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On the path to AI
Law’s prophecies and the
conceptual foundations of
the machine learning age
Thomas D. Grant
Damon J. Wischik
On the path to AI
“Finding an analogy in the legal philosophy of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the au-
thors provide a penetrating and fine-grained examination of artificial intelligence,
a rich and forward-looking approach that should restrain exaggerated claims and
guide a realistic assessment of AI’s prospects.”
—Frederic R. Kellogg, author of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and Legal Logic
On the path to AI
Law’s prophecies and the conceptual foundations of
the machine learning age
Thomas D. Grant Damon J. Wischik
Lauterpacht Centre for International Department of Computer Science and
Law Technology
University of Cambridge University of Cambridge
Cambridge, UK Cambridge, UK
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020. This book is an open access
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Prologue---Starting with Logic
Law and computer science, in their classic form, employ logic to produce
results. Edsger Dijkstra (1930–2002), one of the pioneers of computer
science, expressed the essence of the field in its earlier times. Computer
science had at its heart the mathematical analysis of algorithms, and thus…
v
vi PROLOGUE—STARTING WITH LOGIC
can reason with precision, and separate argument from fallacy, by the clear
simple rules of pure unsophisticated logic … can fix his attention, and
steadily pursue truth through any the most intricate deduction, by the use
of mathematical demonstrations … [and] has contemplated those maxims
reduced to a practical system in the laws of imperial Rome …3
The well-schooled lawyer, like the better mathematician, gets to the cor-
rect result as surely as the well-designed algorithm generates a satisfactory
computer output. As intricate as the deductions might be and thus de-
manding on the intellect, the underlying process is “pure unsophisticated
logic.”
But to sum up computer science that way is out of date. The current
boom in artificial intelligence, driven by machine learning, is not about
deducing logical results from formulae. It is instead based on inductive
prediction from datasets. The success of machine learning does not derive
from better mathematics. It derives instead from bigger datasets and bet-
ter understanding of the patterns those datasets contain. In the chapters
that follow, we will explore this revolution in computer science.
A revolution has taken place in modern times in law as well. As one
would expect of a shift in thinking which has far-reaching impact, more
than one thinker has been involved. Nevertheless, in law, one figure over
the past century and a half stands out. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the title
of whose famous essay The Path of the Law we borrow in paraphrase for
the title of our book, influenced the law and motivated changes in how
people think about the law. To such an extent did Holmes affect legal
thinking that his work marks a turning point.
We believe that the revolution in computer science that machine learn-
ing entails mirrors the revolution in law in which Oliver Wendell Holmes
Jr. played so prominent a part. This book describes both revolutions and
draws an analogy between them. Our purpose here is to expose the fun-
damental contours of thought of the machine learning age—its concep-
tual foundations—by showing how these trace a similar shape to modern
legal thought; and by placing both in their wider intellectual setting. Get-
ting past a purely technological presentation, we will suggest that machine
learning, for all its novelty and impact, belongs to a long history of change
in the methods people use to make sense of the world. Machine learning
is a revolution in thinking. It has not happened, however, in isolation.
PROLOGUE—STARTING WITH LOGIC vii
800 judgments, gave frequent public addresses many of which are set
down in print, and was a prolific correspondent with friends, colleagues,
and the occasional stranger.10 There is also quotability.11 Holmes has de-
tractors12 and champions.13 He has been the subject of “cycles of intel-
lectual anachronisms, panegyrics, and condemnations.”14 It is not to our
purpose to add to the panegyrics or to the condemnations. We do whole-
heartedly embrace anachronism! Actually, we do not deny the limits of
analogy across two disciplines across over a century of change; we will
touch on some of the limits (Chapter 3). Yet, even so, Holmes’s con-
ception of the law, in its great shift from formal deduction to inductive
processes of pattern searching, prefigured the change from traditional al-
gorithmic computing to the machine learning revolution of recent years.
