A New Critique of Theoretical Thought. Deel 3. The Structures of Individuality of Temporal Reality

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Chapter III
The enkaptic structural whole and the concept of substance in modern philosophy of nature

Introduction.

The theory of enkaptic inter-structural interlacements gives rise to a new problem which is of fundamental philosophical importance. It may be formulated as follows: How is it possible that in such interlacements new structural wholes are constituted?

This problem does not permit itself to be evaded any longer. For it has appeared that in itself the figure of enkapsis is sharply opposed to the relation of a whole and its parts. But if temporal reality were built up only in inter-structural interlacements not embraced by integral structural wholes, it would be impossible to account for the naïve experience of things as individual totalities. For we have seen that not any of these things displays a simple structure of individuality but that they are much rather constituted on the basis of enkaptic interweavings of structures.

Therefore, the theory of the enkaptic structural whole that we shall explain in this chapter turns out to be the indispensable keystone of that of the enkaptic interlacements. This new theory, however, which I developed for the first time in an ample treatise published in the quarterly Philosophia Reformata¹, is no more the result of an a-priori construction than any other part of the philosophy explained in this work. Rather it has ripened only little by little in a continuous confrontation with empirical, scientifically established states of affairs. In this respect, too, the idea of the enkaptic structural whole is opposed to the a priori substance-concept of metaphysics. In the present

1 Het Substantiebegrip in de Moderne Natuurphilosophie en de Theorie van het Enkaptisch Structuurgeheel (Phil. Ref. 15th year, 1950), pp. 66-139.

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chapter we shall continually confront these two conceptions with each other and with the empirical states of affairs. From this confrontation it will also appear to what degree in modern theoretical biology and philosophy of nature the substance-concept has impeded a satisfactory solution of the structural problems.

§ 1 - A provisional definition of the enkaptic structural whole and an investigation into the types of enkaptic interlacements in which it may present itself.

We shall start with a provisional definition of what we understand by an enkaptic structural whole, in order to delimit the ontological problem implied in it. We shall speak of a genuine enkaptic structural whole when an interlacement between structures of a different radical- or genotype is realized in one and the same typically qualified form-totality embracing all the interwoven structures in a real enkaptic unity without encroaching upon their inner sphere-sovereignty.

From our previous investigations it has become evident that the different structures interwoven into such an enkaptic whole cannot be related to one another according to the whole-part relation. For in this case the figure of enkapsis would be cancelled. The enkaptic structural whole must much rather embrace all the structures interwoven within its internal operational sphere and assign to them their due place within the whole. The enkaptic functions of these structures must be serviceable to the whole, and the leading and qualifying rôle within the latter must be assigned to the highest of the inter-woven structures. Nevertheless the enkaptic total structure may not coalesce with this qualifying structural type.

The enkaptic structural whole and the undifferentiated individuality structures.

One should, however, be on one's guard against identifying this structural whole with an undifferentiated structure of individuality encountered, for instance, in a primitive organized community. For the latter does not realize any differentiated structure. Here we find only one undifferentiated internal operational sphere which eventually may fulfil at the same time the rôle of a political community, a cult community, a school, a ‘club’, a business, an artificial kinship, etc.

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In a genuine enkaptic structural whole, on the contrary, we always find different internal operational spheres of the structures interwoven in it, which maintain their inner sphere-sovereignty. And insofar as the qualifying structural principle is of a differentiated character - which appears not to be the case in the human body - the latter's differentiated leading function is at the same time that of the enkaptic whole.

In this enkaptic structural whole the individuality-structures interlaced in its form-totality are to be viewed as belonging to the total-structure only so long as they are united by the latter in a mutual enkaptic bond. As soon as this enkapsis is broken the whole is destroyed.

The enkaptic component structure, however, - insofar as it does not play the leading and qualifying rôle in the whole - necessarily embraces two clearly distinct but mutually indissolubly coherent operational spheres, viz.:

1. an internal sphere revealing its own inner sphere-sovereignty, and

2. an external-enkaptic sphere originating from the fact that the higher component structure in which it is bound avails itself of the modal functions of the lower structure and orders the latter within its own operational sphere; all this according to the ordering principle of the enkaptic whole.

In consequence of this extremely intricate composition the figure of an enkaptic structural whole confronts a structural analysis with the most difficult problems. For in this very figure the relation of enkapsis to the whole-part relation displays a critical complication which must lead us astray as soon as the former is confounded with the latter.

The theory of enkapsis, developed by Heidenhain and Theodor L. Haering, which we have discussed in the first chapter of this section, has failed in the face of this very complication of the enkaptic structural whole. It was originally oriented to the relation of the organic whole and its relatively autonomous parts, which Haering erroneously viewed as an universal pattern of an enkaptic structural totality.

This was a consequence of the methodological error implied in starting from the most intricate state of affairs, such as it presents itself in the enkaptic structural whole, before a due insight has been gained into the figure of enkapsis as such.

In my first introduction to the theory of enkaptic inter-structural interlacements, explained in the first (Dutch) edition of

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this work, I followed the other way round. In my opinion the latter is the only right methodological approach to the problem. It was of a primordial importance to arrive at an insight into the very different types of enkapsis which are incompatible with any uniform schematism.

Therefore my first investigations into the problem of the enkaptic interlacements did not yet go into the most intricate question, viz. that of the enkaptic whole. It is true that in this way the theory explained in the first edition could not be complete in a systematic sense. Neverthelass, the inductive method followed in this introductory inquiry paved the way for a methodically right approach to the problem to be explained in the present chapter.

It is of the utmost importance to establish that the intricate figure of an enkaptic whole by no means presents itself in all enkaptic relations. Let us consider this state of affairs more in detail.

The enkaptic structural whole and the different types of enkaptic interlacement.

In the previous chapters we have examined the different ‘types of ordering’ of these relations. The results of this enquiry will now show us the way to establish in which of these types the figure of an enkaptic structural whole may occur.

This is in the first place that of the irreversible foundational relation. We should, however, observe that even this type does not always function in an enkaptic structural totality. This has already appeared from our inquiry into this type of enkapsis such as it presents itself within human societal relationships. In a differentiated human society there is no ‘highest, component structure’ that can qualify a supposed enkaptic structural whole of human society.

But there is always an enkaptic totality to be found cohering with the irreversible foundational relations encountered in the interlacement of structural types belonging to the three primary ‘kingdoms’ (viz. that of physico-chemically qualified kinds of matter and things, and the vegetable and animal kingdoms). In addition it is found in the human bodily structure as the structural whole of man's individual temporal existence. Moreover it presents itself in context with the same type of enkaptic ordering encountered in the different structural types of products of animal and human formation.

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Among the other types of enkapsis relevant in this context we may mention the different kinds of enkaptic symbiosis in which a real collective structure is to be discovered. But in my opinion the figure of an enkaptic whole is lacking wherever we meet with the type of correlative enkapsis, such as it reveals itself in the interlacement of plants and animals with their ‘Umwelt’, and of the latter with the phenotypes of the former. Modern students of botany and zoölogy (Woltereck and many other scholars) often speak in this case, too, of an internal structural unity and totality. But to my mind this cannot be right. A plant or animal cannot be a part of its ‘Umwelt’ (though no doubt in its particular vital environment also other plants and animals will function), nor vice versa. And there is not to be discovered an enkaptic structural whole, in the previously defined sense, embracing both of them in their correlative interwovenness. Only a universalistic biological theory may suppose that such a totality is really given in the universal unity of ‘life’ and its conditions.

We shall now examine the problem of the enkaptic structural whole that presents itself within the three primary kingdoms. Only in the final stage of this investigation - which requires a continuous confrontation with the results of special scientific research - we may hope to find a solution to the problem how such a whole is ontologically possible.

For, as observed, the question is not how we can find an a priori consistent construction. We should much rather engage in tracing structural states of affairs that reveal themselves in empirical reality itself and which will appear to offer serious difficulties to an accurate structural explanation. Perhaps my provisional conception of the enkaptic structural whole will even turn out to lack the character of a ‘consistent structural view’ when we engage in a more detailed analysis of the ontological problem implied in it. In this case it will require a later revision. But in the first phase of our enquiry I prefer to run the risk of a merely provisional approach if at least I may hope to have accounted for the empirical states of affairs.

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§ 2 - The enkaptic structural whole in molecular structures of matter and atomically ordered crystal-lattices. A confrontation of this figure with the metaphysical concept of substance as it is used in Hoenen's neo-Thomistic philosophy of in-organic nature.

The apparent paradox in the basic thesis of chemistry.

Since Boyle it was considered as a genuine paradox of chemistry that the properties of chemical elements in their different combinations are not perceptible, whereas it must be assumed that they are nevertheless really present.

Meanwhile the further development of atom-theory has shed new light on this question: It is now generally known that the atom's nucleus determines the place of an element in the periodical system and thereby at the same time what we have called its physico-chemically qualified geno-type. It is also known that the typical chemical reactions occurring in chemical combinations are only related to the electrons in the periphery of the atom. It is very probable that in the heavier elements these typical reactions are bound to the outermost shell of electrons only. In the chemical combinations of such heavier elements the change occurring in the latter thus remains restricted to the outermost regions of the atoms. The inside shells of electrons, and a-fortiori the nucleus, do not alter their inner structure¹.

1 Cf. B. Bavink, op. cit., p. 151 and more in detail Emeléus-Anderson, Ergebnisse und Probleme der modernen anorganischen Chemie (transl. by Kurt Karbe, Berlin, 1940), pp. 12 ff.

The philosophical structural problem concerning the relation of dissimilar atoms and their molecular combinations.

The philosophic structural problem is naturally not solved by this empirical statement. We are of the opinion that only the theory of the enkaptic interlacements is able to give this solution in a satisfactory way.

In the light of our previous investigations it cannot be doubted that in the chemical combination water, for instance, we are confronted with a genuine irreversible enkaptic foundational relation. The atoms are enkaptically bound in the new kind of matter without losing their original genotype. Should we assume that they have become parts of the new matter water? Certainly not. For the combination H₂0 is itself the minimal form-totality

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of the latter. The H atoms and the O atom, on the contrary, remain hydrogen and oxygen, respectively. Their nuclei, which determine their chemical structural type, remain unaltered, at least as to their structural principle; they do not partake in the combination, they are not ruled by the internal structural principle of the matter water.

This does not exclude the fact that the atoms, as total units, function in enkaptic binding within the new individuality structure. For without their internal connection with the nuclei the electrons of the outward atom spheres would not be able to display chemical functions. But they do not become parts of the chemical combination as a new kind of matter.

About this state of affairs, too, modern chemistry has not left us in uncertainty. The electronic theory of valency¹ has until now been the most comprehensive attempt at an explanation of the chemical combinations, though it is generally acknowledged that it is only an approximative attempt. The more recent and certainly more exact theories based on wave mechanics are provisionally only applicable in a very restricted area of chemistry. We shall avail ourselves of the theory of valency since the other theories imply unconquerable difficulties for those who are not able to comprehend their intricate mathematical apparatus.

According to the former there are three different types of binding of atoms, viz. the electronic binding, the covalency binding and the coordination binding². In the first type an electron of the outermost atom sphere passes from one atom or group of atoms into another atom or group of atoms. The two atoms or groups of atoms are held together by their mutual electrostatic attraction.

In the covalency binding two atoms possess common electrons so that at every turn there are present two common electrons - one of each atom - for a simple combination, four for a double binding, etc. When the combining atoms or atom groups are not of the same type, the electrons are not equally divided

1 By ‘valency’ chemistry understands the numerical relation in which the different elements combine. Thus, e.g., elements combining with hydrogen in a one-one relation of atoms have a valence of one, just like hydrogen itself. Elements which bind two hydrogen atoms or another element of the valency of one have the valency of two, etc.

2 Emeléus-Anderson, op. cit., p. 12 and N.V. Sidgwick, The Electronic Theory of Valence.

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and the combination displays a so-called dipole moment, i.e. a polar structure.

The coordination-binding is as a rule identical with the covalency binding and is only distinct from the latter insofar as the two electrons effecting the combination always belong to either of the two combining atoms only.

So it appears that the combination is always concerned with the electrons of the outermost atomic sphere. The constellation of the nucleus, and in the case of the heavier elements also that of the inside shells of electrons, remain unaltered. This latter result of the theory of valency is, at least in principle, not affected by the more recent theories oriented to wave mechanics, albeit that these theories were obliged to break with the atomistic view of the former and with its sensory pattern of the atomic constellation. Consequently we may establish that the two hydrogen atoms and the oxygen atom, in their typical binding within the water-molecule, cannot be considered as parts of the new matter water. A part of a whole must display the internal structure of the latter and this is not the case here. We are only warranted to say that there arises a functional combination between the atoms, i.e. that the latter function enkaptically within the chemical combination water.

Meanwhile the question may be asked: Is there not to be found an enkaptic structural whole embracing both the bound hydrogen atoms and the oxygen atom as its enkaptic parts?

The enkaptic structural whole as a typically qualified form-totality.

In my opinion such an enkaptic whole can indeed be pointed out, viz. the molecule as a typical physico-chemically qualified form-totality. The latter cannot coalesce with the new matter water as a chemical combination. For we have seen that the nuclei of atoms do not combine. Atoms are consequently not parts of the matter water. But they are certainly embraced by the molecule as the minimal form-totality in which the internal structural principle of water can only be realized.

But how is the internal structure of this qualified form-totality to be conceived? The form is here a typically ordered physico-spatial figure¹ or configuration, and this typical configuration is

1 Cf. Woltereck's explanation of the concept ‘ordered spatial figure’ in his cited work pp. 97 ff. That the molecule is a physico-chemically qualified form-totality appears from the fact that its micro-figure is constituted by electro-magnetic forces effecting a typical ordering of the atoms in the energy-space which is not identical with the objective sensory space of perception.

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the foundation of the qualifying physico-chemical function of the whole, which coalesces with that of the new matter water.

In the more complicated or higher qualified enkaptic natural totalities of the macro-world, such as, e.g., a mountain, a poly-cellular plant or animal, the embracing form-whole will be of a different type and will display a macroscopic figure in the sensory space of perception. But a typical founding spatial form, irrespective of its modality and typical qualification, is essential to the structural whole which may rightly be called an enkaptic structural totality.

This is, for instance, not so in the case of unordered aggregates, which, notwithstanding certain interactions between their different components, lack the typical total form of an inner structural whole². Nor is this state of affairs to be found in the case of total-structures without a specific form such as, e.g., a piece of granite or iron and in general alloys whose typical structural properties (such as hardness, elasticity, malleability and micro-structures) have been examined in detail. On the other hand, we do find the figure of an enkaptic structural whole in the case of inorganic crystals with their 32 classes of typical symmetrical forms, determined by their inner total structure. The same may be said with respect to the characteristic mountain forms, in which the internal totality structures of typical geological formations in the final phase of their development display typical totality figures³. The structural properties of such formations (such as shell lime, lithographic slate, chalk, etc.) are not deducible from a mere addition of those of the minerals and petrified animal and vegetable remnants enkaptically bound in them.

In any case the enkaptic total structure as such must possess a typical embracing form-totality, irrespective of the particular qualification of the latter. For only such a form-totality can do justice both to the enkaptic inter-structural interlacement and

2 For example, the upper mud layer of the bottom of a lake, which forms an un-ordered aggregate of all sorts of remnants, animals, bacteria, sand, etc., or a heap of compost.

3 The distinction between totality-structures without and with a typical form-whole is amply explained by Woltereck, op. cit., pp. 78 ff.

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to the whole-part relation. The form has appeared to be the nodal point of enkaptic relations. Consequently, if the latter function in the typically qualified form of a whole which, as such, cannot coalesce with any of the structures interlaced by it, but assign to each of them their due place¹, then the whole-part relation is guaranteed as well. If such a typical form-totality is lacking, as in the case of a mere correlative enkapsis, we cannot speak of an enkaptic structural whole.

In the case of a water-molecule, however, there is no doubt that it can be discovered. For its internal total structure embraces both the atoms combined in its physico-spatial configuration, and the new matter water. And it is really a physico-chemically qualified form-totality with a typical spatial ordering of atoms according to their valency. This physical spatial form is indeed the foundation of the typical chemical characteristics of the whole. This fact finds its exact expression in the structural formula H₂O, which pertains to the molecular structure rather than to water as the result of the combination.

1 According to the enkaptic foundational relation that finds its nodal point in the form-totality.

Two seemingly incompatible series of data are to be reconciled with each other by the conception of the molecule as an enkaptic whole. The evidence in favour of the continued actual presence of the atoms in a chemical combination and that in favour of the conception that the combination is a new whole.

The above structural analysis can account for two seemingly incompatible series of experimentally established facts. One of them seems to be in favour of the conception that in a molecule or atomically ordered crystal-lattice the atoms remain actually present. The other seems to justify the view that both molecule and crystal-lattice are real wholes.

The strongest, and to my mind convincing, experimental proof of the first conception is the complete immunity of the atomic nuclei - and in the case of the heavier elements also of the more central shells of electrons - to the combination. For from this fact it may be established that the atom does not undergo an inner and consequently essential structural change. Its alterations appear to be of a peripheral character only. This conclusion is corroborated by a series of other data of which we shall mention only the two most important established facts. In

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the first place it has appeared that the duration of a radio-active element's existence is completely independent of its free or bound condition. Secondly we refer to the integral preservation of the typical line-spectra of the elements in the X rays spectrum of the latter. This fact is important in this context since this spectrum does not originate from the periphery but from the more central shells of electrons surrounding the nuclei of heavier atoms.

On the other hand it has been established that the light-spectra of combined atoms do not pass over into this X rays spectrum. But the former do not originate from the more central sphere but from the periphery of the nucleus' environment in the atom.

Of these two arguments the one concerning the independent duration of the existence of a radio-active element is doubtless the most important. For in a separate treatise we have shown that the existential duration of an individual whole is determined by the typical temporal order of its individuality-structure¹.

In case of an intrinsical change of the latter the constancy of the existential duration of a radio-active element would thus be inexplicable.

Another evidence, derived from the experimental confirmation of the so-called stoechiometrical laws² of chemical combinations concerning mass and weight of the latter, is not so conclusive in my opinion. For the nuclear structure of atoms is not essentially concerned with these experiments.

That in a crystal-lattice the atoms really continue to exist could be proved in a particularly convincing experimental way with the aid of a so-called Laue-diagram³. The latter shows the deviation of Röntgen rays through crystal-lattices. Crystals ap-

1 Het Tijdsprobleem in de Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee II (Phil. Reformata 5th year, 1940, pp. 216 ff.).

2 The Greek word stoicheion means ‘element’. The laws intended are the following:

1.

the famous law of Lavoisier, according to which the mass of a combination is equal to the sum of the masses of the component elements;

2.

the law of Proust, i.e. the law of constant proportions or of constant composition;

3.

the law of Dalton or that of multiple proportions, according to which the total weight of a chemical combination is equal to the sum of the total weights of the component elements, each multiplied by a small integer (1, 2, 3, etc.).

3 This diagram is composed of a number of points regularly ordered around the point of incidence of the chief ray.

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peared to have a net-like structural form whose nodal points are occupied by the centra of atoms. The distances between the latter in the different net planes could be calculated in an exact way. From continued investigations it appeared that the intensity of the rays reflected by the crystal-lattice is not only dependent on the ordering of the atoms, but also on the so-called ‘atomic form-factor’, i.e. on the inner structural form of each separate atom. This intensity appears to increase in proportion to the number of electrons of the latter.

Also the elementary waves emitted by the electrons of the same atom proved to interfere with each other in dependence upon the atom structure itself, as Hartree has shown (1928/9). A particularly convincing effect was produced by the recent experiments of Kossel and his cooperators. They succeeded in influencing crystals by means of cathode rays and later on also by Röntgen rays in such a way that the separate atoms of the crystal-lattice operate as independent sources of radiation¹. No wonder that in recent theory the actual existence of atoms in a crystal-lattice is accepted as an established fact². It is, however, certainly not right to suppose that this is only a consequence of the classical mechanistic theory, which conceived crystals as mere aggregates of separate atoms. For it should not be forgotten that modern physics and crystallography no longer rest on the classical mechanist foundations. We may only establish that the philosophical structural problem raised by the maintenance of the atomic structures in a crystal-lattice as yet lacks a satisfactory solution.

On the other hand there are a series of experimentally established facts which are doubtless in favour of the conception that a molecule is a typical whole. It has appeared, for example, that the colours of the absorption-spectrum (i.e. the spectrum of light dispersed by matter) do not correspond to vibrations whose amplitude may vary continually, but are bound to typical quantum conditions. This is certainly not in accordance with the classical atomistic conception of a molecule as a mechanical aggregate of atoms. There are, in addition, other facts which are

1 Cf. F. Laves, Fünf und zwanzig Jahre Laue-Diagramme (Die Naturwissenschaften 25th year, 1937, pp. 705 ff.).

2 Cf., e.g., F.M. Jaeger, Lectures on the Principles of Symmetry (2nd ed. 1920) p. 158: ‘These atoms preserve, therefore, apparently their individuality as constituents of such crystalline substances’.

