The Project Gutenberg EBook of Biology, by Edmund Beecher Wilson

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Title: Biology
A lecture delivered at Columbia University in the series
on Science, Philosophy and Art November 20, 1907

Author: Edmund Beecher Wilson

Release Date: July 26, 2006 [EBook #18911]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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BIOLOGY

BY

EDMUND BEECHER WILSON
PROFESSOR OF ZOOLOGY
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

New York
THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
1908

BIOLOGY

A LECTURE DELIVERED AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
IN THE SERIES ON SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY AND ART
NOVEMBER 20, 1907

BIOLOGY

BY

EDMUND BEECHER WILSON
PROFESSOR OF ZOOLOGY
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

New York
THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
1908

COPYRIGHT, 1908,
by THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS.

Set up, and published March, 1908.

BIOLOGY

I must at the outset remark that among the many sciences that are
occupied with the study of the living world there is no one that may
properly lay exclusive claim to the name of Biology. The word does
not, in fact, denote any particular science but is a generic term
applied to a large group of biological sciences all of which alike are
concerned with the phenomena of life. To present in a single address,
even in rudimentary outline, the specific results of these sciences is
obviously an impossible task, and one that I have no intention of
attempting. I shall offer no more than a kind of preface or
introduction to those who will speak after me on the biological
sciences of physiology, botany and zoology; and I shall confine it to
what seem to me the most essential and characteristic of the general
problems towards which all lines of biological inquiry must sooner or
later converge.

It is the general aim of the biological sciences to learn something of
the order of nature in the living world. Perhaps it is not amiss to
remark that t