"AUTONOMY OF LIFE" FOUND TO BE INVOLVED

"The Autonomy of Life" was the subject of the lecture given yesterday afternoon in the Lecture Hall of the Fogg Art Museum by Dr. Hans Driesch of the University of Heidelberg, one of the best known contemporary German biologists. The lecturer approached his subject from a different viewpoint from that which his hearers expected, quite a few of them appearing unable to follow his meaning.

Dr. Driesch proved that the basis of life was vitalistic by showing that the mechanistic doctrine of life is impossible. He described four experiments with egg cells which definitely contradicted the idea of a machine, in the sense of the specific pre-formed arrangement.

"If the processes of life are not mechanical," declared Dr. Driesch, "they must be nonmechanical. And the nonmechanical agent, which is neither metaphysical nor psychical, we name intellect."

The speaker went on to discuss the conception of intellect which must function by suspending the act of becoming. It keeps a potentiality in its potential state until it wants it to become an actuality, he said. If intellect gave impetus to matter it would violate the principle of the conversation of energy.

"The act of becoming is a consequence", said Dr. Driesch. "Casuality is the conception of a becoming as a effect. If we say there is no cause, then life is causeless, which hypothesis we must reject. As there is a cause, and it is not mechanical, it must be non-mechanical or intellect."

The speaker explained that the idea of a purpose of life was not within the realm or science, which concerned itself with the material system of matter. A concept of the combination of casuality and wholeness, or unifying casuality must be kept in place of the concept of purposefulness he concluded.