The Origin Nature and Evolution of Protoplasmic Individuals and their Associations. Protoplasmic Action and Experience

442 Pages·1982·12.136 MB·English

by  Faustino Cordon (Auth.)

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PROGRESS IN FOOD AND NUTRITION SCIENCE
THE ORIGIN
NATURE AND EVOLUTION
OF
PROTOPLASMIC INDIVIDUALS
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS
(Protoplasmic Action and Experience)
FAUSTINO CORDON
Fimdacion Para la Investigation Sabre Biologia Evohuionista
Madrid, Spain
PERGAMON PRESS
OXFORD - NEW YORK - TORONTO SYDNEY PARIS - FRANKFURT
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FEDERAL REPUBLIC Pergamon Press GmbH, 6242 Kronberg/Taunus,
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Copyright © 1982 Pergamon Press Ltd
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted
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First edition 1982
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Cordon, Faustino.
The origin, nature, and evolution of protoplasmic
individuals and their associations.
Includes bibliographical references.
Contents: [v. 1] Protoplasmic action and experience.
1. Evolution. 2. Protoplasm. 3. Nutrition.
I. Title.
QH371.C8413 1982 577 81-15905
ISBN 0-08-027990-2 (v. 1) AACR2
Printed in Great Britain by A. Wheaton & Co. Ltd, Exeter
GENERAL PREFACE
This preface aims to outline some of the issues developed in the body of the book. They are
taken in the order of subject matter, manner of treatment, the history of the book and the
context out of which it arose, its antecedents, and finally its development.
Subject and Nature of This Book
This book intends to attempt an understanding of living beings of all levels of complexity
in relation to each other and to the various ambient sources which they use to survive (their
respective aliments): protoplasmic individuals and their associations, cells and their associations,
animals and eventually man himself as a culmination of animal evolution. The book, then, is a
general theory of biology, a study of living beings quanta tively differentiated to such an extent
that each level is integrated by the others (animals by cells, cells by protoplasmic individuals,
and the latter by molecules). These beings, therefore, differ from each other to the same degree
as those of the lower protoplasmic level differ from molecules and molecules from the atoms
which make them up, or the particles which form atoms.
As there are different levels of complexity within the subjects under consideration, the work
is divided into four parts: (1) the origin, nature and evolution of the protoplasmic individuals
and their associations; (2) the origin, nature and evolution of the cells and their associations;
(3) the origin, nature and evolution of animals; and (4) the origin, nature and evolution of man.*
The internal unity of each part is evident because it shapes the book into a closed body of
knowledge like chemistry, which deals with a perfectly determined level of complexity: mole-
cules and their interactions. Uninterrupted attention to these issues during many years has led
me to what I consider to be a solidly based opinion on this problem of differentiating the inte-
gration levels, stratified into the different kinds of living beings.
This volume deals with living beings on the lowest level. These in the distant past came from
molecules which were the only living beings throughout a long era of evolution, and still per-
sist today (e.g. cells in animals), and constitute the lowest level which, through their activity,
supports and gives rise to cells. The discoveries of experimental chemistry applied to the study
of living matter, the set of biochemical data, and the phenomena studied by sciences as
sophisticated as immunology, give us clear information about agents on an intermediate level
between the molecular and cellular. The great 19th Century biologists, too, discussed "proto-
plasm" and vaguely attributed to it the fundamental properties of life: despite this however, a
consensus of biological thinking claims the cell as the first biological level, from Virchow on-
wards, who discovered the ceD to be the first biological levelf. As this book intends to argue that
protoplasm is the first level of living beings, I had to collect as completely as possible the known
data on protoplasm and to interpret it coherently.
