Biology

A living body is a machine, Edmund B. Wilson argues—then asks the question that makes the comparison tremble: is it something more?

On November 20, 1907, at Columbia University, Wilson turns an introductory lecture into an inquiry at the heart of biology. How can the study of an organism’s structure be separated from the study of its workings? And what changes when we see every living thing as a product of evolution? Darwin’s legacy, the limits of scientific evidence, and the old idea of a special “vital force” all meet in Wilson’s account of the working naturalist’s task. The stakes reach beyond the laboratory, to humanity’s place in nature. If life is a mechanism, what, if anything, lies beyond its parts and processes?

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