Hans Driesch Research Articles

Dissecting the mystery of embryonic scaling: The Scalers Hypothesis and its confirmation in sea urchin embryos

Embryonic scaling, the ability of embryos to regulate their spatial structure in proportion to size, remains a fascinating yet poorly studied problem in developmental biology. First described in sea urchin embryos by Hans Driesch, this phenomenon is now recognized as a striking example of how living organisms use non-equilibrium self-organization, based on reaction-diffusion (RD) systems, to generate pattern-determining morphogen concentration gradients that scale with size. Although specific molecular mechanisms for scaling such gradients have been described in some cases, a general approach for the targeted identification of such mechanisms had not been developed until recently. In search of a solution, we hypothesized the obligatory participation in scaling mechanisms of special genes, which we named “scalers.” We supposed that these genes share two critical features: their expression is sensitive to embryo size, and their protein products determine the scale of morphogen concentration gradients. As proof of principle, we recently identified scalers by detecting differentially expressed genes in wild-type and half-size Xenopus laevis gastrula embryos. Furthermore, we described a mechanism by which one of the identified scalers, the gene encoding Metalloproteinase 3 (Mmp3), regulates the scaling of gradients of the morphogenic protein Bmp and its antagonists, Chordin and Noggin1/2. In the present work, we have made an important theoretical generalization of the Scalers Hypothesis by proving a statement regarding the obligatory presence of scalers in closed RD systems generating morphogen concentration gradients. Furthermore, through a systematic analysis of all known types of embryonic scaling models based on RD systems, we demonstrate that scalers are present in all known types of such models, either explicitly or implicitly. Finally, to test the universality of the Scalers Hypothesis, we applied our method to identify scalers that adjust Bmp/Chordin gradients to the size of the sea urchin embryo, Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis. Our results show that at least two members of the gene cluster encoding astacin metalloproteinases of the Span family, namely bp10 and Span, exhibit properties characteristic of scalers. Namely, their expression levels increase significantly in half-size embryos, and their protein products specifically degrade Chordin. Additionally, we found that the loss of function of bp10 and span leads to a narrowing of the dorsal domain of the Bmp signaling nuclear effector, pSmad1/5. These findings not only validate the Scalers Hypothesis but also uncover a novel mechanism by which Span proteinases fine-tune Chordin and Bmp morphogen concentration gradients in sea urchins. Thus, the Scalers Hypothesis and the approach to targeted search for such genes developed on its basis open up promising avenues for future research into scaling mechanisms in various biological systems.

Entelechy and Energy

This article reconsiders Hans Driesch’s vitalism, as articulated in his English book The Science and Philosophy of the Organism, from a novel perspective. The central thesis posits that Driesch’s vitalism was intricately intertwined with contemporary physical sciences, particularly the version of energy physics prevalent in the energetics movement at the turn of the twentieth century. More specifically, based on the conceptual framework provided by energeticists like Wilhelm Ostwald and Georg Helm, Driesch offered an intriguing treatment of the relationship between entelechy and energy within an updated Kantian philosophy of nature. This article reconstructs Driesch’s approach by elucidating four points. First, Driesch asserted that an entelechy strictly adhered to the conservation of energy. Second, he posited that the entelechy was not a form of energy and thus did not constitute a special kind of bio-specific vital energy. Third, he identified the entelechy’s most critical characteristic as its ability to suspend certain physico-chemical changes. Fourth, Driesch suggested that the entelechy influenced mechanical systems in a manner akin to Maxwell’s demon, raising the possibility of contravening the second law of thermodynamics. This article also contextualizes Driesch’s treatment within the broader development of energy physics in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In conclusion, this article offers some critical remarks on the peculiar historical phenomenon of chronic vitalism as identified by Driesch and others.

Hans Driesch (1867-1941) and the end of any preformationist vision of development

While the work of early 19th century embryologists marked the end of preformation theory in its initial form, the first experimental attempts at the turn of the century led to the development of the concept of the mosaic egg - a more elaborate preformationist view of development - in which the embryo is made up of a mosaic of territories with a determined future and subjected to autonomous development. By separating sea urchin blastomeres at 2/4 cell stages, a young researcher, Hans Driesch shows that each of the blastomeres develops to form a complete and harmonious larva and that the young embryo is therefore capable of regulation. Thus this invalidated the concept of mosaic development, which predicted the independent development of two hemi-embryos and it opened up new fields of investigation for modern embryology.