To emphasize the point already made, the unity and internal coherence of each part, form a
particular feature of this book. There is an internal coherence in each part, which is a particular
feature of the book; and I have also tried to differentiate clearly and to place in context the
past and present functions of the protoplasm, cell, and finally animal, being firmly convinced
* Man, of course, (because of his level of integration) is strictly speaking an animal and the study of him is
placed at the end of the third part. This is partly because of the special interest that the biological study of
man offers us as men, and the opportunity that we have for studying ourselves as it were from the inside, but
mostly because our remarkable position in biological terms (that of the autotrophic animal, as the green cell
is the autotrophic cell) has compelled us to devote a fourth and last part to this study.
^The protoplasm is now considered as one of the components of the cell soma (a cell's organelle) and is sig-
nificantly called cytoplasm in contrast to the nucleus.
XI
xii The Origin, Nature and Evolution of Protoplasmic Individuals
that, paradoxically, the only way to achieve true synthesis is to analyse and define the boundar-
ies of the qualitatively different. By synthesis I mean a superior unity, the general laws under-
lying each biological fact, a unity obvious from the network of interactions among all living
beings (i.e. the very subject matter of biology). But why should I attempt to impose a theore-
tical unity upon living creatures which appear so qualitatively different when their boundaries
of different integration levels are defined? A separate paragraph is needed to answer this.
Living beings of all levels (protoplasmic, cell and animal) have emerged by stages in a uni-
que process of joint evolution in the biosphere of the Earth. The beings which result from this
process can therefore only be understood as a function of the nature of others at the point
when they emerge, and this result depends in turn on the joint history of them all. In particular,
regulated relationships appear in the process of each level emerging from the preceding one.
This process of emergence of the higher based on the evolution of the lower is one of the funda-
mental issues of the book: how the first protoplasmic individuals emerged from the joint pro-
cess of a given mass of molecules; the first cells emerged from the joint evolution of proto-
plasmic individuals, and finally the first animals emerged from a joint evolution of cells. These
are fundamental points because the essential knowledge of living beings on the three integration
levels (protoplasmic individuals, cells and animals) can only be arrived at by a knowledge of the
process which gave rise to them. By essential knowledge I mean the factor which sustains them
as separate entities from the evolving whole and which differentiates them from each other and
from other kinds of beings.
I have referred already to the integration of living beings of each level (and in general about
the unities at all levels) by living beings (unities) of the preceding level. This fact is evident on
the animal level, constituted by cells (and also on the highest inorganic level, in molecules
which are obviously constituted by atoms). One may claim as confidently that protoplasmic
individuals are constituted by molecules, as cells are made up of protoplasmic individuals. But
these statements are rather superficial and we cannot be satisfied with the notion of the animal
being constituted by cells as a house is made of bricks or even as a plant is constituted by cells.*
It is clear that the soma of an animal is constituted by a set of cells, each one with its own life
(many of them could be kept alive in vitro) but the animal cannot be identified with this cell
set. We can say that an animal is in one sense the set of these somatic cells, in close co-operation:
but the animal also consists of a unity (or the animal's organism, the seat of its individuality)
that gives the set of cells an actual supracellular ability. This is the co-ordination of all the
somatic cells through a sequence of joint actions that are constantly being modified and adapt-
ing to the animal medium and performing this operation rapidly (more rapidly than the pace of
cell activity) and constantly being linked by a form of experience which corresponds to the
higher unity, and which goes beyond the experience of a cell. This higher unity, or animal
organism, certainly emerged from a mere cell association that grouped itself very closely in
order to manage an increasingly hostile environment, until it had to achieve a unitary physical
field. This allowed the whole set to advance a step up to a new and higher kind of action and
experience, which developed, precisely by this means, this association of living beings into a
single living being of a higher level, an animal. The question of how the leap from one level up
to the next of an association of living beings was produced will be set out in each of the volumes,
for the essential beginning is the understanding of the nature and successive evolution of this
kind of level. Essential relationships such as this among the three levels gives unity to the whole
run of the separate volumes.
The above argument implies that the level of a living being clearly cannot be understood with-
out a knowledge of the essential nature of the lower level (its mode of action and the object
of the action).
