Abstract
EXPERIMENTAL cytology is both more and less than its name seems to say. To understand why, we have to look into its antecedents. It springs largely from the conflict of fifty years agQ between vitalism and mechanism. It derives from the tradition born of this conflict, that the individual processes in the cell were physico-chemical processes and that the cell as a whole, and even the organism as a whole, were to be completely understood by measuring and putting together these individual processes. Inspired by this doctrine, and inspired as well by the missionary zeal of Jacques Loeb, experiments were carried out which achieved their first purpose. They drove vitalism into the philosophical backwoods of biology, and in performing this apparently negative service they laid what should have been the foundations of a new science.
Experimentelle Cytologie
Von Hans H. Pfeiffer. (New Series of Plant Science Books, Vol. 4.) Pp. xii + 244. (Leiden: Chronica Botanica Co.; London: William Dawson and Sons, Ltd., 1940). 7 guilders; 18s.
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DARLINGTON, C. Experimentelle Cytologie. Nature 145, 477–478 (1940). https://doi.org/10.1038/145477a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/145477a0
