The Scientific Rejection of Vitalism (continued).

2006-11-20T19:05:00.000-08:00

[to return to the main, click here, http://standtoyourduty.blogspot.com/]

Gabbay, D.M. (? ?), Kuipers, T.A.F. (? ?), Thagard, P. (? ?), Woods, J. (? ?) state:

[in "General Philosophy of Science: Focal Issues"(2007)]

"[Psillos] vitalism, [is] the view that the explanation of life and living organisms cannot be mechanical but should proceed in terms of vital forces or principles [p.166...Mahner] the distinction of science and pseudoscience is vital not just to our physical, but also to our cultural and political life [p.517...] it is unclear whether or not many other parascientific claims can be accommodated within ontological naturalism. In any case, they violate so much of what we know about the lawful behavior of things. Homeopaths, for example, claim that high dilutions that no longer contain even a single molecule of the given substance still have a potent pharmacological effect. If what we know about chemistry is roughly true, there can be no such effect. Homeopaths have learned to concede this objection, but now forward the protective hypothesis that, in the mandatory process of shaking the dilutions (called 'dynamization'), somehow the relevant 'information' of the given substance gets transferred to the solvent. So what produces the therapeutic effect is this 'information.' It goes without saying that this supposed information is ill-defined and perhaps even immaterial, because what chemistry tells us that any molecular structure formed by H2O-clusters is too short lived to do any informational work. Moreover, if water (or alcohol or whatever fluid) had a memory, why would it specifically remember only the information of the homeopathic substance rather than that of all the other chemicals it had contained previously. Another example is therapeutic touch. By moving her hands about 10 cm. over the patient's body, the healers attempts to adjust the patient's 'vital energy,' whose 'imbalance' is always among the causes of whatever disease is to be healed. Needless to say, biology has abandoned the idea of vital energies long ago. These examples show that many of the ideas occurring in the parasciences and paratechnologies are not necessarily supernatural in the traditional sense of involving powerful personal entities like gods or demons, but nevertheless paranatural [...] in the sense of that they are not compatible with the naturalist-materialist outlook of the factual sciences [p.555...] a frequent feature of parascientific knowledge is its anachronistic character [...] what many parascientists propagate as revolutionary new insights or at least as rival 'scientific' theories is in fact [p.563] very old news, so old indeed that they have long been discarded by science. For example, alternative medicine teems with mysterious vital energies that supposedly are out of balance when we are sick. Thus, the basic ideas of homeopathy only make sense when we go back 200 years when vitalism was still going strong in biology and medicine. Traditional Chinese medicine presupposes the existence of some vital energy (qi or ch'i), flowing in channels (meridians) unknown to biology. And the practitioners of therapeutic touch and reiki (ki is the Japanese equivalent of qi) claim that they treat the imbalances in the 'human energy field,' whereas so-called prana healers refer to the Hinduist equivalent prana. The creationists still defend views that may have been legitimate 200 years ago. Then there are the pseudophysicists who try to build perpetua mobilia or other so-called free energy machines as though thermodynamics were nonexistent, or who desperately strive to refute Einstein's two relativities in order to re-establish good old Newtonian ism. Finally, astrology is another prime example of a world view that has been superseded for several hundred years [p.564]";

(ISBN 0444515488)

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.
.
Gargaud, M. (? ?), López-Garcìa, P. (? ?), Martin, H. (? ?) [editors] state:
.

[in "Origins and Evolution of Life: An Astrobiological Perspective"(2011)]

"[via Morange, M. (? ?)] most contemporary biologists nevertheless consider vitalism as a crime against science. It is obvious that looking for a definition of life [...] does not mean that organisms are not natural objects, nor that behind their properties a 'principle of life' is hidden somewhere [p.005]";

(ISBN 052176131X, 9780521761314)

Garrard, G. (? ?) states:

[in "Ecocriticism"(2004)]

"vitalism: largely discredited scientific [!] belief that phenomena possess a vital spirit over and above qualities that may be describe mechanistically [p.184]";

(ISBN 0415196922)

Garrison, F.H. (? ?) states:

[in "An Introduction to the History of Medicine: With Medical Chronology, Bibliographic Data..."(1914)]

