| Show THE SCIENCE OF LIFE ITS significance A paper read before the graduating class of 1914 brigham young university by bv charles Seh wencke it if a man is sit t up u in 1 I a iia leoise li oise ise the transparency pt of the alws la all ail essential esse nitai of liis his seeing the sky but it would not rio re to infer that it if 13 nut ot of the house he could not es ee tile the sky because there was no longer any glass thru which lie iii might see it biology is tile the octen o ot of itt bite e ot of its growth and achievements I 1 shall not weary you my purpose la in this brief article Is to present briefly before ou the problems of biology and tha method which the invests In investigators vesti acors in this held field 0 of o human endeavor have employed 1 an in arriving rivine ar at the c conclusions anc which they have presented at the bar ot of for approval the question as to how tho the pres ent condition ot of organic nature came 1 about resolves itself into t tao 0 apropo I 1 I 1 how has organic or living matter commenced common cora monceil ced its ita existence iona has that living matter been 1 perpetuated dated of i the i 0 o former it ir we consider vba that und mild of 0 evidence la Is available I 1 we wc may have lave I 1 historical orical evidence lend and v e c may have ha s exper experimental mental evi derce it is 18 lor for example concely bable able that tat as tile the hard I 1 pi alich fornis forms a consider bable able portion ot of tl the ass mess mss ot of tho t B 1 jearles fearl JearL hs crust contains cont AUis faithful rec ot of rast past s ot ol lire ilie and Ls aiese dizer lacie alii J more as wo vo go further down ve ite I 1 roay cams azir 0 to come particular beil bed which alch should contain the remains ot of those crea turca with wech ae be lesan an the earth II if we did ro no and sd if 1 such forms of 0 or organic oranie anie eife v aca cep c ep we v e should f have B hat wo we v would call historical I 1 evidence indeed in many works on oil jr ideology there are some writers who 1 haagine l that diat the forms of life which we now find in the rock are aie really real lythe the ones in which life t first appeared on our planet the grounds upon which they base that supposition are these it II you go through the enormous thickness of I 1 the earths crust find and get down to ohp the higher verto verte abiata animals the ile quadrus quadrupeds eds birds and fishes cease to lie be found beneath them we fand only the invertebrate animals and in the deep fast at and lowest rocks these remains become scantier and sc scantier antler until rt length in what are supposed to ag ba tho the oldest tocks rocks ilia th aln animal taina r which are found are almost always confined coa fined to four forms the ld hanla the trilobites bites the ula and pia ila Cras so that here we I 1 11 havi all the fauna reduced to 0 four forms considering the organization ot or hese ese primitive forms of 0 life and in very complex ia batuik requires quai qu one re ii indeed a very I 1 trong imagination to co conclude that liese hese were the first created of all lying things A further reason why hta his view must be accepted accented with re erve and caution lies in ti the e V ot of ascertaining the deepest batin bac adum which life first appeared in ome places there are but very canty traces ot of life I 1 or absolutely one at all ahll in other parts ol of he be world rocks ot of the very samo same or matlon mation are cr crowded oded wilh the rec ada rda ds ot of living forma on the experimental side the evl evi leuce ence to is also inconclusive to enable i 9 to say bay that we know anything aboul bo ux the origination and organ atlon of life uie investigator ought be able to take matters mild them up into protein matter nd d then set it out to live as an f reanie forra form ThI sno one has been r lile ble to do as yet but the thing Is lot t so impossible as tor for the searches of modern di ilary eBil stry have hava lipan wi us not hot the road toward ard it r li ut lut rather the finger fingar post pointing 0 the road that inay may lead to it there la Is another inquiry which ars indirectly upon athla I 1 here refer to the phenomenon ol of spontaneous generation or a sudden appearance of life our forefathers down to the seventeenth century all al believed in perfectly good faith that certain vegetable and animal forms gave birth I 1 in n the t h e process of their decomposition to insect life thus it if one put a piece of meat in the sun and allow it to I 1 they conceived that the grubs which soon began to appear beret he result of the action of a power of spontaneous generation which the meat contained and they could given give you recipes for making various animal and vegetable preparations which chic it would produce certain kinds of animals till this s theory of 0 the origin of II 11 living matter was absolutely disproved by redi and pasteur to the question then how has organic or living matter commenced its existence biology has not yet found a solution A gleam of 0 light Is appearing however under the able effort and work vork of dr loeb of tile the rockefeller institute the next great problem with which biology Is struggling la Is how lias has lifo been perpetuated trow mow has the living world maintained its ident it an adequate answer to ion ioa requires a co coia raplee exposition 0 t tile ike whole alid of oc ii ra search sear cli time permits me to indicate briefly only the high water marks hereditary transmission and variation are the two groat great of the living Vi world orld tho the methods by which lio life is perpetuated la in both plant and animal are the asexual and tho the sexual in the former the continuation of life tadea tabes place irom from and by an act of an individual organism which Is sometimes not classed as belonging to any sex at all in the latter the transmission of life comes a bout about as aa a consequence of tile the interaction of two distinct individuals through heredity each group of living things preserves its identity through varl variation atlon which may be self imposed upon a group or forced upon it by environment life Is re freshened and the old bood blood ja s surcharged with a new inflow thus from generation to generation the life of the world passes along from animal to almal and giom plant to plant having now examined the problems with which biology Is dealing let us ua pow turn to the method which tile the investigators of biology lave have employed in their march of ilia th unknown in proceeding to study any particular ti natural phenomena the biologist does not resort to any super sense of his ile he precedes pro proc codes edes merely such as any other sane and normal ma man would pro precede cede I 1 wish it clearly understood thai biological investigation la is not as many people seem to suppose soma kind hind of modern black art and to make matters worse one hears persons speak of the scientific inquiry deductive and inductive philosophy or tile the ot of the baanan bac onan category as tho those methods of investigation were for foreign elga imported lads to hear all these large words one woula think that the mind of a man ot of balence must be constituted aff differently ferent ly to that ot of his ordinary tel fel lowman but as I 1 have stated if you will not be frightened by terms you will discover that you are quite wrong that these apparently obscure methods are none other than those which are used by yourself every day and every hour of your ufa if you will understand this better it if I 1 give you nn an example suppose you go into a fruit ers shop to get an amplo you pick up one one and on biting it discover that it is sour you look at it and see sa paga pae 4 |
