The Story of the Living Machine Part 1

The Story of the Living Machine.

by H. W. Conn.

PREFACE.

That the living body is a machine is a statement that is frequently made without any very accurate idea as to what it means. On the one hand it is made with a belief that a strict comparison can be made between the body and an ordinary, artificial machine, and that living beings are thus reduced to simple mechanisms; on the other hand it is made loosely, without any special thought as to its significance, and certainly with no conception that it reduces life to a mechanism. The conclusion that the living body is a machine, involving as it does a mechanical conception of life, is one of most extreme philosophical importance, and no one interested in the philosophical conception of nature can fail to have an interest in this problem of the strict accuracy of the statement that the body is a machine. Doubtless the complete story of the living machine can not yet be told; but the studies of the last fifty years have brought us so far along the road toward its completion that a review of the progress made and a glance at the yet unexplored realms and unanswered questions will be profitable. For this purpose this work is designed, with the hope that it may give a clear idea of the trend of recent biological science and of the advances made toward the solution of the problem of life.

MIDDLETOWN, CONN., U.S.A.

_October 1, 1898_.

THE STORY OF THE LIVING MACHINE.

INTRODUCTION.

==Biology a New Science==.--In recent years biology has been spoken of as a new science. Thirty years ago departments of biology were practically unknown in educational inst.i.tutions. To-day none of our higher inst.i.tutions of learning considers itself equipped without such a department. This seems to be somewhat strange. Biology is simply the study of living things; and living nature has been studied as long as mankind has studied anything. Even Aristotle, four hundred years before Christ, cla.s.sified living things. From this foundation down through the centuries living phenomena have received constant attention. Recent centuries have paid more attention to living things than to any other objects in nature. Linnaeus erected his systems of cla.s.sification before modern chemistry came into existence; the systematic study of zoology antedated that of physics; and long before geology had been conceived in its modern form, the animal and vegetable kingdoms had been comprehended in a scientific system. How, then, can biology be called a new science When it is older than all the others?

There must be some reason why this, the oldest of all, has been recently called a _new_ science, and some explanation of the fact that it has only recently advanced to form a distinct department in our educational system. The reason is not difficult to find. Biology is a new science, not because the objects it studies are new, but because it has adopted a new relation to those objects and is studying them from a new standpoint. Animals and plants have been studied long enough, but not as we now study them. Perhaps the new att.i.tude adopted toward living nature may be tersely expressed by saying that in the past it has been studied as _at rest_, while to-day it is studied as _in motion_. The older zoologists and botanists confined themselves largely to the study of animals and plants simply as so many museum specimens to be arranged on shelves with appropriate names. The modern biologist is studying these same objects as intensely active beings and as parts of an ever-changing history. To the student of natural history fifty years ago, animals and plants were objects to be _cla.s.sified_; to the biologist of to-day, they are objects to be _explained_.

To understand this new att.i.tude, a brief review of the history of the fundamental features of philosophical thought will be necessary. When, long ago, man began to think upon the phenomena of nature, he was able to understand almost nothing. In his inability to comprehend the activities going on around him he came to regard the forces of nature as manifestations of some supernatural beings. This was eminently natural.

He had a direct consciousness of his own power to act, and it was natural for him to a.s.sume that the activities going on around him were caused by similar powers on the part of some being like himself, only superior to him. Thus he came to fill the unseen universe with G.o.ds controlling the forces of nature. The wind was the breath of one G.o.d, and the lightning a bolt thrown from the hands of another.

