielstrebigkeit," the "harmony" of the phenomena, or the "dominants" of Reinke and similar things.

With all due personal respect for the authors of such terms I am of the opinion that we are dealing here, as in all cases of metaphysics, with a play on words. That a part is so con structed that it serves the "whole" is only an unclear expression for the fact that a species is only able to live or to use Roux's expression is only durable, if it is provided with the automatic mechanism for self-preservation and reproduction. If, for instance, warm-blooded animals should originate without a circulation they could not remain alive, and this is the reason why we never find such forms. The phenomena of "adaptation" cause only apparent difficulties since we rarely or never become aware of the numerous faultily constructed organisms which appear in nature. I will illustrate by a concrete example that the number of species which we observe is only an infinitely small fraction of those which can originate and possibly not rarely do originate, but which we never see since their organization does not allow them to continue to exist long.

It is, therefore, no exaggeration to state that the number of species existing today is only an infinitely small fraction of those which can and possibly occasionally do originate, but which escape our notice because they cannot live and reproduce. Only that limited fraction of species can exist which possesses no coarse disharmonies in its automatic mechanism of preservation and reproduction. Disharmonies and faulty attempts in nature are the rule, the harmonically developed systems the rare exception. But since we only perceive the latter we gain the erroneous impression that the "adaptation of the parts to the plan of the whole" is a general and specific characteristic of animate nature, whereby the latter differs from inanimate nature. If the structure and the mechanism of the atoms were known to us we should probably also get an insight into a world of wonderful harmonies and apparent adaptations of the parts to the whole. But in this case we should quickly understand that the chemical elements are only the few durable systems among a large number of possible but not durable combinations. Nobody doubts that the durable chemical elements are only the product of blind forces. There is no reason for conceiving otherwise the durable systems in living nature.

The contents of life from the cradle to the bier are wishes and hopes, efforts and struggles, and unfortunately also disappointments and suffering. And this inner life should be amenable to a physico-chemical analysis? In spite of the gulf which separates us today from such an aim I believe that it is attainable. As long as a life phenomenon has not yet found a physico-chemical explanation it usually appears inexplicable. If the veil is once lifted we are always surprised that we did not guess from the first what was behind it.

That in the of inner life physico-chemical explanation is not beyond the realm of possibility is proved by the fact that it is already possible for us to explain cases of simple manifestations of animal instinct and will on a physico-chemical basis; namely, the phenomena which I have discussed in former papers under the name of animal tropisms, As the most simple example we may mention the tendency of certain animals to fly or creep to the light. We are dealing in this case with the manifestation of an instinct or impulse which the animals cannot resist. It appears as if this blind instinct which these animals must follow, although it may cost them their life, might be explained by the same law of Bunsen and Roscoe, which explains the photochemical effects in inanimate nature. This law states that within wide limits the photochemical effect equals the product of the intensity of light into the duration of illumination. It is not possible to enter here into all the details of the reactions of these animals to light; we only wish to point out in which way the light instinct of the animals may possibly be connected with the Bunsen-Roscoe law.

Our wishes and hopes, disappointments and sufferings have their source in instincts which are comparable to the light instinct of the heliotropic animals. The need of and the struggle for food, the sexual instinct with its poetry and its chain of consequences, the maternal instincts with the felicity and the suffering caused by them, the instinct of workmanship, and some other instincts are the roots from which our inner life develops. For some of these instincts the chemical basis is at least sufficiently indicated to arouse the hope that their analysis, from the mechanistic point of view, is only a question of time.

If our existence is based on the play of blind forces and only a matter of chance; if we ourselves are only chemical mechanisms -- how can there be an ethics for us? The answer is, that our instincts are the root of our ethics and that the instincts are just as hereditary as is the form of our body. We eat, drink, and reproduce not because mankind has reached an agreement that this is desirable, but because, machine-like, we are compelled to do so. We are active, because we are compelled to be so by processes in our central nervous system; and as long as human beings are not economic slaves the instinct of successful work or of workmanship determines the direction of their action. The mother loves and cares for her children, not because metaphysicians had the idea that this was desirable, but because the instinct of taking care of the young is inherited just as distinctly as the morphological characters of the female body. We seek and enjoy the fellowship of human beings because hereditary conditions compel us to do so. We struggle for justice and truth since we are instinctively compelled to see our fellow beings happy. Economic, social, and political conditions or ignorance and superstition may warp and inhibit the inherited instincts and thus create a civilization with a faulty or low development of ethics. Individual mutants may arise in which one or the other desirable instinct is lost, just as individual mutants without pigment may arise in animals; and the offspring of such mutants may, if numerous enough, lower the ethical status of a community. Not only is the mechanistic conception of life compatible with ethics: it seems the only conception of life which can lead to an understanding of the source of ethics.

That’s a whole lot of words to say nothing.

The whole thing might as well have been penned by a self-styled FR "scientist" yesterday. I like the last paragraph. It's disturbing. Here's comment by G.K. Chesterton that just so happens to address it...

