ABSTRACT
This article deals with attempts to reduce biology to physics and chemistry, and life to the objects studied by Objectivist and Positivist. The discovery by Watson and Crick of the genetic function of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), combined with the evidence these scientists provided for the self-duplication of DNA, is widely held to prove that living beings can be interpreted, at least in principle, by the laws of physics and Chemistry. Commoner disregards the fact that, viewed by his own criteria for the reducibility of biological processes, his challenge of the self duplication of DNA presents no difficulty to the reduction of genetics to physics and chemistry. The laws of physics are given in terms of differential equations which determine a definite system only within a set of fixed conditions. Physics is dumb without the gift of boundary conditions, forming its frame; and this frame is not determined by the laws of physics.
