Vitalism

History

In Biology, this theoretical framework was one fertile moment, because it released living it of the mechanism and the reducing causal explanations of the Cartesianism (17th), without to return to the Surnaturel. In a strict sense, the term indicates the school of Montpellier (Barthez (1734-1806)).

The recourse to a vital Force loses of its scientific utility starting from 1828 with the birth of the Organic chemistry (accidental synthesis of the Urée by Friedrich Wöhler). The experiments of Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) on the Microbe S and the spontaneous Generation are a second threshold. Finally the molecular knowledge of the cell and the discovery of the structure of DNA (1953) make it possible to affirm the reductibility of the life to the matter.

Definition

Vitalism: Metaphysical doctrines according to which there exists in each individual a " principle vital" , distinct at the same time from the heart thinking and the physicochemical properties of the body, and controlling the phenomena of the life.

Vitalism and mechanism

The mechanism is the reversed double of vitalism: according to the doctrines mechanists, the life does not have any specificity, the organic world being entirely reducible with the laws of the matter. The second part of the Critical of faculty to judge Emmanuel Kant presents the opposition between mechanism and vitalism like a Antinomie (Dialectical of the criticism of faculty to judge teleological, §69-78). The solution which Kant with the conflict between these two doctrines proposes is the following one:

to think the animal as organized for an end, because one cannot include/understand it differently;
to know the animal only as a product of the mechanism, because the finality is not a concept resulting from the experiment.

The vitalism of Barthez

The merits and the disadvantages of this vitalism are exactly opposite of those of the mechanism. Merits, first of all: vitalism clarifies it at what the mechanism was blind, the originality of the biological phenomena. Disadvantages then: the invocation of a " force vitale" is the same type of the false explanation of this originality.

Vitalistic materialism of Diderot

August 1st

Vitalism and animism

If it cannot be confused with the mechanism, vitalism should not more be identified with the Animisme: the animist is not satisfied to subordinate the matter to the life, but, which more is, it subjects the life to the thought. The vitalistic philosophers of inspirations regard on the contrary the mental activity as basically subordinated to the " vie".

Posterity of vitalism: sciences and philosophy

Vitalism has bad reputation near many modern biologists who identify it with an introduction in smuggling of the Anthropomorphisme and finalism in the physicochemical explanation of the life.

In its History of Biology (published in 1984), Ernst Mayr declares as follows: “ for more than fifty years, vitalism has fallen in disuse in the biologists. ” On its side, François Jacob consequently associates vitalism with a basically dualistic position, and, out-of-date: " To recognize the unit of the physicochemical processes at the molecular level, it is to say that vitalism lost any function . "

However, to believe Georges Canguilhem of it, vitalism would be, as a position of principle, quasi irrefutable. It incarnates the " for this reason; confidence in the vitality of the life " and " the permanent mistrust of the life in front of the mechanization of the life . " The medical vitalism of the school of Montpellier would be thus " the expression of a mistrust, is necessary it to say instinctive, with regard to the capacity of the technique on the life . "

If few current biologists say " vitalistes" , a certain number of contemporary philosophers - as Georges Canguilhem, Gilles Deleuze or Hans Jonas - still claim these doctrines.

In addition, vitalism was condemned by the pope Pie X in its Encyclique Pascendi.

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