On the biological significance of the properties of matter: L. J. Henderson's theory of the fitness of the environment

Journal of the History of Biology

Volumn 29, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 155-196

  Fry, Iris ^a  

^a TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY   (Israel)

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EID: 25844469909     PISSN: 00225010     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/BF00571081     Document Type: Article

References (272)

1. L. J. Henderson, The Fitness of the Environment 1913; reprint of 1958 Beacon Paperback edition with an introduction by George WaId, Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1970);
2. L. J. Henderson, idem, The Order of Nature: An Essay (1917; Freeport, N. Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1971).
3. Henderson, Fitness, p. v.
4. "Coincidences so numerous and so remarkable as those which we have met in examining the properties of matter as they are related to life, must be the orderly result of law, or else we shall have to turn them over to final causes and the philosopher" (Fitness, ibid., pp. 275-276; and see p. vii).
5. Fitness, Ibid., p. 282.
6. Fitness, Ibid., pp. 276, 282.
7. L. J. Henderson, "Memories" (unpublished autobiographical manuscript, dictated during 1936-39, located in L. J. Henderson papers in the Baker Library Archives, Harvard Business School, [hereafter, LJH-BLA], and in the Harvard University Archives, [hereafter, LJH-HUA], Cambridge, Mass.), pp. 200-202.
8. In later years Henderson explicitly rejected his former teleological speculations; see Henderson, "Memories", p. 185.
9. Henderson, Fitness, p. 308.
10. See also Henderson, Order, pp. 206-207.
11. H. F. Blum, Time's Arrow and Evolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951; reprint, New York: Harper, 1962), p. 60.
12. See, among other letters, J. T. Merz to Henderson, February 26, 1917; R. F. A. Hoernle to Henderson, February 5, 1915, LJH-HUA.
13. See, for example, H. S. Jennings, "Mechanism and Vitalism," Phil. Rev., 27 (1918), 591;
14. W. M. Bayliss, Principles of General Physiology, 2nd ed. (London: Longmans, Green, 1918), pp. 201, 216.
15. See, for example, J. Barcroft, "Obituary," Nature, 249 (1942), 375;
16. R. M. Ferry, "Obituary," Science, 95 (1942), 317;
17. Dickinson W. Richards, "L. J. Henderson," Physiologist, 1: 3 (1958), 32-37.
18. Blum, Time's Arrow (above, n. 9);
19. J. Parascandola: "L. J. Henderson and the Concept of Organized Systems" (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1968);
20. "Organismic and Holistic Concepts in the Thought of L. J. Henderson," J. Hist. Biol., 4 (1971), 63-113;
21. "Henderson, Lawrence Joseph," Dict. Sci. Biog., 6: 260-262;
22. "L. J. Henderson and the Mutual Dependence of Variables," in Science at Harvard University, ed. C. A. Elliott and M. W. Rossiter (Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 1992), pp. 167-190.
23. J. D. Barrow and F. J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 143-147;
24. J. Gribbin and M. Rees, Cosmic Coincidences (New York: Bantam Books, 1989), p. 270.
25. Henderson, Fitness, p. 278.
26. Henderson, "Memories" (above, n. 6), p. 199.
27. See, Parascandola, "Henderson . . . Variables" (above, n. 13).
28. L. S. Feuer, Einstein and the Generations of Science (New Brunswick, N. J.: Transaction Books, 1982), p. 258.
29. For biographical details, see Parascandola, "Henderson . . . Systems" and "Henderson, Lawrence Joseph" (above, n. 13).
30. See also Henderson, "Memories" (above, n. 6).
31. See R. E. Kohler, "The Enzyme Theory and the Origin of Biochemistry," Isis, 64 (1973), 181-196.
32. In the early 1930s, Henderson initiated the creation of the Society of Fellows. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences, of which he served in the late 1930s as the foreign secretary, establishing extensive relations with scientists abroad.
33. The equation was converted into logarithmic form by the Danish biochemist K. A. Hasselbalch in 1916, and is known as the "Henderson-Hasselbalch equation." It is a standard feature in every biochemistry textbook, and serves as the most useful mathematical device for treating problems related to buffer solutions.
