. .. ' ~ ; ·, .. ~ .. , ~ i l . - COLLEGL~N COLLEGI!1N COLLEGI!•. N COLLEGIAN C 0 LLEG I ~~.N COLL.SGL~N CGLLEGL~.N COLL~GL~N r-, CGLLEGL~N ~::::~> C 0 LL2G I.:~N (/, ~-,--~'----' '----:-:''\) !/'____~ . / \ L~ ~~~\; ~/ ~~-c;i S o~ ~ ~\\~~~~~ :. · i · ;. C 0 LLEG L~N \) COLLEGL).N COLL~GL .. N CCLLEGijN CCLLEGL... N .. ' .i COLLlGL... N C0 Ll.EG r..·,,N CCLLEGL.. N COLLEG L~.N CC LLEG LJ~,J C 0 Lli~G Li.N COLLEGL~N ;, ;_;. I C GLIE:GL~N CGLLC::GL ... N C 0 LLEG I .i.N 1 • • ; COLLZGL ... N .~1 , . r : : r ! COLLEGI~',.N ·. ; : 1!, r •• \''1;;1 ''t_·t·. COLL.C:GL.. N COLLSGL~N l I.__.....,.._.--- • , ,. THE ST~ JOHN'S COLLEGIAN April, 1960 Contents A REPORT ON THE BIOLOGY STUDY GROUP Victor Zuckerkandl THE PAMPHLETS Michael Elias A SEQUENT TOIL OF SONNETS Charles G. Bell MENO REVISITED Ray Davis OVERTURE TO A PLAY Theodore Stinchecum JOHANNA AND THE ELDERS Theodore Stinchecum TWO POEMS Eyvind Ronquist TWO POEMS N oel Meriam REPORT OF A MEMBER OF THE 1958/59 FACULTY STUDY GROUP Presented to the Faculty Seminar, Oct. 31, 1959 Victor Zuckerkandl In the following notes I have tried to sum up what I have learned in the course of the Study Group's work - not so much of biology proper as from biology in reference to the more general problems which concern us as tutors at St. John's. Three areas of study are considered. I, The Cell; II, Development and Maintenance of Organisms; III, Evolution. ; " I, The Cell. - Here a great surprise comes very soon, a kind of ontological shock, if one may say so. One knows of course that the cell is the unit of life, that this unit is not ultimate but is itse lf a complex system producing the energy which the organism requires for its various functions and tasks. What I for one did not know is the way in which this is being done, as it is revealed in the more recent biochemical work. The conventional model of such a heating plant - a furnace into which goes some fuel and which qy burning the fuel produces heat - is completely inadequate to represent what goes on in the cell. This furnace produces heat by burning itself up and in the process building itself up again. Furnace and fuel are not clearly set apart, structure and function cannot be . ~ . ~ . cleanly separated, the c e ll exists as a balance of two opposite processes, destruction and construction going on simultaneously. The concept which tries to do justice to this sta te of a ff a irs is tha t of steady state or flow equilibrium - a balance produced neithe r by absence of action nor by nullifica tion of action as the r esult of two equal but opposite forces, but by opposite processes actually going on at the same time a nd compensating one a nother. It is h ere that the ontologica l problems arise: Wha t is the meaning of the word ._: '. • . J. ··- . 'is' in the statement ' the c ell is'; can we t a lk of 'being' when everything is affected by change or process; what is the subject­ predica te r e lation in the sentence, 'the c e ll functions' - could it not as we ll r ead 'the function cells'? Where is the e lement of ... .: - ·~ ~ ~: o{·.\ permanency h e re, the consta nt f ac tor, the residue of unchanging substanc e without wh ich one finds it difficult to conceive of the being of a thing, even to conceive a thing - wha t is the concept of thing if it is to apply to s omething of this nature? Certainly after this Leibniz' idea that a thing in motion is destroyed in every instance and recrea t ed in the same inst a nce d oes not a ppear as fant a stica lly speculative as it did before. II , Developmen t and Mainte nanc e of Organism. - It is here that one comes face to f ace with the grea t issues tha t were and a re hotly debated by biologists a nd nonbiologists and which for the s a ke of convenience a re still frequently referred to by the obsolete terms of mechanism a nd vitalism. These are the phenomena which more than any othe r baffle the observer1 wh o approa ches them in the ordinary - 2 ~ framework of the physica l sci ences; phenomen a wh ich cannot e v e n be t a lke d -about without usi ng words like