The reason for my systematic intention of understanding the animal in action (and con-
sequently man) as a direct result of the action of closely co-operating cells, is to understand
the acting cell as a direct result of the action of closely co-operating protoplasmic individuals
* The observations about animals, mutatis mutandis, can also be applied to living beings of the other two
levels (protoplasmic individuals and cells) which are authentic individuals as well as to individuals on the in-
organic levels (molecules, atoms, etc.) and it is valid for them only. For instance, a living being is differen-
tiated from a mechanism, however finely it may be adjusted, and also from the most intimate association of
living beings (e.g. that of the cells in a plant).
General Preface Xlll
and finally to understand the acting protoplasmic individuals as a direct result of the action of
closely co-operating molecules. This assumption, in brief, throughout the book aims at under-
standing dynamically the unities of a higher level (all unities are pure, simple dynamism!) based
on the continual interaction of the unities on the previous lower level, (and in turn this remark-
able ability to interact attained by individuals of the next lower level which is a potentially
comprehensible result of a unitary development of *he evolution of this immediate lower level)
and is an attempt to confront science with a new set of problems demanded by the present
level of scientific thought.
It seems, as I have pointed out before* that the great conquests of experimental science,
made so often by incredible leaps of genius, in the last 300 years advanced science to such a
degree of maturity that it faces a new order of problem and solution. This is to integrate the
multiple scientific theories which refer to subjects differing qualitatively (or sometimes a single
subject considered from various viewpoints) appearing quite distinct rather than related within
a unique, general, integrated system of knowledge. Science, then, must be removed from its
experimental level, which goes back to Galileo, up to a new level that could be called evolu-
tionist or dialectic maybe, with reference to its origins or some of its aims (achieved, by the
way, through considering the particular evolution of humanity).
It is my belief that the kind of radical discovery in experimental science which removes this
science from previous empirical knowledge is the fact that experimental science began to dif-
ferentiate between the nature of certain individuals, in nature, of certain integration levels
(molecules, atoms, elementary particles etc., and in the biological field, animal and cell). Neatly
to differentiate in the natural world individuals of a determined integration level (as chemistry
does with molecules) implies a great advance into the knowledge of real processes. Above all,
it allows one to foresee in theory interactions between molecular unities, in which some are
transformed into others (and so to make these interactions work for man's benefit in many
ways, unimagined before, through reversible reactions, i.e. quantitative reactions, or at least
reactions which one may theorize about). The genius of the great experimental scientist (of a
few outstanding figures such as Galileo, Faraday, Newton, Darwin, Virchow, Einstein and
Planck, which point precisely to this three-fold secular advance in human thought) consists in
this very isolating of each one of these levels from the misleading appearance of the real pro-
cess, so that it seems to be something complete in itself; so they can constitute perfectly self
supporting sets in which particular, characteristic energy-matter changes continually take
place, of a kind unique to their set and found nowhere else in the natural world. Let us confine
ourselves to the profound objectivity of these levels which explains the great progress of ex-
perimental sciences, and at the same time, man's contemporary dominion over nature, in-
volving decisive and irreversible scientific conquests. Because of the inescapable character of
these great advances from which experimental sciences were born, these sciences are charac-
terized by their fragmentary nature (and a tendency towards specialization) and are now so far
restricted as to be rendered futile and full of irrationality. This restriction must be broken out
of in order to explore a new area of theoretical thought and a new set of problems.