34. L. J. Henderson, Blood: A Study in General Physiology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1928).
35. The organismic trend in biology, which Henderson's work reflected and to which it contributed, belongs to a wider "organismic" intellectual milieu that grew in importance during the first decades of this century. See Parascandola, "Henderson . . . Systems" and "Organismic and Holistic Concepts" (above, n. 13);
36. G. E. Allen, Life Science in the Twentieth Century (New York: Wiley, 1975), pp. 95-103.
37. L. J. Henderson, Pareto's General Sociology: A Physiologist's Interpretation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1935).
38. See Allen, Life Science (above, n. 24), pp. 109-110;
39. C. E. Russett, The Concept of Equilibrium in American Social Thought (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), pp. 117, 142-143.
40. It is not by chance that Henderson's two "heroes" were the great nineteenth-century physiologist Claude Bernard and the eminent physical chemist Willard Gibbs. See L. J. Henderson, "Introduction," in Claude Bernard, An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (New York: Macmillan, 1927; reprint, New York: Dover, 1957), pp. v-xii.;
41. Henderson, Order.
42. Henderson, Fitness, p. 6.
43. L. J. Henderson, "The Theory of Neutrality Regulation in the Organism," Amer. J. Physiol., 21 (1908), 447-448.
44. See, among numerous papers, L. J. Henderson, "A Critical Study of the Process of Acid Excretion," J. Biol. Chem., 9 (1911), 403-424.
45. Henderson, Fitness, pp. vi-vii.
46. In Henderson's Fitness of the Environment, "the biological advantages of carbon and water were stressed for the first time in terms of comparative chemistry"
47. (Carl Sagan, "Life," in New Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th ed. [Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1991], 22: 997).
48. See H. Bergson, Creative Evolution (1911; Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1983), p. 278.
49. L. T. Ireland, "The Chemical Origin and Regulation of Life," Monist, 24 (1914), 102.
50. Henderson, Fitness, p. vii.
51. Fitness, Ibid., p. 275.
52. Fitness, Ibid., p. vii.
53. Henderson, "Memories" (above, n. 6), pp. 180-181 (emphasis added).
54. Henderson, Fitness, p. vii.
55. Henderson, Order, p. 3.
56. Henderson, Fitness, pp. 5-7.
57. Harold Blum, whose ideas on evolution resemble Henderson's in many respects, summarizes his view on the complementary nature of Hendersonian fitness to the Darwinian notion by saying, "Thus, although the details of fitness of the organisms to the environmental seem to result from . . . mutation and natural selection, it must be recognized that restriction to certain channels has played an inexorable role in the general shaping of fitness" (Blum, Time's Arrow [above, n. 9], p. 208).
58. Henderson, Order, pp. 8-9.
59. Henderson, Fitness, p. 4.
60. Henderson, Blood (above, n. 23), pp. 17, 366.
61. See comments on this issue in Blum, Time's Arrow (above, n. 9), pp. 206-207.
62. L. J. Henderson, "Teleology in Cosmic Evolution: A Reply to Professor Warren," J. Phil. Psych. Sci. Method, 13 (1916), 326.
63. Henderson, Fitness, pp. 8-21.
64. Fitness, Ibid., pp. 33-34.
65. Fitness, Ibid., p. 61;
66. R. T. Rood and J. S. Trefil, Are We Alone? (New York: Scribner, 1981).
67. Robert Shapiro and Gerald Feinberg specifically mention Henderson as a representative of this view, which they name the "carbaquist position." Opponents of this position that they are, they confirm its common acceptance among scientists today; see R. Shapiro and G. Feinberg, "Possible Forms of Life in Environments Very Different from the Earth," in Physical Cosmology and Philosophy ed. J. Leslie (New York: Macmillan, 1990), p. 250.
68. R. S. Lillie, "Review of The Fitness of the Environment," Science, 38 (1913), 337.
69. This claim resembles, in a sense, a most common criticism against the concept of natural selection: its presumed tautology. If biological fitness is defined by the criterion of differential survival, it is argued, then the survival of the fittest amounts only to the empty contention of the survival of those who survive. S. J. Gould's line of argument against this accusation is based on the analogy between natural and artificial selection. In a new environment created artificially by the breeder, Gould points out, certain traits are superior a priori; in nature as well, he claims, "certain traits confer fitness by an engineer's criterion of good design, not by the empirical fact of their survival and spread" (S. J. Gould, Ever Since Darwin [New York: Nortion, 1977], p. 42.