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in favour of the opinion that a chemical combination is a new totality. But it is not necessary to sum them up since the older atomistic view has been definitively abandoned by modern physics and chemistry.

The philosophical background of the older conception of the chemical combination as an aggregate of elements.

True, in classical physics and chemistry this atomistic view was generally accepted. Insofar as experimentally established facts were known testifying to the continued existence of atoms in their different combinations, they were considered to be convincing proofs of the rightness of this atomistic conception.

That the latter was not easily relinquished was doubtless due to the influence of the deterministic science-ideal which implicitly or explicitly ruled the theoretical view of empirical reality.

This classical mechanistic view reached its acme in the atom model projected by Rutherford according to which an atom was also conceived as a mechanical system of elementary corpuscles (a kind of solar system with planets in micro-dimensions). But since the rise of quantum physics in the XXth century this conception was factually antiquated. It could only have an after effect in modern atom theory as a sort of atavism. This can for instance be clearly pointed out with respect to Bohr's new atom theory. The latter tried to accommodate the classical pattern of Rutherford to the quantum theory of Max Planck, though this mechanistic model of atom structure had already been involved in insoluble conflicts with the electro-magnetic theory of Maxwell.

True, Bohr in this way arrived at a formula which in an amazingly exact and elegant way could account for the experimental results with respect to the atom-spectrum. But on the other hand his theory resulted in new anomalies because of its maintaining certain mechanistic conceptions which were in principle incompatible with the foundations of quantum-mechanics. In the present context we cannot go into this subject matter in more detail and may refer the interested reader to some works cited in the foot note¹, in which Rutherford's and Bohr's atom-theories have been subjected to an ample analysis.

1 P. Hoenen S.J., Philosophie der anorganische Natuur, pp. 408 ff. Louis de Broglie, La Physique moderne et les Quanta (éd. Flammarion, 1936), pp. 152 ff.

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The neo-Thomistic theory of Hoenen concerning the ontological structure of atom and molecule.

We shall, however, have to pay special attention to the neo-Thomistic theory of Hoenen, emiritus-professor of the Gregorian University in Rome, concerning the ontological structure of atoms, molecules and crystals. The reason is that this theory gives us occasion once again to confront the Aristotelian-Thomistic concept of substance with our idea of an enkaptic structural whole.

Hoenen is of the opinion that the acceptance of a continued actual existence of atoms in molecules or atomically ordered crystal-lattices necessarily must lead to the atomistic conception of the latter as aggregate conditions. To this view he opposes only one alternative: the neo-Thomistic conception which conceives a mixtum (i.e. a composite) as a new substance in which the elements are no longer present actually but only virtually or potentially. In this condition the properties of the latter may be preserved to a greater or smaller extent, but their substantial form has been destroyed by their combination; the preserved properties have become ‘accidents’ of a new substance that can only possess one single substantial form¹. This preservation of properties is explained from the affinity of the nature of the elements with that of the mixtum, appearing from the genetic connection of the latter with the former. The mixtum is thus a ‘substance’, a new totality, consisting of one ‘primary matter’ and one ‘substantial form’, which gives to this primary matter unity of being. Its matter is a potentiality with reference to a form. From the Aristotelian view that there is only one primary matter in all natural bodies it may, however, not be concluded that this potentiality is the same with respect to all ‘forms’.

1 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theol. I. qu. 76a, 4 ad 6.

The neo-Thomistic doctrine concerning the ‘gradation’ in the realization of potencies; the conception of a heterogeneous continuum.

The point is that there is a ‘gradation’ in potencies, revealing itself in a combining of elements in such a way that ‘primary matter’ has first a disposition to the elements and only via the latter to the ‘mixtum’ or composite. The number of these gradations will increase in proportion to the distance between primary matter and the substantial form ultimately assumed by it.

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From the unity of substantial form, on the other hand, it may not be concluded that the new substance must necessarily be a homogeneous whole all of whose parts display the same properties. The inner unity of an extended substance does not exclude a diversity of properties in its different parts. This implies the possibility of a ‘heterogeneous continuum’. Hoenen applies this neo-scholastical view to the modern theory of atom and molecule, and to that of the crystal forms. According to him the atom is thus a ‘composite substance’ whose true ‘elements’ are protons, neutrons and electrons. It is a ‘natural minimum’ in the Aristotelian sense, i.e. according to its ‘physical nature’, determined by its ‘substantial form’, it is not further to be divided into material substances of the same kind. This implies that in case of its splitting up into its most simple components there arise ‘elementary substances’ of a different physical nature. The molecule, as the natural minimum of a chemical combination, and the crystal-lattice are all the same new substances. If they consist of atoms of a different chemical kind, they are to be considered ‘specific heterogeneous totalities’. This is to say, the specific heterogeneous properties of the atoms are preserved to a certain degree in the combination. This preservation of specific atomic properties is nothing but the result of the affinity in ‘nature’ of the combination with the atoms from which it has originated. The fact that medieval scholasticism assumed inorganic composites necessarily to be composed of homogeneous parts is ascribed by Hoenen to a defective experience.

Preservation of the nuclear properties of atoms in a molecule or atomically ordered crystal-lattice is thus not considered by Hoenen to be evidence of a continued actual existence of the atoms in their combination. It is explained by him from the principle of virtual preservation of heterogeneous properties of the components in a heterogeneous composite.

Critique of Hoenen's theory.

The manner in which this neo-Thomistic scholar has tried to conceive the recent results of modern natural science in a Thomistic philosophical frame of thought deserves special attention.

His argument is always strong and clear when he subjects the classical atomistic conception, founded on a mechanistic view of nature, to a fundamental philosophical criticism. It stands to reason that in this respect he may find support in recent ideas which have entered modern physics in connection with the

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quantum-theory, though it is not to be assumed that physics will in the future return to the Thomistic substance-concept.

On essential points, however, this neo-scholastical theory fails to account for the experimental results in a really satisfactory way.

First, even from a Thomistic viewpoint the immunity of atom nuclei - and in the case of the heavier elements also of the inside shells of electrons - with respect to the combination, cannot be really explained from the scholastical principle concerning virtual preservation of certain heterogeneous properties of atoms. For the nuclear structure of the atom is not simply a specific accidental property. It is much rather that part of the atom's total structure which determines the particular type of element. In the Thomistic line of thought this nuclear structure should be viewed as the substantial form of the atom since it gives to its ‘matter’ the indispensible ‘unity of being’. In the face of the established fact that this ‘substantial form’ is not destroyed by the combining of the atoms, Hoenen's argument against the actual presence of the latter in the combination is doomed to fail. And thereby this neo-Thomistic theory concerning the structure of a molecule has come into an impasse. For by accepting the actual existence of atoms in the combination, the unity of a molecule as a whole would no longer be tenable from the viewpoint of the Thomistic substance concept.

Also the experimental datum concerning the immunity of the existential duration of a radio-active element with respect to its bound condition in a molecule cannot be accounted for from this point of view. Here, too, there is no question of an accidental property of an element, but its internal structure as an actual whole is at issue. Its internal process of decay is a real nuclear alteration giving rise to a new element. It remains completely incomprehensible how this datum might be philosopsically interpreted as a simple change of properties of the composite in which the radio-active element is bound, whereas at the same time the continued actual presence of the bound element is denied.

The same objection must be raised against Hoenen's neo-Thomistic conception of the structure of a crystal-lattice as a heterogeneous continuum. This view may perhaps be able to account for the experiental datum concerning the distances of the nodal points of the net-like structural form. But Hoenen does not mention the influence of the ‘atomic form-factor’ upon the intensity

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of reflection of the incident Röntgen rays discussed above, nor the results of Kossel's experiments. Both of these experimental data are not really compatible with a denial of the actual presence of the atoms in the crystals. For they, too, are related to the internal individuality-structure of the bound elements and not to simple accidental properties of the latter.

In addition, the entire neo-scholastical concept of a heterogeneous continuum is hardly compatible with the foundations of modern wave mechanics. The famous French scientist de Broglie has rightly observed that the quantum condition of energy does not agree with the classical conception of physical space as a continuum. From this it follows that also the structural form of a crystal is not to be viewed as a real continuum.

The Aristotelian-Thomistic concept of substance implies a dilemma which must be deemed unacceptible from the point of view of modern science. It must lead to the conclusion that atoms can only actually exist in a free condition as ‘substances’. If they do not exist as ‘substances’, they cannot actually exist at all. But a free atom no more corresponds to this metaphysical concept than a bound element. Temporal reality is in principle built up in enkaptic structural interlacements which leave no room for absolute metaphysical points of reference.

Here we arrive at the philosophical insufficiency of Hoenen's theory in respect to the structural problems raised by the experimental data of modern physics and chemistry. The substance concept in principle precludes the insight into the relation of enkapsis. But thereby it precludes at the same time any possibility of a distinction between the molecule - or the atomically ordered crystal-lattice, respectively - as a typical qualified enkaptic form-totality, and the genuine chemical combination of which the former is only the bearer. As a consequence the structural problem concerning the relation between the bound atoms and the molecule or crystal, as typical wholes, is oversimplified. There is no question here of one simple totality-structure which would destroy the internal structure of its components. Rather there are three different structures to be distinguished, functioning in enkaptic interlacement. If only the relation between molecule (or crystal) and its atoms were at issue, and there were no enkapsis, the neo-Thomistic dilemma might seem to be inescapable: either the molecule or crystal is a new totality, which destroys the actual existence of the atoms, or the former are merely aggregates of atoms.

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But since the enkapsis relation is at issue in the structural problem concerned, this dilemma is unacceptible in principle. A molecule or crystal, as an enkaptic form-totality, is very well able to embrace in a particular manner the interlaced structures of its bound atoms, without destroying the latter in any way in their internal sphere-sovereignty. And to my mind only this conception can do justice to the two series of experimental data which at first sight seemed to contradict one another.

The Aristotelian-Thomistic concept of substance is unbreakably bound to the form-matter motive, which rules its philosophical approach to the structural problems: An individual whole can only have one substantial form. The component atoms are consequently obliged to become ‘matter’ of the substantial form of molecule or crystal. For if they should preserve their own substantial form, the ‘unity of being’ of the combination would be impossible¹.

This reasoning is consistent in a logical respect if one starts from the Greek form-matter motive and the metaphysical substance-concept oriented to it. But it is not permissible to impose upon philosophy and science the dilemma either to accept the neo-Thomistic solution of the structural problem, or to fall back upon the atomistic view of the classical mechanistic theory. By positing this dilemma Hoenen shows a dogmatic attitude in respect to the transcendental presuppositions of theoretic thought. It is true that classical physics, too, held to a substance-concept, albeit in a sense quite different from that of Aristotelian metaphysics. Therefore it may seem that Hoenen's dilemma is stringent when the neo-Thomistic view is only compared with the classical atomistic conception. But a really critical philosophy should not posit such dilemmas as if they were simply founded in a logical alternative. It should always be ready to account for the presuppositions which rule the manner of positing the philosophical problems. It should not mask these presuppositions by

1 Op. cit., p. 325 (with regard to a ‘living being’): ‘In the mixta which are living beings the material components, inclusive of the elements, cannot be actually present; a living being cannot be an aggregate of substances since it is a substance; it is a totality; it has the substantial unity inherent in an ens (being). If the components were actually present, it would at the same time be one and plural in substance, i.e. in the same respect, which is absurd’. This reasoning is also applied to inorganic combinations (cf. p. 326 of the quoted work).

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a dogmatical metaphysics, which is presented as an unprejudiced ontology.

This implies that our conception of the enkaptic structural whole may not be judged after the standard of Thomistic metaphysics or the classical mechanistic view of nature. According to our structural theory both the bound atoms and the new chemical matter are ordered within a typical form-totality, and in my opinion this conception can really account for the experimental data. But it is not permissible to conclude from the neo-Thomistic concept of substance that such an enkaptic structural whole cannot satisfy the ontological requirement of a ‘unity of being’. For the very structure of such an enkaptic form-totality requires the binding of plural structural wholes in an embracing new totality in such a way that the inner proper nature of each of the latter is preserved.

To my mind Hoenen's neo-Thomistic theory is no more able to account satisfactorily for the real structure of a chemical combination than for the dissolution of the latter. The elements which may be detached from the combination must be actually present in the molecule, though in a bound condition. Every theory denying this is obliged to demonstrate from empirical facts that the atoms in the combination display an essential structural change. And we have seen that Hoenen has not succeeded in this proof. But suppose he did succeed in making acceptable a ‘substantial change’ of the elements, then he would not yet have solved the structural problem concerning the dissolution of a combination.

What solution has his theory to offer in respect to the latter question? Hoenen thinks it is implied in the above mentioned conception concerning the gradations in potentiality. If the atoms are ‘virtually’ present in the composite they can reappear actually when the ‘mixtum’ is dissolved into its elements: their potentiality is no longer pure potentiality, it has already been determined to give these components in these certain quantities, if the composite falls asunder¹.

This theory may doubtless lay claim to our respect because of its sagacity, but we cannot acknowledge it as a real solution of the problem. From a Thomistic point of view the question should be framed as follows: How can the atoms regain their substantial form in the process of dissolution after having lost it in the

1 Op. cit., p. 326.

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chemical combination? This is not to be explained from the virtual preservation of some heterogeneous atomic properties within the molecule. For, according to the neo-scholastical conception, the atoms themselves have lost their substantial form in the combination. They have been made into ‘matter’ with reference to the new substantial form of the latter.

But the reappearance of the atom's ‘substantial form’ is not to be explained from the specific ‘matter’ of a molecule. An appeal to the genetic affinity between the ‘nature’ of the elements and that of the composite is of no avail here. If indeed from the combination of the elements a new totality arises, which is more than the sum of its parts, the internal structure of the latter is not deducible from that of the elements in a genetic way. Nor can this new totality (e.g., the matter water) fall asunder into its elements, if the ‘substantial form’ of the latter has been really destroyed. There exists no genetic affinity of nature between the composite and its separate elements. If Hoenen should really accept this affinity, his conception would not be intrinsically different from the classical atomistic view of the combination that he so sharply combats. In this case he would hold to the opinion that water is nothing but an aggregate of its elements.

‘The preservation of properties of the elements after their transition into a mixtum’, so he observes, ‘should be explained by the material cause, as the ratio sufficiens of this state of affairs; new properties of the mixtum should be explained from the efficient cause, at least insofar as they do not result from the mutual cooperation of the preserved properties’¹. This reasoning should also hold in the reverse direction with respect to the rise of actual free atoms from the dissolution of the combination. In this way the virtual preservation of certain properties of the elements in the composite can never explain the actual reappearance of the atoms in their proper ‘substantial form’. A ‘material cause’ is no ratio sufficiens of this result and Hoenen fails to indicate its efficient and its ‘formal’ cause.

1 Op. cit., p. 530.

The conception of material composites in pre-Thomistic medieval scholasticism.

In medieval scholasticism the Arabian Aristotelians and the older Christian scholastics before Thomas had already been

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sharply aware of this state of affairs. Though there are to be found many differences in the details of their conceptions, they almost unanimously assumed a certain actual presence of the substantial forms of the elements in the composite. But, in order to save the unity of the mixtum as a ‘new substance’, they denied the preservation of the ‘substance’ of the components. From a scholastic metaphysical point of view the inner contradiction of this solution is obvious. Thus Thomas could easily show that a plurality of ‘substantial forms’ is incompatible with the ‘unity of substance’.

But does this scholastic controversy not confirm our view that the vitium originis is to be sought in an inner contradiction of the substance-concept itself?

It is not the intricate structure of empirical reality which implies this contradiction. Much rather the latter originates from the attempt to conceive this structure in a metaphysical a priori way which does not fit it.

§ 3 - The enkaptic structural whole of the living cell-body and the substance-concept in theoretical biology.

Meanwhile our theory of the enkaptic structural whole has to prove its utility in a wider field of structures than that of the inorganic kingdom alone. We have now to pay attention to the structural problems arising in connection with the enkaptic relation between the living organism and the different kinds of matter of the living cell-body.

In the second chapter (part III) we have explained that the atoms and chemical combinations of these kinds of matter cannot be viewed as parts of the living organism of a cell. Rather it appeared that the former are enkaptically bound in the latter according to a particular type of ordering of the inter-structural interlacements, viz. that of the irreversible foundational relation. In itself a living organism is only an individuality-structure. In its realization it is unbreakably bound to different matter-structures which do not coalesce with it. Thus the problem arises concerning the enkaptic structural whole embracing both the matter-structures and that of the living organism of the cell. If such an enkaptic whole should be lacking, a real cell would lack the inner structural unity of a concrete ‘thing’. For the enkapsis as such cannot guarantee this inner unity.

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It is thus necessary to distinguish between the cell-organism and the real cell-body.

Now it cannot be doubted that in the latter there are chemical elements combined in a typical, extremely intricate way. It is also known that only a relatively small number of elements play a rôle in these combinations. In the main there are four which are indispensable, viz. hydrogen (H), oxygen (O), carbon (C) and nitrogen (N). As a rule there are also present phosphor, magnesium, calcium, natron, kalium, chlorine, sulphur, iodine and iron. Some elements of the latter group may be lacking, viz. calcium, and in vegetable cells also natron and chlorine.

The higher organic combinations of these elements in the plasm and the nuclear sphere of the living cell are, however, extremely complicated and thereby extremely labile. And the assimilatory and dissimilatory processes in which they are constituted and dissolved do not correspond in any respect to the ordinary chemical changes in the inorganic world, or even to the spontaneous decay of radio-active matter. The chief difference is the preservation of the material basic structure of nucleus and plasm, whereas the material combinations used in these processes are in a condition of complete lability. This is why the bio-chemical constellation seems to withdraw itself from a complete physico-chemical determination.

Bohr's biological relation of uncertainty.

In order to isolate completely determined chemical combinations from the cell, it is first necessary to ‘kill’ the relevant regions of the living cell-body. The famous Danish physicist Niels Bohr has tried to approach this state of affairs by means of an analogous extension of Heisenberg's relations of uncertainty which occur, e.g., in the case of the determination of position and velocity of an electron, in an electro-magnetic field. An analogous state of affairs presents itself, according to Bohr, in bio-physics and bio-chemistry. The determination of the physico-chemical processes occurring in the living cell finds its limit of certitude and exactness in life itself¹. We have already encountered this conception in an earlier context.

Naturally Bohr's biological relation of incertitude cannot solve the philosophical structural problem with which we are con-

1 Cf., for example, the explanation of Bohr's view in the review Naturwissenschaften 21, 245 (1933).

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cerned here. But his conception is doubtless of particular importance as a pregnant formulation of the limits which a mathematical causal explanation encounters in the internal physico-chemical constellation of a living organism.

These limits must be posited by the individuality-structure of the latter. They cannot pertain to the physico-chemically qualified structures of the different kinds of matter functioning in the bio-physical and bio-chemical processes. Only in the case of the highest, extremely complicated organic combinations (such as globulin, nuclein, albumen, etc.) it has up till now appeared to be impossible to find fixed structural formulas. But this does not detract from the fact that since Wöhler's famous synthesis of urine matter (1828) chemistry has succeeded in a synthetical preparation of a great number of organic combinations. And since the discovery of the rôle of catalysators¹ in fermentation-processes, it has even made great progress in disclosing the secret of the way in which the organic production of these matters is accomplished by the living organism, at least insofar as this process is to be approached by means of physico-chemical methods of research. For the central rôle of the organism's vital function in it can never be eliminated in these investigations.

1 By ‘catalysator’ chemistry understands a substance that produces a chemical reaction in other combinations without partaking itself in this reaction. A fermentation-process turned out to be a catalytic process in which a complex of combinations functions as catalysator. Though the latter are not living ‘substances’, they are produced by a living organism.

What is the meaning of Bohr's relation of incertitude with respect to the methods of organic chemistry in their application to bio-chemical processes?

The question can be asked: What is the meaning of Bohr's relation of incertitude with respect to the methods of organic chemistry in their application to bio-chemical processes? This question is not to be answered in a satisfactory way without our having gained insight into the philosophical structural problem concerning the relation of a physico-chemical combination, as such, to the genuine bio-chemical constellation in the individuality-structure of a living organism.

We must emphatically repeat that by ‘living organism’ we do not understand an individual living being, such as a plant, an animal or a man. Rather we use this term in the sense of a

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typically biotically qualified structure of individuality, functioning within an enkaptic structural whole that will appear to be the body of the living being.