With advancing thought the ideas of polytheism later gave place to the n.o.bler conception of monotheism. But for a long time yet the same ideas of the supernatural, as related to the natural, retained their place in man's philosophy. Those phenomena which he thought he could understand were looked upon as natural, while those which he could not understand were looked upon as supernatural, and as produced by the direct personal activity of some divine agency. As the centuries pa.s.sed, and man's power of observation became keener and his thinking more logical, many of the hitherto mysterious phenomena became intelligible and subject to simple explanations. As fast as this occurred these phenomena were unconsciously taken from the realm of the supernatural and placed among natural phenomena which could be explained by natural laws. Among the first mysteries to be thus comprehended by natural law were those of astronomy. The complicated and yet harmonious motions of the heavenly bodies had hitherto been inexplicable. To explain them many a sublime conception of almighty power had arisen, and the study of the heavenly bodies ever gave rise to the highest thoughts of Deity. But Newton's law of gravitation reduced the whole to the greatest simplicity. Through the law and force of gravitation these mysteries were brought within the grasp of human understanding. They ceased to be looked upon as supernatural, and became natural phenomena as soon as the force of gravitation was accepted as a part of nature.

In other branches of natural phenomena the same history followed. The forces and laws of chemical affinity were formulated and studied, and physical laws and forces were comprehended. As these natural forces were grasped it became, little by little, evident that the various phenomena of nature were simply the result of nature's forces acting in accordance with nature's laws. Phenomena hitherto mysterious were one after another brought within the realm of law, and as this occurred a smaller and smaller portion of them were left within the realm of the so-called supernatural. By the middle of this century this advance had reached a point where scientists, at least, were ready to believe that nature's forces were all-powerful to account for nature's phenomena. Science had pa.s.sed from the reign of mysticism to the reign of law.

But after chemistry and physics, with all the forces that they could muster, had exhausted their powers in explaining natural phenomena, there apparently remained one cla.s.s of facts which was still left in the realm of the supernatural and the unexplained. The phenomena a.s.sociated with living things remained nearly as mysterious as ever. Life appeared to be the most inexplicable phenomena of nature, and none of the forces and laws which had been found sufficient to account for other departments of nature appeared to have much influence in rendering intelligible the phenomena of life. Living organisms appeared to be actuated by an entirely unique force. Their shapes and structure showed so many marvellous adaptations to their surroundings as to render it apparently certain that their adjustment must have been the result of some intelligent planning, and not the outcome of blind force. Who could look upon the adaptation of the eye to light without seeing in It the result of intelligent design? Adaptation to conditions is seen in all animals and plants. These organisms are evidently complicated machines with their parts intricately adapted to each other and to surrounding conditions. Apart from animals and plants the only other similarly adjusted machines are those which have been made by human intelligence; and the inference seemed to be clear that a similar intelligence was needed to account for the _living machine_. The blind action of physical forces seemed inadequate. Thus the phenomena of life, which had been studied longer than any other phase of nature, continued to stand aloof from the rest and refused to fall into line with the general drift of thought. The living world seemed to give no promise of being included among natural phenomena, but still persisted in retaining its supernatural aspect.

It is the attempt to explain the phenomena of the living world by the same kind of natural forces that have been adequate to account for other phenomena, that has created modern Biology. So long as students simply studied animals and plants as objects for cla.s.sification, as museum objects, or as objects which had been stationary in the history of nature, so long were they simply following along the same lines in which their predecessors had been travelling. But when once they began to ask if living nature were not perhaps subject to an intelligent explanation, to study living things as part of a general history and to look upon them as active moving objects whose motion and whose history might perhaps be accounted for, then at once was created a new department of thought and a new science inaugurated.