70. Henderson, Order, p. 181.
71. Order, Ibid., p. 5.
72. C. F. A. Pantin, The Relations between the Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), p. 133.
73. The Relations between the Sciences Ibid., p. 64.
74. Henderson, Fitness, pp. 51-55.
75. In most of his discussions, Henderson is using the term "atmosphere" for both of these parts.
76. Henderson, Fitness, p. 56.
77. Fitness, Ibid., pp. 62-63.
78. See, Lillie, "Review" (above, n. 52), p. 339. Henderson excused himself for this omission either on the basis of methodological reasons - the need for economy - or by claiming that "nitrogen is, in fact, very much less involved in organic activities . . . and is chemically always secondary to hydrogen, carbon and oxygen" (Henderson to E. B. Titchener, April 13, 1918, LJH-BLA).
79. J. S. Levine, ed., The Photochemistry of Atmospheres (New York: Academic Press, 1985);
80. B. Murray, M. C. Malin, and R. Greeley, Earthlike Planets (San Francisco: Freeman, 1981);
81. C. F. Chyba, "Impact Delivery and Erosion and Planetary Oceans in the Early Inner Solar System," Nature, 343 (1990), 129-133.
82. S. W. Fox and K. Dose, Molecular Evolution and the Origin of Life (San Francisco: Freeman, 1972), p. 30.
83. Henderson, Fitness, pp. 31-32.
84. The concept of complexity is perceived intuitively as referring to both structure and function, but it does not get any clear definition. Henderson accepted the general spirit of Spencer's "law of evolution" (though critical of the term "law" and of Spencer's generalizations), according to which every evolutionary change is characterized by the passage from homogeneity to heterogeneity, and every increase in structural complexity involves a corresponding increase in functional complexity. See Henderson, Order, pp. 122-123.
85. Henderson, Fitness, p. 31.
86. Fitness, Ibid., pp. 32-33.
87. It is not by chance that Claude Bernard's theory of the constancy of the milieu intérieur is an important feature in Henderson's analysis of the organism. Claude Bernard, more than anyone else, symbolized for Henderson the true spirit of biology: see Henderson, "Introduction" (above, n. 27). Bernard perceived physiology to rest on the physicochemical sciences, but at the same time, he proposed a theory of the organism as an integrated activity, thus foreshadowing the organismic philosophy of biology of the following century.
88. See Claude Bernard, Leçons sur les phénomènes de la vie commune aux animaux et aux végétaux (Paris, 1878), I, 50,
89. quoted in Henderson, "Introduction," p. vii;
90. J. Goodfield, "Changing Strategies: A Comparison of Reductionist Attitudes in Biological and Medical Research in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries," in Studies in the Philosophy of Biology, ed. F. J. Ayala and T. Dobzhansky (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), p. 81.
91. Henderson, Fitness, p. 24.
92. Fitness, Ibid., pp. 27-28. Evidently, the fact that living systems could be analyzed using the principles of thermodynamics was another factor in the dissolution of the barrier between inanimate matter and organisms, and hence in the physicochemical evaluation of life.
93. See François Jacob, The Logic of Life (New York: Pantheon, 1986), p. 194
94. Freeman Dyson's discussion of the question, Why is life so complicated? may serve as an interesting analogy to Henderson's analysis of the interdependence among the different characteristics of life. By complexity, Dyson means the number of different molecules that a living system contains, an example being the few thousand molecular species included in each variety of bacteria. The reason for this huge number, according to Dyson, is the need to "metabolize efficiently," in order to maintain homeostasis; see F. Dyson, Origins of Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 61.
95. Henderson, Fitness, pp. 34, 29.
96. For a thorough discussion of this subject, see P. J. Bowler, The Eclipse of Darwinism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983).
97. Henderson, Fitness, p. 34.
98. See H. Kamminga, "The Protoplasm and the Gene," in Clay Minerals and the Origin of Life, ed. A. G. Cairns-Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 1.
99. Henderson, "Memories" (above, n. 6), pp. 296-297.
100. In the "Memories," Henderson quoted Jacques Loeb, who commented that "Henderson has discovered the fact that rivers flow through great cities" (Memories ibid., p. 207). Clearly, Loeb is implying that since Henderson speaks on organisms as we know them, it is not surprising that the actual environment is the fittest; other environments would have produced other forms of life.
