Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
and argues a probabilistic theory.
1
Earlier discussion here has
already indicated the similarity between the Darwinian environment
and Bernard's internal environment. Their convergence however
equally concerns their epistemological conceptions. In the same way
that Darwin doubted the objective reality of species, theoretical
models of physiology were, for Bernard, creations of the mind, and
their reality should be considered as subjective. He goes even as far
as doubting the reality of physiological functions. So although nowa-
days it seems extremely surprising to a biologist who does not know
the history of his discipline, the father of the modern theory of evo-
lution did not believe in the reality of the species and the father of
modern physiology did not believe in the reality of physiological
functions! The profound significance of this shared nominalism must
be analysed. It indicates radical anti-essentialism which lets us
understand the living being while renouncing any finalism. Cellular
Darwinism radicalises this Bernard/Darwinian anti-essentialism.
To break, indeed, with the essentialist biology of Aristotle,
Descartes (1596-1650) introduced the idea of the 'Animal Machine'
taking the clock as a metaphor for the organism. La Mettrie then
extended it to the 'Man Machine'.
2
Reducing the living being to a
machine means that the physiological processes follow ordinary
physical and chemical laws, like the rest of nature. Living material,
like inanimate material, is inert in itself. It is the forces that are
each exerted on the parts of a living body
3
that make an organism
move and endow it with vital characteristics. However, Mechanism
1
Darwin does not actually use the terminology of the theory of probability. As
we shall explain in chapter 7, ยง7.3, his explanation of the origin of hereditary vari-
ations was ambiguous. However, it covered what nowadays we call chance variation.
2
Descartes considered man to be made of two substances, the immaterial mind
and the body. The metaphor of the machine only applied to the body. La Mettrie
radicalised this position. For him there is only one material substance. What is
called the mind only arises from the organs of thought functioning, thus producing
the man machine.
3
Or chemical reactions between molecules.
