Abstract
IN staging joint discussions upon various subjects of general interest, the British Association performs one of the most useful of its public functions. Scientific workers of different schools and training meet, as they seldom do, to focus their peculiar outlooks upon a particular problem; the public benefits by hearing at first hand the latest developments of scientific thought or discovery, and can scarcely but be impressed by divergences of opinion which suggest that science, still in process of development, abhors dogma and finality. The discussion on “The Nature of Life”, held at Cape Town on July 25, was more than usually interesting, since it indicated a swing of the pendulum towards the vitalistic view of the nature of life. According to the Cape Town correspondent of the Times, General J. C. Smuts, in opening the discussion, developed his theory of holism, which he regards as avoiding the difficulties of both the vitalistic and mechanistic theories. Life is neither a substance nor a force; it is a structure, a new emergent structure based on pre-existent physical structures. Evolution from the most primordial forms of matter to the highest forms of mind is a continuous process, and this process is characterised at one end by physical structures with a minimum of functional structure, and at the other end by functional structures with a minimum of physical structure, and in between by a transition area of combined physical and functional structures. The first is called matter, the second mind, and the area of mixed structures, life.
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News and Views. Nature 124, 205–208 (1929). https://doi.org/10.1038/124205a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/124205a0