And, going further still, Holmes posited certain ideas about the process of
legal decision making—in particular about the effect of past decisions and
anticipated future decisions on making a decision in a case at hand—that
suggest some of the most forward-thinking ideas about machine learning
that computer scientists are just starting to explore (Chapter 9). There
is also a line in Holmes’s thought that queried whether, notwithstanding
the departure from formal proof, law might someday, through scientific
advances that uncover new rules, find its way back to its starting point in
logic. Here too an inquiry that Holmes led over a century ago in law may
be applied today as we consider what the machine learning age holds in
store (Chapter 10).
As for the law in his day as Holmes saw it, and as many have since, it
must be seen past its starting point in deductive reasoning if one is to make
sense of it.15 Law is, according to Holmes, not logic, but experience—
meaning that the full range of past decisions, rules, and social influences
is what really matters in law. An “inductive turn” in Holmes’s thinking
about law16 —and in law as practiced and studied more widely—followed.
In computer science, the distinct new factor has been the emergence of
data as the motive force behind machine learning. How much weight is
to be attributed to logic, and how much to experience or data, is a point
of difference among practitioners both in law and in computer science.
The difference runs deep in the history and current practice of the fields,
so much so that in law and in computer science alike it marks a divide in
basic understandings.
Jurists refer to formalists and realists when describing the divide in legal
understanding that concerns us here. The formalists understand law as
the application of logical rules to particular questions. The realists see it,
PROLOGUE—STARTING WITH LOGIC ix
In this book, we will use the term machine learning, and we will
not stray any further into artificial intelligence. We have neural networks
in mind, but our discussion applies to machine learning more widely.
Whether machine learning and neural networks have a role to play in
the possible future emergence of a general AI—that is to say, a machine
that approximates or exceeds human intelligence—we will not even spec-
ulate.26
Notes
1. Dijkstra, How Do We Tell Truths That Might Hurt? in Dijkstra, Selected
Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective (1982) 129 (orig-
inal text dated June 18, 1975).
2. Countless iterations of this description appear in course materials on com-
puter programming. See, e.g., http://computerscience.chemeketa.edu/
cs160Reader/Algorithms/AlgorithmsIntro.html; http://math.hws.edu/
javanotes/c3/s2.html. For a textbook example, see Schneider & Gersting,
Invitation to Computer Science (1995) 9. Schneider and Gersting,
in their definition, stipulate that an algorithm is a “well-ordered collection
of unambiguous and effectively computable operations that when executed
produces a result and halts in a finite amount of time.” We will say some
more in Chapter 9 about the “halting problem”: see p. 109.
3. Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England:
Book the First (1765) 33.
4. Holmes, The Path of the Law, 10 Harv. L. Rev. 457 (1896–97).
5. Fred R. Shapiro in The Most-Cited Law Review Articles Revisited, 71 Chi.-
Kent L. R ev. 751, 767 (1996) acknowledged that the fifth-place ranking
of The Path of the Law reflected serious undercounting, because the only
citations counted were those from 1956 onward. Only a small handful of
Shapiro’s top 100 were published before 1956. Shapiro and his co-author
Michelle Pearse acknowledged a similar limitation in a later update of the
top citation list: The Most-Cited Law Review Articles of All Time, 110
Mich. L. R ev. 1483, 1488 (2012). The Path came in third in Shapiro
and Pearse’s 2012 ranking: id. at 1489.
6. Illustrated, for example, by the several symposiums on the occasion of
its centennial: See 110 Harv. L. R ev 989 (1997); 63 Brook. L. R ev.
1 (1997); 78 B.U. L. Rev 691 (1998) (and articles that follow in each
volume). Cf. Alschuler, 49 Fla. L. R ev. 353 (1997) (and several responses
that follow in that volume).
7. Holmes, The Path of the Law, 10 Harv. L. R ev. 457, 465 (1896–97).
8. Holmes, The Common Law (1881) 1.
xii PROLOGUE—STARTING WITH LOGIC
for frontal defenses (albeit from very different quarters), Antonin Scalia,
The Rule of Law as a Law of Rules, 56 U. Chi. L. R ev. 1175 (1989) and
James Crawford, Chance, Order, Change: The Course of International Law,
in Hague Academy of Int’l Law, 365 R ecueil des Cours 113, 113–35
(2013). Further to formalism, see Chapter 1, p. 2; Chapter 2, pp. 20–21.
