BIOLOGY. The study or science of living
organisms, and the phenomena of life. Its field
is the whole breadth of the organic world, and
it seeks to mark the boundaries which separate
living from inorganic nature,— to discover the
principles that unify it, the processes by which
living things have developed, the nature of life
itself and the future in store for it. Biology, then, is the sum of all the special departments of study which deal with plants, animals and man in his animal relations, such as botany, zoology, anthropology, and their subordinate or associated sciences; that is, bacteriology, microscopy, physiology and many more. In his outreaching toward the causes and principles underlying its phenomena, the philosophical biologist must therefore understand organic chemistry, and the laws of electricity, light, heat, and mechanics, as they relate to animal needs; and at the other extreme he must consider psychology as an integral part of his domain.
This array of responsibilities and of objects
for investigation seems too formidable for any
one mind to undertake or a lifetime to encompass, and it would be were not the realm of living nature capable of resolution into simple elements; unified in its fundamental structure; and controlled in its developmental growth by definite “laws of being,” which have come more and more clearly into view as knowledge of details has increased. The classification and co-ordination of the enormous mass of facts incessantly poured into his laboratory and library by experimenters and observers, to illuminate the truth by some generalization, or to exhibit a plan, law, type of structure or growth, is the high purpose of the thoughtful biologist; and the greatest names in the science,—Aristotle, Leibnitz. Harvey, Malpighi, Linné, Buffon, Lamarck, Treviranus (who in 1802 first used the term biology), Cuvier, Galvani, Goethe, Lyell, Von Baer, Owen, De Blainville, Leuckart, Agassiz, Darwin, Wallace, Kowalensky, Müller, Haeekel, Marsh, Cope, Hyatt, Weismann and many others,— have been those of men who had these large aims in view, and have contributed toward a solution of the great problem of life. The living world may be pictured as an enormous bundle of tangled and interlaced cords of phenomena, which, moreover, are never quite stationary and fixed, but are always slowly, invisibly, altering and forming new entanglements. Every naturalist is at work upon some part of this bundle, endeavoring to extricate his particular part. In more cases he pays so little attention to anything else, and is so fascinated with the beauty of his single strand, that he draws but little out. In other cases men of larger view or more serious purpose, or societies of them co-operating, disentangle more. The great biologist is he who can perceive those who have found a clue, and is able to teach them and the others how still more surely to unravel the intricate threads of phenomena that entwine and conceal the great fact of life at the centre of the puzzle.
To drop the figure, the science of biology
in its more restricted and ordinary meaning
is the co-ordination of the observed facts and
manifestations of the organic world into laws, and the discovery of the principle from which all proceed; that is, its object is to find an answer to the ever-present question of
What it Life? To this end goes on
the incessant collection of facts in natural
history, and it goes on joyously because any
moment the biologist may come upon some
fact or suggestion which shall contribute to
the grand result.
Progress has been made. The study at first
was nothing but a miscellaneous gathering of
specimens and records of observations. Then
a crude sorting out began. Men at first failed
to distinguish between what was animate and
what was inert. The winds, the lightning, volcanoes, springs were things of life. Later the broad distinction of organic from inorganic was perceived, but even now it is not known whether some of the manifestations of movement and response in certain “slimes” are purely chemical, or due to the presence of actual life.