It should not be thought that in this way an artificial distinction is introduced which does not correspond to real states of affairs. The distinction concerned hangs unbreakably together with the insight that a ‘living body’ is not built up in a simple or singular structure, and that it cannot coalesce with its ‘living organism’. That this insight corresponds to real states of affairs will appear from what follows.

The Aristotelian-Thomistic substance-concept and the identification of a living organism with the animated body.

The neo-Thomistic view of the relation between the material components and the body of a living being has been summarized in a pregnant way in an utterance of Hoenen's, already quoted in an earlier context¹. Starting from the Aristotelian concept of substance Hoenen cannot accept the actual presence of material elements and their chemical combinations in a living whole. The living body is not distinguished from its living organism. Instead, the material body is conceived as a specific ‘matter’ (in the metaphysical Aristotelian sense) which is completely animated by a specific ‘soul’ as its ‘substantial form’, giving it ‘actuality’ and ‘unity of being’.

We have seen that this conception starts from an unacceptable dilemma. The acknowledgment of an actual, though bound presence of material components in the living body does not at all imply that the latter would be only an ‘aggregate’ and would lack the totality-structure of an individual whole.

The question as to whether all components of a living body are ‘living’ in a subjective sense, is not to be answered from the viewpoint of an a priori metaphysics. It should be answered on the basis of an empirical research. We should only bear in mind that vital phenomena cannot be scientifically conceived apart from the structure in which they present themselves. And as soon as the structural problem proper is at issue, the difference in philosophical insight and religious starting point appears to play a decisive part in the scientific debate.

1 Cf. p. 709 note 1 of this volume.

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On the neo-Thomistic standpoint, however, the above-mentioned question is already answered a priori by the logical implications of the Aristotelian substance-concept. In this case an empirical research is factually superfluous since it cannot teach us anything about the problem concerned, which is of an exclusively metaphysical nature. This is a kind of a priori reasoning which is unacceptable from any specific scientific viewpoint.

The distinction between living and non-living components in a cell-body has urged itself upon biology as a result of empirical research. It rests upon a firm factual basis and as such it has nothing to do with atomistic-mechanistic conceptions of ‘life’.

We have thus to account for these empirical data in our theory of the ‘enkaptic whole’. Naturally we cannot go into a detailed inquiry into the results of modern cytology (i.e. the scientific inquiry into the composition of cells). We are not competent to do so and, in addition, we must observe that these results are still increasing continually. Nevertheless, we are obliged to pay attention at least to those scientifically established facts which are of essential importance with respect to the structural problems at issue in the present context.

The cell as the minimal unity capable of independent life.

First of all we have to establish that the cell with its nuclear and plasm-sphere is the smallest unity capable of independent life that has up till now been discovered. It is true that in the bodies of higher, especially of animal beings, and a fortiori in the human body, there occur many non-cellular tissues (such as tendons, cuticular formations, etc.) which partake of the vital function of the organism in an active sense. In addition it cannot be denied that even in protozoa an extra-cellular bifurcation of the genuine cellular plasm has been found in which different bio-physical and -chemical processes occur without any contact-relation with the cellular endo-plasm. This so-called exo-plasm often displays a very intricate structure.

All such exo-plasmatic, consequently non-cellular components doubtless display the typical characteristics of autonomous division, increasement, capability for stimulation etc., albeit to a less intensive degree than plasmatic cellular organs.

But apart from a connection with genuine cells these exo-plasmatic components have appeared to lack viability. In this respect they have no other relation to the living cell-organism

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than the innumerable smaller living units occurring in the latter itself¹. For the subjective vital function of these units, too, is dependent on the total cell-organism, as will appear presently. It is true that in bacteria and blue-green algae a genuine cell-nucleus is not to be found. But they do possess a more diffuse central cell-sphere which fulfils the same rôle as a nucleus.

1 Cf. Woltereck, op. cit., pp. 313 ff.

The typical physico-chemical aspect of a cell-structure.

From a physico-chemical viewpoint the first remarkable fact is that by far most of the living cells display the material sub-structure of a so-called colloidal system. This is to say that they do not contain genuine solutions of matter, nor only rude suspensions or emulsions, respectively, but are in a typical intermediate condition of matter division.

It is this colloidal condition which lies at the foundation of that extremely intricate physico-chemical constellation which is found in the internal structure of a cell's living organism.

A colloidal mixture contains a solved matter in such a fine division that this matter acquires an enormous development of surface surpassing the ordinary macroscopic condition millions of times. On the other hand this development of surface does not occur to such an extent that all specific properties which the matter concerned displays in greater dimensions are lost. On these surfaces enormous electric charges are present. This is why colloids are very ‘sensitive’ to changes of electric condition, but also to alterations of temperature, etc.².

As a colloidal system, protoplasm may pass from a sol- (solution) condition into a gel- (gelatin) condition and vice versa. It has also been established that colloidal a-biotic systems very often display a crystalline or semi-crystalline structure. In this structure the form of molecule passes without sharp boundaries into that of micro-crystals (molecular complexes).

Secondly it is a remarkable fact that by far most cells display a so-called alveolar form of plasm. This means that the latter is divided into a great number of small bubbles (alveoli) covered by membranes. This, too, is of the highest importance to vital processes.

2 Cf. Bavink, op. cit., p. 340.

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The so-called hylocentric, kinocentric and morphocentric structure of a living cell (Woltereck), viewed from the physico-chemical aspect.

The chief point, however, is the typically centered construction of the living cell. For here the genuine internal structural principle of its living organism reveals itself even in its physico-chemical aspect. It is an established fact that the entire process of constructive and destructive metabolism, and also the typical organizing, determining and regulating effects are directed from a central sphere in the cell-body. And it is beyond doubt that in any case the nucleus (or the diffuse nuclear cell-sphere, respectively) is concerned in this directing rôle, irrespective of the question whether it must itself be viewed as the operating centre or whether it is serviceable only as a sort of store-room for the necessary materials. In addition the more passive part of chromatin (i.e. the nuclear matter) in the process of cell-division is to be paid attention to.

Secondly, at least in animal plasm, a typical internal motive centre is present, viz. the so-called centro-soma. The entire process of cell-divisions and its preparation, e.g., starts from this centre¹.

In the third place the cell's living organism appears to display a centred structure with respect to the production of typical somatic part-forms. This latter state of affairs is of fundamental importance to the enkaptic structural whole; we shall revert to it.

By this three-fold centred structure the living organism of a cell is fundamentally different from all physico-chemically qualified enkaptic micro-wholes (molecules, crystals)². And this difference is already revealed in its physico-chemical aspect. It seems to be a direct expression of the individuality-structure of a cell's living organism, in which the biotical function has the central rôle of a qualifying radical function.

Even the most complicated model of a polypeptid molecule, projected by organic chemistry (E. Fisher) to approach the structure of a so-called ‘living albumen molecule’, lacks this centred construction. It only displays the picture of a bipolar

1 In vegetable cells these centro-somas are generally lacking. Cf. E. Küster, Die Zelle und die Gewebe des pflanzlichen Organismus (Handbuch der Biologie, hrg. von Bertallanffy, 1942) Bnd. VI, Heft 1, p. 13. Woltereck, as a zoologist, generalizes too much.

2 Cf. Woltereck, op. cit., pp. 132 and 133.

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binding of amino-acids ordered in the form of a chain with many radicals¹, groups or side-chains. This model may suffice for certain atomistic and materialistic conceptions of the hereditary process, based upon the ordering of genes in the chromosomes of a cell-nucleus. But it fails in principle, if the entire physico-chemical aspect of a living cell-organism is taken into account.

The same holds with respect to the hypothesis of the Russian materialistic biologist Kolzoff concerning the ‘molecular components of living albumen substance’. According to him these components should be conceived as crystals and the assimilatory processes are supposed to be crystallization processes of amino-acids present in the solution, and of other fragments of albumen. This hypothesis, too, is at the utmost able to account for the colloidal material constellation of a plasmatic cell-body. But it can never explain the typical centred structure of a living plasmatic organism. Molecules and crystals, as minimal enkaptic form-totalities of chemical combinations, in principle lack such a concentric construction.

1 In organic chemistry the term ‘radical’ means an element or atom, or group of these, forming the base of a compound and remaining unaltered during the ordinary chemical changes of a compound.

The phenomenon of bi-, or poly-nuclear cells.

Insofar as in protozoa a poly-nuclear cell is found, every nucleus appears to be the potential centre of a new cell-body². In many protozoa this poly-nuclear condition is only a temporary phenomenon in connection with propagation.

These protozoa increase the number of their nuclei by means of a series of nuclear divisions. Finally they fall asunder into as many new individuals as there are nuclei. Consequently the nuclear division here performs the same function as cell-division does with metazoa (poly-cellular beings).

Other protozoa are characterized by the permanent possession of a plurality of similar nuclei. An actino-sphaerium may even contain more than a hundred of them. When the single cell body is then cut in pieces it appears that such pieces of cyto-plasm are able to become complete individuals. Each separate nucleus is thus the centre of a particular sphere of proto-plasm.

2 Cf. on this subject and the immediately following data E. Reichenow's treatise Protozoa in Handbuch der Biologie (v. Bertallanffy) Bnd. VI, bl. 2, pp. 42 ff.

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The poly-nuclear cell-body in this case appears to embrace different centred units each of which can develop into a new cell-body. Sachs called such a potential unit of nucleus and proto-plasm-sphere an energide.

Finally there exists a form of poly-nuclearity in which the nuclei are dissimilar. All infusoria, e.g., possess at least two nuclei which, because of their very different magnitude, are distinguished as a large and a small nucleus. The significance of this phenomenon becomes clear when we consider the double function of a nucleus. It is the bearer of heredity factors and it also has a central task in the vital processes. In poly-cellular beings the former function is assigned to the nuclei of genital cells, which have an unlimited capability of propagation, the second task is fulfilled by those of the other soma-cells. In most of the protozoa both functions are combined in one nucleus. With infusoria, on the other hand, they are assigned to two different nuclei. The small nucleus is the generative, the large one is the somatical nucleus. The same division of labour, which in poly-cellular beings occurs among particular cells, is carried through in these most organized protozoa within the frame of the single cell in respect to the nuclei. Just as the cells of the different organs originate from the genital cells of metazoa, the macro-nuclei of the infusoria originate from the offspring of the small nuclei.

Thus the phenomenon of bi- or poly-nuclear cells does not detract from the centred structure of the cell-body and its living organism.

The smallest living units within the cell-structure.

The atomistic view may object that a correct comparison between living and in-organic corpuscles implies that one should not start from the living cell as a whole but from the smallest living units. As observed, a cell contains innumerable particles which display the characteristic properties of living plasm: assimilation, autonomous reproduction, growth, division, autonomous reactions to stimulation, etc. Starting from this undeniable datum, different biologists have sought for elementary components of living plasm. The latter were introduced under different names, such as bio-molecules (Verworn), ‘Miscellen’ (Nägeli), vitules (A. Meijer), protomeries (Heidenhain). Nobody has, however, succeeded in proving indisputably that such minimal cell-particles are capable of maintaining life apart from a

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living cell. In any case neither such endo-plasmatic units nor the earlier mentioned exo-plasmatic living particles can detract from the fact that the cell-organism is the real normal minimal centre of life. And it is exactly the centred structure of a living cell-organism and cell-body which in its physico-chemical aspect has not any analogy in the minimal enkaptic form-totalities of inorganic chemical combinations.

Non-living components of the cell-body and their enkaptic binding in the living organism.

On the other hand, not all components present in a cell-body participate in the subjective vital function of the organism. This participation may certainly not be assumed with reference to inorganic combinations, such as water, by far the greatest component of plasmatic matter, or carbonic acid, etc. Apart from the Aristotelian metaphysical substance-concept there is no single ground to be adduced in favour of the conception that in the colloidal condition of plasmatic matter such chemical components alter their inner nature and are transformed into ‘living matter’. There can be question only of an enkaptic binding within more intricate or higher qualified structures, respectively.

Nor may the character of living components be ascribed to enzymes or ferments, which in all probability play such an important rôle in processes of assimilation and dissimilation. Though produced by the living organism itself, they operate only as organic catalysts. That they lack the character of living material components was experimentally proved by Buchner in 1896. The convincing force of this proof is not affected by the results of later investigations showing that fermentation-processes have a more intricate character than was initially supposed¹. In any case enzymes seem to be nothing but complicated protein combinations whose synthetical composition has not yet been possible.

Continued research has taught that also the so-called ‘organizers’ are nothing but inductive, non-living material components capable of influencing living cells in a specific way, even after the cells producing them have been killed. We shall revert to this state of affairs later on.

Furthermore we may consider as non-living components of a

1 Cf. Bavink, op. cit., pp. 348 ff. and Woltereck, op. cit., p. 334.

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cell-body the vacuoles present in plasm, the nucleoles¹ (or certain kinds of nucleoles), and other paraplasmatic material particles².

Among the non-living components we have also encountered the typical mineral formations of protozoa and protophytes secreted by protoplasm at the periphery. Their typical structure has already been analyzed in the first part of this volume³. We have seen that the Si O₂-formations of radiolaria, for example, cannot be considered as aggregative forms of Si O₂ crystals. The reason is that the thousands of specific figures of silicon-acid produced by the plasm of these protozoa completely deviate from the well-known in-organic crystal-formations of this mineral. According to their internal structure, these animal formations are doubtless qualified by a typical psychical object-function, which expresses itself in their typical figure. But they are themselves already typical form-totalities functioning in their turn as enkaptic components of the living cell-body.

They are, however, no more to be considered as parts of the living organism of a cell than the enzymes, the ‘organizers’, and the non-living paraplasmatic components.

Real minimal parts of the living organism can only be those particles of plasm and nucleus that actually partake in the subjective vital function of the centred living whole.

1 Nucleoles are the numerous nuclear corpuscles within a cell's nucleus.

2 According to Woltereck, p. 356, this is generally accepted in modern biological theory.

3 Cf. volume III, pp. 85-87.

Do there exist bio-molecules?

Here we are once again confronted with the question: Are these ‘bio-elements’ to be conceived as a specific kind of ‘molecules’ of chemical combinations deserving the name bio-molecules?

Molecules composed of dissimilar atoms have appeared to be enkaptic form-totalities of a typical physico-chemical qualification. It is true that the boundaries between molecules and crystals cannot be sharply indicated. In higher organic combinations the minimal form-totalities built up of chains of double molecules may rightly be called quasi-crystalline molecules. But this does not detract from their physico-chemical qualification. The term ‘bio-molecule’ must consequently imply an inner contra-

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diction if it is taken in the sense that a molecule of organic matter may be a living unit¹.

It should not be supposed that we are falling back here upon that a priori method of reasoning which we have emphatically rejected in our criticism of Hoenen's neo-Thomistic conception. Our thesis is much rather based upon real structural states of affairs which have urged themselves upon empirical research. The point is that a molecule or quasi-crystal of an organic chemical combination, however complicated and labile its inner construction may be, in principle lacks that centred structure which appeared to be essential to an independent living unit. As to its inner structure any molecule or crystal is in principle physico-chemically qualified.

In a bio-physico-chemical constellation, however, there is no question of the internal structures of such minimal form-units of chemical combinations. Much rather we are confronted here by biotically directed physico-chemical functions of material components, which in the metabolical processes are serviceable to the sustenance of a living body as a whole. In this sense these functions belong to the living organism itself, but they are not internal functions of the molecules or crystals which are enkaptically bound by the former.

In the light of our structural theory this state of affairs is to be characterized as follows: In the internal structure of a living organism the physico-chemical constellation is necessarily disclosed or opened by the subjective vital function. It must thus remain completely open, dynamic and labile.

This entire internal physico-chemical constellation occurs under the typical direction of so-called bio-impulses. The latter are never to be explained in a purely physico-chemical sense but are always qualified by the central subjective vital function of the organism as a whole, though they have doubtless a physico-chemical aspect. It is an established fact that in the balance of

1 In his repeatedly quoted work Woltereck has devoted excellent pages to the relation of a chemical combination to the bio-chemical constellation. Nevertheless he finally accepts the term ‘bio-molecule’, ‘because the prefix “bio” clearly expresses that there is no question of molecules in the sense of chemistry but only of something comparable with the latter’ (op. cit., p. 318). To my mind the acceptance of this term is not advisable since it favours a conceptual confusion. We shall see later on that it has played Woltereck himself a bad trick in his conception of the so-called matrix of ‘living matter’.

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reception and delivery of energy these bio-impulses are negligible because of their minimal use of energy; it has equally been established that they possess a spontaneous character.

Our structural theory of enkapsis can thus completely do justice to Bohr's bio-chemical relation of incertitude. But at the same time the latter is structurally localized and determined as an enkaptic relation. This is to say: the bio-chemical constellation starts exactly at the point where the molecular or quasi-crystalline structures of organic matter end. But the latter are not thereby eliminated from the enkaptic whole of the living cell-body; rather they are enkaptically bound in the latter.

Without the formation of molecules or quasi-crystals there could not originate a bio-chemical constellation: the living organism avails itself of variability-types of the former, which the different kinds of matter only assume within its internal bio-physical and -chemical sphere.

Recent experimental research has indeed been able to establish that a living body contains molecular-crystalline structures of organic matter. Through a great technical improvement of Röntgen-irradiation this research has succeeded in acquiring Laue-diagrams of living nervous and muscular tissues. Though the illumination of such tissues lasted only for ten minutes at the most, these diagrams appeared to possess sufficient clarity. And at least in the case of nervous tissues irradiation did not diminish the latter's susceptibility to stimulation nor their conductibility¹. It has now also been established that with regard to their material sub-structure tendons are built up of genuine crystals with large molecules and that these crystals are ordered after the pattern of fibres. At present we know that in muscular contraction myosin-molecules ordered in the form of chains play an active rôle. In such contraction these myosin-molecules pass from a folded-up form, proper to their resting condition, into a more strongly folded shape of supercontraction². But these molecular structures do not teach us anything about the enkaptic functions of these gigantic molecules within the bio-physical and bio-chemical constellation of living organisms. The typical bio-impulses directing this contraction can never be explained from a physico-chemically qualified matter construction.

1 Cf. the interesting treatise of Francis O. Schmitt, Erforschung der Feinstruktur tierischer Gewebe mit Hilfe der Röntgenstraleninterferenz-Methoden in the review Naturwissenschaften 25th year, 1937, pp. 709 ff.

2 Ibid.

[p. 727]

The problem concerning living protein is an incorrectly posited problem.

Insofar as I may permit myself to have an opinion on this question, I think that the famous problem concerning so-called ‘living protein’ is insoluble in principle, since it is wrongly posited. Nevertheless this problem has held bio-chemistry captive up to the present although this branch of science has become much more critical with respect to the requirements of a so-called bio-synthesis than it was in the days of Haeckel.

Protein-combinations, such as are found in a living body, are only to be viewed as extremely intricate and labile material combinations, which in principle are physico-chemically determined in their inner molecular structure. The discovery of their ultimate structural formulae may never be supposed to be scientifically impossibile. This even remains true notwithstanding the fact (established by Röntgen-analysis) that in the living body these highest organic combinations do not form molecules of a stable magnitude, but only of a variable size. Insofar as here, too, Bohr's relation of incertitude is at issue, it can only pertain to the enkaptic functions of these molecules in the living organism, not to the molecular structures as such. It is true that plasmatic protein with its colloidal properties has up to now only been known as an organic product of living organisms. Nevertheless, as a chemical combination, it may be detached from the latter, and - on the condition of a due protection against micro-organisms - it can be kept intact for an unlimited time. As such it cannot be qualified by the subjective vital function of a living organism.

Consequently, suppose that organic chemistry at one time or other succeeds in finding definite structural formulae and also in composing these most intricate combinations synthetically, the genuine bio-chemical constellation would still lack a theoretical explanation. The only result would be the synthesis of ‘dead’ matter.

According to modern conceptions of a possible bio-synthesis the latter is not concerned with composing relatively simple albuminoid materials (protein). This was already possible long ago. The point is rather to compose extremely complicated proteins containing, besides amino-acids, other (so-called prosthetical) groups, which can often be split off from albumenoids without any alteration of the latter themselves¹. In other words, science is

1 Cf. E. Lehnartz, Die chemischen Voraussetzungen des Lebens (Handb. der Biologie, hrg. v. Bertalanffy) Bnd. I, Heft 4, p. 120.

[p. 728]

looking for the so-called proteid-molecule as an element of living plasm, and it hopes to be able to compose this element synthetically. In addition scientists take into account the requirement of this molecule's capability of propagation, implied in the nature of a living unit.

Woltereck has summarized the modern program of bio-synthesis as follows: ‘The object would be to compose living plasm from colloidal protein substances and to produce in this plasm structures containing such kinds of matter which display a catalytic activity and maintain themselves in the process of cell-division (heredity). On such kinds of matter the determination of all singular properties must depend.’

