Vitalism

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Vitalism is a belief that starts from the premise that "living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things."<ref name=Bechtel>Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref>Template:Efn Where vitalism explicitly invokes a vital principle, that element is often referred to as the "vital spark", "energy", "élan vital" (coined by vitalist Henri Bergson), "vital force", or "vis vitalis", which some equate with the soul. In the 18th and 19th centuries, vitalism was discussed among biologists, between those who felt that the known mechanics of physics would eventually explain the difference between life and non-life and vitalists who argued that the processes of life could not be reduced to a mechanistic process. Vitalist biologists such as Johannes Reinke proposed testable hypotheses meant to show inadequacies with mechanistic explanations, but their experiments failed to provide support for vitalism. Biologists now consider vitalism in this sense to have been refuted by empirical evidence, and hence regard it either as a superseded scientific theory,<ref name="Williams2003">Template:Cite book</ref> or as a pseudoscience since the mid-20th century.<ref name="DevBio"/><ref name="ps"/>

Vitalism has a long history in medical philosophies: many traditional healing practices posited that disease results from some imbalance in vital forces.

HistoryEdit

Ancient timesEdit

The notion that bodily functions are due to a vitalistic principle existing in all living creatures has roots going back at least to ancient Egypt.<ref>Jidenu, Paulin (1996) African Philosophy, 2nd Ed. Indiana University Press, Template:ISBN, p.16.</ref> In Greek philosophy, the Milesian school proposed natural explanations deduced from materialism and mechanism. However, by the time of Lucretius, this account was supplemented, (for example, by the unpredictable clinamen of Epicurus), and in Stoic physics, the pneuma assumed the role of logos. Galen believed the lungs draw pneuma from the air, which the blood communicates throughout the body.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

MedievalEdit

In Europe, medieval physics was influenced by the idea of pneuma, helping to shape later aether theories.

Early modernEdit

Vitalists included English anatomist Francis Glisson (1597–1677) and the Italian doctor Marcello Malpighi (1628–1694).<ref name="Charles Birch 1985, pp. 76">Template:Harvnb</ref> Caspar Friedrich Wolff (1733–1794) is considered to be the father of epigenesis in embryology, that is, he marks the point when embryonic development began to be described in terms of the proliferation of cells rather than the incarnation of a preformed soul. However, this degree of empirical observation was not matched by a mechanistic philosophy: in his Theoria Generationis (1759), he tried to explain the emergence of the organism by the actions of a vis essentialis (an organizing, formative force). Carl Reichenbach (1788–1869) later developed the theory of Odic force, a form of life-energy that permeates living things.

In the 17th century, modern science responded to Newton's action at a distance and the mechanism of Cartesian dualism with vitalist theories: that whereas the chemical transformations undergone by non-living substances are reversible, so-called "organic" matter is permanently altered by chemical transformations (such as cooking).<ref name=Ede/>

As worded by Charles Birch and John B. Cobb, "the claims of the vitalists came to the fore again" in the 18th century:<ref name="Charles Birch 1985, pp. 76"/> "Georg Ernst Stahl's followers were active as were others, such as the physician genius Francis Xavier Bichat of the Hotel Dieu."<ref name="Charles Birch 1985, pp. 76"/> However, "Bichat moved from the tendency typical of the French vitalistic tradition to progressively free himself from metaphysics in order to combine with hypotheses and theories which accorded to the scientific criteria of physics and chemistry."<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> John Hunter recognised "a 'living principle' in addition to mechanics."<ref name="Charles Birch 1985, pp. 76"/>

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach was influential in establishing epigenesis in the life sciences in 1781 with his publication of Über den Bildungstrieb und das Zeugungsgeschäfte. Blumenbach cut up freshwater Hydra and established that the removed parts would regenerate. He inferred the presence of a "formative drive" (Bildungstrieb) in living matter. But he pointed out that this name,

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like names applied to every other kind of vital power, of itself, explains nothing: it serves merely to designate a peculiar power formed by the combination of the mechanical principle with that which is susceptible of modification.{{#if:|{{#if:|}}

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19th centuryEdit

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File:Sample of Urea.jpg
The synthesis of urea in the early 19th century from inorganic compounds was counterevidence for the vitalist hypothesis that only organisms could make the components of living things.

