This is Biology

This is Biology.-Ernst Mayr. 1997. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. xv + 327 pp. ISBN 0-674-88468-X. Cloth, $29.95.-With the collapse of the Cold War, physics is experiencing a shrinking of its funding and, therefore, sees its preeminence among the natural sciences diminished. Biology, having forever suffered from the proverbial physics envy, sees its own fortunes rise as news of possibly large increases in NIH funding reaches us. If Valery Giscard d'Estaing declared the 20th century to be "the century of biology," President Clinton even more confidently prophesied that the 21st century will be it. Mayr's stand on this issue is more sober; his book, on the one hand, carefully argues that biology is no lesser science than is physics, and, on the other hand, reveals the special beauty, as well as the special difficulties and problems, that are inherent in biology. Mayr is certainly not one of the "modern biologists [who] tend to be extreme specialists," because he has been an empirical and theoretical biologist as well as a philosopher and historian of science. Even more, Mayr is a uniquely gifted synthesizer, having brought together ever-wider circles of science and knowledge at successive stages of his life. And he is a master of words and able to write concisely and with precision. (In April of this year, Mayr was awarded the Lewis Thomas Prize, which recognizes the scientist whose voice and vision can tell us science's aesthetic reflection, even revelation, as does a poem or painting.)

The book has the working biologist in mind, "who does not ask whether he should follow the prescriptions of this or that school of philosophy.... He uses whatever method will get him at the moment most conveniently to the solution of his problem." Ornithologists, and biologists in general, are usually firmly rooted in their assumptions, to quote an old adage, and this book provides the opportunity to explore the validity of at least some of our assumptions. Mayr has never been a shrinking violet when it comes to expressing his views and insights, but he is wise and knowledgeable enough to recognize that he cannot cover molecular biology and the biology of mental processes with the same competence we have come to expect from him in other areas of biology. Still, Mayr succeeds in dealing with a substantial part of the life sciences and many aspects of the social sciences and humanities. This book may reveal all its treasures perhaps only to a reader who is willing to work through it several times, because it is written with a Mayrian economy of words and density of concepts and arguments. It is definitely a book to be taken to the proverbial island.

The following summary of the individual chapters cannot do justice to the actual density and multitude of the topics addressed by Mayr, but it is meant to whet the appetite of potential readers. The introduction, unlike so many, is eminently readable and informative. In it, Mayr also discloses what he considers the two betes noires of biology: reductionism and essentialism. Another black beast emerges ever more clearly as one proceeds through the book: thinking in strict either-or terms.

The actual book starts with the eternal question "What is life?" and right away demonstrates one of Mayr's enduring strengths, namely the uncanny ability to unearth different meanings of a word, such as life as a contrast to either death or lifelessness. Mayr goes on to recount the historical developments of physicalism, which essentially maintains that organisms are nothing but machines, and vitalism, which consists of various antiphysicalist ideas and concepts affirming life-specific properties of organisms. He then contrasts the concept of emergence with that of reductionism and leads us to see that both materialistic /mechanistic and vitalist views of life are partly correct; the synthesis is organicism, which incorporates the concepts of the genetic program and of emergence, and which is antireductionist and yet, mechanistic. The chapter ends with a list and discussion of the distinguishing characteristics of life.

In the chapter "What is Science?," Mayr clarifies that science is both an activity and a body of knowledge. He explores the relationships, similarities, and differences between biology and other sciences and systems of knowledge, such as physics, military science, social science, feminist science, theology, philosophy, the humanities, ethics, art, and music. In one of my many favorite sections, Mayr explains how the Christian faith in an all-powerful God actually helped the emergence and development of modern science, but was also responsible for keeping the life sciences dormant until the mid-18th century. Mayr also establishes theoretical connections between observation, experiment, and natural experiment. And finally, he explores the characteristics and motivations of scientists and what makes a scientist his or her best.

In "How does Science Explain the Natural World?," Mayr shows that the natural world can be given supernatural, philosophical, and scientific explanations. He warns us that a rational explanation is not necessarily a true one. And he provides some useful definitions of frequently heard, but rarely well-understood terms, such as epistemology, logical empiricism, testing, prediction, conjecture, theory, law, etc. Mayr the practicing biologist comes through in this section as he at times quite irreverently strips certain terms of their aura of importance and evaluates them in terms of their usefulness in biology. Yet when it comes to discussing the importance of using language properly for good science, Mayr is unyielding, as one would expect from somebody who had to learn a new language well enough to be able to communicate complex abstract concepts.