Woltereck acknowledges the possibility that at one time or other it would be possible to compose synthetically such a material combination which would display the characteristic properties of assimilation and dissimilation, growth, movement, division, susceptibility to stimulation, tension, pluriformity, etc.

‘All this’, he observes, ‘may be expected with regard to formations composed of non-living labile combinations, as a possible result. For it implies nothing that is fundamentally new. Dissolution and reconstruction, shape production and movement, increase of substance (growth) and division, even restoration (in crystal) and a sort of sensitivity (photo-sensitivity) - all this may occur in the world of inanimate things. It would here only be brought together. We may suppose that future bio-chemists will succeed in such a concentration of many properties characteristic of life in one and the same material combination, though this assumption seems improbable’¹. But on two essential points any attempt at bio-synthesis is doomed to fail: First, such a synthetically construed colloidal system can never maintain its identity in the process of metabolism and exchange of energy, in its movement, dissolution and increase. When non-living complexes alter themselves by producing something new or fall asunder into their elements, they disappear and are replaced by something different. The combination of continual active change with maintenance of the total-system is, according to Woltereck, a completely new biotic phenomenon. It cannot be produced artificially by the concentration and combination of a-biotic components.

Secondly, such an artificial ‘living’ aggregate or system will

1 Op. cit., p. 521.

[p. 729]

never be capable of ‘experiencing something in itself’, even if it could react to all sorts of stimuli. For, according to Woltereck, we must ascribe some kind of a-psychical experience even to the most simple living beings, though we know such ‘Innen-Erregungen’ directly only as feelings and volitional tendencies of an ‘experiencing I’.

This latter assumption, amply elaborated in the final part of Woltereck's important work, may be let alone in the present context. As we shall see later on, it is completely dependent upon his irrationalist, emergent evolutionistic starting-point. It remains entirely obscure what is to be understood by ‘a-psychic experiences’ as the ‘inner side of life’.

To my mind Woltereck's first argument against the possibility of a bio-synthesis already clinches the matter. For here he implicitly characterizes the typical fundamental difference between a bio-chemical and a physico-chemically qualified constellation. Even in its bio-chemical aspect a living organism displays that remarkable centred totality-structure which maintains itself in the continual change of all material combinations functioning enkaptically in it. This structure has indeed no single analogy in any molecular or crystalline structure of organic matter, nor in a spontaneous falling asunder of a radioactive element, nor in the ‘growth’ of a crystal form in a matrix-lye. This centred structure, guarantees to a cell's living organism the preservation of its biotically qualified identity. It has its necessary counter-part in the complete variability of all material combinations in their enkaptic function within this living organism.

How far can physics and chemistry penetrate into a bio-chemical constellation?

Physics and chemistry are able to penetrate into this bio-chemical constellation with their proper methods of inquiry only insofar as they take into account the individuality-structure of a living cell-organism. The applicability of the specific methods of physics and chemistry oriented to the atomic, molecular and crystalline structures of material combinations, is naturally not limited to inorganic matters. These methods much rather find their limit at that critical point where in the internal physico-chemical sphere of a living organism there is no question any longer of definite material components.

To trace the real bio-physical and bio-chemical constellation,

[p. 730]

physics and chemistry should not seek for the material results of a bio-chemical process but rather for the manner in which these results are produced¹. The issue here is concerned with processes rather than with their products.

It is beyond doubt that a living organism, in building up and dissolving the body's material components, sets about it in a way quite different from the methods usual in a chemical laboratory. To mention only one characteristic difference: as a rule the organism effects assimilatory and dissimilatory processes by means of ferments or enzymes; the chemist in his laboratory, on the other hand, performs his analysis and synthesis of elements by means of heating. Driesch has rightly observed that the most remarkable characteristic of organic metabolism rests on the very use of ferments on the part of a living organism. The characteristic trait is that, by means of regulation, this metabolism is made serviceable to the living whole. In proportion to local and temporal needs there will occur a chemical combining process or a chemical dissolution.

Genuine bio-chemistry can consequently never be identical with organic chemistry. It can only start after the methods of the latter have been exhausted in an analysis of the material substrates of a living organism and the products of its bio-chemical activity.

It is beyond doubt that both bio-chemistry and bio-physics have to seek for a physico-chemical explanation of the processes occurring within the internal sphere of a living organism. But the typical biotic qualification of these events will always remain the ultimate limit to these methods of explanation. Suppose science seeks for a physical explanation of the remarkable mineral formations performed by radiolaria or other kinds of protozoa. In the process of producing these forms there occurs a gel- and mineral formation which is exactly limited to certain sectors. Attempting to explain this manner of formation, bio-

1 Driesch remarks in his Philosophie des Organischen (2e Aufl. 1921) p. 200: ‘die Wirkung des Fermentes, wenn es einmal da ist, ist chemisch... Das heiszt nun natürlich nicht, dasz aller Stoffwechsel chemischer Natur sei’. [the effect of a ferment, when it is once present, is chemical... This does naturally not mean that all metabolism is of a chemical nature]. As we shall see later on, Driesch does not know a genuine bio-chemical constellation in the sense defined earlier. Nevertheless he has sharply observed that only the process of forming enzymes has a typical connection with life.

[p. 731]

physics cannot do without assuming typical checking field-effects in plasm which remain constant, in contrast to the continual alteration of the material components of the latter and to the complete plasticity of plasm freely moving between the forms produced. But these field-effects really belong to the disclosed or opened bio-physical structure of the living organism. They are directed by the qualifying biotic function of the latter.

From a physical point of view such a biotically qualified ‘field of formation’ belongs to an assumed given physical constellation, which itself cannot be explained in a purely physical way. Both such typical field-reactions and the catalytic processes in assimilation and dissimilation are started and directed by bio-impulses. And the latter are accessible to physics and chemistry only in their physico-chemical aspect, not in their qualifying biotic modality¹.

Biotically qualified field-effects are fundamentally different from electro-magnetic field-effects without such a biotic qualification. This difference is already implied in their non-homogeneous complication and the spontaneous way in which they are started.

1 Woltereck (op. cit., p. 458) elucidates the difference between enzymes and hormones operating as bio-impulses in a living organism, and the catalysts of non-biotically qualified chemical processes as follows: ‘Ein Katalysator beschleunigt oder hemmt eine ohnehin im Gang befindliche Reaktion. Ein Enzym oder Hormon und im weiteren Sinne ein Bio-impuls bestimmt auch die Qualität des Vorgangs. (Dies kann möglicherweise durch Unterdrückung der einen und durch Forderung der anderen Teilvorgänge zustande kommen...). Die biotischen Impulse zeichnen sich dadurch aus, dasz sie einen Erregungszustand im Plasma oder Zellverband hervorrufen. Dadurch unterscheiden sie sich sehr von den gewöhnlichen Katalysatoren, die Ostwald einem mechanischen “Schmiermittel” vergleicht, das den Ablauf bestimmter Reaktionen erleichtert’. [A catalyst accelerates or checks a reaction which is already going on. An enzyme or hormone - and in a broader sense a bio-impulse - also determines the quality of the process. (This may possibly also be brought about by keeping down one part of a process and stimulating the other...) Biotic impulses are characterized by their causing a condition of ‘Erregung’ (being stimulated and excited) in plasm or cell. Thereby they are very different from ordinary catalysts, which Ostwald compares with a mechanical lubricant facilitating the process of certain reactions.].

Does there exist a specific vital matter?

If this is the real state of affairs, the question may be asked

[p. 732]

whether it makes sense to seek any further for a specific ‘vital matter’ as the generator of the bio-chemical constellation, indicated by the terms ‘matrix’ (Woltereck), ‘germ-plasm’ or ‘idioplasm’ (Plate)?

This question is answered in the negative both by the mechanistic and the neo-vitalistic trends in modern biological theory.

According to Koltzoff, an outstanding materialistic representative of the first trend, the acceptance of such a specific ‘bio-substance’ would necessarily lead to a vitalistic standpoint. This standpoint is supposed to imply that biotic phenomena are different in principle from physico-chemical processes and that ‘bio-substance’ is exempt from physico-chemical laws. But the founder of modern neo-vitalism, the famous biologist and philosopher Hans Driesch, emphatically denies the existence of a specific material bio-substance. He assumes that matter can only be ‘living’ so long as some ‘entelechy’ has a controlling influence upon a physico-chemical constellation¹.

The recent conception², according to which there does exist a specific ‘bio-substance’, fundamentally distinct from a-biotic and necro-biotic matter, wishes to take an intermediate standpoint between these two extreme trends.

Woltereck is one of the most prominent adherents of this view. He is of the opinion that it should already be accepted from the viewpoint of the logical principle of economy in the explanation of phenomena. Against Driesch's concept of ‘entelechy’, which we shall consider presently, he observes: ‘It seems to me that Driesch too quickly substitutes a metaphysical notion for an unknown property of the physical-real plasm without having shown the necessity of this introduction from the exclusion of physical possibilities. The possibility that the unquestionable bio-specificities are caused by a particular physico-chemical situation has anyhow not been refuted. The well-known proofs formulated by Driesch in favour of the immaterial autonomy of vital processes do not concern the elementary processes in bio-substance but rather the intricate functions of development, restitution and activity...’³. Let us see whether this argument is to the point.

1 Philosophie des Organischen, p. 504: ‘Eine chemische “lebende Substanz” gibt es auf alle Fälle nicht’. [Anyhow, there does not exist a chemical ‘living substance’.

2 The older vitalistic trends will be discussed presently.

3 Op. cit., p. 331.

[p. 733]

§ 4 - The dilemma ‘mechanism or vitalism in biology’ viewed in the light of the substance-concept.

The philosophical back-ground of the mechanistic conception.

The old dilemma, mechanism or vitalism¹, is in the nature of the case unacceptable on our standpoint. The mechanistic view, even nowadays adhered to by most of the biologists concerned with analytical investigations², continues to seek for a bio-synthesis by means of protein combinations. According to this standpoint colloid-chemistry has the task to disclose all the ‘secrets of life’. This trend is still entirely inspired by the classical science-ideal striving after perfect domination of nature by means of a complete causal determination even of vital phenomena.

It starts from an a priori absolutization of the physico-chemical energy-aspect of empirical reality. Consequently, in principle it denies the irreducible nature of the biotic modality of

1 It is not correct to identify vitalism with the view according to which the biotic aspect has its proper laws and a living organism is characterized by its total structure of individuality. This identification is also found in Driesch's Phil. des Organischen, pp. 138 ff. The term ‘vitalists’ may only be rightly applied to those who in any way absolutize the biotic aspect of a living body. This may occur either at the cost of the non-vital components of the latter, or at the cost of the original and irreducible character of post-biotic modalities, or by elevating the biotic modality to a self-contained substance. Naturally, we cannot go here into all nuances of the mechanistic and vitalistic trends. Nor can we go into the divergent recent attempts at overcoming the dilemma by indicating a third possibility (the so-called ‘Stufentheorieën’ or emergent evolutionistic theories; the so-called ‘mnemism’ of E. Hering and Semon, etc.); or into the attempts at evading the dilemma as a provisionally insoluble problem by restricting themselves to a merely descriptive and ‘empirical’ criterion of organic vital phenomena as ‘autonomous totality-phenomena’ (Gurvitch, Ungerer, Bertallanffy, Alverdes, etc.).
We shall only engage in a more detailed critical analysis of the conceptions of Driesch, Woltereck and B. Bavink.
An excellent, though succinct survey of all these views is to be found in E. Ungerer's treatise Die Erkenntnisgrundlagen der Biologie. Ihre Geschichte, und gegenwärtiger Stand (Handb. der Biol., Bnd. I, H. 3), pp. 76 ff. Cf. also R. Woltereck, Philosophie des Lebendigen (1940). The best description of the history of vitalism is to be found in Driesch's Geschichte des Vitalismus.

2 Especially by the older scientists, such as Wilhelm Roux, Herbst, Rhumbler and Koltzoff. Cf. Rhumbler, Das Lebensproblem (1930) and his treatise Das Protoplasma als physikalisches System, Erg. Physiol. 1914.

[p. 734]

experience. It necessarily involves itself in inner antinomies resulting from the absolutization of a modal law-sphere. In addition it handles a deterministic physical concept of causality, which modern physics has already been obliged to relinquish, albeit that it is not permissible to identify all modern mechanistic conceptions with a machine theory of life, as is done by Driesch.

A deterministic causal explanation of physico-chemical processes encounters a first limit in the micro-structure of atoms. This has found its natural-scientific formulation in Heisenberg's relations of uncertainty mentioned above. Bernard Bavink has rightly observed that the acceptance of a second limit in the internal bio-physico-chemical constellation of a living organism, can never contradict the results of modern physics and chemistry. Rather it is only in conflict with the a priori mechanistic starting-point of classical natural science, which has appeared to disagree with the structure of empirical reality.

The modal aspect in which the physico-chemical functions of a living organism present themselves does not have a rigid structure. As we have seen, it opens and discloses itself within the individuality-structure of this organism.

Neo-vitalism, too, holds to the mechanistic view of the physico-chemical processes.

This latter state of affairs has also been lost sight of by Driesch and his adherents. These neo-vitalists do not detract from the basic tenet of mechanistic theory concerning the complete closeness of any physico-chemical constellation, as a mechanical chain of causes and effects. Their only concern is to withdraw ‘life’ from the rule of the mechanistic concept of causality; they think they have proved experimentally that a living organism is not to be explained from a mere summation of already present physico-chemical elements. This view is based upon Driesch's experimental proofs concerning the typical totality-character of the phenomena of self-regulation, regeneration and heredity occurring in living organisms, and in general of any animal and human action.

Neo-vitalism in contrast to older vitalism.

Older vitalism generally accepted a fundamental difference between organic and in-organic matter. Without any basis in empirical research it proclaimed the a priori thesis: ‘chemistry

[p. 735]

will never succeed in a synthetical composition of organic kinds of matter’. Sometimes it also started from a particular ‘vital force’, though this conception could also be meant in a mechanistic sense¹.

Neo-vitalism distinguishes itself from these older views by the very abandoning of all structures of matter to physico-chemical analysis and determination. It rejects both the a priori conception of older kinds of vitalism and the idea of a ‘vital force’ as a particular potency of energy. It intends to base its own vitalistic view only on experimental results. The older idea of specific organic matter, which would be exempt from physico-chemical laws, has been exploded by the methodical physico-chemical analysis of almost the entire realm of organic matter combinations. Driesch and his adherents have abandoned this untenable position.

1 E. Ungerer has shown in his treatise cited above that the theory of a specific vital force was not at all meant by all of its adherents in a metaphysical-vitalistic sense. In Joh. Chr. Keil's treatise Ueber die Lebenskraft (1795), e.g., it was even defended in a mechanistic way. In Hermann Lotze's writing Leben und Lebenskraft (1842) the concept ‘vital force’ is already fundamentally criticized and rejected.

Driesch's experimental ‘proofs’ of the existence of ‘entelechies’. The so-called harmonious-equipotential system and totality-causality.

The founder of neo-vitalism has tried to show in an experimental way that organic bio-phenomena are not to be explained by means of the analytical causal method of physics and chemistry. He is of the opinion that these phenomena imply a particular type of causality which he calls ‘Ganzheitskausalität’ in contrast to mechanistic ‘Einzelkausalität’. The remarkable results of Driesch's famous experiments with eggs of sea-hedgehogs appeared to be incompatible with the mechanistic view. They showed that it is possible to take away any one part from the young germ-cells (or, in later phases of development, from separate germ-parts) without affecting the final result: the rise of a complete living individual. One may remove germ-parts or deform the latter (without killing them) by pressing them between two glass sheets. Yet the total ultimate result will be reached. The germ-cells themselves develop by continued division as a ‘harmonic equipotential system’, i.e. a system in which all the elements possess an equal disposition to lead to the total final

[p. 736]

result in mutual harmonic cooperation. Such systems lie also at the foundation of regenerative processes occurring in the full grown organisms. They do not operate after the pattern of quantitative physico-chemical causality but according to a typical totality-causality¹. And the same thing holds with respect to the propagation of organisms. Hereditary phenomena are never explainable from mere material ‘genes’.

Insofar as these arguments intend nothing but elucidating the totality character of a living organism, in all of its manifestations, we can readily accept them. We can also agree with the distinction between quantitative causality and totality-causality though we may derogate from the demonstrating force of the arguments based on Driesch's experiments².

But this does not imply an acceptance of the neo-vitalistic view as such. It appears that Driesch lacks any insight into the modal structures of our experiential horizon. This is why he has recourse to the substance-concept to account for the fundamental difference between biotic and physico-chemical functions. ‘Life’ is now conceived phylogenetically as a ‘super-individual substance’ lacking temporal genesis, as an invisible immaterial ‘organic form’ in a pseudo-Aristotelian sense, of which all visible individual forms are only materialized products. This substance is called ‘entelechy’. With Driesch this term means an intensive (i.e. non-spatial) multiplicity manifesting itself, on the one hand, as ‘psychoid’, governing the body when it has already been formed, and, on the other hand, as ‘form-entelechy’, which originates the body as a form-totality³. A ‘psyche’ can never influence material natural phenomena, so Driesch argues; only a ‘psychoid’, as correlate of the latter, is able to do so.

‘What is properly speaking an organic form? What is its essence, its constant “so being”, what is substance in respect to

1 Phil. des Organischen, passim.; Der Begriff der organischen Form (1919), pp. 54 ff.; Ordnungslehre (2e Aufl. 1923), pp. 301 ff.

2 In the first place these experiments lead only to the results intended by Driesch in the initial phases of development of the germ-cells. The experiment with eggs of sea-hedgehogs is not successful in later developmental phases. This is also the case when one cuts the egg not vertically but transversally. Cf. Dr. J.H.F. Umbgrove, Leven en Materie (Nijhoff, 's-Gravenhage, 1943), pp. 54 ff. We must, however, remark that Driesch himself has repeatedly acknowledged that his experiments are bound to the initial phases of development of the germ-cells.

3 Phil. des Organischen, pp. 357 ff.

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it, to which consequently all properties belong? Our answer is: The proper substance of organic form is our entelechy: the latter is the “form”, the εἶδος in the Aristotelian sense; that which is formed in a visible way is only the transitory product of its operation into matter’¹.

1 Der Begriff der organischen Form (Abh. zur theor. Biol., hrg. von Dr. Julius Schaxel, Heft 3, Berlin, 1919), p. 71.

In Driesch's ‘Ordnungslehre’ the substance-concept is not meant in a metaphysical sense.

Now one should not conclude too quickly that Driesch has recourse to metaphysics in order to explain empirical states of affairs. For Driesch does not intend to do so. He views his ‘entelechy’ primarily as a second natural factor, which he tries to conceive in the ‘purely logical’ concepts of his ‘Ordnungslehre’. A metaphysical interpretation of these concepts is only at issue in his ‘Wirklichkeitslehre’ and Driesch is of the opinion that the latter can only arrive at probable conclusions. He wishes only to accept a metaphysics based on the results of empirical research of the natural phenomena and able to account for the ‘Ordnungslehre’². The primary theses (‘Ursetzungen’) of the latter are, according to Driesch, the necessary conditions of an ordered experience of nature, without implying the transcendental idealistic sense ascribed to them by Kant.

Driesch in principle rejects any view of metaphysics as an a priori and primordial basic science (philosophia prima). His starting-point (viewed from the immanence-standpoint) is the Cartesian cogito³ (I am conscious of something, or I know something), not the ontological concept of being in its Aristotelian sense, ruled by the Greek form-matter motive. His philosophical basis is not metaphysics, but his ‘Ordnungslehre’. And the latter is certainly influenced by Kant's epistemology, albeit that Driesch - in contrast to Kant - ascribes to his ordering concepts or categories also an intentional relation to ‘reality in itself’. Properly speaking, the question as to whether ‘entelechy’ is an immaterial substance in a metaphysical sense, coördinated with the spatial substance of material body⁴, should not be ans-

2 Cf. Wirklichkeitslehre (2e Aufl.), pp. 1-65.

3 Driesch only rejects Descartes' metaphysical conclusion from ‘cogito’. Cf. his Philosophische Gegenwartsfragen (Leipzig, 1933), p. 23/4: Excurs über Descartes.

4 Apparently Driesch has in view the two Cartesian substances.

[p. 738]

wered in a categorical sense. It must remain an open question¹. Nevertheless we shall see that Driesch does not maintain this critical standpoint and finally does ascribe a meta-physical sense to his entelechy as ‘substance’².

In his opinion we may conceive entelechy as an ordering concept, but we cannot have any representation of it. The reason is that all our representations are bound to sensory perception. The latter is only concerned with things and events in time and space, consequently only with effects of entelechy in matter. Well then, the concept ‘substance’ or ‘essential form’, as it is used in Driesch's ‘Ordnungslehre’, is only meant in the non-metaphysical sense of an ‘ordering notion’. It is a concept belonging to a theory of the general logical relations in which it cannot mean anything but relatum, or the constant point of reference of all relations, which itself does not imply any relation³. ‘Entelechy’, as ‘form’ and ‘substance’, is then to be understood as ‘the constant bearer of the whole of the properties of the latter’, indicating its essence as ‘bedeutungshaft erfasztes Sosein’⁴.