Jöns Jakob Berzelius, one of the early 19th century founders of modern chemistry, argued that a regulative force must exist within living matter to maintain its functions.<ref name=Ede>Ede, Andrew. (2007) The Rise and Decline of Colloid Science in North America, 1900–1935: The Neglected Dimension, p. 23</ref> Berzelius contended that compounds could be distinguished by whether they required any organisms in their synthesis (organic compounds) or whether they did not (inorganic compounds).<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Vitalist chemists predicted that organic materials could not be synthesized from inorganic components, but Friedrich Wöhler synthesised urea from inorganic components in 1828.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> However, contemporary accounts do not support the common belief that vitalism died when Wöhler made urea. This Wöhler Myth, as historian Peter Ramberg called it, originated from a popular history of chemistry published in 1931, which, "ignoring all pretense of historical accuracy, turned Wöhler into a crusader who made attempt after attempt to synthesize a natural product that would refute vitalism and lift the veil of ignorance, until 'one afternoon the miracle happenedTemplate:'".<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>Template:Efn

Between 1833 and 1844, Johannes Peter Müller wrote a book on physiology called Handbuch der Physiologie, which became the leading textbook in the field for much of the nineteenth century. The book showed Müller's commitments to vitalism; he questioned why organic matter differs from inorganic, then proceeded to chemical analyses of the blood and lymph. He describes in detail the circulatory, lymphatic, respiratory, digestive, endocrine, nervous, and sensory systems in a wide variety of animals but explains that the presence of a soul makes each organism an indivisible whole. He claimed that the behaviour of light and sound waves showed that living organisms possessed a life-energy for which physical laws could never fully account.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) after his famous rebuttal of spontaneous generation, performed several experiments that he felt supported vitalism. According to Bechtel, Pasteur "fitted fermentation into a more general programme describing special reactions that only occur in living organisms. These are irreducibly vital phenomena." Rejecting the claims of Berzelius, Liebig, Traube and others that fermentation resulted from chemical agents or catalysts within cells, Pasteur concluded that fermentation was a "vital action".<ref name=Bechtel/>

20th centuryEdit

Hans Driesch (1867–1941) interpreted his experiments as showing that life is not run by physicochemical laws.<ref name="DevBio">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> His main argument was that when one cuts up an embryo after its first division or two, each part grows into a complete adult. Driesch's reputation as an experimental biologist deteriorated as a result of his vitalistic theories, which scientists have seen since his time as pseudoscience.<ref name="DevBio" /><ref name=ps>Template:Cite book</ref> Vitalism is a superseded scientific hypothesis, and the term is sometimes used as a pejorative epithet.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Ernst Mayr (1904–2005) wrote: Template:Quote Template:Quote

Other vitalists included Johannes Reinke and Oscar Hertwig. Reinke used the word neovitalism to describe his work, claiming that it would eventually be verified through experimentation, and that it was an improvement over the other vitalistic theories. The work of Reinke influenced Carl Jung.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

John Scott Haldane adopted an anti-mechanist approach to biology and an idealist philosophy early on in his career. Haldane saw his work as a vindication of his belief that teleology was an essential concept in biology. His views became widely known with his first book Mechanism, life and personality in 1913.<ref name="Peter J. Bowler 2001, pp. 168">Bowler, Peter J. Reconciling science and religion: the debate in early-twentieth-century Britain, 2001, pp. 168–169. Template:ISBN.</ref> Haldane borrowed arguments from the vitalists to use against mechanism; however, he was not a vitalist. Haldane treated the organism as fundamental to biology: "we perceive the organism as a self-regulating entity", "every effort to analyze it into components that can be reduced to a mechanical explanation violates this central experience".<ref name="Peter J. Bowler 2001, pp. 168" /> The work of Haldane was an influence on organicism. Haldane stated that a purely mechanist interpretation could not account for the characteristics of life. Haldane wrote a number of books in which he attempted to show the invalidity of both vitalism and mechanist approaches to science. Haldane explained:

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By 1931, biologists had "almost unanimously abandoned vitalism as an acknowledged belief."<ref name="Mark A. Bedau 2010, p. 95">Template:Cite book</ref>

EmergentismEdit

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Contemporary science and engineering sometimes describe emergent processes, in which the properties of a system cannot be fully described in terms of the properties of the constituents.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> This may be because the properties of the constituents are not fully understood, or because the interactions between the individual constituents are important for the behavior of the system.

