Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 03.djvu/109

BIOLOGY 91 BIONOMICS. If ierkeley is right, if our own experience is but conscious recognition of the universal prev- alence and unceasing continuity of the selective process, what becomes of the notion that experi- ence is an activity precedent to selection, and the source of the fitness which it picks out and presenes? In a word, what becomes of the "phi- losophy of experience' which meets with so much approval from many modern men of science ? Depexdexce ox Coxditioxs. The discovery of natural selection has destroyed all ground for the belief that wc. or any living beings, ever do anrthing that exhaustive knowledge of their material structure and its history may not some day lead us to expect. This is often held to be proof that all things in nature are fixed and in- evitable and predetermined, and that our own belief that we control or direct our own conduct, or anything else, is a mere illusion. If we have no reason to believe that wc ever do anything that exhaustive knowledge of our bodily frame and its history would not have led us to expect, we are told that our ancestry is our fate. Every- thing that we feel or think or do is contingent upon our structure: and if this were indeed in- evitable and predetermined, we might with good reason declare that we are in the hands of fate, and can never hope to make or mar. to help or hinder. But what reason is there for thinking that proof that a thing is no more than we might have expected would show that it is fixed or fated? The writer is not so vain as to think that his opinion upon this difficult subject will have any weight. He knows well that he will be told that he has failed to grasp the real diffi- culty, or to understand what it is that has so long perplexed the thoughtful : tor he fails to find any antagonism between mechanical inter- pretations of biological facts and freedom and responsibility. He cannot see. for example, how- proof that he does nothing which might not have been expected from him can show that he has no true liberty. Should not he who tries to be a reasonable creature, and to do all that can be expected from him in reason, be utterly unable to see how his siiccess can show that he has failed? How can proof that living beings never do anything that exhaustive knowledge of their structure would not give us good reason to ex- pect show that their actions are predestined or inevitable? Proof that we are part and parcel of the cosmic process cannot tell us who or what has made us so, or that we are helpless, for there is no power, causality, or agency in a process. Processes — evolutionary or otherwise — are matters of fact. There is nothing of agency included in them. If there is agency anywhere, it is not in the selective process, nor in the evo- lutionary process, nor in the cosmic process, but behind them, and, logically, at least, antecedent to them and independent of them. Is it not clear that if we never discover any agency in processes, neither can we find in them any neces- sity or any antagonism between them and lib- erty? While the progress of biology leaves no logical standing-place for him who believes a living be- ing ever docs anything that exhaustive knowl- edge of its machinery would not lead us to expect under given conditions, it also tells us we should not have reason to expect anything Vol,. Ill— 7. to be as it is if these conditions had not been as they were. It is by finding oit, through sci- entific discovery, what these conditions are that we learn how to direct and modify the course of nature. .They who fear that the extension of mechan- ical conceptions of biology may some time de- stroy their conviction that they are reasonable and rational beings, able to act wisely and fool- ishly, and to do right and wrong, should ask themselves, in all seriousness, whether anything could afford clearer proof tluit there is no dis- coverable limit to our ability to influence and modify the co.smic process than the artificial pro- duction of a living being would aft'ord. If this were to be accomplished, would it not be tangi- ble proof that they who complain that their in- herited organization is their fate, mistake the bonds of ignorance for the bonds of fate? In- stead of showing that our knowledge and our conduct are the necessary and inevitable effects of our structure, would it not rather show that we may hope to control and modify our struc- ture through knowledge, when we only know enough about nature ? For the blindness of ig- norance science gives us a remedy; for the blindness of fate there could be none. See AxistAL: Brooks, W. K. ; Classifica- Tiox OF Animals; Darwin; Embryology ; Evo- LCTiox ; Heredity ; Distribvtiox of Aximals ; LAM.uiCK; Natltkal Selection, and other titles in the domains of botany, paleontologj', and zoology, under which will be found references to the literature of the various phases of biology. Consult, also. Brooks, Foundations of Zoology (New York, 1900). BIOLOGY. This term has often been used of plants, especially in Germany, instead of ecology (q.v.), though biologj- in this sense usually includes the more sensational topics of ecology, such as pollination, carnivorousness, etc., rather than the broad field which is now known as ecology. The term in this sense should be discarded. See Ecology. BI'ON (Gk. Bluv) OF Smyrna. A Greek bucolic poet of the Third Century B.C., a younger contemporary and imitator of Theocritus (q.v.). Of his works there are extant seventeen short poems and his longer "Lament for Adonis" ('E?rt- T(£0tos 'ASiiwSos ) , a hymn of great beauty and tenderness, which shows many reminiscences of Theocritus's first idyl. It became itself the model for Shelley's Adonais. The poems are edited with Theocritus and iSIosehus, bv Ahrens (18,")5); Meineke (18.56): Ziegler (18C8) : the 'ETriTd^tos Avith translation and explanatory introduction by Wilamowitz-Muellendorfl', Adoiiis (1900). See also Smvth, Greek Melie Poets (New York, 1 noo ) . BIONDO, byon'dA, Flavio. See Flavio BlOXDO. BI'ONOM'ICS (Gk. pios, bios, life -|- ydtws, nomos. law), or Ecology. The science which deals with the relations of animals or plants to their surroundings ; also called ecology, a term especially used by botanists. The science is a new one and has as yet too few adherents. Charles Darwin, Fritz Miiller, and Karl Sem- per are the best examples of workers in this field. Some of the topics with which bionom- ics deal are: The relation of animals to their inorganic environment: the relation of aquatic