"the animism of Stahl became finally merged into the vitalism [p.242] of the 'four B's,' Bordeu, Barthez, Bichat, and Bouchut – to find a more recent avatar in the tedious 'entelechies' of Driesch. Eighteenth century vitalism [p.243...] the superfine vitalism of Driesch would soon dwindle into a truism, for the eminent morphologist has latterly invoked, as a substitute for the medieval vital principles, the old Aristotelian 'entelechies,' which is again, only a petitio principii [an assumption from the beginning]. Driesch has given up experimentation to philosophize in the cloud-cuckoo-land [Aristophanes, The Birds: 'an imaginary place where silly or unrealistic people metaphorically reside'] of 'harmonious equipotential systems [...] two of the ablest experimental morphologists of recent times have lapsed into scientific inactivity through the effect of their own theories [p.478...] the trend of all recent biological, and especially physiological, thinking has been away from vitalism, because, like other forms of intellectual complacency, it only drives the subject into a blind alley and side-tracks the chances of further investigation. The materialist, who regards the living cell as a physicochemical unit, furnished with a center of oxidation (nucleus) [we know better now!] and bounded by a semipermeable membrane, its physiological processes being looked upon as resultants of mechanical, physical, and chemical laws, at least offers something which can be tried out experimentally to its last consequences. The vitalist has nothing to offer except sterile phrases like the 'entelechies' of Driesch,which only beg the question. In the laboratory, vitalism would seem to be on its last legs [p.600]";

(ISBN none, too old; W.B. Saunders)

Gay, V.P. (? ?) states:

[in "Joy and the Objects of Psychoanalysis: Literature, Belief, and Neurosis"(2001)]

"the body is basically the same universally; it is a complex (but finite) structure of hierarchical interactions. None of its activities or systems my violate any of the numerous valid physical, chemical and biological laws [...] by rejecting vitalism we make possible the rigorous study of the body [...] the rejection of vitalism, a philosophic claim that organic systems are inherently unlike nonorganic systems, in the late nineteenth century seems crucial for advance in biological sciences [...] because all biological systems must obey all biological and chemical laws, we can reject findings, theories, or claims that appear otherwise [...] to retain vitalism means to retain the idea that every so often living systems can violate laws adduced in adjacent disciples. If one retained vitalism, the biological scientists could not automatically reject competing theories that violated thermodynamic laws [p.072]";

(ISBN 0791450996)

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Geisler, E. (? ?), Heller, O. (? ?) state:

[in "Management of Medical Technology: Theory, Practice, and Cases"(1998)]

"by the end of the 19^th century the concept of the prevailing 'specific vital force' ('vitalism'), thought to be essential for living organisms, lost its popularity [p.262...] it was Wohler, and later Kolbe in 1845 who synthesized acetic acid, who helped banish 'vital force,' or 'vitalism,' from organic chemistry and from science altogether [p.265]";

(ISBN 0792380541)
.

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Georges, T.M. (? ?) states:

[in "Digital Soul: Intelligent Machines and Human Values"(2003)]

"vitalism -- that some unspecified and irreducible life force, variously called out soul, spirit, essence, powers in our inner selves [...] the trouble with vitalism and dualism, of course, is that they are scientific dead ends [p.076]";

(ISBN 0813340578)

Glashow, S.L. (PhD{physics} Harvard) states:

[1979 Nobel Laureate in Physics {click here, http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1979/index.html}]

[in "Immanuel Kant [...]"]

"until the middle of the 19th century, the doctrine of ‘vitalism’ placed a seemingly impenetrable barrier between organic and inorganic chemistry. Organic compounds, such as urea and acetic acid, could not be synthesized from inorganic materials, or so it was believed, because they contained within them the ‘vital force’ of life which lay beyond the scope of the physical sciences [...] in 1828, Frederich Wohler was astonished when he found, quite by accident, that a compound he had synthesized, ammonium cyanate, was identical to urea. He wrote to one of his vitalist colleagues: 'I must tell you that I have prepared urea without requiring a kidney or an animal, neither dog nor man' [...] unfortunately, the discredited notion of vitalism continues to affect the credulous and lives on as various bizarre pseudo-medical perversions: qi gong, ayurveda, reflexology, feng shui, ad infinitum";

(click here,

http://physics.bu.edu/static/Glashow/barcelona2002.pdf)

(archived here,

)

(for the archive.org history of this page, click here,

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Goetz, S. (? ?), Taliafero, C. (? ?) state:

[in "Naturalism"(2008)]

"vitalism [is] the discredited thesis that 'life' is a kind of explanatory force that cannot be accounted for in terms of the dynamics and organization of lifeless (dead) molecules [...] vitalism has given way to a less mystical life science [p.021...quoting Dennett] 'nobody would have taken vitalism seriously for a minute if the vitalists hadn't had a set of independently describable phenomena -- of reproduction, metabolism, self-repair and the like -- that their postulated fundamental life-element was hope to account for. Once these phenomena were otherwise accounted for, vitalism fell flat [p.023]";

(ISBN 0802807682)

Golley, F.B. (? ?) states:

[in "A History of the Ecosystem Concept in Ecology: More Than the Sum of the Parts"(1996)]