Whether emergence should be grouped with traditional vitalist concepts is a matter of semantic controversy.Template:Efn According to Emmeche et al. (1997):

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MesmerismEdit

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File:Franz Anton Mesmer.jpg
Franz Mesmer proposed the vitalist force of magnétisme animal in animals with breath.

A popular vitalist theory of the 18th century was "animal magnetism", in the theories of Franz Mesmer (1734–1815). However, the use of the (conventional) English term animal magnetism to translate Mesmer's magnétisme animal can be misleading for three reasons:

  • Mesmer chose his term to clearly distinguish his variant of magnetic force from those referred to, at that time, as mineral magnetism, cosmic magnetism and planetary magnetism.
  • Mesmer felt that this particular force/power only resided in the bodies of humans and animals.
  • Mesmer chose the word "animal," for its root meaning (from Latin animus="breath") specifically to identify his force as a quality that belonged to all creatures with breath; viz., the animate beings: humans and animals.

Mesmer's ideas became so influential that King Louis XVI of France appointed two commissions to investigate mesmerism; one was led by Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, the other, led by Benjamin Franklin, included Bailly and Lavoisier. The commissioners learned about Mesmeric theory, and saw its patients fall into fits and trances. In Franklin's garden, a patient was led to each of five trees, one of which had been "mesmerized"; he hugged each in turn to receive the "vital fluid," but fainted at the foot of a 'wrong' one. At Lavoisier's house, four normal cups of water were held before a "sensitive" woman; the fourth produced convulsions, but she calmly swallowed the mesmerized contents of a fifth, believing it to be plain water. The commissioners concluded that "the fluid without imagination is powerless, whereas imagination without the fluid can produce the effects of the fluid."<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Medical philosophiesEdit

Vitalism has a long history in medical philosophies: many traditional healing practices posited that disease results from some imbalance in vital forces. One example of a similar notion in Africa is the Yoruba concept of ase. In the European tradition founded by Hippocrates, these vital forces were associated with the four temperaments and humours. Multiple Asian traditions posited an imbalance or blocking of qi or prana. Amongst unterritorialized traditions such as religions and arts, forms of vitalism continue to exist as philosophical positions or as memorial tenets.Template:Citation needed

Complementary and alternative medicine therapies include energy therapies,<ref name="titleComplementary and Alternative Medicine – U.S. National Library of Medicine Collection Development Manual">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> associated with vitalism, especially biofield therapies such as therapeutic touch, Reiki, external qi, chakra healing and SHEN therapy.<ref name="Rubik">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In these therapies, the "subtle energy" field of a patient is manipulated by a practitioner. The subtle energy is held to exist beyond the electromagnetic energy produced by the heart and brain. Beverly Rubik describes the biofield as a "complex, dynamic, extremely weak EM field within and around the human body...."<ref name="Rubik" />

The founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann, promoted an immaterial, vitalistic view of disease: "...they are solely spirit-like (dynamic) derangements of the spirit-like power (the vital principle) that animates the human body." The view of disease as a dynamic disturbance of the immaterial and dynamic vital force is taught in many homeopathic colleges and constitutes a fundamental principle for many contemporary practising homeopaths.Template:Citation needed

CriticismEdit

Vitalism has sometimes been criticized as begging the question by inventing a name. Molière had famously parodied this fallacy in Le Malade imaginaire, where a quack "answers" the question of "Why does opium cause sleep?" with "Because of its dormitive virtue (i.e., soporific power)."<ref name="fr.wikisource.org"> Mihi a docto doctore / Demandatur causam et rationem quare / Opium facit dormire. / A quoi respondeo, / Quia est in eo / Vertus dormitiva, / Cujus est natura / Sensus assoupire. Le Malade imaginaire, (French Wikisource)</ref> Thomas Henry Huxley compared vitalism to stating that water is the way it is because of its "aquosity".<ref name="The Physical Basis of Life">The Physical Basis of Life, Pall Mall Gazette, 1869</ref> His grandson Julian Huxley in 1926 compared "vital force" or élan vital to explaining a railroad locomotive's operation by its élan locomotif ("locomotive force").