Kurt Gödel's Anticipation of the Turing Machine: A Vitalistic Approach

In 1935/1936 Kurt Gödel wrote three notebooks on the foundations of quantum mechanics, which have now been entirely transcribed for the first time. Whereas a lot of the material is rather technical in character, many of Gödel's remarks have a philosophical background and concentrate on Leibnizian monadology as well as on vitalism. Obviously influenced by the vitalistic writings of Hans Driesch and his ‘proofs’ for the existence of an entelechy in every living organism, Gödel briefly develops the idea of a computing machine which closely resembles Turing's groundbreaking conception. After introducing the notebooks on quantum mechanics, this article describes Gödel's vitalistic Weltbild and the ideas leading to the development of his computing machine. It investigates a notion of lawlike sequence which closely resembles Turing's concept of a computable number and which Gödel himself calls ‘problematic’, and compares it to the opposed concept of randomness, drawing upon the notion of program-size complexity. Finally, Gödel's machine is implemented in a dialect of the Lisp programing language.

A Few Thoughts on the Possibility of Intercultural Thinking in a Global Age

A Few Thoughts on the Possibility of Intercultural Thinking in a Global Age Kai Marchal (bio) Introduction Until recently, most humanities scholars (including philosophers) in North America and Europe lived in a world where China was notable for its absence. In the great debates of the 1990s and early 2000s on postmodernism, the end of history, the legacy of Marxism, and the future of liberalism, no Chinese contributions were heard, nor were they in the more recent debates on the relationship between Islam and the West, the post-secular age, genetic engineering, the digital age, or Speculative Realism. Only most recently, with the changed geopolitical situation, are Chinese thinkers starting to receive more attention. In this context, Eric S. Nelson’s book Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought makes an important contribution to further opening up the West to Chinese discourses. Nelson’s book is a historical study about the reception of Chinese philosophy by German-speaking philosophers in the early twentieth century. However, it quickly becomes clear that his book is actually much more ambitious; spanning more than three hundred pages, it covers vast periods of Chinese philosophy (from Confucius and Laozi to the late Heidegger), but also seeks to bridge immense historical and cultural differences. The real thrust of Nelson’s book, however, may be found in the implicit claim that the adherents of Western philosophy, as the French Sinologist and philosopher François Jullien has famously asserted, do not need to appropriate Chinese thinking through a form of historical-transcendental self-criticism; rather, the Other has long been embedded in the history of Western (especially German-speaking) philosophy and can thus be brought into effect at any time. The history of Western philosophy, Nelson writes programmatically in his introduction, “is historically already interculturally and intertextually bound up with non-Western philosophy” (p. 3). Philosophers are seldom good historians. Since Plato first elevated the death of Socrates to an almost mythical narrative about the birth of philosophy, many Western thinkers have engaged in writing historical narratives about the development of philosophy with the intent of educating other people on the basis of their philosophical perspective. The way philosophers write histories of philosophy reveals hidden philosophical [End Page 238] commitments and reflects particular commitments that, with hindsight, often appear quite arbitrary. As Nelson demonstrates convincingly, the exclusive identification of philosophy with Europe, argued for most famously by G.W.F. Hegel, is itself a result of cultural interaction, or, as Nelson puts it, “a relatively recent modern invention” (p. 13). In the age of globalization, Nelson’s case studies on how different philosophers in the German tradition (Edmund Husserl, Rudolf Eucken, Hans Driesch, Martin Buber, Martin Heidegger, and others) interacted with Chinese thought undermine the still widespread idea that philosophy is of Greek origin and can be practiced only in European languages. Particularly convincing is Nelson when he detects “constellations” of intercultural philosophizing that have long since been forgotten, such as the exchanges between Carsun Chang (Zhang Junmai 張君勱) and Eucken and Driesch in the 1920s or Georg Misch’s further development of Dilthey’s hermeneutics in the form of a historical-critical reflection regarding the global origins of philosophy (chapters 2 and 5). Reviewers have already highlighted the numerous strengths of this volume. It is a landmark study in intercultural philosophy that will shape the research field for years to come. In my essay, I would like to describe a few difficulties that, in my understanding, still hamper a project like Nelson’s. I want to focus on two aspects: (1) the relationship between philosophy and its history and (2) Heidegger and the “hermeneutic primacy of interpretation.” The Relationship between Philosophy and Its History There can be no doubt that philosophy has a highly problematic relationship with its own historicity. This is reflected, for example, in the fact that historical approaches in philosophy often run counter to problem-oriented ones. Students who take seriously the claims to knowledge of the natural sciences will not necessarily feel the desire to work through the doctrines of philosophers like Plato, Rousseau, Kant, or even Husserl, but rather engage with the ongoing debates among contemporary thinkers and neuroscientists. Nelson...