==Historical Geology==.--Preparation had been made for this new method of studying life by the formulation of a number of important scientific discoveries. Prominent among these stood historical geology. That the earth had left a record of her history in the rocks in language plain enough to be read appears to have been impressed upon scientists in the last of the century. That the earth has had a history and that man could read it became more and more thoroughly understood as the first decades of this century pa.s.sed. The reading of that history proved a somewhat difficult task. It was written in a strange language, and it required many years to discover the key to the record. But under the influence of the writings of Lyell, just before the middle of the century, it began to appear that the key to this language is to be found by simply opening the eyes and observing what is going on around us to-day. A more extraordinary and more important discovery has hardly ever been made, for it contained the foundation of nearly all scientific discoveries which have been made since. This discovery proclaimed that an application of the forces still at work to-day on the earth's surface, but continued throughout long ages, will furnish the interpretation of the history written in the rocks, and thus an explanation of the history of the earth itself. The slow elevation of the earth's crust, such as is still going on to-day, would, if continued, produce mountains; and the was.h.i.+ng away of the land by rains and floods, such as we see all around us, would, if continued through the long centuries, produce the valleys and gorges which so astound us. The explanation of the past is to be found in the present. But this geological history told of a history of life as well as a history of rocks. The history of the rocks has indeed been bound up in the history of life, and no sooner did it appear that the earth's crust has had a readable history than it appeared that living nature had a parallel history. If the present is a key to the past in interpreting geological history, should not the same be true of this history of life? It was inevitable that problems of life should come to the front, and that the study of life from the dynamical standpoint, rather than a statical, should ensue. Modern biology was the child of historical geology.

But historical geology alone could never have led to the dynamical phase of modern biology. Three other conceptions have contributed in an even greater degree to the development of this science.

==Conservation of Energy==.--The first of these was the doctrine of conservation of energy and the correlation of forces. This doctrine is really quite simple, and may be outlined as follows: In the universe, as we know it, there exists a certain amount of energy or power of doing work. This amount of energy can neither be increased nor decreased; energy can no more be created or destroyed than matter. It exists, however, in a variety of forms, which may be either active or pa.s.sive.

In the active state it takes some form of motion. The various forces which we recognize in nature--heat, light, electricity, chemism, etc.--are simply forms of motion, and thus forms of this energy. These various types of energy, being only expressions of the universal energy, are convertible into each other in such a way that when one disappears another appears. A cannon ball flying through the air exhibits energy of motion; but it strikes an obstacle and stops. The motion has apparently stopped, but an examination shows that this is not the case. The cannon ball and the object it strikes have been heated, and thus the motion of the ball has simply been transformed into a different form of motion, which we call heat. Or, again, the heat set free under the locomotive boiler is converted by machinery into the motion of the locomotive. By still different mechanism it may be converted into electric force. All forms of motion are readily convertible into each other, and each form in which energy appears is only a phase of the total energy of nature.

A second condition of energy is energy at rest, or potential energy. A stone on the roof of a house is at rest, but by virtue of its position it has a certain amount of potential energy, since, if dislodged, it will fall to the ground, and thus develop energy of motion. Moreover, it required to raise the stone to the roof the expenditure of an amount of energy exactly equal to that which will reappear if the stone is allowed to fall to the ground. So in a chemical molecule, like fat, there is a store of potential energy which may be made active by simply breaking the molecule to pieces and setting it free. This occurs when the fat burns and the energy is liberated as heat. But it required at some time the expenditure of an equal amount of energy to make the molecule. When the molecule of fat was built in the plant which produced it, there was used in its construction an amount of solar energy exactly equivalent to the energy which may be liberated by breaking the molecule to pieces.

The total sum of the active and potential energy in the universe is thus at all times the same.

This magnificent conception has become the cornerstone of modern science. As soon as conceived it brought at once within its grasp all forms of energy in nature. It is primarily a physical doctrine, and has been developed chiefly in connection with the physical sciences. But it shows at once a possible connection between living and non-living nature. The living organism also exhibits motion and heat, and, if the doctrine of the conservation of energy be true, this energy must be correlated with other forms of energy. Here is a suggestion that the same laws control the living and the non-living world; and a suspicion that if we can find a natural explanation of the burning of a piece of coal and the motion of a locomotive, so, too, we may find a natural explanation of the motion of a living machine.

