 The organization of cellular systems plays a central role in the dialectic between mechanistic biologists and holists. Holists often construe mechanistic biologists as downplaying the importance of organization, but many mechanistic biologists deny this. Bernard had emphasized the role of organization in allowing components to maintain the constancy of the internal environment and those seeking to explain homeostasis appealed to feedback loops. Recognizing that mechanistic accounts are not limited to a simple, additive view of organization, J. S. Haldane’s son, J. B. S. Haldane, abandoned his father’s commitment to holism and embraced a mechanistic framework that emphasized how biological components are affected by being incorporated within organized systems. In making this break with his father he was heavily influenced by working with the biochemist Hopkins (1913), who likewise made organization central to his accounts of biochemical processes. Accordingly, J. B. S. Haldane became one of the pioneers in formulating biological inquiry into the origins of life while still insisting that complex organization figured centrally in activities of living organisms (Martin 2010).