A Parapsychologist, an Anthropologist, and a Vitalist Walk into a Laboratory: Ernesto de Martino, Mircea Eliade, and a Forgotten Chapter in the Disciplinary History of Religious Studies

While the work of the Italian historian of religion, Ernesto de Martino (1908–1965), has frequently been compared to that of Mircea Eliade, Claude Lévi-Strauss, or Clifford Geertz, he has hardly received any attention in anglophone scholarship to date. Taking an all-but-forgotten controversy between de Martino and Eliade at a conference on parapsychology in France in 1956 as its starting point, the article fills part of this lacuna by first reconstructing the philosophical universe underlying the Italian thinker’s program of study. In the process, it introduces the reader to three Weimar scientists, who have never before been inserted within the canon of the study of religion, namely the parapsychologist Albert von Schrenck-Notzing (1862–1929), the anthropologist Leo Frobenius (1873–1938), and the biologist and philosopher Hans Driesch (1867–1941). Contextualizing these thinkers within their historical context, it becomes clear that they were part of a larger scientific crisis that affected the Western world during the first half of the twentieth century. Finally, the article uncovers surprising affinities, particularly the fact that the Romanian thinker had his very own parapsychological phase during his youth.

Ernst von Aster ve Çağdaş Felsefe Ders Notları

This study is composed of short biographic information about Ernst Von Aster, 20th Century German historian of philosophy, and the lecture notes about “Contemporary Philosophy” that is given by him at Istanbul University Faculty of Literature Philosophy Department in the 1943-1944 academic period. The text which is the lecture notes taken by Cahit Tanyol, a student at the Philosophy Department in the above-mentioned period, in Ottoman Turkish has been translated into Latin alphabet and made ready to be published. Lecture notes are started with the Descartes philosophy, especially his existence approach. Then the views of Descartes and Newton about universe and mechanics are compared. Right after the relations between Newton physics and Kant philosophy are examined. Subsequently, Kant metaphysics and the philosophy of Brentano are compared with each other. After the comparison between Neo-Kantianism and Schelling, the relation between Kant and Husserl is examined. On the other hand, time and space in the Heidegger’s ontology are dealt with. Also, the existing approach in Descartes and Heidegger is investigated. Lastly, Vitalism of Hans Driesch and Spiritualism of Bergson are dealt with. The lecture notes end with the New Positivism after comparison is made between evolution approaches of Bergson and Darwin.

Transcriptome analysis of regeneration during Xenopus laevis experimental twinning

Animal embryos have the remarkable property of self-organization. Over 125 years ago, Hans Driesch separated the two blastomeres of sea urchin embryos and obtained twins, in what was the foundation of experimental embryology. Since then, embryonic twinning has been obtained experimentally in many animals. In a recent study, we developed bisection methods that generate identical twins reliably from Xenopus blastula embryos. In the present study, we have investigated the transcriptome of regenerating half-embryos after sagittal and dorsal-ventral (D-V) bisections. Individual embryos were operated at midblastula (stage 8) with an eyelash hair and cultured until early gastrula (stage 10.5) or late gastrula (stage 12) and the transcriptome of both halves were analyzed by RNA-seq. Since many genes are activated by wound healing in Xenopus embryos, we resorted to stringent sequence analyses and identified genes up-regulated in identical twins but not in either dorsal or ventral fragments. At early gastrula, cell division-related transcripts such as histones were elevated, whereas at late gastrula, pluripotency genes (such as sox2) and germ layer determination genes (such as eomesodermin, ripply2 and activin receptor ACVRI) were identified. Among the down-regulated transcripts, sizzled, a regulator of Chordin stability, was prominent. These findings are consistent with a model in which cell division is required to heal damage, while maintaining pluripotency to allow formation of the organizer with a displacement of 90 0 from its original site. The extensive transcriptomic data presented here provides a valuable resource for data mining of gene expression during early vertebrate development.