18. The 2018 Report of the UN Secretary-General on Current developments in
science and technology and their potential impact on international security
and disarmament efforts put the relation between the terms like this:
The proper distinction between the three terms has led to heated ar-
gument between technologists. See e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/
item?id=20706174 (accessed Aug. 24, 2019).
19. Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence (Lords), Report (Apr. 16,
2018) p. 15, 17.
20. See, e.g., Efron & Hastie (2016) 351. See also Leo Breiman as quoted in
Chapter 1, p. 1.
21. Rosenblatt (1958).
22. Artificial intelligence has experienced a series of booms and “AI winters.”
For a broader history of artificial intelligence, see Russell & Norvig (2016)
5–27. Cf. National Science and Technology Council (U.S.), The National
Artificial Intelligence Research Development Strategic Plan (Oct. 2016)
pp. 12–14, describing three “waves” of AI development since the 1980s.
23. The ImageNet database was announced in 2009: J. Deng, W. Dong, R.
Socher, L.-J. Li, K. Li & L. Fei-Fei, ImageNet: A Large-Scale Hierarchical
Image Database, CVPR, 2009. The first ImageNet Challenge was in 2010.
For the history of the Challenge, see Olga Russakovsky*, Jia Deng*, Hao
Su, Jonathan Krause, Sanjeev Satheesh, Sean Ma, Zhiheng Huang, Andrej
xiv PROLOGUE—STARTING WITH LOGIC
1 Two Revolutions 1
1.1 An Analogy and Why We’re Making It 3
1.2 What the Analogy Between a Nineteenth Century Jurist
and Machine Learning Can Tell Us 4
1.3 Applications of Machine Learning in Law—And
Everywhere Else 7
1.4 Two Revolutions with a Common Ancestor 9
xv
xvi CONTENTS
5 Output as Prophecy 49
5.1 Prophecies Are What Law Is 50
5.2 Prediction Is What Machine Learning Output Is 54
5.3 Limits of the Analogy 57
5.4 Probabilistic Reasoning and Prediction 59
10 Conclusion 113
10.1 Holmes as Futurist 114
10.2 Where Did Holmes Think Law Was Going,
and Might Computer Science Follow? 119
10.3 Lessons for Lawyers and Other Laypeople 121
CONTENTS xvii
Index 143
About the Authors
xix
Abbreviations
xxi
xxii ABBREVIATIONS
Two Revolutions
What constitutes the law? You will find some text writers telling you that it is
something different from what is decided by the courts of Massachusetts or England,
that it is a system of reason, that it is a deduction from principles of ethics or
admitted axioms or what not, which may or may not coincide with the decisions.
But if we take the view of our friend the bad man we shall find that he does not
care two straws for the axioms or deductions, but that he does want to know what
the Massachusetts or English courts are likely to do in fact. I am much of his mind.
The prophecies of what the courts will do in fact, and nothing more pretentious, are
what I mean by the law.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. The Path of the Law (1897)
In the mid-1980s two powerful new algorithms for fitting data became available:
neural nets and decision trees. A new research community using these tools sprang
up. Their goal was predictive accuracy. The community consisted of young computer
scientists, physicists and engineers plus a few aging statisticians. They began using
the new tools in working on complex prediction problems where it was obvious that
data models were not applicable: speech recognition, image recognition, nonlinear
time series prediction, handwriting recognition, prediction in financial markets.
Leo Breiman, Statistical Modeling: The Two Cultures (2001)
The present short book describes how machine learning works. It does
so with a surprising analogy.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., one of the law’s most influential figures
in modern times, by turns has been embraced for the aphoristic quality
of his writing and indicted on the charge that he reconciled himself too
readily to the injustices of his day. It would be a mistake, however, to take
Holmes to have been no more than a crafter of beaux mots, or to look
no further than the judgment of some that he lacked moral compass.
That would elide Holmes’s role in a revolution in legal thought—and the
remarkable salience of his ideas for a revolution in computer science now
under way.
