Problems of Life, An Evaluation of Modern Biological Thought

to biologists as one of the leaders in the attempt to develop biology as an autonomous science with its own laws. This attempt gives to the organic sciences perspectives of thought which seem often to have been lost by the one-sided influence of the inorganic sciences which developed earlier. The necessity for a reorientation was clearly stated and analysed in the theory of stratification of reality in the ontology of Nicolai Hartmann. The approach chosen by the author and developed and elaborated in broad outlines is the so-called organismic concept. This is contrasted with vitalism and mechanism in an attempt to solve this age-old dispute. The organism is here conceived as a system which is a complex of elements in mutual interaction, this system having a dynamic hierarchial order and an autonomy of its own. The book is fundamentally an elaboration of this conception of the organism. This theory of dynamic structure of living organisms and the interpretations and schemes derived from it are of extreme importance for every branch of biology. It permits a description of biological organization in scientific terms, i.e., laws governing organization within living matter. The author describes biological phenomena at all levels of organization (physico-chemical, cellular, organismic, and communal) strictly within the framework provided by this concept. The examples chosen are taken principally from zoology. The book is written in sufficiently broad terms to be easily comprehensi-ble. The reader who desires a more specific and exact language should consult the author's Theoretische Biologie, volumes I and II. The present book is an important one and one hopes it will find the place it deserves in the development of biology. The author shows clearly that biology is not an accumulation of facts but rather a constant re-interpretation of the problems of organic systems.