A non-metaphysical evaluation of vitalism in the early twentieth century.

In biology the term "vitalism" is usually associated with Hans Driesch's doctrine of the entelechy: entelechies were nonmaterial, bio-specific agents responsible for governing a few peculiar biological phenomena. Since vitalism defined as such violates metaphysical materialism (or physicalism), the received view refutes the doctrine of the entelechy as a metaphysical heresy. But in the early twentieth century, a different, non-metaphysical evaluation of vitalism was endorsed by some biologists and philosophers, which finally led to a logical refutation of the doctrine of the entelechy. In this non-metaphysical evaluation, first, vitalism was not treated as a metaphysical heresy but a legitimate response to the inadequacy of mechanistic explanations in biology. Second, the refutation of vitalism was logically rather than metaphysically supported by contemporary biological knowledge. The entelechy was not a valid concept, because vitalists could neither formulate vital laws (to attribute determinate consequences to the entelechy), nor offer convincing examples of experimental indeterminism (to confirm the perpetual inadequacy of mechanistic explanations).

O współczesnych badaniach obejmujących zakres stanowiska neowitalistycznego Hansa Driescha. Ogólne uwagi krytyczne

Achievements of Hans Driesch (1867–1941), German embryologist and philosopher,are contemporarily viewed almost exclusively from their later metaphysicalphase of development, while his earlier scientific experimental researchesare not appreciated sufficiently enough. They consisted in highlighting thespecifically totipotential character of biological, and especially of embryological,processes what is still methodologically inspiring in many dimensions ofcontemporary biological investigations. The author postulates thus a deeperanalysis of Driesch’s scientific accomplishments and broader assessment oftheir actual significance in contemporary biology.

O błędnych założeniach metodologicznych oraz nieudanej próbie eksperymentalnej Wilhelma Roux w toku wyjaśniania osobliwości organicznych procesów rozwojowych

Wilhelm Roux (1850–1924) was the follower of mechanical philosophy in biologicalrecognition. His research strategy focusing exclusively on the physicaland chemical rights should be considered as strictly scientific. Reductionistperspective of organisms by Roux as closed complexes and physiological activitiesoccuring in their range are in the completely new light of modern biologywhere the experimental method was introduced. In spite of the faultymethodological assumptions and the failed experimental attempt, the researchattempt of Roux was the inspiration for vitalist Hans Driesch.

Pathways to life course changes: Introducing the concept of Avenues of Directive Meaning

The concept of Avenues of Directive Meaning is proposed as a notion for understanding the development of trajectories that map psychological phenomenon in their temporal unfolding. This notion aims to include personal constructed meanings as they interact with the directions offered by the sociocultural environment. Focusing on the notion of equipotentiality – introduced by the embryologist Hans Driesch at the turn of the 20th-century – we apply it to the meanings constructed by persons as they set up equifinality points in their life courses. We illustrate the Avenues of Directive Meaning notion through the analysis of two couples that decided to adopt a child in the contemporary Brazilian context.

Polycomb group (PcG) proteins and Pax6 cooperate to inhibit in vivo reprogramming of the developing Drosophila eye.

How different cells and tissues commit to and determine their fates has been a central question in developmental biology since the seminal embryological experiments conducted by Wilhelm Roux and Hans Driesch in sea urchins and frogs. Here, we demonstrate that Polycomb group (PcG) proteins maintain Drosophila eye specification by suppressing the activation of alternative fate choices. The loss of PcG in the developing eye results in a cellular reprogramming event in which the eye is redirected to a wing fate. This fate transformation occurs with either the individual loss of Polycomb proteins or the simultaneous reduction of the Pleiohomeotic repressive complex and Pax6. Interestingly, the requirement for retinal selector genes is limited to Pax6, as the removal of more downstream members does not lead to the eye-wing transformation. We also show that distinct PcG complexes are required during different developmental windows throughout eye formation. These findings build on earlier observations that the eye can be reprogrammed to initiate head epidermis, antennal and leg development.

Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought by Eric S. Nelson

Reviewed by: Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought by Eric S. Nelson David Chai (bio) Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought. By Eric S. Nelson. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. Pp. x + 344. Hardcover $114.00. ISBN 978–1-3500–0255-5. Eric Nelson's Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought opens with the following: "The work before you is an interpretive journey through the historical reception of Chinese and Buddhist philosophy in modern German thought, focusing in particular--albeit not exclusively--on the early twentieth century. Its intent is to describe and analyze the intertextual nexus of intersecting sources for the sake of elucidating implications and critical models for intercultural hermeneutics and intercultural philosophy. The possibility of such a philosophy is confronted by the persistent myth and prejudice that philosophy is and can only be a unique and exclusive Western spiritual achievement" (p. 1). The book is directed by "the question of who can philosophize, and who counts as a philosopher" (p. 2), a quintessential question indeed, but I wonder if it dawned on Nelson that this question never occurred to the people of Asia, rendering it an exclusively Western line of approach. The same can be said when Nelson writes: "The much-needed emancipation of philosophy from ethnocentrism, often cloaked in the language of a false universality, requires what could be called 'a critique of European reason,' or a deconstruction of the Eurocentric conception of rationality, which is simultaneously an internal immanent critique of the dialectic of Western philosophy and an exposure to the exteriority of its--in this case East Asian--others" (p. 3). Is this not also true of the lack of Chinese receptivity towards Western thought for much of its history? Until the arrival of the Jesuits in the 16th century, the Chinese lacked the means to converse with Western philosophy, Buddhism notwithstanding. Of course, Nelson is only concerned with the modern Western reception of East Asian thought, but this doesn't make my point moot. Indeed, if the West can engage the ancient traditions of the East, and be accused of misrepresenting or misconstruing their ideas, why is there no similar criticism being made of the modern Chinese reception of classical Western thought? Perhaps the reason is as Nelson says: "A more genuine encounter and dialogue is constrained and undermined by the colonial and racial history of modern Western philosophy" (p. 5). [End Page 1] Chapter 1 "traces episodes in the story of European Confucianism by exploring historical examples of the role and interpretation of Confucianism in modern German philosophy in general and in early twentieth-century thought in particular" (p. 16). A richly detailed historical and intellectual account, it is necessary for Nelson to provide this as it sets the stage for the analysis that follows in subsequent chapters. Chapter 2 examines Zhang Junmai's (1886–1969) relationship with Rudolf Eucken (1846–1926) and Hans Driesch (1867–1941), and how their life-philosophy influenced Zhang's own intercultural thinking. In light of the social and political chaos engulfing China at the turn of the 19th century, many Chinese intellectuals turned to the West for inspiration and potential solutions to the identity crisis sweeping their country. That Zhang turned to the life-philosopher Eucken and the neo-vitalist Driesch is both surprising and also fascinating because Zhang and Eucken co-authored a book in German in 1922 entitled: Das Lebensproblem in China und Europa (The Problem of Life in China and Europe). Nelson describes their collaborative work as "perceiving affinities between early Greek and Chinese thinking, particularly in their Socratic and Confucian moments, as critical reflection concerning the individual and social-political formation of life through self-cultivation and moral government" (p. 50). Such qualities were absent from the China of Zhang's time, deserted when the Qing empire collapsed a decade beforehand. Zhang, therefore, "articulates a modern Confucian philosophy that has learnt from and is open to learning and adopting from Western modernity, in particular from Kantian philosophy and liberal-constitutional and social democratic political thought, in the formation of a distinctive Chinese modernity achieved through a form of enlightenment suited...

