VI The Man Science Failed to Discover

VI The Man Science Failed to Discover M odern scholars have come to the conclusion that we may have succeeded in making great discoveries about inanimate matter, but that we cannot be certain of having been successful in discovering the facts of man’s nature and existence, for there exists a strange disparity between the sciences of inanimate matter and those of life. The sciences which concern themselves with the inanimate part of our world differ from the biological sciences in that the former are subject to definite laws whereas the latter are, to quote Dr. Alexis Carrel, inextricably lost ‘in the midst of a magic forest whose countless trees unceasingly change their place and shape.’ Unlike material phenomena, biological phenomena cannot be defined in terms of algebraic equations. The sciences of the material world are confined to description, a lower form of science altogether, because they do not unveil the ultimate nature of things, but only convey certain qualities such as weight and spatial dimensions. They do give us the power to predict future events, and often to determine at will their occurrence; in learning the secret of the constitution and properties of matter, we have gained the mastery of almost everything which exists on the surface of the earth excepting ourselves. The science of living beings in general, and of the human individual in particular, has not made such spectacular progress. It still remains at the descriptive stage, while the elucidation of the real nature of living beings requires much more than mere description. The Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Alexis Carrel, who achieved unique fame in biological research at the Rockfeller Institute in New York,