THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE

摘要

In a famous lay sermon on the Physical Basis of Life, written nine years after the publication of The Origin of Species, Huxley writes as follows: When hydrogen and oxygen are mixed in a certain proportion and an electric spark is passed through them, they disappear, and a quantity of water, equal in weight to the sum of their weights, appears in their place. There is not the slightest parity between the passive and active powers of the water and those of the oxygen and hydrogen which have given rise to it. At 32°, and far below that temperature, oxygen and hydrogen are elastic gaseous bodies whose particles tend to rush away from one another with great force. Water at the same temperature is a strong though brittle solid, whose particles tend to cohere into definite geometrical shapes. . . .