The mark of the atheistic style is that it instinctively chooses the word which suggests that things are dead things; that things have no souls. Thus they will not speak of waging war, which means willing it; they speak of the "outbreak of war," as if all the guns blew up without the men touching them. Thus those Socialists that are atheist will not call their international sympathy, sympathy; they will call it "solidarity," as if the poor men of France and Germany were physically stuck together like dates in a grocer's shop. The same Marxian Socialists are accused of cursing the Capitalists inordinately; but the truth is that they let the Capitalists off much too easily. For instead of saying that employers pay less wages, which might pin the employers to some moral responsibility, they insist on talking about the "rise and fall" of wages; as if a vast silver sea of sixpences and shillings was always going up and down automatically like the real sea at Margate. Thus, lastly (as we shall see touching our special subject-matter here) the atheist style in letters always avoids talking of love or lust, which are things alive, and calls marriage or concubinage "the relations of the sexes"; as if a man and a woman were two wooden objects standing in a certain angle and attitude to each other, like a table and a chair.
No human being, pagan or Christian, I am certain, ever thought of another human being as a chair or a table. The mind cannot base itself on the idea that a comet is a cabbage; nor can it on the idea that a man is a stool.
-- GK Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils

The natural man is what liberals and monists see as stunted and repressed by society, economics, and politics. The sexually free person is absolutely critical to happiness and utopia. I am reminded of a documentary in which little children sat on branches rubbing themselves as they watched adults working around them. The program treated these children as happy ideals with no hang-ups. Strange and wrong. Which describes the political forces trying to cure us conservatives, obviously with growing success. Just look at the free sexual spirits (and the dysfunction) around us and in the schools.

So since you really enjoy the whole guilt-by-association thing and you've quoted Chesterton, how do you feel about this:

A more practical comparison would be one between the Jews and gipsies; for the latter at least cover several countries, and can be tested by the impressions of very different districts. And in some preliminary respects the comparison is really useful. Both races are in different ways landless, and therefore in different ways lawless. For the fundamental laws are land laws. In both cases a reasonable man will see reasons for unpopularity, without wishing to indulge any task for persecution. In both cases he will probably recognise the reality of a racial fault, while admitting that it may be largely a racial misfortune. That is to say, the drifting and detached condition may be largely the cause of Jewish usury or gipsy pilfering; but it is not common sense to contradict the general experience of gipsy pilfering or Jewish usury.
-- GK Chesterton, The Problem of Zionism

So Chesterton agrees with the Nazis about the Jews and the 'gipsies'!

“Materialistic agnostic monistic atheistic logically positivistic naturalism ping!”

The article seems to fill the bill. It certainly suggest that everything can, in principle, be explained in “physico-chemical terms,” with a bunch of references to “instinct” thrown in for good measure.

Clearly the author has an objective or agenda. Why, he does not say. If asked, he might say it is the only approach that makes sense. But anyone can say that their opinion is the only one that makes sense.

In the same way that a good lie has elements of the truth, his claims do have occasional support, and his logic may occasionally follow. His text just doesn't work for me. I agree with MetMom’s post 3

I went to my browser and typed in monism. Monism emphasizes oneness, but it seems that there have been many types of monism. A few excerpts follow.

Answers.com
Monism finds one where dualism finds two. Physicalism is the doctrine that everything that exists is physical, and is a monism contrasted with mind-body dualism.
http://www.answers.com/topic/monism

Wikipedia.com
Monism is any philosophical view which holds that there is unity in a given field of inquiry, where this is not to be expected. Thus, some philosophers may hold that the Universe is really just one thing, despite its many appearances and diversities; or theology may support the view that there is one God, with many manifestations in different religions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monism

Catholic Encylopedia
Among the early Greek philosophers, the Eleatics, starting, like the Hindus, with the conviction that sense-knowledge is untrustworthy, and reason alone reliable, reached the conclusion that change, plurality, and origination do not really exist, that Being is one, immutable, and eternal. They did not explicitly identify the one reality with God, and were not, so far as we know, inclined to mysticism. Their Monism, therefore, may be said to be of the purely idealistic type.

These two forms of metaphysical Monism recur frequently in the history of philosophy; for instance, the idealistic-spiritual type in neo-Platonism and in Spinoza's metaphysics, and the purely idealistic type in the rational absolutism of Hegel.

Besides idealistic Monism there is Monism of the materialistic type, which proclaims that there is but one reality, namely, matter, whether matter be an agglomerate of atoms, a primitive, world-forming substance (see IONIAN SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY), or the so-called cosmic nebula out of which the world evolved.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10483a.htm

I don't think this smear of Chesterton works. You might say that the Nazis thought 2+2=4, and that anyone who thinks likewise agrees with the Nazis. Surely there are points of overlap and points of differences.