In accordance with this, it is clear that the aim of raising scientific thought to a new general
and integrating level and a new set of problems (i.e. evolutionary science) is not artificial but
urged both by the present state of science and, fundamentally, dictates of the general structure
of reality, which gave rise on one hand to the progress of the various branches of experimental
science as far as their present blossoming in various forms, and on the other hand explains their
artificial separation, theoretical sterility and growing irrationality that is becoming increasingly
clear as time goes on. From this arises the need to understand the links between the different
levels of reality between subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, protoplasmic individuals,
cells and animals. These levels do exist and (as was pointed out before) to clarify their
existence was the remarkable feat of experimental science. But this achievement implies an
unavoidable limitation; since each branch of mental science concentrates on its particular level
and distinguishes it from the rest, this level becomes dominant as an absolute; it therefore
*My small book La funcion social de la ciencia (Ed. Cuadernos para el Dialogo, Madrid 1977) contains my
ideas on the meaning of science in the context of general human activity, and on evolution itself.
xiv The Origin, Nature and Evolution of Protoplasmic Individuals
appears "a-historical" (as though it had always existed) and "static" (isolated from the general
coherence of the totality of processes which form the world).
As a typical example let us take chemistry which, throughout the last century - its Golden
Age — considered atoms (parts interchanged by molecules through reactions) as absolute en-
tities, carriers of elemental mass quanta; it is true that factual findings afterwards added to this
concept the complexity and profound dynamism of the atom, but it is no less true that we
are at the beginning of the attempt to understand the true nature of the molecule: a differen-
tiated and continual result from the dynamism that defines atom integration. It is, therefore,
the endeavour to understand molecules and atoms as genuine unities which moment by
moment apply themselves as a whole to the modes of action that continually define them;
thus atoms and molecules are being constantly produced (and annihilated through action)
from interactions (determined by history) of lower level individuals. Briefly, chemistry per-
sists in studying theoretically (i.e. interpreting and foreseeing) the results of the interactions
between molecules in a diversity of artificial and natural conditions and so in dominating
the molecular level for man's service; yet it is still far from a real approach to what the molecule
really is, as defined through its permanent action (the contribution that is essentially new, of
the molecule to the set of atoms). All this points to the understanding of molecules continually
emerging and being annihilated — as may be said of all true unities — through the endless
dynamism of the lower level unities, the atoms, and through these annihilated in the joint
cosmic process, this process in turn is not comprehensible if its entire history, as far as the
molecular level, is not understood.
Another significant example, which is within the scope of biology, is that of cytology. We
can ascribe to Virchow the discovery of the cell level together with the origin of this new
experimental science, a science in fact dismembered in multiple specialized branches. Virchow
perceives, with a clearsightedness still admirable today, in his Cell Pathology, not only that all
plants are constituted of cells (as Schleiden had stated before) and that all animals are also
constituted of cells (as Schwann had previously confirmed), but also that plant and animal cells
are basically homologous, that every cell comes from another one and that they interact among
themselves building up the set which is each plant body and animal soma. He states that cells
are individual carriers of living properties, that they are born, they feed, grow, react to stimuli
of the environment, reproduce, become sick, and die. In my opinion, all these statements
(produced in 1859) are unquestionable, a definitive conquest of experimental science which
has made the cell a preferred object of study. Thus, cytology, like chemistry was "inevitably"
born with the restrictions or prejudices belonging to experimental sciences and as chemists
thought they were working on elementary indestructible unities of matter (atoms), biologists
since Virchow explicitly or implicitly consider cells as elementary absolute living unities (and
in fact, in doing this they "magically" break off the cell level from all the other real processes);
i.e. the level is considered as self-supporting and defined by the substantive quality: life.
Obviously the cell is a level of the living being as the molecule is an inorganic level of energy-
matter integration. But it is plain that besides interacting within their own level, cells are on
one hand agents which maintain themselves by assimilating from the outside energy that is
not cell energy, and on the other hand the cell first had to emerge (and therefore had to con-
tinue to emerge and maintain itself ) from individuals on an immediately lower integrating
level just as molecules derived and continue to derive from interacting atoms, or as animals
do from cells themselves.*
Thus the cell cannot be defined in the abstract as the individual carrier of life (what is
life, indeed, apart from the living individual?) but as a determined energy-matter integration
level of reality whose understanding in terms of function demands on one hand, an understand-
ing of its origin from the joint evolution of the lower level; and, on the other hand, when this
is understood, it is possible to reach an understanding of the immediately higher level (from
its joint evolution, i.e. the functional understanding of animals). Now for reasons given in this
book it seems impossible that the cell (because of its mode of action and experience, and be-
cause of its particular medium) should be considered as a directly supramolecular level. The
* Of course, this continual emergence and support from the lower level from the moment the higher
emerged, is directed by the higher.