101. Henderson, "Teleology" (above, n. 47), p. 327.
102. L. J. Henderson, "La finalité du milieu cosmique," Bull. Soc. Franç. Phil., 16 (1921), 29.
103. Henderson, Order, pp. 133-134.
104. Order, Ibid., pp. 155-179.
105. I. S. Shklovskii and C. Sagan, Intelligent Life in the Universe (New York: Delta Books, 1968), p. 183.
106. I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason trans. N. Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin's, 1965), B756, p. 586 (emphasis added).
107. J. S. Wicken, Evolution, Thermodynamics, and Information; Extending the Darwarinian Program (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 29.
108. Henderson, Fitness, pp. 65-67.
109. Fitness, Ibid., pp. 70-71 (emphasis added).
110. See Bayliss, Principles (above, n. 11), pp. 226-245.
111. For a current discussion of the prevalence of water and its unique properties, see L. Pauling, General Chemistry (San Francisco: Freeman, 1959), p. 315.
112. See also Lubert Stryer, Biochemistry, 3rd ed. (San Francisco: Freeman, 1988), pp. 9-10.
113. William Bayliss' Principles of General Physiology, one of the most popular physiology textbooks at the beginning of the century, is heavily indebted to Henderson's data and general fitness argument;
114. see Bayliss, Principles, p. 226.
115. Through Bayliss's book, Henderson's fitness work became known to many other physiologists: Henderson, "Memories" (above, n. 6), pp. 136, 252.
116. Henderson, Fitness, pp. 80-109.
117. Fitness, Ibid., pp. 109-110.
118. Fitness, Ibid., pp. 110-131.
119. Fitness, Ibid., pp. 130-131.
120. Fitness, Ibid., pp. 125-126.
121. Blum, Time's Arrow (above, n. 9), p. 74 n. 5.
122. Henderson, Fitness, p. 133.
123. Henderson, Fitness, pp. 133-140.
124. Fitness, Ibid., pp. 140-152;
125. L. J. Henderson, "The Regulation of Neutrality in the Animal Body," Science, 37 (1913), 389-395.
126. For a more sophisticated treatment of the behavior of carbon dioxide, see Pauling, General Chemistry (above, n. 87), p. 455;
127. A. L. Lehninger, Biochemistry (New York: Worth 1970), p. 50.
128. See, for example, Henderson, Order, p. 181.
129. Henderson, Fitness, p. 276.
130. Fitness, Ibid., pp. 277-278.
131. Fitness, Ibid., pp. 192-195.
132. Fitness, Ibid., pp. 209-210.
133. E. Frieden, "The Chemical Elements of Life," in Conditions for Life, ed. A. Gibor (San Francisco: Freeman, 1976), p. 11.
134. Henderson, Order, p. 173. In fact, it is sometimes argued today that carbon compounds were selected for their role in the organism despite the fact that energy must be expended to reduce inorganic carbon to glucose. However, the cooperative nature of environmental fitness, emphasized by Henderson, should not be ignored, and the energy-requiring reduction of carbon dioxide to glucose should not be treated as an isolated system: this process is made possible, first and foremost, by the availability and potency of solar energy, and in addition, by the thermal properties of water.
135. Henderson, Fitness, pp. 264-266.
136. See, for example, R. M. Lemmon and W. R. Erwin, "High-Energy Reactions of Carbon," in Gibor, Conditions for Life (above, n. 104), p. 58.
137. Only below -200°C can silicon form long-chain molecules, and in this temperature range the rate of chemical reactions is very small. Recently there has been a reconsideration of the possibility of chemical reactivity at extremely low temperatures. However, these mechanisms are suggested as additional factors in carbon chemistry under special conditions; see V. I. Goldanskii, "Interstellar Grains as Possible Cold Seeds of Life," Nature, 269 (1977), 583-584.
138. Rood and Trefil, Are We Alone? (above, n. 50), pp. 112-114.
139. See, for example, J. D. Bernal, The Origin of Life (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1967), p. 143;
140. Fox and Dose, Molecular Evolution (above, n. 64), p. 339;
141. W. Sullivan, We Are Not Alone (New York: Penguin Books, 1970), p. 118. Carl Sagan does consider other candidates, but he also stresses the need for an excellent solvent with a large temperature range between its freezing and boiling points, whose temperature should be very difficult to change. Water, thus, seems to be the optimal medium;
142. see Sagan, "Life" (above, n. 32), p. 996.
