Turro y Darder, Ramon
Turro y Darder, Ramon
Spanish Biologist and Philosopher. Born in Malgrat, Dec. 8 1854. Died in Barcelona, June 5, 1926. As a Biologist, his conclusions about the circulation of the blood, more than half a century ago, were accepted and verified by later researchers and theorists. Among other things, he showed the insufficiency and unsatisfactoriness of the mechanistic and neomechanistic explanations of the circulatory process. He was also the first to busy himself with endocrinology and bacteriological immunity. As a philosopher Turro combated the subjectivistic and metaphysical type of psychology, and circumscribed scientific investigation to the determination of the conditions that precede the occurrence of phenomena, considering useless all attempt to reach final essences. Turro does not admit, however, that the psychical series or conscious states may be causally linked to the organic series. His formula wasPhysiology and Consciousness are phenomena that occur, not in connection, but in conjunction. His most important work is Filosofia Critica, in which he has put side by side two antagonistic conceptions of the universe, the objective and the subjectne conceptions. In it he holds that, at the present crisis of science and philosophy, the business of intelligence is to realize that science works on philosophical presuppositions, but that philosophy is no better off with its chaos of endless contradictions and countless systems of thought. The task to be realized is one of coming together, to undo what has been done and get as far as the original primordial concepts with which philosophical inquiry began. — J.A.F.