Thomas Sowell argues at length in one of his books that some "stereotypes" have a foundation. As just one of his examples, he asserts (with citations) that Italians are over-represented in the fishing industry of many countries: Argentina, Australia, the US, etc. One only need contemplate the geography of Italy and its easy access to water to get a sense of how a large proportion of Italians might come to love fishing.

Usury is a strong term. I wish Catholics and other Christians would put less emphasis on this undefined yet accusatory word. Still, even the conservative Rabbi Lapin recently made a case that "Jews are good with money." Those less financially adept might conclude usury, which I think is a mistake. I've never met a gypsie, but a friend told me of his encounters with gypsies. As he told it, the ones he met were expert at separating a man from his wallet. I realize, as do we all, that individuals are individuals and must not be judged by the group to which they belong. Still, common tendencies may commonly apply to some groups for a period of time.

As to Chesterton's opinions, I think it better to identify which are right and which are wrong. Agreement with Nazis, whether apparent or real, is irrelevant.

I went to my browser and typed in monism. Monism emphasizes oneness, but it seems that there have been many types of monism.

Monism is really atheism combined with a certain scientific-sounding nature worship, or just naturalism with different (continental) expressions and idioms. Ernst Haeckel was the big prophet of Monism. He started the Monist League. Many famous guys were members (Ernst Mach, for instance) It was extremely influential. Nothing really explains the 'monist attidude' better than the writings of monists themselves. Here:

The Non-Miraculous History of Creation, Ernst Haeckel
Ernst Haeckel His Life, Works, Career, and Prophecy, T. Wakeman

Agreeing with the Nazis on basic arithmetic is qualitatively different from agreeing with the Nazis about the 'Jewish Question'. In fairness, Chesterton emphatically disagreed with the Nazi answer to the 'Jewish Question' but his discussion of the Jews as an alien and unreliable presence in Europe is still fairly repugnant. Here is the essay I quoted from: The Problem of Zionism.

All this, however, is tangential to my main point: guys with the waterheaded pastime of trying to discredit evolutionary science by trumpeting the unsavory politics of some of its practitioners probably shouldn't be quoting Chesterton. Unless they're comfortable being giant hypocrites, I guess.

As to Chesterton's opinions, I think it better to identify which are right and which are wrong. Agreement with Nazis, whether apparent or real, is irrelevant.

Well put. I would also add that his opinions should be understood in the context of his environment, and it is unreasonable to strictly judge any historical person by hindsight standards. I only ask that this same standard be applied to J. B. S. Haldane and Ronald Fisher.

I never heard of the Monist League before. I don’t doubt their influence.

There are many people who are either monists, or fellow travelers with monism. One need only consider the near hysterical response from some quarters whenever it is suggested that something highly improbable (and meaningful) might be the result of intelligent design.

The word “teleology” probably has the power to set people off as much as the phrase “intelligent design.” Nor is it the word “information” welcome in many discussions of DNA. There are systematic efforts to close minds and render certain topics, and words, forbidden.

One of the sources I found mentioned the monism of Hegel. I’m not certain, but it sounded like his monism was based upon mind/self/(soul) rather than experiences from the five senses, or on matter/energy. That would certainly be a different take than the approach of the Monist league. It might provide the basis for a useful rejoinder, if only as a way to show that there is more than one reasonable way to look at the world.

I never heard of the Monist League before. I don’t doubt their influence.

The Haeckel monists were very influential in Germany. The monist league eventually became an official organ of the Nazi party. The american and british monists went a different route. The Rationalist Press Association was full of monists. They disseminated Haeckel's books in English. In America, Paul Carus formed The Monist journal. It is a mixture of articles by famous scientists and philosophers together with Paul Carus's anti-Christian tripe sandwiched in between.

There are systematic efforts to close minds and render certain topics, and words, forbidden

Agnosticism is a forbidden word among the Monists. Many things are forbidden.

I was thinking how I can give you a short description of monism as I see it from reading The Monist. You are probably familiar with "pagan Christ" theories, viz, Frazer's Golden Bough, Kersey Graves, Acharya S, Gany & Freke's The Jesus Mysteries, Dan Brown, and so on. You will note the peculiar form of reasoning that all of these writers use. The way they patch together explanations of unrelated things that don't make sense, and so on. Hard to describe, but if you've read them then you know what I mean. Take that peculiar form of reasoning about religion and history, and apply it to biology, physics, philosophy etc. You get Monism.

And not only that, Monists are the ones who popularized all those "pagan origins of Christianity" theories. About half of the Monist is like that. And many Rationalist Press books are like that. Indeed Monists, having a fascination for pagan or nature-religion symbolism, are obsessed with such theories. Reminiscent of Ostara and those weird pre-Nazi pagan revival magazines in Germany.

One of the sources I found mentioned the monism of Hegel.

You can probably consider Hegel a precursor to monism (and to british evolutionary philosophy.) Oken, the old German biologist, wrote like a monist, before Haeckel. Nietzche is big with monists. They seem to love him. Monism has a number of idols which are baptized as monists: Goethe, Spinoza, Bruno, etc.

Einstein was a Monist.

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