143. Barrow and Tipler, Anthropic Cosmological Principle (above, n. 14), pp. 551-552.
144. Henderson, Fitness, p. 248.
145. Fitness, Ibid., p. 273.
146. Lillie, "Review" (above, n. 52), p. 340.
147. See also Bayliss, Principles (above, n. 11), p. 226.
148. For an appreciative evaluation of Henderson's results, see Charles Sherrington, Man on His Nature (1940; reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), p. 80.
149. For a recent reference to Henderson's data on the fitness of water for life, see C. Sagan, W. R. Thompson, R. Carlson, D. Gurnett, and C. Hord, "A Search for Life on Earth from the Galileo Spacecraft," Nature, 365 (1993), 716.
150. Henderson, Fitness, p. 274. Henderson has no doubt that adaptation is the result of the mechanism of natural selection.
151. Fitness, Ibid., p. 277.
152. Fitness, Ibid., pp. 278, 280-281.
153. Fitness, Ibid., p. 285.
154. Henderson, Order, p. 190;
155. Fitness, p. 278.
156. In his remarks on Henderson's fitness work, during one of the meetings of the Josiah Royce seminar in 1913, Royce comments on this issue: "Here was a preparation for life long before life came" (G. Smith ed., Josiah Royce's Seminar, 1913-1914: As Recorded in the Notebooks of Harry T. Costello [New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1963], p. 24).
157. George Wald, "Introduction," in Henderson, Fitness, p. xix.
158. On several occasions, Henderson referred to the fact that while the descriptive parts of his fitness research exerted quite an influence on physiologists, that was not the case with the general fitness conclusion, which he felt to be "the most interesting result I have reached in my own work" ("Memories" [above, n. 6], p. 197). The difficulty, Henderson speculates, has to do with the fact that the fitness subject "does not fit into any of the current research in any department of biology" (Henderson to R. H. Wheeler, November 16, 1934, LJH-BLA).
159. Henderson, Fitness, p. 300 (emphasis added).
160. L. J. Henderson, "The Functions of an Environment," Science, 39 (1914), 525.
161. Henderson, Fitness, p. 310 n. 1.
162. Lillie, "Review" (above, n. 52), p. 341.
163. Not surprisingly, Jacques Loeb did not see any problem in the mechanistic production of life from inorganic matter. On the basis of his successful research on artificial parthenogenesis he claimed that "nothing indicates . . . at present that the artificial production of living matter is beyond the possibilities of science" (J. Loeb, The Mechanistic Conception of Life [1912; reprint Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964], p. 7).
164. Troland, "Chemical Origin" (above, n. 34), pp. 92-133.
165. Smith, Josiah Royce's Seminar (above, n. 119), p. 90.
166. Henderson, Fitness, pp. 278-279.
167. See Troland, "Chemical Origin" (above, n. 34), p. 102.
168. Troland claimed that the vast amount of time available for evolution could allow for this improbable event to occur; see Chemical Origin ibid., p. 104.
169. Henderson, Fitness, pp. 309-310.
170. On another occasion Henderson remarked that "some chemists would still prefer the first chapter of Genesis to the mechanist's guesses upon the subject" (L. J. Henderson, "Review of J. S. Haldane's Mechanism, Life and Personality," Science, 42 [1915], 378).
171. See H. Kamminga, "The Origin of Life on Earth: Theory, History and Method," Uroborus, 1 (1991), 101, 103.
172. See John Farley, The Spontaneous Generation Controversy from Descartes to Oparin (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), pp. 72-73;
173. G. L. Geison, "The Protoplasmic Theory of Life and the Vitalist-Mechanist Debate," Isis, 60 (1969), 273-292.
174. Farley, Spontaneous Generation, pp. 72-73.
175. The Bathybius, which was supposed to cover the sea bottom with a layer of protoplasmic Urschleim, was later discovered to be a chemical artifact.
176. See Kamminga, "Origin of Life" (above, n. 131), p. 103.
177. H. J. Muller, "The Gene Material as the Initiator and the Organizing Basis of Life," Amer. Nat., 100 (1966), 494 (emphasis added).