General Preface XV
cell must have emerged from the joint evolution of individuals which really had to be directly
supramolecular and therefore from an intermediate level between the molecular and the cellu-
lar. Therefore these individuals on the first level of living beings emerged and evolved during
a stage of the biological evolution which was prior to the stage of cell evolution and which still
exist in the cell soma supporting the whole cell (in the same way that cells make up the animal
soma and their interaction is basic to the continual maintaining of animal individuality)*;using
old terminology with a new meaning, we call these living beings of a lower level protoplasmic
individuals. Protoplasmic individuals emerged primevally from the joint evolution of molecules
and (exclusively in the cell somas integrated by them) they continually emerge and maintain
themselves with the direct aid of molecules (metabolites); thus the mode of action and ex-
perience defining protoplasmic individuals is exactly that close governing of molecular trans-
formations which they permanently organize by means of metabolic pathways, by constantly
regulating these molecules whose energy-matter integration level is restored by them at each
moment and which they are also permanently applying to its action. The specific subject of this
volume is the origin, from the molecular level; the nature, defined by the ability to direct this
molecular level towards its own profit, and eventually the joint evolution of protoplasmic
individuals at first separated, and then in associations until they reach the point of the emer-
gence of the first cell above a highly evolved association of protoplasmic individuals.
This explains the intended unity of the complete work, a set of four volumes preceded by
the present one. I have just said that the acting protoplasmic individual can scarcely be compre-
hended, nor even the energy nature of the physical field which supports its supramolecular
individuality, without considering its origin in the joint evolution of the distinct, lower level,
i.e. the joint evolution of a huge mass of molecules in a suitable place and time in the Earth's
biosphere. In short, then, an understanding of the lowest biological level — the protoplasmic —
necessarily involves a historical, dynamic and integrated consideration of the lower level (that
is, the higher level of the "inorganic", the molecular level). It involves dealing with an exter-
nal problem which differs in nature from those which belong to experimental science, but it
is obviously a problem facing experimental science and cannot be solved without experimental
data. This new kind of problem inherent in evolutionist science is how the (temporarily new)
highest level of beings emerged from, and was maintained by, the joint evolution of the lower
and previous beings (in place of the limitations of the study of interactions between homo-
genous beings considered a-historically, as if they were "given" from the beginning, and sup-
ported, as it were "internally", within the same level). Now in fact we are concerned with
knowledge of the true unity (what is continually transformed into action): in the case of
protoplasmic individuals, this is the understanding of the joint evolution of the immediately
lower level and from then on by stages to a consideration of the joint evolution of the whole,
of the universe. In short, we are deling with the explanation of the first level of living beings
via its origin (which is from then on basic to all the others) as a comprehensible result of in-
organic evolution. It is of course an event of the greatest biological general validity because from
the beginning (thousands of millions of years ago) it must have been produced with no inter-
ruption (in the ontogenetic emerging of every protoplasmic individual and in the maintaining
of its life at every moment) in a multiple way, at first in free and associated protoplasmic in-
dividuals and later in all cell somas.
