Allgemeine Biologie: eine Einführung in die Lehre vom Leben

Abstract

IN the issue of NATURE of December 17, 1932, we had the pleasure of reviewing a bold and original work on general biology by Prof. Woltereck, and now we have before us a still longer and more elaborate work on the same subject by Dr. Hartmann, who is a member of the staff of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Experimental Biology at Dahlem. Naturally the subject is treated very differently by the two authors, for whereas Woltereck has attained world-wide fame as a zoologist and embryologist, Hartmann's claims for distinction rest chiefly on researches on the Protista (Protozoa and Protophyta) and on the Thallophyta amongst plants. Then again, Woltereck came courageously into the battle, by asserting that in all living things there is a vitalistic factor regulating their actions which is not to be accounted for by the structure or mutual positions of their constituent molecules. Hartmann, on the contrary, whilst repudiating materialism as a system of thought unworthy to be regarded as a ‘philosophy’, nevertheless holds that science can deal only with living things as lumps of matter: it must argue ‘as’ if materialism were true. Allgemeine Biologie: eine Einfuhrung in die Lehre vom Leben. Dr. Max Hartmann. Zweite, vollstandig neubearbeitete Auflage. Pp. xii + 792. (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1933.) 38 gold marks.