==Evolution==--A second conception, whose influence upon-the development of biology was even greater, was the doctrine of evolution. It is true that the doctrine of evolution was no new doctrine with the middle of this century, for it had been conceived somewhat vaguely before. But until historical geology had been formulated, and until the idea of the unity of nature had dawned upon the minds of scientists, the doctrine of evolution had little significance. It made little difference in our philosophy whether the living organisms were regarded as independent creations or as descended from each other, so long as they were looked upon as a distinct realm of nature without connection with the rest of nature's activity. If they are distinct from the rest of nature, and therefore require a distinct origin, it makes little difference whether we looked upon that origin as a single originating point or as thousands of independent creations. But so soon as it appeared that the present condition of the earth's crust was formed by the action of forces still in existence, and so soon as it appeared that the forces outside of living forces, including astronomical, physical and chemical forces, are all correlated with each other as parts of the same store of energy, then the problem of the origin of living things a.s.sumed a new meaning.

Living things became then a part of nature, and demanded to be included in the same general category. The reign of law, which was claiming that all nature's phenomena are the result of natural rather than supernatural powers, demanded some explanation of the origin of living things. Consequently, when Darwin pointed out a possible way in which living phenomena could thus be included in the realm of natural law, science was ready and anxious to receive his explanation.

==Cytology.==--A third conception which contributed to the formulation of modern biology was derived from the facts discovered in connection with the organic cell and protoplasm. The significance of these facts we shall notice later, but here we may simply state that these discoveries offered to students simplicity in the place of complexity. The doctrine of cells and protoplasm appeared to offer to biologists no longer the complicated problems which were a.s.sociated with animals and plants, but the same problems stripped of all side issues and reduced to their lowest terms. This simplifying of the problems proved to be an extraordinary stimulus to the students who were trying to find some way of understanding life.

==New Aspects of Biology==.--These three conceptions seized hold of the scientific world at periods not very distant from each other, and their influence upon the study of living nature was immediate and extraordinary. Living things now came to be looked upon not simply as objects to be catalogued, but as objects which had a history, and a history which was of interest not merely in itself, but as a part of a general plan. They were no longer studied as stationary, but as moving phases of nature. Animals were no longer looked upon simply as beings now existing, but as the results of the action of past forces and as the foundation of a different series of beings in the future. The present existing animals and plants came to be regarded simply as a step in the long history of the universe. It appeared at once that the study of the present forms of life would offer us a means of interpreting the past and perhaps predicting the future.

In a short time the entire att.i.tude which the student a.s.sumed toward living phenomena had changed. Biological science a.s.sumed new guises and adopted new methods. Even the problems which it tried to solve were radically changed. Hitherto the attempt had been made to find instances of _purpose_ in nature. The marvellous adaptations of living beings to their conditions had long been felt, and the study of the purposes of these adaptations had inspired many a magnificent conception. But now the scientist lost sight of the purpose in hunting for the _cause._ Natural law is blind and can have no purpose. To the scientist, filled with the thought of the reign of law, purpose could not exist in nature. Only cause and effect appeal to him. The present phenomena are the result of forces acting in the past, and the scientist's search should be not for the purpose of an adaptation, but for the action of the forces which produced it. To discover the forces and laws which led to the development of the present forms of animals and plants, to explain the method by which these forces of nature have acted to bring about present results, these became the objects of scientific research.

It no longer had any meaning to find that a special organ was adapted to its conditions; but it was necessary to find out how it became adapted.

The difference in the att.i.tude of these two points of view is world-wide. The former fixes the attention upon the end, the latter upon the means by which the end was attained; the former is what we sometimes call _teleological_, the latter _scientific;_ the former was the att.i.tude of the study of animals and plants before the middle of this century, the latter the spirit which actuates modern biology.

==The Mechanical Nature of Living Organisms.==--This new att.i.tude forced many new problems to the front. Foremost among them and fundamental to them all were the questions as to the mechanical nature of living organisms. The law of the correlation of force told that the various forms of energy which appear around us--light, heat, electricity, etc.--are all parts of one common store of energy and convertible into each other. The question whether vital energy is in like manner correlated with other forms of energy was now extremely significant.