178. Henderson, "Finalité" (above, n. 79), pp. 15-16 (translation mine).
179. H. Kamminga: "Life from Space - A History of Panspermia," Vistas Astron., 26 (1982), 67-86;
180. "Origin of Life" (above, n. 131), p. 100.
181. It is not surprising that Henderson considered panspermia as a legitimate scientific idea; see Fitness, pp. 50, 280.
182. See Jennings, "Mechanism and Vitalism" (above, n. 11), p. 589;
183. Lillie, "Review" (above, n. 52).
184. Henderson, Fitness, p. 305.
185. See L. J. Henderson, "Mechanism, from the Standpoint of Physical Science," Phil. Rev., 27 (1918), 573.
186. Henderson, Fitness, pp. 293-298. According to Bergson, with a different chemical substratum, under different physical conditions, the original impetus, which would still be one and the same, would produce a different evolutionary course;
187. see Bergson, Creative Evolution (above, n. 33), p. 257.
188. The five were L. J. Henderson, the zoologist H. S. Jennings of Johns Hopkins, the psychologist Howard C. Warren of Princeton, the philosopher and psychologist Walter T. Marvin of Rutgers, and the philosopher R. F. A. Hoernle of Harvard.
189. All five papers and the "Basis of Reference" were published in the November 1918 issue of the Philosophical Review, in preparation for the Association meeting that was held in December 1918 at Harvard University.
190. "Basis of Reference in Discussion on Mechanism and Vitalism," Phil. Rev. 27 (1918), 672-673. This last vague formulation stems probably from the main dividing line in the Basis group, which is clearly the question whether all natural phenomena can be explained using only the traditional categories of physics and chemistry: along this line, Warren represents the reductionistic angle and Hoernle the "autonomist" one, while Henderson, Jennings, and Marvin uphold the middle position.
191. W. T. Marvin, "Mechanism versus Vitalism as a Philosophical Issue," Phil. Rev., 27 (1918), 617-620. A hotly debated issue at the time, which is dealt with by most participants, is the question of free will versus determinism. Henderson chose as an appendix to The Order of Nature, Clerk Maxwell's essay "On Determinism and Free Will", while Jacques Loeb's initiation into his "mechanistic conception of life" was his preoccupation with the question of free will;
192. see Donald Fleming, "Introduction," in Leob, Mechanistic Conception (above, n. 126), p. xii.
193. H. C. Warren, "Mechanism versus Vitalism in the Domain of Psychology," Phil. Rev., 27 (1918), 611;
194. R. F. A Hoernle, "Mechanism and Vitalism," Phil. Rev., ibid., p. 643.
195. This should be kept in mind in light of Henderson's version of physical teleology, developed mainly in The Order of Nature in order to offer some solution to the problem of fitness.
196. Hoernle, "Mechanism and Vitalism" (above, n. 148), pp. 638, 636.
197. Warren, "Mechanism versus Vitalism" (above, n. 148), p. 613.
198. Jennings, "Mechanism and Vitalism" (above, n. 138), p. 577;
199. Marvin, "Mechanism versus Vitalism" (above, n. 147), pp. 623-624.
200. Henderson, Fitness, p. 285.
201. A similar view is expressed by Marvin: see Marvin, "Mechanism versus Vitalism," p. 616.
202. Hilde Hein describes Bernard's "agnostic" dismissal of any discussion of a "vital principle" on the ground that "first causes" forever escape us in science; see H. Hein, "The Endurance of the Mechanism - Vitalism Controversy," J. Hist. Biol., 5 (1972), 167.
203. Henderson, Fitness, p. 287.
204. Fitness, Ibid., p. 29 n. 3.
205. See Jennings, "Mechanism and Vitalism" (above, n. 138), p. 580.
206. Henderson, "Mechanism" (above, n. 142), p. 575.
207. Mechanism Ibid., p. 576.
208. Henderson is referring here to Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, where the possibility is raised of the "old Epicurean hypothesis" according to which "the continual motion of matter . . . must produce this economy or order, and by its very nature, that order, when once established, supports itself (David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [1779; reprint, New York: Hafner, 1966], p. 53).
209. See, for example, Jennings's discussion of the durability of systems, and his claim that if we treat systems of all kinds with the aid of the concept of equilibrium, "there is no logical break" when we pass from the inorganic to the organic realm: Jennings, "Mechanism and Vitalism" (above, n. 138), p. 583.
