No.
4992 July 3, 1965 NATURE
applied research, is directed towards specific national goals,
it is more important to ask, not how much we can afford for
research and development but how necessary a particular
undertaking is to the achievement of a national goal.
Criticism and appraisal must be specific, and Dr. Haworth
is as clear as Dr. Waterman as to the vital importance of
public understanding: the real objective in basic research
is to develop an understanding of Nature.
There is no misconception of the importance of all those
areas of activity-basic research, applied research, and
development--or their interrelationship. Dr. Haworth
suggests that scientists might have done more to explain
clearly the nature of basic research. One of the most
important features of his statement is his survey of the
role of the National Science Foundation, including some
specific criticism of the project grant system as hitherto
used. This is the more valuable in that it is placed in
the context, of the historical perspective rather than
simply expressing a conviction that scientific and tech-
nological progress depends alike on strengthening educa-
tion in science and on maintaining and augmenting a fund
of scientific knowledge, derived mainly from basic research.
In this historical perspective he notes particularly the
limitations which manpower, facilities and finance always
impose on policy, the necessity of guarding against
fragmented research effort or dissipation of resources,
the extent to which scientific activities transcend the
responsibility or interest of a single agency, and the
need for continuous reappraisal from fresh vantage
points.
In the United States Dr. Haworth considers that the
key individual in co-ordinating the national research and
development effort is the Special Assistant to the President
for Science and Technology, who is chairman of the
President's Science Advisory Committee and of the
Federal Council for Science and Technology as well as
head of the Office of Science and Technology. The Federal
Council for Science and Technology consists of the chief
scientific officers of the nine Federal agencies most heavily
involved in scientific activities and it leans heavily on the
scientific advice of the Science Advisory Committee and
National Academy of Sciences. It is under this system
that the National Science Foundation operates and it has
in the past relied heavily on project grants in supporting
research. Dr. Haworth now asks whether the Foundation
should attempt instead to devise new or modified pro-
grammes of support; how the Foundation can be sure
that the relative amounts of support provided to the
various fields of science are approximately correct; and
whether the Foundation should change its policies and
procedures in response to increasing concern over the
geographical concentration of Federal funds for research
and development.
Even in the United States these problems are not
limited to the National Science Foundation, and in Britain
they are implicit in the concern at present being expressed
over recent changes in the organization of civil science.
Dr. Haworth points to some specific defects in the project
grant system. It leads, for example, to decisions being
made outside the institution on the nature and amount
of support to be given to the parts within a particular
institution, and this may adversely affect its balanced
growth or administration. Again, scientists and adminis-
trators may alter the proposed balance of research in
favour of efforts judged most likely to receive Federal
support. Younger, unknown investigators tend to have
difficulty in securing support, and it is also difficult for
© 1965 Nature Publishing Group
3
an institution to establish new activities, particularly
interdisciplinary units or programmes. Under this system,
too, funds are not often available for flexible or co-
operative use, and experienced research workers are some-
times required to submit fresh applications for continued
support every year or two, when the nature of the work
makes it evident that completion of the project requires
much longer.
Dr. Haworth does not suggest that there is any simple
way to overcome these difficulties, although they might
become less pressing or acute if more generous funds
were available. What is clear from his statement is that
under his leadership the Foundation will continue to seek
for new and improved methods of allocating its funds
effectively, including the assessment of priorities as
between different fields of science and their probable
contribution to the solution of national problems. He is
obviously animated by essentially the same convictions
as his predecessor and, so far, he appears to have limited
himself to some measures to encourage decentralization
within the Foundation itself. However, on the evidence
of his first statement the Foundation should continue to
function on the sound lines established in the past, but
with constant appraisal of its methods and procedures in
the light of past experience, new needs and resources and
changing national requirements. To scientists in Britain,
the Foundation's report and the director's statement
should provide a wealth of material for appraisal of the
reorganization of scientific effort and the structure most
appropriate for that effort and for the formulation of
scientific policy.
ORGANIZATION AND EVOLUTION
IN PLANTS
Organization and Evolution in Plants
By Prof. C. W. Wardlaw. Pp. xiii + 499 + 24 plates.
(London: Longmans, Green and Co., Ltd., 1965.) 60s. net.
N Prof. W ardlaw's latest book, a worthy successor to
I earlier and familiar volumes 1 - 3 , the author faces the
problems which biological organization presents. He
therefore deals with what many regard as one of the most
outstanding scientific problems of our time. The book
relates specifically to plants, and here one should frankly
recognize that it is in their organization that higher plants
and animals differ in essential respects. The breadth and
scholarship with which Wardlaw develops his theme will
be appreciated by all plant scientists, who accept the
great challenge of interpreting growth, development,
differentiation, and morphogenesis, for they are, and will
increasingly be, preoccupied with organization in living
things. Nevertheless, there are those to whom the topic
of organization carries a suggestion of vitalism and even
mysticism. But even they must see that, whereas com-
parative biochemistry and now molecular biology tell us
much about what cells and organisms have in common,
we still face the problems of their diversity. It obviously
takes something more than a general knowledge of the
separate parts of a complex system to understand its
smoothly co-ordinated, integrated behaviour.