Holmes in the years immediately after the American Civil War engaged
with leading thinkers of the nineteenth century, intellectuals who were
taking a fresh look at scientific reasoning and logic and whose insights
would influence a range of disciplines in the century to come. The
engagement left an imprint on Holmes and, through his work as scholar
and as judge, would go on to shape a new outlook on law. Holmes played
a central role in what has recently been referred to as an “inductive turn”
in law,2 premised on an understanding that law in practice is not a sys-
tem of syllogism or formal proof but, instead, a process of discerning pat-
terns in experience. Under his influence, legal theory underwent a change
from deduction to induction, from formalism to realism. This change has
affected the law in theory and in practice. It is oft-recounted in modern
legal writing. A formalist view of legal texts—seeing the law as a formula
that can be applied to the factual situations the legislator promulgated the
law to address—remains indispensable to understanding law; but formal-
ism, for better or worse, no longer suffices if one is to understand how
lawyers, judges, and others involved in the law actually operate.
In computer science, a change has occurred which today is having
at least as much impact, but in most quarters remains unknown or, at
best, imprecisely grasped. The new approach is an inductive data-driven
approach, in which computers are “trained” to make predictions. It had
its roots in the 1950s and has come to preeminence since 2012. The clas-
sic view of computing, by contrast, is that computers execute a series of
logical steps that, applied to a given situation, lead to completion of a
required task; it is the programmer’s job to compose the steps as an algo-
rithm to perform the required task. Machine learning is still built on com-
puters that execute code as a series of logical steps, in the way they have
since the start of modern computing3 —but this is not an adequate expla-
nation of what makes machine learning such a powerful tool, so powerful
1 TWO REVOLUTIONS 3
socially vital field. The analogy that we develop here between law and
machine learning supplies a new way of looking at the latter. In so doing,
it helps explain what machine learning is. It also helps explain where
machine learning comes from: the recent advances in machine learning
have roots that reach deeply across modern thought. Identifying those
roots is the first step toward an intellectual history of machine learning. It
is also vital to understanding why machine learning is having such impact
and why it is likely to have still more in the years ahead.
The impact of machine learning, realized and anticipated, identifies it
as a phenomenon that requires a social response. The response is by no
means limited to law and legal institutions, but arriving at a legal classi-
fication of the phenomenon is overdue. Lawyers and judges already are
called upon to address machine learning with rules.6 And, yet, legisla-
tive and regulatory authorities are at a loss for satisfactory definition. We
believe that an analogy between machine learning and law will help.
But what does an analogy tell us, that a direct explanation does not?
One way to gain understanding of what machine learning is is by enu-
merating what it does. Here, for example, is a list of application areas
supplied by a website aimed at people considering careers in data science:
• Game-playing
• Transportation (automated vehicles)
• Augmenting human physical and mental capabilities (“cyborg” tech-
nology)
• Controlling robots so they can perform dangerous jobs
• Protecting the environment
• Emulating human emotions for the purpose of providing convincing
robot companions
• Improving care for the elderly
• General health care applications
• Banking and financial services
• Personalized digital media
• Security
• Logistics and distribution (supply chain management)
• Digital personal assistants
• E-commerce
• Customizing news and market reports.7
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Cambridge natural history, Vol. 01 (of
10)
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world
at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of
the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Editor: S. F. Harmer
Sir A. E. Shipley
Language: English
Credits: Keith Edkins, Peter Becker and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by
The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAMBRIDGE NATURAL HISTORY, VOL.