Moreover, the observations about the protoplasmic level are clearly just as applicable to the
cell level. Cells are not, as Virchow thought, the "fundamental substratum of life", but (like
protoplasmic individuals and animals) are living beings, individuals of a determined integration
level, the level directly supraprotoplasmic in the cell. In consequence, as much as the functional
understanding of its process of emergence from a major set of lower level individuals (mole-
cules), the functional understanding of the cell (not in terms of more formal description but of
its particular mode of acting upon its surroundings) requires the understanding of the emer-
gence of the first cell as a culminating result of the joint evolution of single and associated
protoplasmic individuals, since this primeval progress of a new level (the cell) from the
* In the same way that atoms make up the whole molecule and the continual interaction among them is
equivalent to the maintaining of the supratomic, molecular unity.
xvi The Origin, Nature and Evolution of Protoplasmic Individuals
immediate lower (the protoplasmic) is re-enacted in the ontogenesis of every cell in every
moment of its life, though always through progressively changing conditions within cell evolu-
tion. The subject of the second volume therefore (origin, nature and evolution of cells and
cell associations) corresponds very closely to that of the first: the study of a new level (the cell
level) to the joint evolution of the immediate lower level (the protoplasmic) and so there is a
permanent interrelation between one book and the other, which closely unifies the two
volumes through their subject; although we must add at once that the fact that both volumes
deal with steps of a qualitatively different level (in one case from the molecular level to the
protoplasmic and in the other from the protoplasmic to the cell) makes both evolutionary
histories profoundly different or at least, causes a sharp differentiation between the particular
manifestations of some of the great general laws in Volume I and II. Yet the coherence between
the volumes is predominant in the light of two facts: the first is that Volume I intends to in-
vestigate the nature of the first biological level (protoplasmic) which underlies the second (cell)
as a background, so the origin and, therefore, the nature and evolution of the latter are not
intelligible without prior knowledge of the former; i.e. Volume I is a basis for Volume II. The
second fact is that the processes considered in these two volumes are successive acts of a single
general process which took place in the Earth's biosphere and continued in the animal stage
which culminated in man. This fact, that all living creatures on Earth emerged through an inte-
grated process, provides the set of biological sciences (although it deals with the study of three
successive levels of energy-matter integration) with the possibility of a better or worse under-
standing of the development of levels from the lower ones after the separation of these levels,
i.e. it is possible to attempt to discover how a new level of individuality (a new level of action
and experience and therefore of a medium) arose from the improvement of a whole biological
level (and by keeping the acquired improvement of the lower) in a place and at a time especially
suitable and how this new level of actions (constituted by the older ones) slowly spread across
the lower (which constitutes its soma) becoming gradually more complex until it took a place
in the biosphere.
Of course, the problems corresponding to the emergence of the third biological level
(animal) from the second (cell), and to the nature of the animal action and experience of its
own medium (its complement) and, finally, to the progressive animal evolution, are the sub-
ject of Volume III of which Volume IV is, as it were, a last chapter devoted to the origin,
nature and evolution of man in that he is the culminating hegemonic animal. Thus, the com-
plete work does in fact possess a deep thematic unity, because the four volumes deal with a
single historical process during which stages at three levels occurred and must continue (at
present, of course, in multiple conditions that must be understood by their evolutionary
history) inside contemporary living beings with maximum complexity (inside our own soma),
since man is the culminating result of the whole biological evolution.
Thus evolutionist biology pursues the knowledge of the nature of every level of living
being (protoplasmic individuals, cells and animals) by means of their originating processes
(including man who can only be understood as an animal and in the context of the joint evolu-
tion of animals) and, it can do so because the history of living beings can be traced along its
general lines not only by considering its present diversification (which explains the progressive
vicissitudes of each level) but also because the evolutionary events most crucial in the three
changes of level are still occurring continually inside living beings now, for every living being of
every level cannot emerge nor maintain itself except out of the joint evolution of the imme-
diately lower level. As a consequence it is possible to obtain knowledge of all structural and
functional biological subjects only through the understanding of the whole of biological evolu-
tion. Besides the wide scope intended by this work on the joint evolutionary process is possible
in fact precisely because man is the culminating product of biological evolution; so the gradual
understanding of all the properties of man facilitates a fuD understanding of the process which
moreoever has begun, developed, is occurring now, and which will continue to do so in a
specific zone of the Earth: the terrestrial biosphere (the portion of maximum interaction be-
tween liquid water, atmosphere and soil.)