The Vital and the Statistical

The Vital and the Statistical Jennifer L. Fleissner (bio) Is naturalism "data fiction?" It can scarcely be denied that the roots of what we now know as "Big Data" lie in the consolidation of statistical thinking over the course of the 1800s.1 In particular, applications of statistics to phenomena such as crime and suicide during the later years of the century play a significant role in the disciplinary emergence of what would become the social sciences: sociology, psychology, criminology, and so on. These are, of course, the same years that saw the rise of the literary genre of naturalist fiction, in the U.S. as well as in France and, arguably, elsewhere in Europe as well. Statistics, as a tool for the quantitative analysis of individual and social life, can thus readily appear relevant to that genre's aspirations to scientific status, as codified most famously in Émile Zola's comparison of his novelistic practice to the researches of the physician Claude Bernard in his 1880 essay "The Experimental Novel." Rather than simply affirm naturalism's clear investments in statistical thinking, however, I aim here to place these in dialectical tension with another component—vitalism—that grows just as directly out of the genre's self-conception as a form of scientific fiction (and, in many ways, specifically medicalizing fiction, as Bernard's role implies). As we will see, these two features of naturalism's scientific aspirations often take quite different forms and, as a result, play against one another as much as they harmonize. The present essay will explore these before moving to the particular case of a novel by Frank Norris, the American writer who most directly modeled himself on Zola in his posthumously published first effort, written in the mid-1890s, Vandover and the Brute (1914). On a broader level, I hope to show, the recognition of vitalist currents in naturalist work can enable us to place the still pertinent question of quantitatively driven methodologies, [End Page 9] and their applicability to human and social questions, within a longer historical trajectory that runs backward as well as forward in time. For all its scientific aspirations, naturalism clearly remains fascinated by large, impersonal forces that are conceived of as resistant to quantification and that gain their authority through their immediate and at times overwhelming effect on the senses. Here, logics of aggregation appear that are not in any way statistical in nature. Rather, from Norris's vast fields of wheat and grains of desert sand to Zola's cornucopias of market goods and mighty human crowds, we see a satisfaction taken in a largeness often presented as, in itself, an emblem of power. In the face of such massive conglomerations, human technique appears humbled; one can only allow them to roll majestically or terrifyingly forward like waves. Thus, the statistical and all other tools of rationalization must finally stand aside in the face of what are depicted as the movements of nature or "Life" itself. Should such visions be termed "vitalist," to use the term often associated with holistic conceptions of the life force? It is certainly possible to make such a claim; indeed, the common association of vitalism with thought and imagery of this kind can begin to account for why the term often provokes such immediate negative reactions. As noted by Georges Canguilhem, the French historian of medicine whose writings remain one of the most valuable resources on this subject, the Nazis did draw directly on the turn-of-the-century vitalist writings of biologists like Hans Driesch, "using theories of Ganzheit ('wholeness') to advocate against individualist, atomist, and mechanist liberalism and in favor of totalitarian forces and social forms" (72). It is fair to say that similar potentialities can be found in Norris's essays depicting the Anglo-Saxon race as an "elemental energ[y]" following its natural destiny toward progress through conquest ("Frontier" 1188). Some tempering of such irrationalist visions by statistics' insistence on the relativity of norms might well appear highly welcome. And yet as Canguilhem goes on to note, of course, fascism might better be understood as combining its vitalist imagery with rational techniques, such as eugenics, of a highly modern...

Heidegger y la biología: Mecanismo y vitalismo en los conceptos fundamentales de la metafísica. Mundo, finitud y soledad (1929/30) de Martin Heidegger

El presente artículo busca reconstruir la discusión entre mecanicismo y vitalismo en la que se inserta Heidegger, a partir de algunas de las referencias explícitas que él hace sobre Wilhelm Roux y Hans Driesch en la lección Los conceptos fundamentales de la metafísica. Mundo, finitud, soledad 1929/30. Más específicamente, mi objetivo es reconocer y analizar las principales tesis de W. Roux y H. Driesch. Ellas son utilizadas por Heidegger para esclarecer la esencia del animal a partir del tratamiento de la noción de «organismo».

Toward a Pragmatist Epistemology: Arthur O. Lovejoy's and H. S. Jennings's Biophilosophical Responses to Neovitalism, 1909-1914.