It is meant here as an ‘empirical natural factor’, i.e. a factor to be known from its phenomenal manifestation. In our experience it is at least intended as ‘an independent reality, foreign to the experiencing ego’. In this context Driesch speaks of a ‘gleichsam selbständig seiendes Etwas’, apparently to exclude the metaphysical sense of a ‘thing in itself’⁵. And in this sense he speaks in his ‘Ordnungslehre’ of two substances of natural reality, viz. matter (mass) and form (entelechy).

But also in this non-metaphysical sense entelechy, as substance, does certainly not mean organic life as an experiential modality, as an aspect of reality. Much rather it refers to an immate-

1 Cf. Phil. des Organischen, pp. 495-519.

2 This is overlooked by O. Heinichen, Driesch' Philosophy (Leipzig 1924), p. 160.

3 Ordnungslehre, pp. 311-313. This is why it is called ‘das reine Glied der Relation’.

4 Ordnungslehre, p. 90. Driesch denies that this is a nominalistic conception of ‘essence’. He observes that he also accepts universalia in rebus. But this does not detract from the nominalistic character of his ‘Ordnungslehre’. Genuine ‘realism’ always starts from the metaphysical concept of being and never from the Cartesian ‘I think’ or ‘I am conscious of something’, as Driesch does. So-called ‘critical realism’ is, therefore, never genuine realism, since its starting-point is subjective.

5 Op. cit., p. 156.

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rial and constant bearer of properties, which is opposed to the material natural substance as the immaterial independent cause of all its effects in the latter¹. Driesch no more knows a modal biotic aspect of empirical reality than Aristotle or Thomas did. By means of his substance-concept he tries directly to conceive the (logical) essence of an individual living whole before having acquired any insight into the modal structures of empirical reality. This is why this concept, even in its non-metaphysical use, also impedes the insight into the individuality-structures.

1 Phil. des Organischen, p. 508: ‘In keiner Form hängt das Dasein des Naturagens Entelechie von irgendetwas Materiellem ab, obschon seine räumlichen Leislungen... von gegebenen materiellen Zuständen abhängen’.

Driesch's conception of entelechy is fundamentally different from the Aristotelian view.

Driesch's conception of entelechy is quite different from the Aristotelian view. The point is that Driesch holds to the Cartesian substance-concept, albeit with reserve as to its metaphysical interpretation. This implies a dualistic separation of an immaterial substance and a material one, and a mechanistic conception of the latter as an independent extended corporeal entity².

‘Body’ in Driesch is identical with ‘matter’ and is separated as ‘substance’ from the immaterial ‘entelechy’³.

2 Driesch was fully aware of the fact that his concept of entelechy lacks the genuine Aristotelian sense. In a footnote on p. 71 of his Der Begriff der organischen Form quoted here, he observes: ‘Aristotle's εἶδος consequently corresponds more of less to our concept of entelechy, it is well known that his ἐντελεχεῖα has a different meaning’. And in his Phil. des Org., p. 170 he remarks: ‘We want to use the word entelechy only as a proof of our veneration for this great genius; we accept his word only as a form which we have filled and shall fill with a new content’.

3 This clearly appears from Driesch's remarks (Phil. d. Org., pp. 209-210) with respect to Weismann's theory concerning the material continuity of germ-plasm: ‘Wörtlich genommen ist diese Behauptung offenbar selbstverständlich, obschon darum nicht unwichtig. Denn da alles Leben sich an Körpern, d.h. an der Materie, darstellt, und da die Entwicklung aller Nachkommen von Teilen der elterlichen Körper, d.h. vom Stoff oder Material der Eltern, ihren Ursprung nimmt, folgt ohne weiteres, dasz im gewissen Sinne eine stoffliche Kontinuität existiert, so lange es Leben gibt, wenigstens Leben in den uns bekannten Formen’. [Taken to the letter, this thesis is apparently a matter of course, though therefore not unimportant. For any life manifests itself in bodies, i.e. in matter, and the development of all offspring originates from parts of the paternal bodies, i.e. from the paternal matter or material. From this it immediately follows that there exists a material continuity in a certain sense so long as there exists life, at least life in the forms known to us.]
Life and material body are thus separated from one another as ‘substances’. Driesch does not know a biotic or psychic function of the body. ‘Body’, as such, to him means an extended material substance, whose spatial figure, however, originates from the operation of an immaterial entelechy-substance.
As to Driesch's Cartesian identification of ‘material substance’ with space itself or at least with an extensive material element, I refer, e.g., to Phil. d. Org., p. 497, where we read: ‘Anorganische Substanz ist entweder selbst Extensivität, d.h. der Raum als Träger der phänomenalistischen Realität, oder sie ist etwas, das aus absolut einzelnen Elementen, welche im Extensiven eines neben dem anderen sind, besteht’. [Inorganic substance is either itself extension, i.e. space as the bearer of phenomenal reality, or it is something consisting of absolutely singular elements which in extension are next to one another.]

[p. 740]

Aristotle, on the contrary, views a ‘natural primary substance’ always as a composite of form and matter. With him the ‘entelechy’ of a living body is never itself a ‘substance’. All natural substances are material; their ‘form’ is never an independent being.

Driesch's ‘entelechy’, as the immaterial ‘natural form’, potentially contains ‘also all particular potences of a functional, adaptive, restitutive character to be found in the realized form’. It even includes the possibility of all future generations inclusive of the possibility of all future phylogenetic processes of mutation. From a phylogenetic viewpoint there are consequently not many entelechies, rather there is only one, viz. the ‘super-personal life’, of which all individual entelechies are only temporal and transitory ramifications¹.

1 Cf. Der Begriff der organischen Form, p. 72: ‘Durch die Beziehung einer gegebenen Form und ihrer personalen εἶδος auf Vererbung und Phylogenie wird nun sofort die “Form” im substantialen Sinne ihres eigentlich personalen Charakters entkleidet: die sich in der materiellen Produktion von Personen betätigende Entelechie ist nicht selbst “personal”, als ob es “viele” Entelechieën gäbe. Das Leben ist Eines, eine grosze in Personen, welche von einander abstammen, gegliederte Gesamtheit.’ This thesis is explained more amply in Driesch's Logische Studien über Entwicklung I, p. 9 ff.

‘Entelechy’ as a metaphysical substance. Driesch's view of the scheme act-potence confronted with the Aristotelian conception.

In this context Driesch now also expressly raises the metaphysical question as to whether this ‘entelechy’ itself develops,

[p. 741]

in which case it could not be the ‘constant substance’ of the empirical ‘organic form’. His answer is: ‘‘Here we can only advance by applying the conceptual pair actus and potentia to two essential sides of the substantial entelechy. As potentia it is the constant substance of the “form”, but as to its actus manifesting itself in matter, it changes in the sense of a development of the type of a non-mechanical evolution’¹. This statement proves that Driesch really ascribes to his entelechy also a metaphysical sense, in spite of his earlier statements that this question should remain ‘open’. For the ‘constant substance’, which is at issue in this context, is no longer meant in the sense of an ordering concept. It is only to be understood as an immaterial ‘thing in itself’.

And at the same time we may establish that also the metaphysical conceptual pair actus et potentia is used here in a sense fundamentally different from its Aristotelian meaning. For in Aristotle ‘potency’ (δύναμις) is always inherent in ‘matter’. According to Driesch, on the contrary, the very entelechy, viewed from the side of ‘form’ and ‘immaterial constant substance’, is a pure ‘potence’, which only in its operating in matter becomes ‘actus’.

1 Der Begriff der organischen Form, p. 72: ‘Hier kommen wir wohl nur dadurch weiter, dasz wir das Begriffspaar actus und potentia auf zwei Wesensseiten der substantialen Entelechie anwenden: Als potentia ist sie die beharrliche Substanz der “Form”, aber ihrem actus nach, welcher sich an Materie betätigt, verändert sie sich im Sinne einer Entwicklung vom Typus nichtmaschineller Evolution’.

Driesch denies a typical bio-chemical constellation. The problem concerning the influence of entelechy upon a purely mechanical matter.

Besides the existence of a particular ‘living matter’ Driesch also denies the existence of a particular ‘bio-chemical constellation’ in the sense formerly defined by us. Viewed from its physico-chemical side, a living organism is, according to him, nothing but ‘dead matter’, which as such possesses a completely closed constellation determined in a mechanical causal way. From the physico-chemical viewpoint material organisms with and without entelechy (i.e. dead and living organisms) are, therefore, not different in principle². The difference is exclusi-

2 This is not in conflict with Driesch's conception that, as a ‘living organism’, a body is a material system whose behaviour does not conform to mechanical, but to vitalistic laws. (Cf. Phil. d. Org. I, pp. 851 ff.; Leib und Seele (Leipzig, 3e Aufl. 1923, p. 88). For the body is certainly not such an autonomous vital material system from the physico-chemical point of view. The latter cannot show us anything but mechanical causal processes. It is only in consequence of the controlling influence of an immaterial entelechy that a living body displays the typical traits of a vital material system. But this influence is of a non-physical character and its causality is a vital causality which, according to Driesch, always presupposes the mechanical causality displayed in the physico-chemical constellation of matter. This clearly appears from his discussion of the relation between the brain as a ‘physico-chemical system’ and the ‘psyche’ which operates by means of this system. In his Leib und Seele, pp. 89-90, he observes: ‘Das Hirn ist für das Handeln als Naturereignis notwendig, sein Bau in den verschiedenen Tiergruppen bedingt des Handelns besondere Form und Höhe, Hirndefekte bedingen gelegentlich, obschon nicht immer, bestimmte Handlungsdefekte. Aber des Hirns physikalisch-chemische Zuständlichkeit in irgend einem gegebenen Zeitpunkt ist nicht der vollständige zureichende Werdegrund, sondern nur ein Teilwerdegrund für das, was an ihm und von ihm aus geschieht; und das obwohl in jedem beliebigen Zeitpunkt das Hirn als materielles Ding seine bestimmte physiko-chemische, oder, in Kürze, mechanistische Kennzeichnung besitzt.’ [The brain is necessary for an action as a natural event, its construction in the different animal groups conditions the particular form and level of action; brain defects condition occasionally, though not always, certain defects in action. But the brain's physico-chemical condition at a given point of time is not the complete sufficient genetic ground, but only a partial genetic ground for what happens in it and proceeds from it; and this though in anyone point of time the brain as a material thing possesses its determined physico-chemical, or, in short, mechanistic characteristic.]

[p. 742]

vely to be found in the controlling influence of entelechy upon matter, and this influence is not of a physico-chemical character.

This raises the crucial problem: How can such an immaterial entelechy influence matter in its physico-chemical constellation without breaking through the causally determined mechanistic system of the latter? And inversely: How can a mechanically determined matter influence an immaterial entelechy without encroaching upon the latter's autonomy?

Driesch has amply discussed these questions in his large work Philosophie des Organischen¹. In a later treatise, entitled Logische Studien über Entwicklung, he has deepened his former view to an important degree.

He assumes four possibilities with respect to a causal method of operation of entelechy:

1 Op. cit., pp. 153-240.

[p. 743]

1.	Entelechy is itself able to originate physical movement (energy). In this case, however, the basic law concerning the preservation of energy would be violated.
2.	Entelechy removes energy by means of a sort of ‘turning’ of material systems (Descartes, Hartmann), and it functions in this way as an ‘arbeitslose Kraft’. Suppose a force is working upon a physical system perpendicularly to the momentary direction of its movement. In this case the work done by this force is zero but the latter is nevertheless able to cause a change in the direction of moving matter particles. We can imagine that entelechy adds such forces to the physical forces of the material system, or withdraws the former from the latter if need be. In this case all particles concerned will be led into different directions without the balance of energy being altered.
3.	Entelechy may ‘suspend’ movement by temporarily transforming actual kinetic energy into potential energy. Entelechy may also set free kinetic energy bound by it so that the latter changes into actual energy; and this may occur in a teleological relation to the needs of the living whole.
4.	Entelechy imposes a rough building plan upon the material system; but within the frame of this plan it leaves free scope to the physico-chemical movements of the material system. It thus creates within the material system of cells only certain chances (‘naturwirkliche Bedingungsgleichungen’) within which each separate physico-chemical event may freely proceed.

The first of these hypotheses is rejected by Driesch because of its incompatibility with the basic law of the preservation of energy. It would imply a rise of energy from an immaterial source. In this case entelechy would operate in a quantitative-causal way by originating a certain quantum of energy. The three remaining hypotheses are equivalent in his opinion as acceptable attempts at an explanation of the method of operating of entelechy. In 1908 he chose the third solution, but later on he preferred the theory of the rough building-plan. The reason was that the latter was supposed to give a satisfactory explanation of the undeniable fact that the vital form-totality is only realized in a rough outline while the position of the individual cells in the separate organs remains accidental. The Russian biologist Gurwitch probably meant something similar

[p. 744]

by what he called a vital form (morphe) which only regulates the physico-chemical system without determining it¹.

The second and third hypotheses have already been subjected to a decisive criticism by Bernard Bavink². First he observes that the physico-chemical laws are not exhausted by the law of the preservation of energy. According to the classical view, apparently adhered to by Driesch, a physical system proceeds in conformity to certain differential equations combining the initial condition with the changes of the magnitudes concerned. The law concerning the preservation of energy is only one integral of these equations. Driesch might object to this argument that he has also taken into account the law of entropy. But it remains true that the laws of thermo-dynamics alone cannot completely determine the closed physico-chemical system of classical physics and chemistry.

Driesch should have shown how an entelechy may be able to alter the direction of a physico-chemical process that is already completely determined by its initial condition and the classical laws of nature. His arguments, however, lead his explanatory attempts into a vicious circle, or they presuppose a physico-chemical function of entelechy itself, contrary to its assumed immaterial nature. In order to illustrate the possibility of an entelechy's influence upon matter, Driesch adduces that by means of a machine a human being may lead a physico-chemical process to certain ends without violating physico-chemical laws. This is doubtless true. But man can only bring about this either by means of small quantities of energy inserted by him in the process concerned, or by constructing a machine in such a way that the physico-chemical processes in it must occur in the direction required.

Applied to an entelechy this would mean in the first case that the former itself must produce energy although in minimal quantities. In the second case the argument would result in the assumption that the organism, though originating from entelechy, functions completely as a machine. Both consequences contradict the neo-vitalist view. In addition, if the working of entelechy upon matter is conceived after the pattern of the human direction of a machine, we are once again confronted with the problem: How can a human being influence physico-

1 Gurwitch, Biol. Zentrallblatt 32 (1912), p. 458 and Arch. f. Entwicklungsmechanik, Bnd. 30, I, p. 139.

2 Op. cit., pp. 445 ff.

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chemical processes? For man himself is a living being in which an entelechy must be at work, if the neo-vitalist conception is true. But the method of working of entelechy was to be explained by its very comparison with the human direction of a machine, so that we move in a vicious circle.

The so-called suspension-theory developed in Driesch's third hypothesis in any case supposes the production of some energy on the part of an entelechy. And as to the second hypothesis it should be observed that a force which does not do any work is nevertheless a physical force, whereas an entelechy was supposed to be an immaterial cause.

Finally we will briefly consider Driesch's fourth hypothesis which Bavink does not discuss. The so-called building-plan theory is no better than the two former explanatory attempts. This theory, too, supposes ‘a physico-chemical realization’ of the rough plan in the material organism, which, as a ‘close physico-chemical system’, is supposed to be completely determined by its initial condition and its self-contained laws. When the building-plan of an architect is realized, this realization can never occur in a purely immaterial way. Rather it needs physico-chemical energy not belonging to the physico-chemical constellation of the building materials. This comparison, too, implies the vicious circle in which we were moving when Driesch compared the working of entelechy with the human direction of a machine.

It is the dualistic substance-concept which involves theoretical thought in such insoluble (because wrongly posited) problems. So long as ‘life’ is viewed as an immaterial ‘substance’ working upon a ‘material substance’, the question how such an operation is possible will remain the chief crux of theoretical biology. For the substance-concept itself, whether or not used in an explicitly metaphysical sense, implies an unconquerable antinomy, which we have amply discussed in the first part of this volume. The reason is that it elevates a theoretical abstraction to an independent being.

An entelechy in Driesch's neo-vitalist sense cannot exist in temporal reality; for it is nothing but a theoretical abstraction of the biotic modality of experience, absolutized to an ‘immaterial substance’. This concept of entelechy is nothing but the vitalistic counter-part of the mechanistic concept of ‘matter’, which modern physics was obliged to relinquish because of its incompatibility with the micro-structures of energy.

[p. 746]

The neo-vitalistic view confronted with the neo-Thomist conception. Driesch's philosophy of nature shows a transformation of the Greek basic motive into the Humanistic basic motive of nature and freedom.

The question may be asked why Driesch has refrained from reverting to the genuine Aristotelian conception of entelechy. For it cannot be doubted that the latter, revived in the neo-Thomist philosophy of nature, is in different respects in a better position than neo-vitalism. It does not involve itself in the contradictions of a vitalism which is at the same time intended to maintain the basic tenets of the mechanistic view of matter. For it holds that the specific ‘matter’ of a living being has no independent being but, as a hulè in the Greek sense, can only occur in the substantial form of a psyche. And it equally denies an independent being of the latter but assumes (apart from the Thomist reserve with respect to the human rational soul) that the substantial form of a composite can only be realized in a specific ‘matter’. The Aristotelian-Thomistic view does not know any other matter in a living body than ‘living’ matter, i.e. in its frame of thought, animated matter.

The answer to the question concerned must be: In his philosophy of organic nature Driesch does not start from the Greek basic motive of neo-Thomism. Rather his basic motive is that of nature and freedom in the modern Humanist sense¹. The Greek idea of hulè remained entirely foreign to him. His concept of matter is completely oriented to the modern deterministic science-ideal of classical natural science.

It is true that he continually avails himself of the scheme of matter and form and that of act and potence. Seemingly he even connects the particular Greek concepts of anangkè and tuchè²

1 This is also implicitly granted by Heinichen in his quoted writing (p. 150), when he summarizes Driesch's view of the relation between entelechy and causality as follows: ‘In der Naturphilosophie gibt es der Begriff der Freiheit nicht, der die Voraussetzung alles Schöpferischen, Neuen ist; es darf für die Naturphilosophie keine Freiheit geben, denn im strengen Wortsinne bedeutet Freiheit die Verneinung eindeutiger Bestimmtheit, und es ist unmöglich zu denken, dasz bei gegebenen Umständen entweder das eine oder das andere geschehen könne.’ This statement is completely oriented to the classical deterministic view of nature in its dialectical contrast with the Humanist freedom motive.

2 Cf. what we have observed with respect to these Greek notions in volume I, pp. 61 ff.

[p. 747]

with his notion of matter. But in reality all these basic ideas have been fundamentally transformed by the Humanist motive of nature and freedom.

In his Ordnungslehre Driesch speaks of a basic dualism in the world which he characterizes as the irreconcible contrast between ‘totality’ and ‘chance’¹. But his idea of chance is diametrically opposed to the Greek idea of tuchè and anangkè. When he introduces this notion, he immediately adds: I explicitly define the concept ‘chance’ as Nichtganzbezogenheit (i.e., what is not related to a totality) - consequently not, e.g., as ‘lack of cause’². And then he continues as follows: ‘This contrast between totality and chance is the fundamental opposition from which all contrasts usually called “dualistic” derive; viz. the contrast between animate and inanimate, form and matter, mind and body, soul and body, etc. One may define chance as a concurrence of mutually independent causal series, as e.g., the great embryologist C.E. v. Baer does. But this is only a particular instance of chance which is implied in our completely universal delimitation of this concept’³.

In ‘matter’ (i.e. ‘inanimate nature’) chance rules without restriction (‘schlechthin’), though we have seen that Driesch conceives of ‘matter’ in a rigid mechanically determined way. Only a few traits of unity and totality are realized in it (e.g., the unity of the three-dimensional physical space in which all matter is supposed to move).

Yet the dualist motive of ‘totality’ and ‘chance’ is not identical with the Humanist basic motive of freedom and nature, which

1 Ordnungslehre (2e Aufl.), p. 446 ff.

2 Cf. also Driesch's treatise Wahrscheinlichkeit und Freiheit (Phil. Gegenwartsfragen, 1933) p. 170: ‘Das zufällige Ereignis ist also nicht “Glied” eines Ganzen, sondern nur “Teil” einer summenhaften Gesamtheit’. [An accidental event is consequently not an ‘(organic) part’ of a whole, but only an ‘element’ of a sum total of elements.] The concept ‘summenhafte Gesamtheit’ in Driesch's terminology always has an atomistic mechanistic sense.