210. On many other occasions Henderson mentions diverse applications in science of Hume's principle of the tendency toward dynamic equilibrium: Newton's dynamics in physics, Gibbs's Phase Rule, Le Chateliers's theorem in physical chemistry, Darwin's natural selection, and Vilfredo Pareto's social system; see, for example, Henderson, Order, pp. 137-138.
211. See, for example, Lillie, "Review" (above, n. 52), p. 340.
212. See Emile Meyerson, Identity and Reality [1908] (London: Allen and Unwin, 1930), pp. 312-313. It is only in the last decades that a new branch of thermodynamics has been developed, which treats biological systems as remote-from-equilibrium systems, and thus enables a more accurate discrimination between biological organization and physciochemical systems in equilibrium.
213. See Wicken, Evolution (above, n. 84).
214. For one example among many, see Henderson, Order, p. 115.
215. Henderson, "Mechanism" (above, n. 142), p. 576.
216. Henderson to Tichener, April 13, 1918, LJH-BLA.
217. Henderson, Order, p. 204 n. 1.
218. P. J. Bowler, Evolution, The History of an Idea (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), p. 246.
219. See also V. L. Kellogg, Darwinism Today (New York: Henry Holt, 1907), pp. 1-7.
220. Henderson, Fitness, pp. 290, 275 n. 1.
221. Vernon Kellogg describes "the origin, the causes, and the primary control of these congenital variations" as one of the chief problems in biology (Kellogg, Darwinism Today, p. 30).
222. Henderson, Order, p. 88.
223. Henderson's use of the term "trapped" is probably based on William James 's notion learned from Josiah Royce: see Smith, Josiah Royce' Seminar (above, n. 119), p. 23.
224. Josiah Royce' Seminar Ibid., p. 89.
225. Henderson, Fitness, p. 280.
226. Henderson's anthropic ideas are associated with the existence of life in general, and not with intelligence or the ability to observe. It is in this sense that I use the term "anthropic" here.
227. This notion is accepted as factual by many physicists. See, for example, Leslie, Physical Cosmology (above, n. 51);
228. George Gale, "The Anthropic Principle," Sci. Amer., 245: 6 (1981), 154-171;
229. B. J. Carr and M. J. Rees, "The Antropic Principle and the Structure of the Physical World," Nature, 278 (1979), 605-612;
230. M. Livio and A. Kopelman, "Life and the Sun's Lifetime," Nature, 343 (1990), 25-34. The facts usually mentioned in this context are, among many, the strength of gravity and the strong and weak forces, the mass and charge of the electron and the proton, and, in particular, the exact energy levels of the nuclei of carbon and beryllium atoms, which enable the synthesis and existence of significant quantities of carbon and oxygen in the universe.
231. Gribbin and Rees point out that the argument is not affected if there are other forms of life that do not depend on carbon chemistry: "But we are a carbon-based life form and therefore it is no surprise to find that we see a Universe 15 billion light-years across" (Cosmic Coincidences [above, n. 14], pp. 13-14).
232. See, for example, R. Swinburne, "Argument from the Fine-Tuning of the Universe," in Leslie, Physical Cosmology (above, n. 51), pp. 154-173.
233. Barrow and Tipler, Anthropic Cosmological Principle (above, n. 14), p. 143.
234. L. J. Henderson, "The Locus of Teleology in a Mechanistic Universe," J. Phil. Psych. Sci. Methods, 17 (1920), 434.
235. L. J. Henderson, The Locus of Teleology in a Mechanistic Universe, J. Phil. Psych. Sci. Methods, 1920), 17 ( 434. Ibid.
236. This is clearly the case in The Fitness of the Environment, though less so in The Order of Nature.
237. Henderson, "Finalité" (above, n. 79), p. 29;
238. Henderson, Order, p. 210.
239. Henderson, Fitness, p. 281.
240. Several hypotheses on the origin of life based on the concept of chemical evolution were raised at the end of last century and the beginning of this one. However, these hypotheses were still founded on the protoplasmic theory, and thus did not face the difficult question of the evolution of biological complexity. In addition, hypotheses based on the new concept of the gene that were raised at the beginning of the century (I have mentioned Troland's theory) relied on a highly improbable, lucky accident as the starting point of the process. See Kamminga, "Protoplasm" (above, n. 75);
241. H. Kamminga, "Historical Perspectives: The Problem of the Origin of Life in the Context of Developments in Biology," Orig. Life, 18 (1986), 1-11.