Prof. Wardlaw's book, which deals with problems of
organization at various levels of complexity, is therefore
a timely one, for biologists must now turn increasingly
to the consideration of the implications of organization
as they investigate biological functions, not only in isola-
tion, but also in the full complexity of their interactions
in living systems which can grow and develop. While it is a
laudable chemical ambition-and even a necessary first
 4 NATURE
step-to achieve as much as possible in cell-free systems,
knowledge is rarely complete until we interpret the
behaviour in vivo. In this respect the present-day popular
term 'molecular biology', if too literally interpreted, can
become a reductio ad absurdum; for the problems of
biology really begin when one considers levels of organiza-
tion higher than the purely chemical interpretation of
molecules-molecules per se are not alive. Indeed, without
the examination and interpretation of viable systems,
which have evolved and which can grow and develop,
biology would be like 'Hamlet without the Prince of
Denmark'. Prof. Wardlaw therefore summarizes the
knowledge that has been gleaned from the various branches
of natural science, and which is now needed to formulate
concepts of the organization of plants. However, he also
draws extensively on a wide knowledge of works which
deal with the comparative morphology of plants and with
the philosophy of organisms. Ever appreciative of the
essential contributions which have been made and are
still to be made by students of chemistry and physics, etc.,
he nevertheless stresses-and rightly so-the need to see
and understand the organism as a whole.
This book is therefore to be welcomed. It will be wel-
comed by those botanists who are steeped in a descriptive
tradition, because of the skill with which Prof. Wardlaw
summarizes knowledge drawn from a scattered and
extensive literature. It should be welcomed by experi-
mentalists, who may turn to it for an appreciation of the
systems with which they often do their work. It should be
helpful to those in biochemistry, biophysics and molecular
biology if they really seek to understand the full range of
problems which the interpretation of plants as organisms
presents. But all biologists will readily appreciate the
twenty-four carefully chosen and well-executed plates
in this attractive volume, and the large number of figures
which illuminate the text and develop the author's theme
around concrete and well-chosen examples. Thus, this
book should be useful to students, teachers and research
workers alike for the wealth of documented material it
contains. The bibliography compresses into some 7 50
citations the selected references by which the author
skilfully exposes his readers to a very extensive body of
literature. The subject index also functions as an index
by plant names.
Prof. Wardlaw views the biological scene with the
perspective of a morphologist and he emphasizes a com-
parative approach ; his essential and indisputable claim
is that biological organizations have evolved and, to
survive, they have adapted and must function effectively.
But, with the scope and breadth of interest which distin-
guishes Prof. W ardlaw's writings, this new work ranges
from current knowledge of genetically determined events
as they occur in nature at the molecular level to the
recognition of organization at successively higher levels.
Thus organization is considered at the level of sub-cellular
organelles, cells, tissues, organs, and organisms; and only
at the level of populations, where problems of organization
also arise, does Prof. Wardlaw content himself by reference
to other authorities. But, throughout, the author is essen-
tially true to that which he knows best, namely, the com-
parative morphological approach. Collectively, organisms
are seen as the product of their history of evolutionary
adaptation, and, individually, as the outcome of their
ontogenetic development. Thus time is an essential
parameter.
Prof. Wardlaw's book is particularly needed, as investi-
gators now make use of more and more refined techniques
but also tend to draw broader generalizations from a
narrower base of observations. Not all investigators
find themselves able to build on the philosophical
writings of the past nor to formulate that broad apprecia-
tion of plants as successful functioning organisms which is
the necessary base from which to approach the still
unsolved biological problems. Prof. Wardlaw's book seems
very successfully to have contributed to this end ; it
© 1965 Nature Publishing Group
July 3, 1965 VOL. 207
$ketches in the biological background against which the
emerging drama of the growth, differentiation and morpho-
genesis of plants may now be viewed.
It is neither possible nor profitable to make a digest, or a
precis, of the sixteen separate chapters which comprise
Organization and Evolution in Plants. Were that possible,
neither the book nor the subject to which it refers would
have the fascination of a continuing, unfolding, unfinished
story. The author would clearly have it so. He concludes,
however, on a somewhat wistful note, designed to preserve
the unity of the subject of botany.