In short, the fact that man (agent of the scientific knowledge) is a living being and the cul-
minating one, explains why biological knowledge should be the first kind to face the set of
evolutionary problems which consists in understanding historically, dynamically and totally,
General Preface xvii
given biological levels by means of others. Because of difficulties encountered in looking for
a differentiation between the three biological levels of action and experience, Biology, could
scarcely jump from the level of empiric knoweldge to that of experimental science, but on the
other hand the obvious, universal fact of evolution could easily be perceived because it was
clearly within the scope of Biology, so it is at present ready to advance towards evolutionist
science. So it seems that Biology dominates experimental science in relation to this endeavour
to unify scientific knowledge as is required at present, in order to offer an integrated view of
the nature of the universe in order that man's development may take place with greater ease
and happiness. (This is not only a question of biological evolution requiring the prior evolution
of inorganic levels, and therefore putting forward the study of this evolution as a principal
scientific problem, but also of the fact that biological evolution was produced by living be-
ings' exploitation of inorganic sources of energy that together with the stages in biological
levels have moved in order from certain inorganic levels to others. It seems to me, therefore,
that biological evolution understood thoroughly can furnish invaluable data for a proper
approach to certain problems of cosmic evolution.) I hope this brief prologue will give a general
idea of the following work which covers the whole of biological evolution: it begins with the
first volume devoted to the first biological level, fundamental to the other two: the protoplas-
mic level.
Antecedents (1950-54)
The direct antecedents of this book include the greater part of my research which I began
about 1949. At that time I started moving away from conventional biochemical investigation to
develop my own set of problems. The occasion which began this definitive turn in my scienti-
fic thought was the discovery of certain facts of immunology which I interpreted, though
hardly consciously, in contradiction to current theories. For the first time I raised the question
of the "absolute veracity" of established science and was encouraged by the habit of scientific
criticism, which I would define as the continual necessity to contrast actual data with general
theory, and vice versa. My chief reward for the years I devoted to critical revision and re-
organization of immunology theory (1949-54) was the certainty that the protoplasmic level
was the first biological level, (since the formulation of the problem of the enzymatic activity
consisted in the mode of action and experience belonging to protoplasm) and the outline of the
evolutionist theory of integration levels of living beings.*
1955-60
With this sytem of ideas I undertook a systematic revision of Darwinist thought, in an
attempt to understand the meaning and field of application of his enduring achievement (the
theory of natural selection) in the light of the new order of ideas. I tried to understand not only
the evolution of an animal species once it was formed (which he explains as natural selection
equivalent to artificial selection) but the way through which new species arise (how one species
unfolds into two different ones both differing from the previous). This problem which is be-
yond Darwin's field, led me directly to distinguishing species' media and to explain why they
select according to particular ways and how each one progresses together with the progress of
the species and vice versa. In fact, with this achievement, 1956-60, began, for me, the search
for a feature characteristic of every evolution, i.e. the dependence of the evolution of specific
entities (in this case, the evolution of one species) from the joint evolution of the level to which
the species belongs (in this case, the animal level) and how the multiple specific media are
correspondingly interrelated. Another feature of evolutionist biology which I considered in
this period was the definition of something new (new species that were emerging in the evolu-
tion of a level) through its origin process within the fabric of the joint evolution of the level;
I also tried to find out the cause of the relations between phylogeny and ontogeny, discovered
* This work is chiefly collected in F. Cordon Immunidad y automultiplicacion proteica, Revista de Occi-
dente (1956); F. Cordon "Immunologia", a chapter of F. Calvet's Bioquimica, Alhambra (1956); F. Cordon
"Position de las enzimas en los procesos intracelulares tfpicos tal como la descubren los hechos de immuni-
dad*', a chapter of the collective book Enzimoterapia (1957); F. Cordon Introduction al origen y evolution
de la vide, Taurus (1958).