242. The term "deterministic" applies mainly to the phase of the emergence of life and has to be relaxed in later evolutionary stages. See C. De Duve, Blueprint for a Cell (Burlington, N. C.: Neil Patterson, 1991), pp. 211-217;
243. S. J. Gould, Wonderful Life (New York: Norton, 1989), p. 289. Determinism (as used here), which results from the strong control exerted by physical and chemical constraints on the processes of chemical and prebiotic evolution, stands in contrast to statistical randomness.
244. I have already commented on Harold Blum's interpretation of Henderson's fitness theory as a study of the physical factors that place restrictions on the channels within which living systems might evolve, factors that "gave some degree of direction to all subsequent evolution" (Blum, Time's Arrow [above, n. 9], p. 208).
245. See I. Fry, "Are the Different Hypotheses on the Emergence of Life as Different as They Seem?" Biol. Phil., 10 (1995), 389-417.
246. See R. Morris, The Edges of Science (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1990), p. 213.
247. See J. Leslie, "Modern Cosmology and the Creation of Life," in Evolution and Creation, ed. E. McMullin (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985), pp. 110-118;
248. F. Hoyle and C. Wickiamasinghe, Evolution from Space (London: Dent, 1981), pp. 140-141.
249. G. Gale, "Some Metaphysical Perplexities in Contemporary Physics," Internat. Phil. Quart., 26 (1986), 394;
250. Gribbin and Rees, Cosmic Coincidences (above, n. 14), p. 287.
251. A. Linde, "The Universe: Inflation out of Chaos," New Scientist, 105 (1985), 14-18;
252. P. Davies, "What Are the Laws of Nature?" in Doing Science, ed. John Brockman (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1991), pp. 61-62.
253. See, for example, J. Gribbin, Genesis: The Origin of Man and the Universe (New York: Delacorte Press, 1981), pp. 307, 310.
254. Gribbin and Rees, Cosmic Coincidences (above, n. 14), pp. 270-271.
255. Morris, Edges of Science (above, n. 186), p. 219.
256. See Davies, "Laws of Nature" (above, n. 189), p. 62.
257. See Henderson to Rev. B. O'Toole, January 22, 1920; Henderson to Bishop F. D. Leete, March 8, 1933, LJH-BLA.
258. Henderson, "Memories" (above, n. 6), pp. 200-202.
259. Henderson, Fitness, pp. 305-306.
260. Fitness, Ibid., p. 306.
261. Fitness, Ibid., p. 308 (emphasis added).
262. Fitness, Ibid., pp. 305, 311.
263. Fitness, Ibid., p. 305.
264. Henderson, on the one hand, concurred with the orthogenetic emphasis on a "nonrandom principle" operating in evolution. On the other hand, he denied the orthogenetic claim that on the basis of morphological traits one can postulate a straight-line evolutionary process, and suggested a mechanism (maybe a change in a hormone, or the production of a new chemical compound in embryonic development), which might explain the linearity of the change of some traits. See L. J. Henderson, "Orthogenesis from the Standpoint of the Biochemist," Amer. Nat., 56 (1922), 97-104.
265. Bowler, Eclipse of Darwinism (above, n. 167), p. 204.
266. See C. L. Morgan, "A Concept of the Organism, Emergent and Resultant," Proc. Aristot. Soc., 27 (1926-27), 141-176;
267. J. Needham, Order and Life (Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press, 1936), p. 166 n. 91.
268. See A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: Free Press, 1929), pp. 91-92.
269. See Henderson, "Memories" (above, n. 6), pp. 153-154.
270. See R. F. A. Hoemle to Henderson, 1915, LJH-HUA.
271. Bernard Bosanquet, "The Meaning of Teleology," Proc. Brit. Acad., 2 (1906), 236.
272. A few years after he wrote The Order of Nature, Henderson came to regard his philosophical speculations as totally irrelevant and meaningless, though he was still convinced that his work on the fitness problem was "the most significant contribution I have made" (Henderson, "Memories," p. 185; Henderson to J. F. Fulton, October 14, 1930, LJH-BLA).