Haldane's Blessing

In 1931 Haldane published a book representing his Donnellan lectures delivered at the University of Dublin in the previous year. The book addressed some philosophical issues related to practices and theories in biology; in fact, not coincidentally, it was titled The Philosophical Basis of Biology. Haldane, now seventy-one years old, not only reported and synthesized all the convictions about philosophy, biology, physiology and psychology he had developed and promoted throughout his intense life; he also felt the need to conclude the book with a brief supplement in which he discussed three recent and promising books: Hogben's Nature of Living Matter, Woodger's Biological Principles and Russell's Interpretation of Development and Heredity, all published between 1929 and 1930. Haldane was rather critical of Hogben's mechanistic interpretation of life phenomena: Haldane complained that in Hogben's reductionist approach (an approach extended to animal behaviour), he overlooked the organic coordination and integratedness exhibited by any organism. Furthermore, his mechanist interpretation of hereditary phenomena – an interpretation drawing heavily on the latest advances promoted by the Mendelian school – supported, rather than undermined, mystical and vitalist hypotheses explaining inheritance. As Haldane thundered:

Conversely, and not surprisingly, Haldane was quite enthusiastic about Woodger and Russell, who represented a younger generation of scholars that was developing, and even improving, his own insights.