The Wonders of Life: A Popular Study of Biological Philosophy. Ernst Haeckel
Читать онлайн книгу.
found a special institute and journal for the science of protists. One very important section of it is bacteriology.
The practical division of biology, according to the extent of the organic kingdom, leads us to mark out four chief provinces of research: protistology (the science of the unicellulars), botany (the science of plants), zoology (the science of animals), and anthropology (the science of man). In each of these four fields we may then distinguish morphology (the science of forms) and physiology (the science of functions) as the two chief divisions of scientific work. The special methods and means of observation differ entirely in the two sections. In morphology the work of description and comparison is the most important as regards both outer form and inner structure. In physiology the exact methods of physics and chemistry are especially demanded—the observation of vital activities and the attempt to discover the physical laws that govern them. As a correct knowledge of human anatomy and physiology is indispensable for scientific medicine, and the work requires a particularly large apparatus, these two sciences have long been studied separately, and have been handed over to the medical facility in the division of the academic curriculum.
The broad field of morphology may be divided into anatomy and biogeny; the one deals with the fully developed, and the other with the developing, organism. Anatomy, the study of the formed organism, studies both the external form and the inner structure. We may distinguish as its two branches the science of structures (tectology) and the science of fundamental forms (promorphology). Tectology investigates the features of the structure in the organic individual, and the composition of the body out of various parts (cells, tissues, and organs). Promorphology describes the real form of these individual parts and of the whole body, and endeavors to reduce them mathematically to certain fundamental forms (chapter viii.). Biogeny, or the science of the evolution of organisms, is also divided into two parts—the science of the individual (ontogeny) and of the stem or species (phylogeny); each follows its own peculiar methods and aims, but they are most intimately connected by the biogenetic law. Ontogeny deals with the development of the individual organism from the beginning of its existence to death; as embryology it observes the growth of the individual within the fœtal membranes; and as metamorphology (or the science of metamorphoses) it follows the subsequent changes in post-fœtal life (chapter xvi.). The task of phylogeny is to trace the evolution of the organic stem or species—that is to say, of the chief divisions in the animal and plant worlds, which we describe as classes, orders, etc.; in other words, it traces the genealogy of species. It relies on the facts of paleontology, and fills up the gaps in this by comparative anatomy and ontogeny.
The science of the vital phenomena, which we call physiology, is for the most part the physiology of work, or ergology; it investigates the functions of the living organism, and has to reduce them as closely as possible to physical and chemical laws. Vegetable ergology deals with what are called the vegetative functions, nutrition and reproduction; animal ergology studies the animal activities of movement and sensation. Psychology is directly connected with the latter. But the study of the relations of the organism to its environment, organic and inorganic, also belongs to physiology in the wider sense; we call this part of it perilogy, or the physiology of relations. To this belong chorology, or the science of distribution (also called biological geography, as it deals with geographical and topographical distribution), and œcology or bionomy (also recently called ethology), the science of the domestic side of organic life, of the life-needs of organisms and their relations to other organisms with which they live (biocenosis, symbiosis, parasitism).
Third Table
SYNOPSIS OF THE CHIEF BRANCHES OF BIOLOGY (1869)
Biology = The Science of Life
| I. | Protistology = the science of single cells—unicellular organisms. |
 |
The four chief branches of systematic biology. |
| II. | Botany = the science of plants—tissue plants (metaphyta). | ||
| III. | Zoology = the science of animals—tissue animals (metazoa). | ||
| IV. | Anthropology = the science of man—speaking primates. |
| A. Morphology = The Science of Forms. Anatomy and biogeny of organisms. | |
| A I. Anatomy. The science of structure. 1. Tectology. The science of structure.Cytology, science of cells. Histology, science of tissues. Organology, science of organs. Blastology, science of persons. Kormology, science of trunks.—— 2. Promorphology.The science of fundamental forms. Knowledge of the geometrical ideal forms (mathematically definable) in relation to the concrete real form of the individual. | A II. Biogeny. The science of development. 3. Phylogeny. Stem history.Paleontology and genealogy. Transformism or theory of descent. Natural classification.—— 4. Ontogeny. 4a. Embryology. (Development within the fœtal membranes.) 4b. Metamorphology. (Modification of the organism after fœtal life.) |
| B. Physiology = The Science of Functions. Physics and chemistry of the organism. | |
| B I. Ergology. 5. Vegetal ergology. Physiology of the vegetative functions. 5a. Trophonomy. The science of metabolism. 5b. Gonimatology. The science of reproduction. —— 6. Animal ergology. The science of movement. 6a. Phoronomy. The science of movement. 6b. Sensonomy. The science of sensation 6c. Psychology. | B II. Perilogy. Physiology of relations. 7. Chorology.The science of distribution. Biological geography and topography. The science of migrations.—— 8. Œcology. (or bionomy or ethology). The science of domestic life. Biological economy.Relations of the organism to the environment, and to other organisms with which it lives. |
V
DEATH
Life and death—Individual death—Immortality of the unicellulars—Death of the protists and tissue-organisms—Causes of physiological death—Using up of the plasma—Regeneration—Biotonus—Perigenesis of the plastidules: memory of the biogens—Regeneration of protists and tissue-organisms—Senile debility—Disease—Necrobiosis—The lot of death—Providence—Chance and fate—Eternal life—Optimism and pessimism—Suicide and self-redemption—Redemption from evil—Medicine and philosophy—Maintenance of life—Spartan selection.
Nothing is constant but change! All existence is a perpetual flux of "being and becoming"! That is the broad lesson of the evolution of the world, taken as a whole or in its various parts. Substance alone is eternal and unchangeable, whether we call this all-embracing world-being Nature, or Cosmos, or God, or World-spirit. The law of substance teaches us that it reveals itself to us in an infinite variety of forms, but that its essential attributes, matter and energy, are constant. All individual forms of substance are doomed to destruction. That will be the fate of the sun and its encircling planets, and of the organisms that now people the earth—the fate of the bacterium and of man. Just as the existence of every organic individual had a beginning, it will also undeniably have an end. Life and death are irrevocably united. However, philosophers and biologists hold very different views as to the real causes of this destiny. Most of their opinions are at once out of court, because they have not a clear idea of the nature of life, and so can have no adequate idea of its termination—death.
The inquiry into the nature of organic life which we instituted in the second chapter has shown us that it is, in the ultimate analysis, a chemical process. The "miracle of life" is in essence nothing but the metabolism of the living matter, or of the plasm. Recent