01 (OF 10) ***
THE
EDITED BY
S. F. HARMER, Sc.D., F.R.S., Fellow of King's College, Cambridge; Superintendent of the University
Museum of Zoology
AND
A. E. SHIPLEY, M.A., F.R.S., Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge; University Lecturer on the
Morphology of Invertebrates
VOLUME I
PROTOZOA
By Marcus Hartog, M.A., Trinity College (D.Sc. Lond.), Professor of Natural History in the Queen's College, Cork
PORIFERA (SPONGES)
By Igerna B. J. Sollas, B.Sc. (Lond.), Lecturer on Zoology at Newnham College, Cambridge
ECHINODERMATA
By E. W. Macbride, M.A., F.R.S., formerly Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge; Professor of Zoology in McGill
University, Montreal
London
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1906
PAGE
Scheme of the Classification adopted in this Book ix
PROTOZOA
CHAPTER I
Protozoa—Introduction—Functions of Protoplasm—Cell-division—Animals and
Plants 3
CHAPTER II
Protozoa (continued): Spontaneous Generation—Characters of Protozoa—
Classification 42
CHAPTER III
Protozoa (continued): Sarcodina 51
CHAPTER IV
Protozoa (continued): Sporozoa 94
CHAPTER V
Protozoa (continued): Flagellata 109
CHAPTER VI
Protozoa (continued): Infusoria (Ciliata and Suctoria) 136
PORIFERA (SPONGES)
CHAPTER VII
Porifera (Sponges)—Introduction—History—Description of Halichondria Panicea as
an Example of British marine Sponges and of Ephydatia Fluviatilis from Fresh
Water—Definition—Position in the Animal Kingdom 165
CHAPTER VIII
Porifera (continued): Forms of Spicules—Calcarea—Homocoela—Heterocoela—
Hexactinellida—Demospongiae—Tetractinellida—Monaxonida—Ceratosa—Key
to British Genera of Sponges 183
CHAPTER IX
Porifera (continued): Reproduction, Sexual and Asexual—Physiology—Distribution
—Flints 226
COELENTERATA
CHAPTER X
Coelenterata—Introduction—Classification—Hydrozoa—Eleutheroblastea—
Milleporina—Gymnoblastea—Calyptoblastea—Graptolitoidea—Stylasterina 245
CHAPTER XI
Hydrozoa (continued): Trachomedusae—Narcomedusae—Siphonophora 288
CHAPTER XII
Coelenterata (continued): Scyphozoa = Scyphomedusae 310
CHAPTER XIII
Coelenterata (continued): Anthozoa = Actinozoa—General Characters—Alcyonaria 326
CHAPTER XIV
Anthozoa (continued): Zoantharia 365
CTENOPHORA
CHAPTER XV
Ctenophora 412
ECHINODERMATA
CHAPTER XVI
Echinodermata—Introduction—Classification—Anatomy of a Starfish—Systematic
Account of Asteroidea 427
CHAPTER XVII
Echinodermata (continued): Ophiuroidea = Brittle Stars 477
CHAPTER XVIII
Echinodermata (continued): Echinoidea = Sea-Urchins 503
CHAPTER XIX
Echinodermata (continued): Holothuroidea = Sea-Cucumbers 560
CHAPTER XX
Echinodermata (continued): Pelmatozoa—Crinoidea = Sea-Lilies—Thecoidea—
Carpoidea—Cystoidea—Blastoidea 579
CHAPTER XXI
Echinodermata (continued): Development and Phylogeny 601
INDEX 625
SCHEME OF THE CLASSIFICATION ADOPTED IN THIS BOOK
The names of extinct groups are printed in italics.
Hyo
(p.
Rhiz
(p.
Pen
(p.
Crinoidea
Holo
(p. 580)
(p.
PELMATOZOA Com
(pp. 430, 579)
(p.
Inadunata (p. 595).
Articulata (p. 595).
Camerata (p. 595).
Thecoidea = Edrioasteroidea (pp. 580, 596).
Carpoidea (pp. 580, 596).
Cystoidea (pp. 580, 597).
Blastoidea (pp. 580, 599).
PROTOZOA
BY
CHAPTER I
The Free Amoeboid Cell.—If we examine under the microscope a fragment of one of the higher
animals or plants, we find in it a very complex structure. A careful study shows that it always consists of
certain minute elements of fundamentally the same nature, which are combined or fused into "tissues."
In plants, where these units of structure were first studied, and where they are easier to recognise, each
tiny unit is usually enclosed in an envelope or wall of woody or papery material, so that the whole plant
is honeycombed. Each separate cavity was at first called a "cell"; and this term was then applied to the
bounding wall, and finally to the unit of living matter within, the envelope receiving the name of "cell-
wall." In this modern sense the "cell" consists of a viscid substance, called first in animals "sarcode" by
Dujardin (1835), and later in plants "protoplasm"[1] by Von Mohl (1846). On the recognition of its
common nature in both kingdoms, largely due to Max Schultze, the latter term prevailed; and it has
passed from the vocabulary of biology into the domain of everyday life. We shall now examine the
structure and behaviour of protoplasm and of the cell as an introduction to the detailed study of the
Protozoa, or better still Protista,[2] the lowest types of living beings, and of Animals at large.