3 Ordnungslehre, p. 446: ‘Dieser Gegensatz zwischen Ganzheit und Zufall ist das grundlegende, auf das alle Gegensätze, die man gelegentlich “dualistisch” zu nennen pflegt, zurückgehen, also der Gegensatz von Belebten und Unbelebten, Form und Materie, Geist und Körper, Seele und Leib und andere. Auch wer, wie z.B. der grosze Embryologe C.E. v. Baer, den Zufall als das Zusammentreffen von einander unabhängiger Kausalreihen definiert, fixiert damit etwas Bestimmtes, was sich unserer ganz allgemeinen Umgrenzung des Zufalls einfügt.’

[p. 748]

in its deepest sense rules Driesch's entire thought. In his Wirklichkeitslehre Driesch opposes genuine freedom to univocal determinateness in the process of genesis. The question as to whether there exists freedom in this sense is called here a metaphysical question of belief which should remain unanswered by philosophy as science¹. This standpoint differs from Kant's. For Kant answers this question in a positive sense, in his Critique of Practical Reason, and he may do so because he does not hold to an exclusively scientific view of philosophy. Driesch and Kant agree, however, in the opinion that ‘freedom’ is not a question of scientific demonstration, but of belief. Their difference of opinion concerning the material conception of freedom will be considered presently in a footnote².

In any case Driesch's philosophy of nature remains entirely enclosed within the frame of determinism. Also his neo-vitalism is not at all intended to place a barrier in the way of the classical science-ideal with its postulate of a closed causal explanation of nature. On the contrary, its true intention was to save the concept of natural law also in the sphere of bio-phenomena, although this concept must assume a different sense here from its mechanistic conception. The concept of totality (Ganzheit) remains with Driesch an ordering notion pertaining to natural phenomena. As such it seems not to be oriented to the freedom-motive of the Humanist personality-ideal, as was the case in German freedom-idealism.

And yet, when we penetrate into the deeper strata of Driesch's philosophy of nature, it is hardly to be denied that in the dualist theme of totality and chance, the influence of the dialectical basic motive of freedom and nature is present. Driesch's particular idea of totality, in its contrast to that of a mere summation of mechanical elements, is doubtless dependent on the influence of Schelling's freedom-idealism upon the philosophy of nature. In Driesch the romantic idealist idea of totality has only been transformed into a second concept of natural causality. The purpose of this transformation was to save the classical science-ideal with respect to the bio-phenomena.

The common origin of Driesch's and Schelling's idea of totality was the idea of totality developed in Kant's Kritik der teleologischen Urteilskraft. In this latter work this notion was only

1 Wirklichheitslehre, p. 93-122.

2 Cf. p. 749, note 1.

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serviceable to the dialectical attempt at bridging the cleft between nature and freedom, if only by way of an ‘as if’-judgment.

Driesch has intentionally elevated this teleological idea of totality to a new category of natural science, next to the mechanistic categories of classical physics¹. So it has become a constitutive category of science itself.

Nevertheless, this ‘ordering notion’ continues to betray its origin from the Humanistic freedom-idea by its polar contrast to the mechanistic concept of a determined aggregate of elements. This polar contrast between ‘mechanism’ and ‘totality’ is not to be bridged in Driesch's philosophy of nature. It implies a mechanistic view of ‘matter’ in the sense of classical physics and - as its polar counter-part - an entelechy as ‘substance’ which works upon matter after the pattern of a ‘totality-causality’.

An acceptance of the Aristotelian-Thomistic view of a living whole was thus already excluded by the transcendental basic Idea of Driesch's philosophy.

1 This scientific transformation of the Kantian notion of a teleological whole was facilitated by the fact that Driesch denies the genuine freedom-character of Kant's practical Idea of liberty. Kant had identified the latter with the Idea of ‘moral autonomy’ of the ‘pure human will’ regulated by the ‘categorical imperative’. According to Driesch, genuine metaphysical freedom is incompatible with any general law imposing itself upon human action. This thesis must consequently include Kant's categorical imperative. In Driesch' opinion genuine freedom is only compatible with a consistent pantheism, in the sense of a ‘becoming deity’ lacking also any determination by a constant divine nature.

§ 5 - The relation of the molecular (or crystalline) structures of matter to the living organism and the living body. The problem concerning the ‘bio-substance’ in Woltereck.

Woltereck's hypothesis concerning a particular bio-substance.

After our critical analysis of the mechanistic and the neo-vitalist standpoints, we shall now consider in more detail Woltereck's earlier mentioned hypothesis concerning a particular ‘bio-substance’. Woltereck has initially bound this hypothesis to the explicit reserve that he accepts it only ‘until it should be refuted’.

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It must be evident beforehand that the introduction of this hypothesis can have nothing to do with the older vitalist view of a vital matter. Woltereck does not in the least intend to withdraw his hypothetical material bio-substance from physico-chemical scientific research. On the contrary, he blames Driesch for having prematurely substituted the ‘metaphysical notion of ‘entelechy’ for an as yet unknown property of the ‘physical real plasm’. He is of the opinion that Driesch has not proved the necessity of this substitution by the exclusion of genuine physico-chemical possibilities.

On the other hand his standpoint is equally opposed to the mechanist view according to which bio-phenomena are exclusively explainable from intricate physico-chemical processes. He thinks that his hypothetical material bio-substance is connected with ‘immaterial and conditional structural constants’ (‘Wennso-constanten’) as potencies, which as such pass away together with their material bearer.

Physico-chemical bio-phenomena, accessible to sensory perception and logical analysis are, according to him, only the temporal-spatial outside of living organisms. The genuine essence of the latter is their immaterial inside. Biological research may only approach this essential inside by conceiving a vital process as an ‘inner experience’ of the living being.

As we have seen, Woltereck considers an artificial bio-synthesis to be impossible in principle. He agrees with the opinion that a causal physico-chemical analysis of bio-phenomena encounters an insuperable limit: ‘Our causal-material analysis of bio-phenomena’, so he observes, ‘cannot exceed a certain limit. However wonderful the advances which we owe to experimental analysis..., by clarifying the material hereditary units, the organisers and hormones, and by the discovery of the behaviour and operation of these bearers of impulses, this analysis has reached its ultimate limit; or to be more precise: it will have reached this limit when we arrive at a complete knowledge of the field-conditions and field-processes lying at the foundation of this behaviour and operation’¹.

1 Op. cit., p. 512/3: ‘Wir kommen mit der kausal-materiellen Analyse der Lebenserscheinungen über einen bestimmten Punkt nicht hinaus. So wunderful die Fortschritte sind, die wir der experimentellen Analyse... verdanken; mit der Klarstellung von materiellen Erbeinheiten, von Organisatoren und von Hormonen und mit der Enthüllung des Verhaltens und Wirkens dieser Impulsträger ist die fatale Grenze der materiell-kausalen Analyse erreicht, genauer: wird sie erreicht sein, wenn wir die ihnen zugrunde liegenden Feldzustände und Feldvorgänge vollständig kennen werden.’

[p. 751]

And finally we must remark that Woltereck's hypothetical ‘bio-substance’ is no more meant in a metaphysical sense than initially Driesch's ‘entelechy’ was. Woltereck himself points to the multivocality of the term ‘substance’ in its philosophical use. He explicitly declares that he wants to understand by it nothing but ‘living mass’.

By the latter, however, he decidedly means a specific ‘living matter’, a complex of molecules fundamentally distinct from inanimate matter or dead plasm in consequence of an as yet unknown physico-chemical property, a so-called ‘primary bio-chemical moment’. In addition, this bio-substance is supposed to be characterized by the two basic vital properties of autonomous capability for stimuli and genetic continuity. Woltereck compares this specific physico-chemical condition of his ‘bio-substance’ with that of radio-active elements and aromatic combinations, which are also distinct from other kinds of matter by specific ‘moments’.

In favour of his hypothesis he first points to the fact that, notwithstanding our lack of knowledge of the ‘bio-chemical basic moment’, we may clearly establish a fundamental difference between the material components of a living cell-body: on the one hand we discover components which produce other kinds of matter without passing away themselves; on the other hand we meet with material components which are produced without being capable of producing.

An intermediate position is taken by enzymes, which do not reproduce themselves and consequently cannot be viewed as ‘living components’, but nevertheless do not partake in the chemical processes influenced by them in a regulative sense.

As ‘living substance’ Woltereck only regards the producing ‘chief substance’ of all bio-systems. Every bio-system seems to contain three components:

1.	units effectuating the processes of dissimilation and assimilation;
2.	so-called inductive material units which are operative in a determining, or regulating, or organizing way, respectively (genes, hormones, enzymes, organizers);
3.	the ‘matrix’ (germ-plasm, idio-plasm, reserve-plasm), i.e.

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that unknown living basic matter of the cell which remains constant in spite of all changes in the bio-chemical constellation. This ‘matrix’ reproduces itself and potentially guarantees all typical properties of the different species as well as all operative functions of the living cell. And it also produces, if need be, the inductive material components.

The inductive material components in the living cell-body: enzymes, hormones, organisers and genes.

Now we may establish that modern biology has indeed succeeded in showing the presence of inductive material factors in the living cell-body. This result has been reached in a three-fold way.

First, physiological chemistry has succeeded in establishing the catalytic operation of enzymes in metabolic processes. In addition, it has established by serological research the function of the specificity of protein combinations produced by living organisms according to their different geno-types. In recent times physiological chemistry has also elucidated the enormous significance of the hormones or internal secretions¹.

The existence of ‘organizers’ has been indisputably shown by so-called ‘developmental mechanics’ founded by Wilhelm Roux. These ‘organisers’ have appeared to exercise a determining influence upon the embryonic development of a living body and its particular organs. Continued research has brought to light that here, too, we are confronted with particular material factors.

There is an abundance of experimental material with respect to this subject-matter. We have already mentioned the experiments of Spemann and his school with the transplantation of cells from the so-called blastopore, i.e. the invagination of the gastrula² of a developing embryo.

1 Physiological chemistry has already succeeded in synthetically preparing different kinds of hormones (insulin, adrenalin, thyroxin, different genital hormones etc.), which have found an extensive application both in medicine and zoology.

2 By means of division of the animal germ-cell there first arise two cells, then four, thereupon eight, sixteen, etc. Finally there arises a solid ball of cells, which is called morula (i.e. mulberry). By secretion of liquid the latter turns into a hollow ball, called blastula, which then further is transformed into the gastrula. During the latter process, the so-called gastrulation, there arise two different layers of cells, the inner and outer blastoderm, between which in all higher animals very soon a meso-blastoderm is formed.

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It appeared that the fixation of the developmental direction of the separate parts of an embryo occurs the sooner in proportion as the latter's position is nearer to the blastopore. It was already known that in the developmental phase of an embryo a living cell (or groups of cells) has much more genetic potencies than that which is finally realized. In the fixation of the ultimate developmental direction the neighbouring cell or group of cells appears to exercise a determining influence. This operation occurs in a strict law-conformity and may eventually also deviate from the total building-plan of the organism. The question, e.g., as to whether from one of the two part-cells of the egg of a sea-hedgehog, a complete or the half of an embryo develops, is dependent on a complex of causes. These causes partly lie beyond the internal working-sphere of this single cell, though it is certain that at first the capability or incapability of the internal structure of the egg's protoplasma to regulation is decisive here¹. If the cell is separated from its fellow-cell, then it will produce a complete embryo, if it remains united with the latter it will produce a half one. In this case the developmental law of the separate cells apparently suits the building-plan of the total organism. But under certain conditions it also appeared possible to cause entirely abnormal formations of organs and even a double embryo by means of transplantation of cells.

Spemann's disciple H. Mangold succeeded in giving rise to an entirely new embryo by transplanting a piece of the blastopore of a gastrula in a tissue of another embryo, viz. that tissue which later on develops into abdominal-skin. This new embryo, however, arising in the place of inplantation, did not merely grow from the transplanted cell-groups, but for the greater part by far from the cells of the host-embryo. The latter were now determined in a quite different direction! Later on many other experiments with such remarkable ‘chimera-formations’ have occurred. Thereby it has been indisputably established that the cells of the blastopore have the potence of compelling the neighbouring cell-groups to develop the form in question. This was the experimental proof of Spemann's hypothesis that the blastopore must contain the organizing centre².

1 Cf. Driesch, Phil. d. Org., pp. 56 ff.

2 At a more advanced stage of development, however, the direction of the development appears to be already determined to such a degree that a fundamental change is no longer possible.

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It was a matter of course that the mechanist trend conceived these ‘organizers’ as material substances expanding themselves from the centre concerned to the environment. The neo-vitalists, on the contrary, viewed these ‘organisers’ in the nature of the case as effects of the immaterial entelechy. The experiments with abnormal organ- and chimera-formations seemed to contradict this neo-vitalist interpretation. But Driesch tried to reconcile these experiments with the neo-vitalist view by means of his building-plan-theory or by assuming ‘sub-entelechies’ which operate without subjecting themselves to the rough building-plan of the whole¹. Meanwhile, later experiments have shown that the ‘organisers’ are indeed inductive material factors.

Holtfreter and other investigators of the Dahlem Institute succeeded in producing the induction of an embryo in the indifferent abdominal tissue of the host-animal by means of dead cellular material originating from the blastopore². Thereby the supposition already made earlier that the embryonic organisers, too, are a kind of hormones (developmental hormones) was nearly elevated to certainty. But, naturally, this did not mean that the rightness of the mechanistic interpretation was experimentally proved. For the determining influence of the material organisers is completely dependent upon the potencies of the living cell-organism of the host-animal.

The third kind of inductive material factors has been brought to light by modern genetics in combination with a microscopic investigation of the cells, especially the germ-cells and their nuclear components. These combined investigations have led to the discovery of the genes in the chromosomes³ of the cell-nucleus, which are viewed as the material bearers of factors of hereditary dispositions.

The existence of these genes and their local distribution in the chromosomes can no longer be doubted. For it has been experimentally proved that in the case of an artificial partial des-

1 Phil. d. Org., p. 483.

2 Cf. the report of these experiments in the review Naturwissenschaften, Bnd. 51 (1932), pp. 972 ff.

3 Chromosomes are the looplike threads into which, during the process of cell-division, the chromatin (i.e. the nuclear matter capable of being coloured) contracts itself. This phenomenon is usually accompanied by a temporary disappearance of the two other important nuclear components, viz. the nucleoles (nuclear corpuscles) and later on also the nuclear membrane.

[p. 755]

truction of a chromosome in the germ-cells of Drosophila also particular properties of the individual had vanished. According to the genetical analysis of Morgan and his school (whose results have been recorded in the famous chromosome-maps) these properties must have had their seat in the vanished piece of chromatin. Morgan, who was certainly not an adherent of the mechanistic standpoint, supposed that the genes are fitted into a linear ordering of the chromatin particles of a chromosome. In this case the structure of a polypeptid-molecule urges itself upon us, in which the separate genes are supposed to function as changeable radicals. Other investigators have supposed that genes, too, are a kind of enzyme-like material components which have some connection with the above-mentioned ‘developmental hormones’. It needs no further argument that also the discovery of these genes has nothing to do with a mechanistic interpretation of the hereditary phenomena.

Woltereck is of the opinion that the experimental material briefly outlined above may be considered to be a sufficient foundation for his view of the cell-structure which starts from the existence of a material bio-substance.

As we have seen, he distinguished three components in the bio-chemical constellation of the cell: a ‘matrix’, material components bringing about the processes of assimilation and dissimilation, and inductive material factors of a determining, organizing and regulating character respectively. Now he assumes that this distinction as such has been proved; opinions may differ only concerning the question how these three kinds of components cohere with each other¹.

In his opinion the best founded hypothesis is the following: In every living being there exists a specific living material substance, viz. the ‘matrix’, which differs with the different species of living beings. There exist more simple constellations of matter (radicals), dependent on the matrix, which cause the assimilatory and dissimilatory processes. These radicals are continually changing by partially falling asunder and partially taking up material combinations, i.e. by dividing themselves and growing, etc. They may be considered to be identical with Heidenhain's ‘protomeries’ or minimal living particles. Finally there exist particular material components (produced by the matrix) which are operative in organizing, differentiating and regulating the

1 Op. cit., p. 352.

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cell-organism. Among these latter the genes have their seat in the nuclear loops of the germ-cells. They are to be looked upon either as micro-grains of chromatin or as radicals within the latter. The localization of the genes is known. As to the material components causing the assimilatory and dissimilatory processes it may be assumed as probable that they are distributed over the whole cell as ‘protomeries’. But as to the matrix we do not know where it has its proper seat¹.

With respect to this question Woltereck assumes two possible hypotheses: either the matrix is spread everywhere in the plasm and nucleus of the cell in equal proportions, and it produces, besides other structures and material components, the chromatin threads and the genes; or the matrix is present in a concentrated form in the chromosomes, perhaps in the form of a chain of molecules with many side-chains, radicals, etc. more or less loosely combined with the latter. In this case the radicals hanging on it are the genes, which later on produce differentiating impulses.

This latter hypothesis seems to Woltereck the best founded supposition because it corresponds more precisely to the results of cytological and genetical research. But he does not want to exclude the possibility that also outside of a cell-nucleus there are determining hereditary material components which might be called ‘plasmatic matrix’.

The question concerning the seat of the ‘organizers’ and ‘regulators’ within a cell-body then remains unanswered. But in any case these material components are also produced by the matrix.

1 Op. cit., p. 352.

Criticism of Woltereck's theory.

It cannot be doubtful that the kernel of Woltereck's theory must be sought in the assumption of a ‘matrix’ as a material bio-substance. It is remarkable that he initially introduced the latter only in a hypothetical sense and cautiously bound this hypothesis to the reserve: ‘bis zu ihrer Widerlegung’. He even explicitly warned his readers ‘that an unknown moment’ (viz. the assumed bio-chemical basic moment of the matrix) ‘can neither be strictly proved nor refuted’, but only ‘be rendered probable or improbable’. Meanwhile this reserve has apparently been abandoned in the continuation of his argument. It is indeed

[p. 757]

surprising that later on Woltereck speaks of the existence of his ‘matrix’ as an experimentally established or proved fact (op. cit., p. 352).

He does not inform us how his hypothesis concerning a bio-substance has been proved. From the experimental material briefly mentioned above, this proof can certainly not be derived.

On the contrary, we have seen that the material components of a cell whose inductive, determining or regulative functions have been experimentally established, have more and more proved to be non-living combinations. As to genes Woltereck himself has observed that they cannot be pure living units¹. And he has also emphatically established that the existence of ‘bio-molecules’, which are supposed to bring about the assimilatory and dissimilatory processes, has never been proved.

Thus the question arises: How has Woltereck arrived at his hypothesis concerning the ‘matrix’ as a constant bio-substance which would continually reproduce itself? To answer this question we should consider that Woltereck himself has identified his ‘matrix’ with the concepts germ-plasm, idio-plasm or hereditary material. He prefers his own term only because the others are more or less burdened by the theories which have availed themselves of them.

1 Op. cit., p. 353.

Weismann's theory concerning the continuity of the germ-plasm.

The term germ-plasm has been introduced by the famous biologist August Weismann, one of the prominent representatives of the older Darwinist theory of evolution. Weismann was of the opinion that from the very beginning in the process of embryonic development those cells are separated which later on become the so-called mother-cells or germ-cells. They form the continuous ‘Keimbahn’, as Weismann called it, passing through the generations, whereas the body-cells, or the soma, are again and again split off, as it were, from the former. The germ-cells of the present generation are thus not produced by the individual bodies in which they are taken up; rather they are the direct products of the germ-cells of the previous generation from which also the soma-cells of the present generation originate. This was the theory concerning the continuity of germ-plasm, which notwithstanding the strong opposition it aroused at first,

[p. 758]

has at present been rather generally accepted. This acceptance was especially owing to the fact that the so-called cell-lineage research succeeded in directly tracing the isolated developmental course of the germ-cells¹.

Meanwhile, Driesch has pointed to the fact that all this only concerns empirical data of descriptive embryology. The more recent discoveries concerning the restitution of a living organism have made it necessary to add so many reserves to the theory of the ‘spezifische Keimbahne’ that it practically loses any significance. For these discoveries have shown that in the earliest phases of development a cell possesses a so-called ‘masked’ prospective potency which may lead to results quite different from what has been factually reached. According to Driesch, this new experimental material entitles us to ascribe to all the cells of a soma in principle all morphogenetic possibilities. Perhaps it would be possible under certain conditions (as yet unknown) that any soma-cell becomes a germ-cell². This is why Driesch is of the opinion that Weismann's concept of ‘Keimbahn’ has only a descriptive character and cannot be elevated to a fundamental concept.