Living forces had been considered as standing apart from the rest of nature. _Vital force_, or _vitality_, had been thought of as something distinct in itself; and that there was any measurable relation between the powers of the living organism and the forces of heat and chemical affinity was of course unthinkable before the formulation of the doctrine of the correlation of forces. But as soon as that doctrine was understood it began to appear at once that, to a certain extent at least, the living body might be compared to a machine whose function is simply to convert one kind of energy into another. A steam engine is fed with fuel. In that fuel is a store of energy deposited there perhaps centuries ago. The rays of the sun, s.h.i.+ning on the world in earlier ages, were seized upon by the growing plants and stored away in a potential form in the wood which later became coal. This coal is placed in the furnace of the steam engine and is broken to pieces so that it can no longer hold its store of energy, which is at once liberated in its active form as heat. The engine then takes the energy thus liberated, and as a result of its peculiar mechanism converts it into the motion of its great fly-wheel. With this notion clearly in mind the question forces itself to the front whether the same facts are not true of the living animal organism. It, too, is fed with food containing a store of energy; and should we not regard it, like the steam engine, simply a machine for converting this potential energy into motion, heat, or some other active form? This problem of the correlation of vital and physical forces is inevitably forced upon us with the doctrine of the correlation of forces. Plainly, however, such questions were inconceivable before about the middle of the nineteenth century.

This mechanical conception of living activity was carried even farther.

Under the lead of Huxley there arose in the seventh decade of the century a view of life which reduced it to a pure mechanism. The microscope had, at that time, just disclosed the universal presence in living things of that wonderful substance, _protoplasm._ This material appeared to be a h.o.m.ogeneous substance, and a chemical study showed it to be made of chemical elements united in such a way as to show close relation to alb.u.mens. It appeared to be somewhat more complex than ordinary alb.u.men, but it was looked upon as a definite chemical compound, or, perhaps, as a simple mixture of compounds. Chemists had shown that the properties of compounds vary with their composition, and that the more complex the compound the more varied its properties. It was a natural conception, therefore, that protoplasm was a complex chemical compound, and that its vital properties were simply the chemical properties resulting from its composition. Just as water possesses the power of becoming solid at certain temperatures, so protoplasm possesses the power of a.s.similating food and growing; and, since we do not doubt that the properties of water are the result of its chemical composition, so we may also a.s.sume that the vital properties of protoplasm are the result of its chemical composition. It followed from this conclusion that if chemists ever succeeded in manufacturing the chemical compound, protoplasm, it would be alive. Vital phenomena were thus reduced to chemical and mechanical problems.

These ideas arose shortly after the middle of the century, and have dominated the development of biological science up to the present time.

It is evident that the aim of biological study must be to test these conceptions and carry them out into details. The chemical and mechanical laws of nature must be applied to vital phenomena in order to see whether they can furnish a satisfactory explanation of life. Are the laws and forces of chemistry sufficient to explain digestion? Are the laws of electricity applicable to an understanding of nervous phenomena?

Are physical and chemical forces together sufficient to explain life?

Can the animal body be properly regarded as a machine controlled by mechanical laws? Or, on the other hand, are there some phases of life which the forces of chemistry and physics cannot account for? Are there limits to the application of natural law to explain life? Can there be found something connected with living beings which is force but not correlated with the ordinary forms of energy? Is there such a thing as _vital energy_, or is the so-called vital force simply a name which we have given to the peculiar manifestations of ordinary energy as shown in the substance protoplasm? These are some of the questions that modern biology is trying to answer, and it is the existence of such questions which has made modern biology a new science. Such questions not only did not, but could not, have arisen before the doctrines of the conservation of energy and evolution had made their impression upon the thought of the world.