It is not in detached fragments of the tissues of the higher animals that we can best carry on this study:
for here the cells are in singularly close connexion with their neighbours during life; the proper appointed
work of each is intimately related to that of the others; and this co-operation has so trained and specially
modified each cell that the artificial severance and isolation is detrimental to its well-being, if not
necessarily fatal to its very life. Again, in plants the presence of a cell-wall interferes in many ways with
the free behaviour of the cell. But in the blood and lymph of higher animals there float isolated cells, the
white corpuscles or "leucocytes" of human histology, which, despite their minuteness (1⁄3000 in. in
diameter), are in many respects suitable objects. Further, in our waters, fresh or salt, we may find similar
free-living individual cells, in many respects resembling the leucocytes, but even better suited for our
study. For, in the first place, we can far more readily reproduce under the microscope the normal
conditions of their life; and, moreover, these free organisms are often many times larger than the
leucocyte. Such free organisms are individual Protozoa, and are called by the general term "Amoebae."
A large Amoeba may measure in its most contracted state 1⁄100 in. or 250 µ in diameter,[3] and some
closely allied species (Pelomyxa, see p. 52) even twelve times this amount. If we place an Amoeba or a
leucocyte under the microscope (Fig. 1), we shall find that its form, at first spherical, soon begins to
alter. To confine our attention to the external changes, we note that the outline, from circular, soon
becomes "island-shaped" by the outgrowth of a promontory here, the indenting of a bay there. The
promontory may enlarge into a peninsula, and thus grow until it becomes a new mainland, while the old
mainland dwindles into a mere promontory, and is finally lost. In this way a crawling motion is effected.[4]
The promontories are called "pseudopodia" (= "false-feet"), and the general character of such motion is
called "amoeboid."[5]
Fig. 1.—Amoeba, showing clear ectoplasm, granular endoplasm, dark nucleus, and lighter contractile vacuole. The
changes of form, a-f, are of the A. limax type; g, h, of the A. proteus type. (From Verworn.)
The living substance, protoplasm,[6] has been termed a "jelly," a word, however, that is quite
inapplicable to it in its living state. It is viscid, almost semi-fluid, and may well be compared to very soft
dough which has already begun to rise. It resembles it in often having a number of spaces, small or
large, filled with liquid (not gas). These are termed "vacuoles" or "alveoles," according to their greater or
their lesser dimensions. In some cases a vacuole is traversed by strands of plasmic substance, just as
we may find such strands stretching across the larger spaces of a very light loaf; but of course in the
living cell these are constantly undergoing changes. If we "fix" a cell (i.e. kill it by sudden heat or certain
chemical coagulants),[7] and examine it under the microscope, the intermediate substance between the
vacuoles that we have already seen in life is again found either to be finely honeycombed or else
resolved into a network like that of a sponge. The former structure is called a "foam" or "alveolar"
structure, the latter a "reticulate" structure. The alveoles are about 1 µ in diameter, and spheroidal or
polygonal by mutual contact, elongated, however, radially to any free surface, whether it be that of the
cell itself or that of a larger alveole or vacuole. The inner layer of protoplasm ("endoplasm," "endosarc")
contains also granules of various nature, reserve matters of various kinds, oil-globules, and particles of
mineral matter[8] which are waste products, and are called "excretory." In fixed specimens these
granules are seen to occupy the nodes of the network or of the alveoli, that is, the points where two or
three boundaries meet.[9] The outermost layer ("ectoplasm" or "ectosarc") appears in the live Amoeba
structureless and hyaline, even under conditions the most favourable for observation. The refractive
index of protoplasm, when living, is always well under 1.4, that of the fixed and dehydrated substance is
slightly over 1.6.