However this may be, Weismann himself has certainly not conceived the ‘continuous germ-plasm’ as a specific ‘bio-substance’, in the sense of Woltereck. Much rather the intention of his theory was to provide mechanistic evolutionism with a general foundation. And this evolutionist view in principle rejected the assumption of a specific ‘bio-substance’.

Even if Weismann's theory should be considered as proved by the research of cell-lineage, this proof can thus certainly not pertain to Woltereck's hypothetical ‘matrix’. The real existence of such a material bio-substance can never be proved in a purely experimental way. For the question as to whether material combinations as such may be qualified by a subjective biotic func-

1 Cf. Bavink, op. cit., pp. 406 ff., who apparently assumes that Weismann's theory has been proved by the results of this research.

2 Phil. d. Org., p. 210. From a quite different standpoint Weismann's theory is rejected by the neo-Lamarckians, such as O. Hertwig (Allgemeine Biologie, 6th and 7th ed. 1923). The latter holds to the transmission of acquired characters in the hereditary process by means of an alteration of the idio-plasm of the egg-cell. This theory is naturally obliged to deny the independence of germ-plasm with respect to the soma.

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tion necessarily implies a philosophical problem of structure¹. And the standpoint chosen with respect to the latter problem in principle determines any theoretical interpretation of the results of experimental research’.

It is not the continuity of germ-plasm which is at issue here. Rather we are confronted with the question concerning the relation between typically biotically and typically physico-chemically qualified structures of individuality within an apparently present totality-structure of the living cell-body.

We are certainly entitled to say that the results of experimental research have made it necessary to distinguish between living and non-living components of a cell. Woltereck himself does so emphatically. But the structural problem proper is not thereby solved. Already the way in which a scientific investigator posits it, is philosophically conditioned.

1 This is implicitly acknowledged by Woltereck himself insofar as he ascribes to his hypothetical matrix an ‘invisible basic structure’.

The influence of the metaphysical substance-concept upon Woltereck's theory of ‘matrix’.

Now it seems to me that Woltereck, however reserved he appeared to be with respect to the metaphysical substance-concept, has nevertheless unconsciously been influenced by it. We could establish the same state of affairs with Driesch. Even the term ‘substance’, however reservedly used, turns out to exercise a kind of magic influence upon many serious scientific theorists. Driesch elevated his ‘entelechy’ to a ‘substance’ of the living organic form-totality. Woltereck conceived his ‘matrix’ as a ‘bio-substance’, in the sense of a specific ‘living matter’, which in addition was supposed to possess an inner-side as an ‘experiential centre’.

When elaborating his matrix-theory, Woltereck appears to return to the hypothesis that the ‘bio-substance’ may display the intricate structure of a polypeptid molecule. And he does so notwithstanding the fact that he himself had emphatically established that such a structural model can never account for the typical centered structure of a living cell.

But a molecular theory of ‘living matter’ necessarily implies the tendency to eliminate the typical totality-structure of a living organism. And this consequence decidedly contradicts Woltereck's earlier statement that the living cell is the minimal whole capable of life in an independent sense.

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Now we should bear in mind that until the XXth century the modern concept of matter was itself connected with a mechanistic substance-concept. Classical physics founded by Galileo and Newton held to the metaphysical conception of ‘matter’, as a spatial mechanical substance remaining quantitatively constant in all physico-chemical changes. As soon as this classical substance-concept of matter appeared to be untenable, it was methodically transformed into a mathematical-physical concept of function, a functional mass-concept, which as such lacks any ontological connotation as a rigid substantial constant. This mass-concept only pertains to the physico-chemical energy-aspect of experiential reality.

Modern chemistry ascribes to the general concept matter only the meaning of a certain system of equilibrium between protons, neutrons and electrons.

Specific kinds of matter are only known in the atomic structures of chemical elements and in the molecular or crystalline form-structures of their chemical combinations.

These structures have proved to be physico-chemically qualified, in the sense of our theory of individuality-structures. Only by restricting the concept of matter to these typical structures can we ascribe to it a univocal sense, founded in the plastic horizon of human experience.

As soon as, in line with the Aristotelian idea of hulè, ‘matter’ is conceived of as mere potentiality, it can no longer be viewed as a real constellation in itself. In this case it must be reduced to a metaphysical component of a ‘composite natural substance’, implying a specific ‘substantial form’ as its complement. But neither in the frame of thought of modern natural science nor in that of the Greek and scholastic form-matter theme can it make sense to speak of a specific material bio-substance, in contrast to an in-organic substance of ‘dead matter’.

Woltereck's standpoint regarding this bio-substance is indeed far from clear. On the one hand he emphatically rejects any mechanistic reduction of a living organism to mere material processes. In this context he observes that his hypothesis of a ‘matrix’ only leads to ‘shifting the indubitable visible particularity of all living bodies into the invisible basic structure in which the spatial and temporal specificities of the organism must be somehow represented and prepared’¹. But, on the other

1 Op. cit., p. 330.

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hand, he parallels the ‘primary bio-chemical element’ by which ‘living matter’ is to be distinct from ‘dead matter’, with the specific properties of radio-active kinds of matter and aromatic combinations. By so doing Woltereck apparently overlooks that the characteristic properties of these latter kinds of matter are indubitably determined by their physico-chemical structure. The assumption of a specific ‘living mass’ or ‘bio-substance’, however, implies an inner contradiction. For, on the one hand, this bio-substance is supposed to have a typical physico-chemical structure (although unknown up to now) by which it is determined as matter; on the other, it must be qualified by a typical biotic moment.

For such a biotic qualification must doubtless be assumed if there be any question of a bio-substance. Roux¹ has already repeatedly pointed to the fact that a system of material combinations (A, B, C, D, etc.) may chemically effect the rise of a matter X in a continually increasing quantity, but that from a purely chemical point of view it is entirely impossible that X assimilates itself. Such an assimilation can certainly not be a purely chemical process.

In Woltereck's own explanations the contradiction mentioned reveals itself in the above analysed way: He starts with accepting the living cell in its totality as the minimal unit capable of independent life. But, in consequence of his hypothesis concerning a ‘bio-substance’, he finally arrives at the hypothetical assumption of a molecular structure of a material ‘matrix’, which must explain even the typical centered structure of the living cell-organism². And he does so notwithstanding he himself has emphasized that the causal physico chemical analysis encounters insuperable limits in the bio-chemical constellation!

In this way Woltereck, too, has involved himself in the inner antinomies of the substance-concept. Thereby his attempt at overcoming the dilemma vitalism-mechanism was doomed to fail. The course of his argument clearly shows that he, too, had

1 Ueber die bei der Vererbung von Variationen anzunehmenden Vorgänge (Vorträge und Aufsätze über Entwicklungsmechanik nr. 19 (1913), p. 4.

2 For in this way Woltereck later on elaborates his thesis ‘that the indisputibly present bio-specificities are caused by a particular chemico-physical situation’ (op. cit., p. 331).

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recourse to the substance-concept for lack of insight into the modal structures and the typical individuality-structures of our experiential horizon. Driesch elevated ‘life’ to an ‘immaterial substance’ and called it ‘entelechy’. Woltereck on the one hand reduces ‘life’ to a particular physico-chemical constellation of a material bio-substance, on the other he sublimates it to an immaterial inner experience of a non-spatial ontical centre. How can we explain this remarkable dualist view?

Woltereck's philosophical standpoint. His dynamical ontological ‘Stufentheorie’.

Woltereck's biological view is only explicable from his later work Ontologie des Lebendigen (1940), in which he reveals himself as an adherent of a dynamical ‘Stufentheorie’ of reality. This theory tries to overcome the dilemma mechanism-vitalism by means of a genetic monism which nevertheless accepts irreducible levels of becoming. This means that on the one hand the irreducible character of life as a new level of reality is acknowledged, but on the other the process of becoming is conceived as a continuous evolution in which ‘life’ is viewed as an ‘emergence’ of physico-chemical constellations. We have already encountered this ‘emergent evolutionism’ in an earlier context¹. Woltereck is of the opinion that ‘life’ may very well be conceived genetically as an ‘emergence’ of a-biotic matter-combinations; just like the genesis of the different chemical elements may be explained from an increase of the possibilities of a material basic substance, or psychical life as an ‘emergence’ of merely biotic, and ‘mind’ as an ‘emergence’ of psychical life. According to Woltereck, the rise of different autonomous ‘levels of reality’ is ruled by ‘structural constants’ which he also calls ‘autonomous powers’, ‘determinants’, ‘imagoids’ or ‘ideas’.

Thereby he involves himself in the antinomy between the assumed constancy of these structural determinants on the one

1 This emergent evolutionism has in recent times been in vogue with many philosophically trained biologists and physicists. L. Morgan is one of the chief representatives of this view. It is also adhered to by J.H. Woodger and A.N. Whitehead, by B. Bavink and Woltereck and different other scholars. The ontological view of Woltereck is strongly influenced by Nicolai Hartmann's ‘Schichtentheorie’.

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hand, and the continuity and unity of the process of becoming, on the other. Woltereck himself has acknowledged that on his standpoint this antinomy is insoluble: ‘As to the living determinants of becoming’, he observes, ‘and the determinants of value, there exists an unsolved antinomy between the state of affairs meant by the term validity and that concerning the “genesis of validity”. The former requires exemption from time or at least indifference to time, the latter refers to the genesis of ideas and values which undeniably arise from human cultural activity and which we surmise in the becoming of organisms’¹.

Woltereck rejects the solution of this antinomy presented by Platonism and the modern philosophy of values, which have recourse to a supra-temporal kingdom of Ideas or values. Rather he resigns to the sceptical conclusion: ‘we will not succeed in solving the antinomy between the a-temporal validity and the genesis of values.’

The origin of this antinomy, however, is evident. The latter is due to an overstraining of the modal aspect of biotic development in its subject-side. We are here confronted with an irrationalistic evolutionism that views the structural laws as products of the creative freedom of a ‘Welt-Subjekt’, which itself is involved in a process of continual development. Here, too, the Humanist basic motive of nature and freedom is the ultimate, indeed religious, moving power of theoretical thought. The evolutionist basic idea of the latter implies the attempt to conceive ‘freedom’ (in the irrationalist sense of ‘creative subjective freedom’) as the ‘completion of nature’ (Vollendung der Natur)².

1 Ontologie des Lebendigen (1940) § 176: Die Antinomie zwischen Gelten und Ursprung des Geltens. In the German text this passage reads as follows: ‘Für die lebendigen Werdebestimmer und Wert-determinanten besteht eine ungelöste Antinomie zwischen dem Sachverhalt Geltung, der Zeitlosigkeit oder mindestens Zeitindifferenz erfordert, und dem Sachverhalt “Entstehen von Geltung” von Ideen und Werten, wie sie aus menschlichem Schaffen unverkennbar hervorgehen und wie wir sie im Werden der Organismen vermuten.’

2 Ontologie, p. 9: ‘Eine selbstverständliche Aussage wird für unsere Untersuchung wesentlich werden: Ausdruck, Gesetze und Sinn gehen nicht auf Ursachen zurück, sondern können nur als freie Setzungen verstanden werden. Wenn überhaupt Metaphysisches allem Zweifel entrückt ist, so ist es die schöpferische Freiheit des Sinn-gebenden Weltsubjekts... Wir werden dabei die Grundlage nicht zu verleugnen haben, von der unser Forschen ausgeht: die Erkenntnis der Einen, Totalen alles Erfahrbare Umfassende Wirklichkeit der “Natur” (I italicize). Das kann, wer will, eine “naturalistische” Grundlage nennen.’ [A statement which is indeed a matter of course will become of essential importance to our inquiry: Expression, laws and meaning do not derive from causes but are only to be understood as free creations. If any metaphysical state of affairs is beyond all doubt, then it is the creative freedom of the World-Subject which gives meaning... Besides we should not deny the foundation from which our investigation starts, viz. the knowledge of the one total reality of ‘nature’ embracing all that is capable of being experienced. If one wants to do so, this can be called a ‘naturalistic’ foundation.]

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On this standpoint any insight into the modal structures and individuality structures of empirical reality is precluded, just as in the case of Driesch.

This appears, moreover, from the following statement of Woltereck: ‘the spiritual-psychic phenomena, the productive activities and their results belong just as much to life as, e.g., the shell formation or movement of protozoa. A temple, a book, a sonata or a strategic plan are bio-phenomena, results of the productive activity of living “subjects of happening”. And literally the same assertion holds with respect to the buildings made by termites, the cocoon spun by a caterpillar, the melody of a bird call, the leaf-incision made by a birch-leaf-roller: Anybody who does not understand this coherence of the phenomena mentioned, because it seems to be paradoxal, will hardly ever completely conceive the real extent and contents of the concept of life’¹. (Italics are mine).

Such an utterance clearly testifies to a complete lack of insight into the difference between the modal sense of the biotic aspect and the biotic analogies presenting themselves within the modal structures of all post-biotic modalities of experience. In addition this utterance reveals a lack of insight into the difference between the modal structure of the biotic aspect and the typical structures of individuality functioning within it. As a

1 Op. cit., p. 52: ‘die geistig-seelische Phänomene, Leistungen, Produkte gehören genau so zum Leben wie etwa die Schalenbindung oder die Bewegung von Protoza. Ein Tempel oder ein Buch, eine Sonate oder ein strategischer Plan sind Lebens-erscheinungen, Leistungen lebendiger Geschehens-subjekte; und wörtlich das gleiche gilt für die Bauten von Termiten, für das Gespinst einer Raupe, für die Tonfolge eines Vogelrufs, für den Blattschnitt eines Birkenrollers: Wem diese Zusammengehörigkeit, weil sie paradox aussieht, nicht einleuchten will, der wird kaum jemals Umfang und Inhalt des Lebensbegriffes völlig verstehen.’

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result Woltereck falls back into a genuine ‘biologism’ whereby the concept of life loses any defined modal sense¹.

We have seen, however, that a clear insight into the relation between the physico-chemically qualified material combinations and the living organism within the total structure of a cell, depends on a clear insight into the different modal aspects of the latter. And the very insight into the inner nature and the unbreakable inter-modal coherence of these modal aspects is precluded in principle by the acceptance of the substance-concept.

Our critical analysis of the theories of Driesch and Woltereck has continually confirmed the correctness of this thesis.

1 Also the irrationalistically conceived freedom-motive thereby assumes a patent biologistic sense. Compare the following statement (op. cit., p. 122): ‘Der zweite Teil der geäuszerten Erwartung’ (viz. that the total process of becoming of the world strives after ‘completion’ in the sense of perfection) ‘sieht im Geiste des Menschen die Möglichkeit einer Welt-vollendung und zwar in einem zukünftigen, geadelten, schöpferischfreien Geiste. Das ist die “Messias-erwartung” biologisch gesehen.’ [The second part of the expectation expressed views the possibility of a completion of the world in the human mind, and such in a future, noble-minded, creative free spirit. This is the Messiah-expectation biologically viewed.] (I italicize the latter words).

A brief resumption of my own view.

When engaging in an inquiry into the intricate structure of a living cell we have made a sharp distinction between three different individuality-structures: first, those of the physico-chemically qualified material combinations, which themselves in their molecular or quasi-crystalline form-minima appeared to be genuine enkaptic structural wholes; secondly, that of the cell's living organism, in which these building-materials are enkaptically bound; thirdly, that of the cell-body as a biotically qualified enkaptic form-totality embracing the other structures in the enkaptic bond of its form.

This distinction was oriented to the vegetable cell. In the case of an animal cell the structure of the living organism is the foundation of a higher structure, viz. that of the sensorium, which has a psychic qualification. This implies that the enkaptic structural whole of an animal cell-body is also psychically qualified.

The genuine bio-chemical constellation appeared to occur within the structure of a cell's living organism, not in the

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molecular or quasi-crystalline structure of the material components of the cell-body. When a cell is killed, the internal structure of its building materials is not immediately changed. Only their biotically qualified enkaptic chemical function disappears. This is to say that the bio-chemical constellation is only built up by means of those physico-chemical functions of the material components which are enkaptically bound in the living cell-organism. These functions fall outside of the internal structure of these material components. They are not physico-chemically determined since they are subject to the continual direction of the leading biotic function of the cell-organism. They are as such internal physico-chemical functions of the latter and not of the material molecules.

But this living organism can only realize itself in the enkaptical form-totality of the living cell-body, of which (in the case of a vegetable cell) it is only the qualifying component, just as the chemical combination appeared to be the qualifying component of the molecular form-whole.

In the case of an animal cell the higher structure of the sensorium binds the lower individuality-structures of the living organism and the cell's material components. This is to say that we are confronted here not only by a bio-chemical constellation but in addition by a physico-chemical one. This state of affairs explains why an indubitably psychically qualified reaction observed in protozoa also displays a physico-chemical and biotic aspect.

This latter state of affairs has been completely misinterpreted from the current dualistic view-point which speaks of a ‘psyche’ in distinction from the ‘material body’. Theodor Haering also appeared to adhere to this view which, with respect to a human being, adds a ‘spirit’ or ‘mind’ to the psyche. This is why his conception of an enkaptic whole remained unsuitable. Since ‘psyche’ and ‘spirit’ are conceived here as immaterial entities, irrespective of the question as to whether they are or are not conceived as ‘substances’, this view is involved in insoluble problems. How can a ‘psyche’ or ‘spirit’ influence a material body? Driesch, too, appeared to be entangled in this wrongly posited question.

The living organism of a cell is indeed living in all of its inner articulations. It can as such not contain lifeless parts. The cell-body, however, cannot be identical with this part-structure of its total existence. As an enkaptic form-totality it also contains

[p. 767]

the life-less material combinations bound by its living organism, which itself has appeared to be enkaptically founded in this material sub-structure. In an animal cell the structure of the living organism is bound in its turn by that of the sensorium, and the latter qualifies the cell-body as an enkaptic form-totality. This does not detract from the fact that in the higher differentiated poly-cellular animals, the differentiated psychic functions are bound to complexes of cells belonging to the central nervous system.

Now the significance of our distinction between the living organism and the body of a cell becomes completely clear. This distinction appears to be not at all artificial, but much rather necessary to account for the real states of affairs within the cell as a whole.

Our previous analysis of the molecular matter-structures has shown that by applying our theory of enkapsis, culminating in the idea of the enkaptic structural whole, two series of experimental data could be harmonized which by the application of the substance-concept seemed to contradict each other. The same holds with respect to the structure of a living cell-body.

As long as biology continues to cling to the intrinsically contradictory substance-concept, the vain contest between the mechanistic and the vitalistic views will be continued without any prospect of its definitive decision.

Once again the Aristotelian-Thomisticc substance-concept confronted with the structural problem of the living body.

A return to the Aristotelian-Thomistic substance-concept will be of no avail to vitalism in its relatively justified opposition to the mechanistic view.

For, as observed, this scholastical substance-concept compels any theory which accepts it to neglect or misinterpret the ever increasing series of experimental results which exactly seem to corroborate the mechanistic position. These results have undisputably shown that a living body contains many lifeless components which in their internal structure are completely determined in a physico-chemical sense.

We have seen that the neo-Thomist theory cannot account for these experimental results by means of its doctrine concerning a virtual preservation of properties of the material components in a living whole.

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The question is not as to whether the material components in their enkaptic function within the living organism play an essential rôle in the vital processes of the body. The only question is whether they may participate in the subjective biotic function of the latter, i.e. whether they can be really living components of the body, just like nucleus and plasm, as enkaptically founded organic parts of a living cell, doubtless are living parts¹. In the light of the experimental results this question can only be answered in the negative.

The neo-Thomist philosophy of nature can save its vitalist view only by denying the continued actual existence of the lifeless material components in the living cell-body. But exactly on this critical point the Thomistic substance-concept appears to contradict the structure of reality.

1 It should be borne in mind that the concepts ‘nucleus’ and ‘protoplasm’ are biologically qualified notions and do not pertain to physics and chemistry, insofar as the latter are only concerned with lifeless material combinations.

The ontological problem concerning the enkaptic structural whole of the living cell-body. An objection to our theory.

Meanwhile there remains a critical question concerning our theory of the enkaptic structural whole which may be asked from the ontological point of view. We have to consider it cautiously to secure our view against a possible misunderstanding.

From the very beginning we have observed that our conception of an enkaptic structural whole does not imply the consequence that the internal molecular or crystalline structures of the different material components are, as such, part-structures of the living body. Such a consequence would certainly contradict our basic tenet that the whole-part relation is exclusively determined by the structure of the whole.

But is our theory not involved in another contradiction? How can an enkaptic structural whole display an inner unity of structure though it seems to be constituted only in an intricate system of enkaptic interlacements? Does not the very plurality of structures interwoven within its internal sphere contradict this structural unity?