Some (as Prof. Wardlaw says) seem now to regard botany
as a "Cinderella-like science", only likely to attract
general interest in so far as its problems are "tackled
by those with competence in the physical sciences". It
is even feared that botanical science will almost certainly
suffer a setback "even cease to be botany" if "purely
physico-chemical concepts of some of the processes in
plants were permitted to displace and supervene upon the
comprehensive biological concepts which are essential
to any adequate understanding of plants as functional
entities". Surely, however, Prof. Wardlaw need have no
fears. Plants are not animals ; neither are they mere
assemblages of molecules any more than a chemical analysis
alone describes the Five Sisters' window of York Minster
or the beauty of the stained glass in Chartres Cathedral.
So long as there are those who set down with skill and
scholarship the facts as Prof. Wardlaw has presented them,
and others take up the problems as he, and they, see them,
there will be need for those who can take all the knowledge
that chemistry and physics and molecular biology can
furnish to develop concepts of what plants are and how
they function through growth. One may even say that
the students of plants as organisms are needed not only
to pose the problems that the new disciplines may solve
but to suggest the systems on which the attack may
best be made. The ancient injunction to "consider the
lilies of the fields how they grow" is still apt, to be heeded
with wonder and humility by botanists and chemists alike.
To put the matter more bluntly, the dominant organisms
of to-day are plants, for they collectively represent the
bulk of living protoplasm now on the Earth, and
without them there would be no animals or insects.
This is not alone because of photosynthesis but also
because it is plants that have solved the problem of
incorporating inorganic forms of nitrogen into protein
and which keep the nitrogen cycle going. One could
have an extensive biology without animals, but not as we
know it without plants. Higher plants also have distinctive
ways by which they construct their organs out of cells and
by which they correlate and regulate their behaviour ;
they have obviously achieved a very different way of life
than have higher animals. Therefore, that branch of
biological science, hitherto called botany, will and must
persist. Botany is no "Cinderella science"-the stately
theme which Prof. ·wardlaw himself develops will not
fade like a fairy-tale at midnight. It contains too much
that is essential to human welfare and too much that still
remains to challenge the combined abilities of biologists
and of those who, following W ardlaw's advice, will add
to the skills of the chemists and physicists that intimate
knowledge of, and respect for, organization at all levels
which is the distinguishing characteristic of the biologist.
The cell theory of 1838 defined the minimum viable
morphological unit. Huxley's famous aphorism that,
"protoplasm is the physical basis of life" focused attention
on a "stuff of life". Since then past progress has so often
been made by, as it were, taking living organisms apart
to achieve an ever more detailed knowledge of them at
lower and lower orders of magnitude. But with each new
technique that basis of life which used to be thought of as a
substance becomes ever more obviously an arrangement,
a design, composed of organelles and granular units in
complex and intimate proximity. All this knowledge of
fine structure is in a descriptive morphological tradition.
 No. 4992 July 3, 1965 NATURE
Meanwhile the molecular biologists, approaching the
the problems from the other end of the scale, strive to
interpret the living system in terms of the unit properties
of its matter. But after all this essential learning of 'more
and more about less and less', biologists must still attack
the difficult task of synthesis. They must, in effect, put the
pieces back together again ; not merely to visualize
the reconstructed wholes built out of their identifiable
parts (gr::i.nules, membranes, organelles, cells, tissues,
organs) but also to interpret how organisms function-
in short, how they grow and develop. (Having in fact
understood the watch by taking it to pieces, wo must not
only visualize how it should be reconstructed but under-
stand what makes it tick.) It is here that the seemingly
more intangible concepts of organization apply, for they
relate to features which-though they may distinguish
the "quick from the dead"-are more evident in
the subtleties of the assembly and interrelationships
between component parts than in their identity alone. It is
all this which makes for a smoothly operating integrated
whole.
Prof. Wardlaw would have us understand plants,
whether algae or angiosperms, in this way ; and his book
Organization and Evolution in Plants makes a real contri-
bution to this end, if only because it directs attention to
the problems that are to be encountered.
F. C. STEWARD
1 Wardlaw, C. W., Morphogenesis in Plants, Methuen's Monographs in Bio-
logical Subjects, 176 (London: Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1952).
'Wardlaw, C. W., Phylogeny and Morphogenesis, 536 (London: Macmillan
and Co., Ltd., 1952).
• Wardlaw, C. W., Embryogenesis in Plants, 381 (London: Methuen and Co.,
Ltd., 1955).
INTEGRATED BIOLOGY
The Behaviour of Arthropods
By J. D. Carthy. Pp. vii+ 148. Paperback 12s. 6d.
The Biology of Hemichordata and Protochordata
By E . J. W. Barrington. Pp. vi+ 176. Paperback 15s.