Another criticism is that vitalists have failed to rule out mechanistic explanations. This is rather obvious in retrospect for organic chemistry and developmental biology, but the criticism goes back at least a century. In 1912, Jacques Loeb published The Mechanistic Conception of Life, in which he described experiments on how a sea urchin could have a pin for its father, as Bertrand Russell put it (Religion and Science). He offered this challenge:<ref name="JLoeb1912">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp

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Loeb addressed vitalism more explicitly:<ref name="JLoeb1912"/>Template:Rp

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Bechtel states that vitalism "is often viewed as unfalsifiable, and therefore a pernicious metaphysical doctrine."<ref name=Bechtel/> For many scientists, "vitalist" theories were unsatisfactory "holding positions" on the pathway to mechanistic understanding. In 1967, Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, stated "And so to those of you who may be vitalists I would make this prophecy: what everyone believed yesterday, and you believe today, only cranks will believe tomorrow."<ref name="Crick">Crick, Francis (1967) Of Molecules and Men; Great Minds Series Prometheus Books 2004, reviewed here. Crick's remark is cited and discussed in: Hein H (2004) Molecular biology vs. organicism: The enduring dispute between mechanism and vitalism. Synthese 20:238–253, who describes Crick's remark as "raising spectral red herrings".</ref>

While many vitalistic theories have in fact been falsified, notably Mesmerism, the pseudoscientific retention of untested and untestable theories continues to this day. Alan Sokal published an analysis of the wide acceptance among professional nurses of "scientific theories" of spiritual healing.<ref name="Sokal">Pseudoscience and Postmodernism: Antagonists or Fellow-Travelers? (pdf)</ref> Use of a technique called therapeutic touch was especially reviewed by Sokal, who concluded, "nearly all the pseudoscientific systems to be examined in this essay are based philosophically on vitalism" and added that "Mainstream science has rejected vitalism since at least the 1930s, for a plethora of good reasons that have only become stronger with time."<ref name="Sokal" />

Joseph C. Keating, Jr.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> discusses vitalism's past and present roles in chiropractic and calls vitalism "a form of bio-theology." He further explains that:<ref name="keating_innate">Template:Citation</ref>

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Keating views vitalism as incompatible with scientific thinking:<ref name="keating_innate" />

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Keating also mentions Skinner's viewpoint:<ref name="keating_innate" />

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According to Williams, "[t]oday, vitalism is one of the ideas that form the basis for many pseudoscientific health systems that claim that illnesses are caused by a disturbance or imbalance of the body's vital force."<ref name="Williams" /> "Vitalists claim to be scientific, but in fact they reject the scientific method with its basic postulates of cause and effect and of provability. They often regard subjective experience to be more valid than objective material reality."<ref name="Williams">Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref>

Victor Stenger<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> states that the term "bioenergetics" "is applied in biochemistry to refer to the readily measurable exchanges of energy within organisms, and between organisms and the environment, which occur by normal physical and chemical processes. This is not, however, what the new vitalists have in mind. They imagine the bioenergetic field as a holistic living force that goes beyond reductionist physics and chemistry."<ref name=Stenger>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Such a field is sometimes explained as electromagnetic, though some advocates also make confused appeals to quantum physics.<ref name="Rubik" /> Joanne Stefanatos states that "The principles of energy medicine originate in quantum physics."<ref name="Stefanatos">Stefanatos, J. 1997, Introduction to Bioenergetic Medicine, Shoen, A.M. and S.G. Wynn, Complementary and Alternative Veterinary Medicine: Principles and Practices, Mosby-Yearbook, Chicago.</ref> Stenger<ref name="Stenger" /> offers several explanations as to why this line of reasoning may be misplaced. He explains that energy exists in discrete packets called quanta. Energy fields are composed of their component parts and so only exist when quanta are present. Therefore, energy fields are not holistic, but are rather a system of discrete parts that must obey the laws of physics. This also means that energy fields are not instantaneous. These facts of quantum physics place limitations on the infinite, continuous field that is used by some theorists to describe so-called "human energy fields".<ref name="Biley">Biley, Francis C. 2005, Unitary Health Care: Martha Rogers' Science of Unitary Human Beings, University of Wales College of Medicine, viewed 30 November 2006, {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Stenger continues, explaining that the effects of EM forces have been measured by physicists as accurately as one part in a billion and there is yet to be any evidence that living organisms emit a unique field.<ref name="Stenger" />

Vitalistic thinking has been identified in the naive biological theories of children: "Recent experimental results show that a majority of preschoolers tend to choose vitalistic explanations as most plausible. Vitalism, together with other forms of intermediate causality, constitute unique causal devices for naive biology as a core domain of thought."<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

See alsoEdit

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NotesEdit

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ReferencesEdit

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SourcesEdit

External linksEdit

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