Our answer to this question is: Such a contradiction can only originate from an erroneous way of positing the intricate

[p. 769]

structural problem whereby our theory of the living body as an enkaptic whole is yet again misintepreted as an aggregate-theory. But it might be that our terminological indication of the structural state of affairs has as yet lacked that ultimate exactitude which is necessary to preclude such misunderstandings. A first misunderstanding may arise from indicating the enkaptically interwoven structures within the living body as part-structures of the latter. Strictly speaking, this initial indication cannot correspond to the real structural state of affairs. For even the fact that the interwoven structures are enkaptically bound by the form-totality of the whole cannot detract from their genuine structural types, which are different from that of the body as a whole.

Therefore we should now abandon this confusing terminology which is certainly inadequate from the ontological point of view. We have temporarily availed ourselves of it because our first concern was to account for the experiential data which could not be explained by applying the Aristotelian-Thomistic substance-concept. These data testified to a plurality of structures bound by a whole. The metaphysical neo-Thomist theory was built up by means of an a-priori close reasoning which from a logical point of view implied no contradiction so long as the internally contradictory substance-concept itself was taken for granted. But the real structural states of affairs proved not to fit in this a-priori construction.

When we pay attention to the rôle of the material combinations in a living cell-body, we may formulate the real state of affairs as follows: A cell cannot live in the molecular or (quasi-) crystalline matter-structures. Nevertheless the latter are actually present in the living cell-body, because its organism can no more live without than within them, and the material sub-structure really functions within its form-totality.

Any philosophical theory which does not wish to distort the data for the sake of an a-priori close reasoning is obliged to account for this state of affairs in a cautious way.

To arrive at complete clarity in respect to the subject-matter of this chapter we shall now engage in a more detailed ontological consideration of the structure of a cell-body as an enkaptic form-totality.

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A more detailed ontological consideration of the cell-body as a (typically qualified) enkaptic form-totality.

We have seen that a living cell-organism is enkaptically founded in a very particular mixture of matter and binds the latter within its own individuality-structure. The nodal point of this intertwinement has appeared to be the earlier discussed alveolar-colloidal and centered form of the plasm, maintaining itself in the continual process of dissolution and building up of the molecular matter-structures. In this form the material components also disclose those particular variability-types which function in the bio-chemical constellation and are no longer physico-chemically but biotically determined.

But it is the cell-body as a whole which gives the plasmatic matter this particular form; and this form, as the bodily form of the living cell-organism, is qualified by the subjective biotic function of the enkaptic whole, or, in the case of an animal cell, by the psychic function of the sensorium qualifying the animal cell-body. This biotic or psychical qualification respectively, is immediately obvious in uni-cellular beings: the plasmatic form remains entirely plastic, leaving room to contraction and expansion of its surface in all directions and to a mutual removability of the parts. In this way the cell-body is capable of adapting itself to its different biotic or primitive psychic functions, respectively, without being fixed within rigid form-boundaries.

Woltereck observes: ‘In the protozoa and protophytes it is immediately evident that the total form is an expression of the total system, in this case of the cell. With respect to poly-cellular beings this state of affairs can only be deduced from particular observations and considerations. Also the separate organ-forms of the continuations of the plasm, the cilia, fibres, vacuoles, etc. are produced by the total substratum of the system... The living “cell-body” as a whole is the bearer and producer both of all of its part-forms and of the specific total form (figure) of the radiolarium, infusorium, bacterium’¹.

1 Grundzüge, p. 117: ‘Bei den Protozoem und Protophyten ist ohne weiteres klar - was bei den Vielzelligen erst aus besonderen Beobachtungen und Erwägungen abgeleitet werden kann - das die Gesamtform ein Ausdruck des ganzen Systems, hier also der Zelle ist, und dasz auch die einzelnen Organformen der Fortsätze, Zilien, Fasern, Vakuolen u.s.w. vom Gesamtsubstrat des Systems erzeugt werden... Der lebendige “Zellleib” ist als Ganzes Träger und Produzent sowohl seiner sämtlichen Teilformen als der spezifischen Gesamtform (Gestalt) des betreffenden Radiolars, Infusors, Bakteriums.’

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The cell-form as an elementary form-totality¹.

The answer to the question as to whether a cell-body is a real structural whole, or a mere aggregate of structures intertwined with one another enkaptically, in the first place depends on the insight into the nature of the cell-form. Is the latter indeed an elementary form-totality or is it rather a mere aggregate of differently qualified forms?

This question becomes of primordial importance if it is borne in mind that it is the very body-form in which the different typical structures distinguishable in a cell-body are to be enkaptically interlaced. If it should appear that this form is only composed of molecular matter-configurations, or of the latter and of typical biotically qualified organ-forms, respectively, then there could indeed be no question of a typical form-totality of the body. In this case the typical foundational function of the assumed enkaptic structural whole would be lacking and thereby the latter would turn out to be impossible in an ontological sense.

Driesch, Woltereck, Bertalanffy and other famous biological theorists have doubtless the credit of having refuted the aggregate-theory on experimental grounds. The former has shown in particular that the visible figure of poly-cellular plants, animals and the human body is not only built up from organ-forms, tissue-forms and cell-forms but that in addition it is obedient to the specific form-laws of a totality².

Driesch's demonstration of the impossibility of a pure physico-chemical theory of the biotically qualified shape-formation³ possessed a particular convincing force. The older theory of Weismann concerning the predisposition of all full grown organic forms, owing to a material (though invisible) morphogenetic primary structure in the nucleus of the germ-cells, was thereby definitively refuted.

Woltereck has particularly demonstrated that also the separate cell-form is to be viewed as an elementary total form in which a typical structural whole expresses itself.

1 Compare in general with respect to the biological form-problem Bertalanffy's Kritische Theorie der Formbildung (Berlin, 1928), and particularly Woltereck's Grundzüge, p. 114 ff.

2 Phil. d. Org., pp. 1-180.

3 Op. cit., pp. 125 ff.

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Woltereck's investigations into the ‘biotic elementary forms’.

Woltereck's investigations devoted to the ‘biotic elementary forms’ are of a particular interest for our theory of the enkaptic structural whole. We shall therefore briefly resume some chief points of his explanations concerned.

Some uni-cellular beings (such as bacteria, uni-cellular green and blue-green algae and amoebae) display a restricted number of almost undifferentiated - and in this sense simple - figures. But also many cells of complicated animal and in particular of vegetable bodies display such a simple figure, in which besides cell-membrane and nucleus no particular constant organic forms have developed.

On the other hand, the greater part of tissue-cells and of unicellular beings have differentiated figures, either as a result of the secretion of complicated forms by the plasm, or by an intricate organic articulation of the cell-body itself.

Especially the flagellated cells deserve our interest. They are known either as independent vegetable, animal and bacterium-beings, or as developmental phases of poly-cellular beings. (Also the sperm-cells are a kind of flagellated cells provided with a scourge-like offshoot).

Woltereck calls the morphological structure of these latter the ‘elementary form kat' exochèn’ common to all main groups of living beings. This type occurs in very simple figures in bacteria and monads¹, and with refinedly elaborated organ-forms in the peridinidiae² with their spiral circulation for the whips, their cellulose shells, complicated eyes, tentacles, etc. All these differentiated part-forms are produced by the living cell-body as a whole and are a differentiated morphological expression of its inner structural totality. The same holds as to the specialized tissue-cells of plants and animals, which equally - though not in the same multiplicity - display part-forms within the frame of their specific total form, such as epithelial cells, muscle-cells, gland-cells, etc. Here, too, the total cell-form with all of its particular articulations of inner and outer architecture is a function of the total cell-body.

1 Very small protozoa belonging to the flagellates.

2 So called cilio-flagellates which move forward through the water by means of two dissimilar small scourges. It is not certain whether they belong to the protozoa or to the protophytes.

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In this context Woltereck's above-mentioned observation concerning the typical totality character of the form-products of different protozoa and protophytes¹ is also of particular importance. The typical silico-lattices, -tubes or -radii, e.g., secreted by the cell-body of radiolaria and silico-flagellates appeared to display specific total-forms different from species to species. All of them fundamentally deviate from the physico-chemically determined crystal-forms of the mineral silicon dioxyde (SiO₂). Nevertheless it must be assumed that in these specific silico-forms, molecular forms of the combination SiO₂ are enkaptically bound. For they remain typical SiO₂ figures.

The production of these typical forms always starts with alterations of the colloidal plasm, which zonally passes from the sol-condition into the gel-condition. The plasmatic zones which have arrived at the latter condition already display the typical physico-spatial relations of the skeletons and shells originating from them in the process of silica-formation. The formation starts from the cell-body in its centred and entirely movable colloidal-fluid figure, and this plastic whole is present both within and between the parts of the produced form.

Similar complicated fixed formations arise in the plasm of calc-algae and foraminifera and here, too, the plasm is present within and between the parts of the produced calc-shells. All of the produced parts of the skeletons or shells stand in particular relations of dimension and direction. They cannot be the result of separate physico-chemical operations of material components of the plasm, because, during the production, the parts of the plastic cell-body continually change their position within and between these fixed formations.

1 Cf. the ample discussion of these formations in E. Reichenau's treatise Protozoa (Handbuch der Biologie, hrg. v. Bertalanffy, Bnd. VI, Heft 2, pp. 53 ff.).

Plasmatic, allo-plasmatic and xeno-plasmatic forms. Indifference of this distinction with respect to the form-structure.

Both, uni-cellular and poly-cellular plants and animals may build up specific sensorily perceptible spatial forms with the aid of materials of three kinds, viz. either plasmatic matter, or cell-secretions, or finally foreign kinds of matter which the organism has taken up from outside. Woltereck, therefore, dis-

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tinguishes three kinds of formations, viz. plasmatic, allo-plasmatic and xeno-plasmatic shapes.

Plasmatic forms are found, e.g., in the pseudo-poda and motive organs of uni-cellular beings; furthermore in the cotyledons (seed-leaves), nerve-cells and sense-organs of animals. All these organic forms arise from solidified plasm (having passed into the gel-condition).

Allo-plasmatic forms are of two kinds: Either the living cell secretes inorganic kinds of matter (taken up by it in a solved form) in a solid form. Well-known examples are the silico-skeletons and calc-shells of many uni-cellular beings, the silico- and calc-skeletons of sponges, coral polyps, echino-derms, and vertebrates. Or the organism produces organic forms of its own, for example the cellulose coverings of uni- and poly-cellular plants, the chitin of articulate animals and the horny formations (scales, hairs, feathers, etc.).

Xeno-plasmatic forms are also found both with uni-cellular and poly-cellular beings. Many rhizopoda which are provided with shells, and the simplest kinds of the different groups of foraminifera have the potency to collect grains of sand, silico-needles, micro-shells of diatoms, etc., and to form from them coverings surrounding the cell-body. Similar phenomena are found with articulates. Lobsters cover their shells or hindpart with pieces of sea-weed, sponges or snail-houses; larvae of insects build up artificial tubes and ‘houses’ from shell pieces, etc.

It is a particularly interesting phenomenon that - especially with protozoa - the xeno- and alloplasmatic forms may be similar: with foraminifera we find, for instance, tube-like and bottle-like formations consisting either of sand-particles stuck together, or of a porcelain-like calcium mass.

From this it appears that the different nature of the materials cannot be of essential importance to the form-production of the living bodies. The same form may be built up from different kinds of matter (both organic and inorganic). And the same matter may be serviceable to the construction of quite different forms. The only essential thing is the formative principle that selects the materials and works them into particular kinds of moulded products.

Now we have seen that the typical products of formation discussed here are not all of them living parts of the cell-body. The allo-plasmatic and xeno-plasmatic forms are not typically qualified by a biotic or post-biotic subject-function, but by an ob-

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ject-function of biotic or post-biotic modality. In the living organism, and the animal sensorium they can consequently only function enkaptically.

But this structural subject-object relation does not detract from the enkaptic form-totality of the living cell-body. And the same holds good for the poly-cellular body.

In the first place the foundational form-totality of a living body as such is always an objective sensory-spatial figure. The latter doubtless gives expression to the biotic (or psychic) subject-object relation between the living organism (or the animal sensorium) and its non-living form-product. But the latter itself appeared to display a figure which obeys the form-laws of the cell-body as a whole and not the laws of crystallization of the materials used.

The internal structural unity of the body is not threatened by the fact that its morphological sensory figure encompasses forms of an objective biotic (or -psychic) qualification. For this morphological sensory figure as a whole implies the very subject-object relation. The vegetable and animal bodily form as such is an objective expression of the body's qualifying function. The non-living form-product is an autogenous product of the living body and not separated from the latter, but taken up in its objective sensory form-totality. And this form-totality has appeared to be the foundational function of the enkaptic structural whole.

Only after the separation of the non-living form-product from the living body that has produced it, does the form-function of the former cease to belong to the total bodily form. Nevertheless, even in this case this formation retains its objective biotic (or objective psychic) qualification as vegetable or animal form-product, respectively.

The chief point is, therefore, that both the form of a living cell-body as a whole, and that of its organic parts is a morphological expression of an enkaptic structural whole of a higher than physico-chemical qualification.

The different structures interlaced by this enkaptic form-totality are indeed no parts of the total structure. The material components of the body are only realized in the morphological interlacements of the structures concerned. This is why no single morphological criterium is suitable to distinguish the different ‘structural layers’ of a living body. But the living body itself is a morphological whole typically qualified by the highest

[p. 776]

structure enkaptically bound by it. Therefore it is (at least insofar as it is of a vegetable or animal character) a real thing-structure, accessible to naïve experience. For the latter does not theoretically distinguish the different structures in whose morphological interlacements the enkaptic form-totality constitutes itself. It immediately grasps the morphological whole.

The sensory form-totality, as the foundational function of the living body, does not coalesce with the typical foundational form-functions of the interlaced structures.

It should be noted that the sensory total form of the living body, as an enkaptic whole, does not coalesce with the typical form-functions which have a foundational rôle in the different interlaced structures.

This is immediately evident in the case of the physico-chemically qualified structures of the molecules or crystals of the bodily matter. But the same must be true with respect to the typical foundational function of a body's living organism. The latter has a typical biotic qualification, and its foundational form is of an objective bio-spatial character. As such, it is not able to constitute in itself the enkaptic form-totality, characteristic of the bodily whole, though it certainly binds the different kinds of bodily matter in an enkaptic way within its bio-spatial form.

It is only in the objective sensory space that an enkaptic form-totality can be built up which lies at the foundation of the real whole of a living body, and not merely of the whole of one of the structures interlaced in it. For in this modality of spatial figures all the precedent modalities of spatial forms are objectified in the same analogous sense, so that they cannot obtrude at the cost of the sensory total image of the body.

This sensory total form gives a living body its objective material sensory figure, which in the dynamic biotic space is still lacking. It is the objective sensory image of the materialized living organism. In the case of an animal body it gives at the same time objective expression to the higher structure of the sensorium, and in a human body, in an anticipatory direction, to the act-structure of the enkaptic whole. In other words, the sensory total form of the body overlaps the interlaced structures. It gives expression to an enkaptic totality which constitutes itself by means of interstructural intertwinements, without being

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reducible to the latter. This is a second reason why the enkaptic whole is immediately accessible to naïve experience, since the latter does not penetrate into the interlaced structures themselves, but grasps the continuous whole only. Nevertheless, naïve experience is implicitly aware of the qualifying rôle of the highest structure as to the sensory form-totality.

The sensory-spatial form of the enkaptic whole does certainly not contain the modal nuclear type of individuality of this qualifying structure as such, but only that of the body as a typically qualified morphological unity, realizing the enkaptic totality in all of its interlaced structural layers. Therefore, it is only the foundational function of this realized whole, and not that of its abstract qualifying structure in the latter's internal sphere. The qualifying function of the latter, if present, can only be that of the body, insofar as it is enkaptically bound by the body, and not in its purely internal rôle in this qualifying structure.

The form-type of the living body as variability-type. The living body and its ‘Umwelt’.

It is a matter of course that this bodily total form is at the same time the nodal point of enkaptic interlacements between the living being and its ‘Umwelt’ and that thus it is co-determined by its relation to the latter. But this state of affairs does not detract from the fact that the bodily form is produced by the living being itself and that, consequently, it is not at all mechanically impressed upon the latter by its vital milieu. In his voluminous Organographie der Planzen¹, K. v. Goebel has shown with the aid of a wealth of empirical material that the multiplicity of the organ-forms by far surpasses that of the life conditions. This already appears from the great form-diversity of uni-cellular plants living under completely or nearly equal milieu-relations.

Woltereck distinguishes three main groups of morphological types in which the relation to the milieu finds expression:

1.	the suspensoid type of those living beings which are ‘suspended’ in their milieu (water, air);
2.	the motoroid type of those which move by swimming or creeping in a particular direction;
3.	the basoid type of those which with a plane or a pole of their body fasten themselves to the bottom, so that with the other pole they are turned away from the latter.

1 Vol. I (Jena, 1928).

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In each of these types the organic forms are never a mechanical result of adaptation to the milieu, but always co-determined by the structural geno-types of the living beings concerned. The thousandfold abundance of forms within the motoroid type, e.g., is never to be explained one-sidedly from the entirely monotonous milieu of the beings belonging to this type. To become convinced of this state of affairs, as Woltereck observes, one need only turn up an atlas of the freely swimming peridinidiae, or of diatoms, or of radiolaria, in the same part of the ocean.

We can say that Woltereck's three basic types of ‘Umweltbedingtheit’ are in fact variability-types, but that they nevertheless realize themselves in accordance with the nature of the geno-types. In this sense they are an expression of the internal structural type of the living body in its relation to the milieu.

Woltereck formulates this state of affairs in the frame of his own thought in this way ‘that the organisms are doubtless autonomous in the production of body-forms, but that beforehand this autonomy implies particular relations to the Umwelt’¹.

So it appeal's that the form-totality of a living-body is a real nodal point of enkaptic interlacements, both as to its internal constitution and as to its outer milieu. But at the same time it remains the morphological expression of an internal structural whole.

We have already mentioned the important methodological consequence following from the insight into this state of affairs with respect to the inquiry into the structures interlaced in the body-form. The criterion of these structural strata can never be of a morphological character, but should be oriented to their internal structural principles. In this way each of these structural layers has its proper internal criterion. But the body, as an enkaptic structural whole, intertwines them in its typically qualified form-totality.

1 Grundzüge, p. 137.

The objectivistic conception of the body as an absolutization of the objective sensory bodily form.

In this context we finally have to pay attention to the old controversy between the Platonic and the Aristotelian view of the material body which even nowadays continues to influence scholastic thought. Plato viewed the body as a vehicle (ochèma) of the soul. This was obviously an objectivistic conception,

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whereas the Aristotelian view of the animate body was much rather of a subjectivistic character since it ascribed all the ‘formal’ qualities of the body to the soul as its substantial form.

How is it to be explained that the Platonic conception again and again urged itself upon the Augustinian trend in scholasticism with a particular convincing force, in contradistinction to the Aristotelian view?

The answer to this question is already implied in our previous analysis of the body as an enkaptic structural whole. For although this analysis preponderantly pertained to the cell-body, as the simplest example of a living bodily whole, its method is also applicable to the poly-cellular bodies of plants, animals and even of human beings.

The Platonic conception is apparently oriented to the objective sensory form of the body, which is only the foundational function of its structure as an enkaptic whole. If only this objective sensorily perceptible aspect of the body is paid attention to, the psychic subject-object relation urges itself upon us with an inner necessity. This sensory figure of the body is doubtless related to a possible subjective sensory perception. If then furthermore the latter is considered to be metaphysically related to a ‘soul’, in the sense of an ‘immaterial substance’, the ‘material body’ is indeed hardly to be conceived in another manner than as a ‘vehicle’ or an objective ‘organ’ of the soul¹. This means a hypostatization of the objective morphological aspect of the body, which becomes particularly destructive to an insight into the human body as the enkaptic structural whole of the total temporal human existence.

In modern existentialistic philosophy we may observe a return to the subjectivistic view of man's corporality, especially with Sartre and Merleau Ponty. Here this view is completely emancipated from the Greek metaphysical substance-concept and the form-matter motive which was its religious starting-point. But, especially in Merleau Ponty, ‘experienced corporality’ is considered to belong to a supposed ‘pre-objective’ experiential field,

1 This background of the Platonic conception is particularly clear in the French sociologist and constitutional law theorist Maurice Hauriou, whose view of the relation between soul and body has always remained dualistic Platonic. For he based this conception explicitly upon a pure morphological concept of form and consequently rejected the Aristotelian-Thomistic view of the soul as the substantial form of the material body.

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which is sharply opposed to the objectivistic analytical mode of thought of science. This involves a fundamental misinterpretation both of the subject-object relation of pre-theoretic experience and of the antithetic ‘Gegenstand-relation’ of theoretic thought. This leads Merleau Ponty to his characterization of human corporality as a ‘blind adherence’ (‘adhésion aveugle’) to the pre-objective world.