purpo se, intention, direction, plan, r egulation - words which the conceptual framework of science c annot absorb and wh i ch have no pl ace i n its explan a tion pattern. To mention just a few of these phenomena; the growth of the mushroom ••• the growth of a gourd ••• allometric growth . .. the healing of a wound ••• the fla tworm, the hydra, and the nematocystoo.behavior of c e ll colonies (slime mo lds).coendogenous rhythms and biological clocks. The a rgume nt of course t urns on t he sense in which those words - purpose, intention, e tc . - a r e used: i nnocently, in a metaphorical s ense, as r het orical device , as provisional terms ultimately to be replaced by concepts tha t do fit the framework of physics a nd chemistry; or are they s upposed to i ndica te the actua l presenc e in biologica l phenomena of a fact or which is ul timately irreducible to the concepts a nd explanation patterns of the physica l sciences. Two things eme rge r a the r clearly f rom t he rea ding of books by authors on both sides of the controve r sy" One, the introduction of non-·physicochemical conce pts like intenti onality 5 purposi veness, direc tiveness is of no h e lp whatever i f it is not a t the same t i me either demonstrated or indic a ted how , by wh at st eps, these non-physicochemical agents do achieve their physicochemica l r esults _ Nowhere is this the case. If I state that by virtue of the qual ity of di rectiven e ss the events at one end of a long cell a re determined by the ac tion of the nucLe us at the othe r end, mil es away, comparatively speaking, and nothing furthe r is said about the communication hetween the two e nds, I h a v e t agg ed the problem and axpl ained nothing r On the other hand, many of those who want to k eep clear of extra-physicochemica l concepts still rea lize tha t these probl ems call for something more t han the typica l approach. To quot e from J. T o Bonner, Morphogenesis: "O f a ll the 1 qualities that are 'living , there are none which seem quite s o unexplainabl e, so mystifying yet so charac t eristic as r e gula tion 1 for so many processes, such as growth, a r e psrfectly regulated; ••• If we knew how this pattern was achi e v ed, then we might not be so bothered • I : ' . by - we might even explai n - the wholeness of the orga nism, and not be driven t o e ntelechi esuo•• oI think, a f ter we have surveyed the f acts, tha t the whole subject of growth will seem bigger than the chemistry of synthesis, and that it will be more likely that this latter will s eem a s ~a ll (al though important) part of a l arger scheme ••. " (p. 61). " There must be some factor which t:.--: anscends the cell wa ll a nd unifies this cottony mass (of the mushroom), but what this factor or f a ctors might be is another matter .. oi t is the expla nation of this sort of phenomenon that makes us say that gr0wth and development is a problem. Rea lly it is many probl ems; but this one, the unifica tion of great masses of protoplasm i nto a oneness, a wholeness, has us more mystified 11 11 than a ll the others~ ( p .. 100) o This (the growth of the g ourd) is another exanple of t he principle wa have sta ted b efore, tha t growth is not a strictly mechanical problem; . • . the control of growth trans­ 11 I : ; .,, c ends the c e ll boundarieSo oo (pc 108), : ~ :.; . ; _. _•:_,._. ·. As one reads the books deali ng with questi ons of principle, a rguing for or against one or the other, one gets bored very quickly ; ;.I ," " the whole debate of vitalism vs. mechanism appears more a nd more pointless. The f o llowing thr ee i nstances a r e adduc ed to bring out the pse udo c haracter of t he problem. Fi rs t : In the us ua l f or mula tion of the i ssue the s t a t ements: t he org~nism is (is not) a machine , - a nd: the organism c an ( c annot ) be explained by physics and c h emi s try - a re take n a s s a ying the same t hing wit h di ffe r ent words . In h is book " Die Physik und das Gehei mn i s des Lebens" Pascual Jor dan has d emon­ stra t e d t he error of t his assumption.