The science and philosophy of the organisms

The science and philosophy of the organisms By Hans Driesch
2010 | 356 Pages | ISBN: 1177432986 | DJVU | 9 MB
This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: General Plan Of These Lectures Turning now to a sort of short outline of what is to be discussed in the whole of our future lectures, this summer and next, it seems clear, without further analysis, that biology as a science has its nomothetic and its systematic part also; respiration and assimilation, for instance, have proved to be types of natural laws among living phenomena, and that there is a " system" of animals and plants is too commonly known to require further explanation here. Therefore we might study first biological laws, and after that biological systematics, and in the third place perhaps biological history. But that would hardly correspond to the philosophical aims of our lectures: our chief object is not biology as a regular science, as treated in text-books and in ordinary university lectures; our chief object is the Philosophy of the Organism, as aided and supported by scientific biology. Therefore a general acquaintance with biology must be assumed in these lectures, and the biological materials must be arranged according to their bearing on further, that is on philosophical, analysis. That will be done, not, of course, to the extent of my regarding every one of my audience as a competent biologist; on the contrary, I shall explain most fully all points of biology proper, and even of the most simple and descriptive kind of biology, which serve as bases for philosophical analysis. But I shall do so only if they indeed do serve as such bases. All our biology will be not for its own sake, but for the sake of philosophy. Whilst regarding the whole of the biological materialwith such aims, it seems to me best to arrange the properly scientific material which is to be the basis of my discussions, not along the lines which biology as an independent science wou...