The Physiology of Nematodes
By D. L. Lee. Pp. x + 154. Paperback 12s. 6d.
The Metabolism of Insects
By Darcy Gilmour. Pp. xii+ 195. Paperback 15s.
Reproduction in the Insects
By K. G. Davey. Pp. x+96. Paperback 12s. 6d.
Cybernetics and Biology
By F. H. George. Pp. viii+ 138. Paperback 12s. 6d.
(Edinburgh and London: Oliver and Boyd, 1965.)
1 "-'HE past twenty-five years have seen the disappear-
ance of the once well-defined boundaries separating
classical biology from biochemistry, physics and chemistry.
R ecognizing this fact, some universities have now begun
to establish integrated courses in biological science in which
biochemistry and the exact sciences carry equal weight
with botany and zoology and in which the latter subjects
are themselves biased toward experiment and analysis.
But the biologist is still primarily concerned with the
organism as an integrated whole; the ultimate explana-
tions of physiology and morphology in terms of physics
and chemistry must still account for the diversity of
living things and the ways in which organisms exist in
relation to their particular environments.
The six volumes included so far, in the series of Univer-
sity Reviews on Biology, separately and together form an
admirable addition to the literature at present available
to support this new approach to biology. The books
combine classical zoological information with the results
of modern experiment, and stress particularly the import-
ance of biochemical processes in arriving at a deeper
© 1965 Nature Publishing Group
5
understanding of biological function. The reviews should
play an important part in any integrated course in bio-
logical science, although since the individual subjects are
largely unrelated, the books may be bought separately
according to particular interest.
The Behaviour of Arthropods is another example of Dr.
Carthy's happy knack of communicating fairly complicated
concepts in terms readily understandable to the non-
specialist. The book eschews purely descriptive accounts
of behaviour patterns and consequently deals largely with
insects, the group in which most detailed analysis has been
made; where equally rigorous research has been carried
out in other arthropod groups, this has been included.
The various characteristics of different kinds of behaviour
are related, where possible, to the neurophysiological
mechanisms involved. The excellent summaries of
Mittelstaedt's analysis of the control pattern of prey
localization in mantids, and Harker's work on cockroach
diurnal rhythms, are typical of the quality of this book.
The Biology of Hemichordata and Protochordata discusses
the morphology and interrelationships of the groups in a
way which might be thought to follow the more classical
accounts of animal phyla. But the anatomical descrip-
tions provide a firm basis for a great deal of recent work
on movement, feeding, reproduction, etc. And, as is to be
expected in a book by Professor Barrington, there is an
amount of stimulating speculation on the origins of the
thyroid and pituitary glands and hormones. A special
feature of this volume is the concise summary following
each chapter.
The Physiology of Nematodes also includes sufficient
anatomical detail, including ultrastructure, to make more
meaningful the biochemical events underlying the physi-
ology of the various kinds of free-living and parasitic
n ematodes. The metabolic processes of digestion and
absorption, oxygen uptake and transport, osmoregulation
and excr etion, etc., in nematodes are continually compared
with similar processes in other animals, to illustrate
clearly the universality of these mechanisms and their
specific variations related to the mode of life of particular
forms.
The Metabolism of Insects is a biochemical text related
particularly to insect biology. Where information about
metabolic processes in insects is incomplete, Dr. Gilmour
has indicated the probable course of events by drawing
upon general biochemical knowledge. But the sections
concerned with mechanisms more specific to insects, for
example the metabolism of insecticides, tanning of the
cuticle, or the intervention of hormones in the control
of metabolism, are dealt with in remarkably lucid detail.
Each chapter is introduced in general terms, describing
principles in a way easily appreciated by the non-specialist,
before moving to the more detailed biochemistry involved.
This book will be invaluable both to the general ento-
mologist and to the biochemist.
Reproduction in the Insects does not attempt a compre-
hensive review of insect reproductive mechanisms, but
concentrates more upon some of the specific problems
involved. Dr. Davey shows how modern research has
brought a greater insight into the kinds of reproductive
mechanisms evolved by the largest animal phylum as well
as a clearer understanding of the ways in which different
insects have developed a variety of processes to deal with
similar problems. The chapters on spermatophore forma-
tion, sperm transfer and hormones are particularly good.
The author's enthusiasm and clear exposition illuminate
the whole of this little book.
Cybernetics and Biology is perhaps the least successful
of this generally very successful series. Every field of
intellectual activity tends to develop its own esoteric
jargon; this becomes particularly confusing in psychology
and cybernetics, where words and phrases lose their every-
day usage and have specific and perhaps unusual meanings.
Dr. George suggests that the Penguin Dictionary of Psy-
chology be consulted for the definition of some of the terms