The sustained interdisciplinary debate about neovitalism between two Johns Hopkins University colleagues, philosopher Arthur O. Lovejoy and experimental geneticist H. S. Jennings, in the period 1911-1914, was the basis for their theoretical reconceptualization of scientific knowledge as contingent and necessarily incomplete in its account of nature. Their response to Hans Driesch's neovitalist concept of entelechy, and his challenge to the continuity between biology and the inorganic sciences, resulted in a historically significant articulation of genetics and philosophy. This study traces the debate's shift of problem-focus away from neovitalism's threat to the unity of science - "organic autonomy," as Lovejoy put it - and toward the potential for development of a nonmechanististic, nonrationalist theory of scientific knowledge. The result was a new pragmatist epistemology, based on Lovejoy's and Jennings's critiques of the inadequacy of pragmatism's account of scientific knowledge. The first intellectual move, drawing on naturalism and pragmatism, was based on a reinterpretation of science as organized experience. The second, sparked by Henri Bergson's theory of creative evolution, and drawing together elements of Dewey's and James's pragmatisms, produced a new account of the contingency and necessary incompleteness of scientific knowledge. Prompted by the neovitalists' mix of a priori concepts and, in Driesch's case, and adherence to empiricism, Lovejoy's and Jennings's developing pragmatist epistemologies of science explored the interrelation between rationalism and empiricism.

Tagore: (泰戈尔) A Case study of his visit to China in 1924

In 1923, Beijing Lecture Association, Jiangxueshe (讲学社) invited Rabindranath Tagore to deliver a series of lecturers. Established in September 1920, Jiangxueshe was one of the many globally acclaimed institutions that mushroomed in China in the wake of the May Fourth Movement. The main objective of this institution was to invite foreign scholars and celebrities to arrange lectures by them for Chinese intellectuals. They thought it will help the Chinese intellects to be prospers in many aspects, which will enrich their country. Every year, they used to invite the most respected global figures, research scholars, scientists, and noble laureates to deliver their valuable speeches and sermons. Before Rabindranath, the Association invited some dignified global figures like John Dewey (1859-1952), Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) and Hans Driesch (18621941). Most of them were not able to move them in a great way. Anyway, as the Chinese association felt that they were not receiving expected result after inviting so many global scholars, they finally decided to invite Rabindranath to their country. It is worthy to be mentioned here, some fervent critics and scholars like Das, Sun and Hay have averred that Tagore’s visit to China created two fold reactions among the people of China. Tagore’s visit to China received both friendly and hostile reactions from them. Many of them were in support of this visit and some Chinese were against it. Here my endeavour is to spotlight them and probe these with proper reasons and acute critical analyses.

Boolean modeling of gene regulatory networks: Driesch redux

Conducting research on sea urchins at the Naples Zoological Station, 19th century developmental biologist Hans Driesch demonstrated the totipotent nature of early embryonic cells, contributing significantly to the then-nascent field of “developmental mechanics.” Driesch discussed the possibility of understanding the clocklike development of this organism in physical/mathematical terms, but ultimately retreated from this stand later in his career (1). As developmental biology moves into its third century of existence as a modern science, we find that major advances are bringing us full-circle to approach central questions posed by early pioneers (Fig. 1). In PNAS, Peter et al. (2) describe a quantitative model to describe at a molecular level the processes of cellular differentiation that have fascinated generations of biologists, providing a means to link developmental and systems biology.

The renowned foreign philosophers' China lectures during the May Fourth era and China's “taking Russia as the teacher”

From 1919 to 1924, John Dewey and four other internationally renowned philosophers (Bertrand Russell, Paul Monroe, Hans Driesch and Rabindranath Tagore) came to China to give lectures. As a whole this constituted a magnificent cultural achievement for post war European Western studies in East Asia. The well-known Western philosophers' lectures not only transmitted information about the changing tide of modern Western thought, but more importantly, they comprised an enthusiastic and passionate response by the lecturers to the desire among Chinese intellectual circles to master this new knowledge. Therefore their lectures in reality went past the level of pure academic exchange, forming mutual interconnections with the latter. The renowned philosophers’ lectures helped sophisticate thought at the time, and also promoted the differentiation and evolution of Chinese intellectual circles, which eventually made their own mark with the Chinese belief in Marxism and “taking Russia as a teacher.” After delving into this, it will not be difficult to understand why waves arising in Chinese intellectual circles surrounded their lectures, triggering sensational debates such as those concerning socialism and “the debate on science and metaphysics.” Regardless of whether this was a conscious factor on their part or not, the lectures of the renowned philosophers expanded the nation's horizons, and in effect participated in the new cultural movement, constituting an organic part of the latter.