Post 24934
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The rigidly scientific type of mind sees no greater mystery in the difference in contour of different animal bodies than a mere difference in the density of the germ cells: “one density results in a sequence of cell-densities to form a horse; another a dog; another a cat”; and avers that if we “repeat the same complex conditions, the same results are as inevitable as the sequences of forces that result in the formation of hydrogen monoxide from hydrogen and oxygen.”
Different degrees of density may throw light on the different behavior of gases and fluids and solids, but can it throw any light on the question of why a horse is a horse, and a dog a dog? or why one is an herbivorous feeder, and the other a carnivorous?
The scientific explanation of life phenomena is analogous to reducing a living body to its ashes and pointing to them–the lime, the iron, the phosphorus, the hydrogen, the oxygen, the carbon, the nitrogen–as the whole secret.