lpetrich
16 Mar 2009, 09:39 AM
Vitalism is the theory that living things are alive as a result of some "vital force", as opposed to their being that way being an emergent property of appropriately-arranged nonliving matter (mechanism).
Vitalism is an old and popular hypothesis, perhaps an almost universal hypothesis before modern times. "Soul" or "spirit" essentially meant "vital force" in many cases. The ancient Greek atomists, well-known for their philosophical materialism, believed that there are vital-force (soul) atoms as well as other kinds of atoms. Aristotle even went so far as to identify three kinds of vital force: the vegetable soul, the animal soul, and the rational soul. However, it is nowadays completely discredited in mainstream science, though it survives as the "theoretical justification" for various "alternative medical therapies". Yes, forces like "qi / chi" and "prana" are versions of "vital force".
It's hard for me to find any good histories of that subject online; the most I've found is Carbon Chemistry (http://www.3rd1000.com/history/carbon.htm). Some accounts treat Friedrich Wöhler's 1828 synthesis of urea from ammonium cyanate as a Great Turning Point. However, this feat was hardly noticed at the time, and was celebrated only long afterwards. But it was counterevidence against a common view at the time, notably advocated by chemist Jöns Jakob Berzelius, that many compounds, the "organic" ones, could only be made by living things (the others are "inorganic"). And I suspect that this experiment is remembered because it was followed by numerous other experiments that pointed in the same direction.
In 1845, one of Wöhler's students, Adolph Kolbe, succeeded in making acetic acid from inorganic compounds, and in the 1850's, Pierre Berthelot succeeded in synthesizing numerous organic compounds from incorganic precursors, including methyl alcohol, ethyl alcohol, methane, benzene, and acetylene.
But a vitalist could still claim that this is not really counterevidence, because these substances could be made by that "vital force", in addition to being makable in the lab.
One of the last reputable vitalists in mainstream biology was Hans Driesch, who in 1895 made an odd discovery: he could take a fertilized sea-urchin egg that had started dividing, split it in two, and watch the two halves develop into two complete sea urchins, instead of two halves of one sea urchin. He concluded from this that there was some "vital force" responsible for development. However, in their first few divisions, a sea-urchin embryo's cells are uncommitted to any particular fate; that commitment only happens later, and Driesch had proposed a sort of "vital force of the gaps".
But one of his contemporaries, Eduard Buchner, discovered in 1897 that yeast-cell contents could cause fermentation in the absence of whole yeast cells. He followed up in 1903 by making the first discovery of one of the enzymes responsible (zymase).
And over the twentieth century, molecular biologists continued onward, scoring triumph after triumph, while totally ignoring the vital-force hypothesis. They have finished what Wöhler started, mapping out numerous metabolic pathways, including biosynthesis ones. And they have solved several other biological riddles, like heredity. There are still some things that have resisted molecular biologists' efforts, like how one gets from genes to macroscopic shapes, but from what can be determined about that, a vital force is totally superfluous there also.
I finally note an odd circumstance: present-day vitalists are totally apolitical about their vitalism, in strong contrast with creationists, who are sometimes shamelessly political about their beliefs. There are not many vitalists who want equal time for chi and prana in molecular-biology classes. And molecular biologists devote next to no effort to debunking chi and prana.
Vitalism is an old and popular hypothesis, perhaps an almost universal hypothesis before modern times. "Soul" or "spirit" essentially meant "vital force" in many cases. The ancient Greek atomists, well-known for their philosophical materialism, believed that there are vital-force (soul) atoms as well as other kinds of atoms. Aristotle even went so far as to identify three kinds of vital force: the vegetable soul, the animal soul, and the rational soul. However, it is nowadays completely discredited in mainstream science, though it survives as the "theoretical justification" for various "alternative medical therapies". Yes, forces like "qi / chi" and "prana" are versions of "vital force".
It's hard for me to find any good histories of that subject online; the most I've found is Carbon Chemistry (http://www.3rd1000.com/history/carbon.htm). Some accounts treat Friedrich Wöhler's 1828 synthesis of urea from ammonium cyanate as a Great Turning Point. However, this feat was hardly noticed at the time, and was celebrated only long afterwards. But it was counterevidence against a common view at the time, notably advocated by chemist Jöns Jakob Berzelius, that many compounds, the "organic" ones, could only be made by living things (the others are "inorganic"). And I suspect that this experiment is remembered because it was followed by numerous other experiments that pointed in the same direction.
In 1845, one of Wöhler's students, Adolph Kolbe, succeeded in making acetic acid from inorganic compounds, and in the 1850's, Pierre Berthelot succeeded in synthesizing numerous organic compounds from incorganic precursors, including methyl alcohol, ethyl alcohol, methane, benzene, and acetylene.
But a vitalist could still claim that this is not really counterevidence, because these substances could be made by that "vital force", in addition to being makable in the lab.
One of the last reputable vitalists in mainstream biology was Hans Driesch, who in 1895 made an odd discovery: he could take a fertilized sea-urchin egg that had started dividing, split it in two, and watch the two halves develop into two complete sea urchins, instead of two halves of one sea urchin. He concluded from this that there was some "vital force" responsible for development. However, in their first few divisions, a sea-urchin embryo's cells are uncommitted to any particular fate; that commitment only happens later, and Driesch had proposed a sort of "vital force of the gaps".
But one of his contemporaries, Eduard Buchner, discovered in 1897 that yeast-cell contents could cause fermentation in the absence of whole yeast cells. He followed up in 1903 by making the first discovery of one of the enzymes responsible (zymase).
And over the twentieth century, molecular biologists continued onward, scoring triumph after triumph, while totally ignoring the vital-force hypothesis. They have finished what Wöhler started, mapping out numerous metabolic pathways, including biosynthesis ones. And they have solved several other biological riddles, like heredity. There are still some things that have resisted molecular biologists' efforts, like how one gets from genes to macroscopic shapes, but from what can be determined about that, a vital force is totally superfluous there also.
I finally note an odd circumstance: present-day vitalists are totally apolitical about their vitalism, in strong contrast with creationists, who are sometimes shamelessly political about their beliefs. There are not many vitalists who want equal time for chi and prana in molecular-biology classes. And molecular biologists devote next to no effort to debunking chi and prana.