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Summaries of Addresses of Presidents of Sections: Mechanism in Biology

Abstract

IN his presidential address before Section D (Zoology) Dr. J. Gray discusses “The Mechanical View of Life”. The laws which physics has provided for an analysis of biological phenomena rest on a statistical basis; they only apply to systems which contain a large number of participating units and only describe natural phenomena in terms of probability and not of absolute,truth. If we accept these laws as a means of describing the behaviour or the structure of an organism, we must accept the conventions attached to the laws and agree to ignore such events as are improbable, although they may conceivably occur.

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Summaries of Addresses of Presidents of Sections: Mechanism in Biology. Nature 132, 397–398 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/132397a0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/132397a0

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