Allgemeine Physiologie

Riassunto

Allgemeine Physiologie by Max Verworn is a scientific treatise written in the early 20th century. It presents a unified “general physiology” founded on cellular physiology, synthesizing comparative biology with chemical, physical, and methodological insights to explain life’s core processes, from metabolism and form-building to energetics, stimuli, and death. The opening of the work establishes its purpose: to provide an orienting map of physiology’s aims, methods, and problems while cautioning against narrow specialization. It defines physiology as the study of life and argues this requires a cellular focus, then shows how hard it is to distinguish living from nonliving with striking microscope examples (quiescent seeds, yeast versus milk fat droplets, and jittering crystals that mimic life), underscoring the need for clear criteria. It clarifies “explanation” as reduction to simpler elements, asks whether life can be treated within the mass–space–time framework, and raises the relation between bodily and mental phenomena. Finally, it begins a brisk historical survey from mythic animism and Greek philosophy through the Pneuma doctrine, Galen’s system and experiments, medieval stagnation, Renaissance anatomy and Harvey’s circulation, to Bacon, Descartes, van Helmont, and Borelli, where the excerpt pauses. (This is an automatically generated summary.)