The Mechanism of Life

_Diffusion and Osmosis._--If we place a lump of sugar in the bottom of a glass of water, it will dissolve, and spread by slow degrees equally throughout the whole volume of the...

Movement is everywhere; there is no such thing as immobility; the very idea of rest is itself an illusion. Immobility is only apparent and relative, and disappears under closer...

It is impossible to define life, not only because it is complex, but because it varies in different living beings. The phenomena which constitute the life of a man are far other...

Primitive man distinguished but two kinds of bodies in nature, those which were motionless and those which were animated. Movement was for him the expression of life. The stream...

The phenomenon of osmotic growth has doubtless presented itself to the eyes of every chemist; but to discover a phenomenon it is not enough merely to have it under our eyes. Bef...

_Solutions which conduct Electricity._--The laws of solution which we have studied in the previous chapter apply only to those solutions, chiefly of organic origin, which do not...

By many biologists, even at the present day, the origin and evolution of living beings is considered to be outside the domain of natural phenomena, and hence beyond the reach of...

We have seen that living beings are transformers of energy and of matter, evolutionary in form and liquid in consistency; that they are solutions of colloids and crystalloids se...

The course of development of every branch of natural science has been the same. It begins by the observation and classification of the objects and phenomena of nature. The next...

_Periodic Precipitation._--A phenomenon is said to be periodic when it varies in time and space and is identically reproduced at equal intervals. We are surrounded on all sides...

As we have already seen, living organisms are formed essentially of liquids. These liquids are solutions of crystallizable substances or crystalloids, and non-crystallizable sub...

Chemical affinity is the force which holds together the different atoms in a molecule. Cohesion is the force which holds together molecules which are chemically similar. Althoug...

In 1873, Hermann Fol, writing of the eggs of Geryonia, thus describes the phenomenon of karyokinesis: "On either side of the residue of the nucleus there appears a concentration...