==Significance of the New Biological Problems==--It is further evident that the answers to these questions will have a significance reaching beyond the domain of biology proper and affecting the fundamental philosophy of nature. The answer will determine whether or not we can accept in entirety the doctrines of the conservation of energy and evolution. Plainly if it should be found that the energy of animate nature was not correlated with other forms of energy, this would demand either a rejection or a complete modification of our doctrine of the conservation of energy. If an animal can create any energy within itself, or can destroy any energy, we can no longer regard the amount of energy of the universe as constant. Even if that subtile form of force which we call nervous energy should prove to be uncorrelated with other forms of energy, the idea of the conservation of energy must be changed.

It is even possible that we must insist that the still more subtile form of force, mental force, must be brought within the scope of this great law in order that it be implicitly accepted. This law has proved itself strictly applicable to the inanimate world, and has then thrust upon us the various questions in regard to vital force, and we must recognize that the real significance of this great law must rest upon the possibility of its application to vital phenomena.

No less intimate is the relation of these problems to the doctrine of evolution. Evolution tries to account for each moment in the history of the world as the result of the conditions of the moment before. Such a theory loses its meaning unless it can be shown that natural forces are sufficient to account for living phenomena. If the supernatural must be brought in here and there to account for living phenomena, then evolution ceases to have much meaning. It is undoubtedly a fact that the rapidly developing ideas along the above mentioned lines of dynamical biology have, been potent factors in bringing about the adoption of evolution. Certain it is that, had it been found that no correlation could be traced between vital and non-vital forces, the doctrine of evolution could not have stood, and even now the special significance which we shall in the end give to evolution will depend upon how we succeed in answering the questions above outlined. The fact is that this problem of the mechanical explanation of vital phenomena forms the capstone of the arch, the sides of which are built of the doctrines of the conservation of energy and the theory of evolution. To the presentation of these problems the following pages will be devoted. The fact that both the doctrine of the conservation of energy and that of evolution are practically everywhere accepted indicates that the mechanical nature of vital forces is regarded as proved. But there are still many questions which are not so easily answered. It will be our purpose in the following discussion to ascertain just what are these problems in dynamical biology and how far they have been answered. Our object will be then in brief to discover to what extent the conception of the living organism as a machine is borne out by the facts which have been collected in the last quarter century, and to learn where, if anywhere, limits have been found to our possibility of applying the forces of chemistry and physics to an explanation of life. In other words, we shall try to see how far we have been able to understand living phenomena in terms of natural force.

==Outline of the Subject==.--The subject, as thus presented, resolves itself at once into two parts. That the living organism is a machine is everywhere recognized, although some may still doubt as to the completeness of the comparison. In the attempt to explain the phenomena of life we have two entirely different problems. The first is manifestly to account for the existence of this machine, for such a completed piece of mechanism as a man or a tree cannot be explained as a result of simple accident, as the existence of a rough piece of rock might be explained. Its intricacy of parts and their purposeful interrelation demands explanation, and therefore the fundamental problem is to explain how this machine came into existence. The second problem is simpler, for it is simply to explain the running of the machine after it is made. If the organism is really a machine, we ought to be able to find some way of explaining its actions as we can those of a steam engine.

Of these two problems the first is the more fundamental, for if we fail to find an explanation for the existence of the machine, our explanation of its method of action is only partly satisfactory. But the second question is the simpler, and must be answered first. We cannot hope to explain the more puzzling matter of the origin of the machine unless we can first understand how it acts. In our treatment of the subject, therefore, we shall divide it into two parts:

I. _The Running of the Living Machine_.

II. _The Origin of the Living Machine_.

PART I.

_THE RUNNING OF THE LIVING MACHINE._

CHAPTER I.

IS THE BODY A MACHINE?

The problem before us in this section is to find out to what extent animals and plants are machines. We wish to determine whether the laws and forces which regulate their activities are the same as the laws and forces with which we experiment in the chemical and physical laboratory, and whether the principles of mechanics and the doctrine of the conservation of energy apply equally well in the living machine and the steam engine.