Edmund Montgomery was an American philosopher, scientist and physician.
Background
Edmund Duncan Montgomery was born on March 19, 1835, in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was the natural son of Isabella Davidson Montgomery and Duncan MacNeill, later Baron Colonsay and Oronsay, an eminent Scottish jurist who rose to the position of lord justice-general in 1852. At the time of Montgomery's birth, his father was solicitor-general for Scotland in Peel's first administration. When but four years old the boy was taken to Paris, remaining there until 1844, when his mother took him to Frankfort. There he lived until 1852, in which year he matriculated as a student of medicine at Heidelberg.
Education
From his student notebooks of his Gymnasium days, it is evident that Montgomery was unusually gifted in languages, science, and mathematics. According to contemporary testimony he was the most popular boy in his school, and it appeared that he would surpass his father, who had obtained the degree of M. D. at St. Andrew's and a "first" in mathematics at Edinburgh. In his fourteenth year, however, an event occurred which was destined for many years to cast a shadow on his life. He refused to be confirmed, after having gone through the preliminary training, and was ostracized. Years after the event, Montgomery wrote that at this time he was driven by loneliness and religious perplexity almost to the point of suicide. In 1848, Montgomery, still a boy, participated in the revolution at Frankfort to the extent of helping to build barricades. In 1850, he frequently saw Schopenhauer. During the years from 1852 to 1858, he studied at various German and Austrian universities (Heidelberg, 1852-54; Berlin, 1855; Bonn, 1856; Würzburg, 1857; and possibly Prague in 1858 and Vienna in 1859). He claimed for himself a degree in medicine, but the records of the universities that he attended yield no evidence to support his assertion. At Heidelberg, Montgomery was a friend of Moleschott and Kuno Fischer, and at Bonn, he was a pupil of Helmholtz.
Career
Montgomery returned to England and became a resident physician at the German Hospital (1860 - 61), Bermondsey Dispensary (1861 - 62), and demonstrator of morbid anatomy at St. Thomas' Hospital in London (1861 - 63). For some reason, possibly a tubercular infection, but more probably the discovery of his imposture, he left St. Thomas' and went to Madeira. During the years 1863-69, he practiced medicine at Madeira, Mentone, and Rome. In 1869, he retired from medical practice and in 1870 came to America. The first two years of their residence in America, Montgomery, and his wife spent in a colony near Thomasville, Georgia, devoted to the reclamation of the negro. The colony failed to advance its aims, and in 1872 they removed to Hempstead, Texas. "Liendo" was purchased in 1873. Here, isolated from the world, Montgomery for several years (1873 - 79) continued intensive researches on the nature of protoplasm which he had begun during his London days.
Following close upon the death, in June 1907, of Elisabet Ney, Montgomery sustained an apoplectic attack, and after a period of paralysis lasting over three years, died.
Achievements
Views
The fruits of his biological studies in Texas appeared in a number of papers published in the Popular Science Monthly (September, October 1878), St. Thomas' Hospital Report (1879), the Index, Jenaische Zeitschrift für Naturwissenschaft, Archiv für die gesammte Physiologie, and in a final monograph, The Vitality and Organization of Protoplasm, an octavo pamphlet of 83 pages, published independently in 1904. In these papers, he maintained what may be called a neo-vitalistic point of view in contrast with the materialism current in his day. At the same time (1878 - 87), in Mind, Index, the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, New Ideal, the International Journal of Ethics, the Monist, New Occasions, and Open Court, he published an imposing series of philosophical articles preliminary to his magnum opus, Philosophical Problems in the Light of Vital Organization (1907). Montgomery in his philosophical position is undoubtedly monistic, but his monism is of a double-aspect type, corresponding to that of Clifford and Hoffding. To him, the fundamental philosophical problem was that of the mind-body relation. The principal effort of his thought was "to show, that the two disparate modes of existence, known to us under the name of body and mind, have a common origin in one and the same underlying reality". He was firmly convinced that this and related problems must be solved by the scientific discovery and demonstration of a unitary substance in the very nature of which inhere the two contradictory attributes of permanence and change. His biological researches convinced him that living protoplasm was such a substance. On this same basis, he concluded that nature is wholly teleological. Its highest achievement is human personality, and his ethical theory, which is unique, is based upon this conception. His monism is likewise strikingly similar to that of Bergson, but to him, the fundamental reality is not élan vital, but living substance. In his concept of the origin and nature of life, he anticipated in detail that of the great biochemist, Benjamin Moore. He accounted for the appearance of novelties in the evolutionary series by a formulation strikingly anticipatory of the later theory of "emergent evolution. "
Membership
a member of the Texas Academy of Science
Personality
In intellectual quality and personal appearance, Montgomery resembled his father to an unusual degree. His photograph bears a most striking resemblance to Thomas Duncan's portrait of Duncan MacNeill in the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh. He was a gracious and outstandingly attractive person. The unfortunate circumstances of his birth and complications rising out of his marriage with Elisabet Ney combined to make him an aloof figure.
Connections
On November 17, 1863, at the office of the British consul, Montgomery married Elisabet Ney, whom he had first met and loved while he was a student of medicine at Heidelberg.