Again, within the outer protoplasm is found a body of slightly higher refractivity and of definite outline,
termed the "nucleus" (Figs. 1, 2). This has a definite "wall" of plasmic nature, and a substance so closely
resembling the outer protoplasm in character, that we call it the "nucleoplasm" (also "linin"),
distinguishing the outer plasm as "cytoplasm"; the term "protoplasm" including both. Within the
nucleoplasm are granules of a substance that stains well with the commoner dyes, especially the "basic"
ones, and which has hence been called "chromatin." The linin is usually arranged in a distinct network,
confluent into a "parietal layer" within the nuclear wall; the meshes traversing a cavity full of liquid, the
nuclear sap, and containing in their course the granules; while in the cavity are usually found one or two
droplets of a denser substance termed "nucleoles." These differ slightly in composition from the
chromatin granules[10] (see p. 24 f.).
The movements of the leucocyte or Amoeba are usually most active at a temperature of about 40° C. or
100° F., the "optimum." They cease when the temperature falls to a point, the "minimum," varying with
the organism, but never below freezing-point; they recommence when the temperature rises again to
the same point at which they stopped. If now the temperature be raised to a certain amount above 40°
they stop, but may recommence if the temperature has not exceeded a certain point, the "maximum"
(45° C. is a common maximum). If it has been raised to a still higher point they will not recommence
under any circumstances whatever.
Again, a slight electric shock will determine the retraction of all processes, and a period of rest in a
spherical condition. A milder shock will only arrest the movements. But a stronger shock may arrest
them permanently. We may often note a relation of the movements towards a surface, tending to keep
the Amoeba in contact with it, whether it be the surface of a solid or that of an air-bubble in the liquid
(see also p. 20).
Fig. 2.—Ovum of a Sea-Urchin, showing the radially striated cell-membrane, the cytoplasm containing yolk-granules, the
large nucleus (germinal vesicle), with its network of linin containing chromatin granules, and a large nucleole (germinal
spot). (From Balfour's Embryology, after Hertwig.)
If a gentle current be set up in the water, we find that the movements of the Amoeba are so co-ordinated
that it moves upstream; this must of course be of advantage in nature, as keeping the being in its place,
against the streams set up by larger creatures, etc. (see also p. 21).
If substances soluble in water be introduced the Amoeba will, as a rule, move away from the region of
greater concentration for some substances, but towards it (provided it be not excessive) for others. (See
also pp. 22, 23.) We find, indeed, that there is for substances of the latter category a minimum of
concentration, below which no effect is seen, and a maximum beyond which further concentration
repels. The easiest way to make such observations is to take up a little strong solution in a capillary tube
sealed at the far end, and to introduce its open end into the water, and let the solution diffuse out, so
that this end may be regarded as surrounded by zones of continuously decreasing strength. In the
process of inflammation (of a Higher Animal) it has been found that the white corpuscles are so
attracted by the source of irritation that they creep out of the capillaries, and crowd towards it.
We cannot imagine a piece of dough exhibiting any of these reactions, or the like of them; it can only
move passively under the action of some one or other of the recognised physical forces, and that only in
direct quantitative relation to the work that such forces can effect; in other words, the dough can have
work done on it, but it cannot do work. The Amoeba or leucocyte on the contrary does work. It moves
under the various circumstances by the transformation of some of its internal energy from the "potential"
into the "kinetic" state, the condition corresponding with this being essentially a liberation of heat or
work, either by the breaking down of its internal substances, or by the combination of some of them with
oxygen.[11] Such of these changes as involve the excretion of carbonic acid are termed "respiratory."
This liberation of energy is the "response" to an action of itself inadequate to produce it; and has been
compared not inaptly to the discharge of a cannon, where foot-tons of energy are liberated in
consequence of the pull of a few inch-grains on the trigger, or to an indefinitely small push which makes
electric contact: the energy set free is that which was stored up in the charge. This capacity for liberating
energy stored up within, in response to a relatively small impulse from without, is termed "irritability"; the
external impulse is termed the "stimulus." The responsive act has been termed "contractility," because it
so often means an obvious contraction, but is better termed "motility "; and irritability evinced by motility
is characteristic of all living beings save when in the temporary condition of "rest."