"an idealistic concept called vitalism. The problem involved the nature of life [...] life seemed to be something immaterial; life was said to represent a vital essence [...] vitalistic concepts were frequently used in biology to explain phenomena that appeared to be unexplainable in materialistic terms. One after another, however, these phenomena were explained by conventional research founded on materialistic principles, and the vitalist argument was gradually discredited, being held mainly by those defending a religious interpretation of biology [p.027]";

(ISBN 0300066422)

Golub, E.S. (? ?) states:

[in "The Limits of Medicine: How Science Shapes Our Hope for the Cure"(1997)]

"one of the reasons science came so late to medicine was that the fundamental assumptions of biology and medicine were the deeply rooted idea of vitalism. This is the belief that some kind of mysterious 'vital force' separates living things from nonliving matter. It was an idea of so much inherent attraction that is would change only when the functioning of living organisms began to be looked at as a collection of chemical reactions and processes. These reactions differ in no way from chemical reactions and processes that are not associated with life, so the thing that makes life unique is the particular combination of reactions [p.082] Liebig [...] by the 1830's he was one of the world's leading chemists, and although he studied living entities, as a chemist it was unthinkable for him to invoke the concept of 'vital force' [...] something as nebulous and philosophical-sounding as 'vital force' [...] one of the goals of Liebig and the other great chemists of his time, in addition to explaining chemical reactions, was the destruction of the old-fashioned idea of vitalism [p.083...] it took a Frenchman named Louis Pasteur to put the nail in the coffin of vitalism and usher in a new era of medicine [p.084...] it was Louis Pasteur who deal the final blows to vitalism and turned the tide against the miasmas as the cause of infectious diseases [p.085]";

(ISBN 0226302075)

Gould, S.J. (? ?), Osborn, H.F. (? ?) state:

[in "The Origin and Evolution of Life: On the Theory of Action, Reaction and Interaction of Energy"(1980)]

"Driesch has abandoned a natural explanation and assumed [p.x] the existence of an entelechy [...] an internal perfecting influence [p.xi...] vitalism or mechanism? [...] the traditional opinion is that something new entered this and possibly other planets with the appearance of life [...] the older and newer hypotheses [p.001] which group around the idea of vitalism or the existence of specific, distinctive, and adaptive energies in living matter -- energies which do do occur in lifeless matter. The more modern scientific opinion is that life arose from a recombination of forces pre-existing in the cosmos [...] life does not represent the entrance either of a new form of energy or of a new series of laws, but is simply another step in the general evolutionary process, [and] is certainly consistent with the development mechanics, physics, and chemistry since the time of Newton and of evolutionary thought since Buffon, Lamark, and Darwin [...] Descartes [...] explanation of life should be sought in the physical terms of motion and matter [...per] the mechanistic [...wherein] every advance thus far in the quest as to the nature of life has been in the direction of a physicochemical rather than of a vitalistic explanation [p.002...] if we affirm that the entire trend of our observation is in the direction of physicochemical explanations rather than of vitalism and vitalistic hypotheses, this is very far from affirming that the explanation of life is purely materialistic, or purely mechanistic [p.006...] we [p.009] may also exclude as unscientific the vitalistic theory of an entelechy or any other form of internal perfecting agency distinct from known or unknown physicochemical energies [...] the fact that the causes underlying the origin of many forms of adaptation are still unknown, unconceived, and perhaps inconceivable, does not inhibit our opinion that adaptation will prove to be a continuation of the previous cosmic order rather than the introduction of a new order of thing. If, however, we reject the vitalistic hypotheses of the ancient Greeks, and the modern vitalism of Driesch, of Bergson, and of others, we are driven back to the necessity of further experiment, observation, and research, guided by the imagination and checked by experiment [p.010...] living matter utilizes the energy of the sun to draw a continuous stream of electric energy from the chemical elements in the earth, the water, and the atmosphere. This was the first step in the interpretation of life processes in the terms of physics and chemistry, rather than in terms of a peculiar vitalism. What had previously been regarded as a special vital force in the life of plants thus proved to be an adaption of physiochemical forces [p.052...] the conclusive evidence against an elan vital or internal perfecting tendency [...] is that these characters do not spring up autonomously at any time [p.278]";

(ISBN 0405127286)

Grafen, A. (? ?), Ridley, M. (? ?) {ed.s} state:

[in "Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think"(2007)]

"[per Ruse, M. (PhD{philosophy} U. Bristol)] Huxley [...] was ever attracted to vitalism -- he was a firm enthusiast for the thinking of Henri Bergson -- [...] although he realized that vital forces really have no place in science [p.157]";

(ISBN 0199214662)

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Grant, J. (? ?) states:

[in "Discarded Science: Ideas That Seemed Good at the Time"(2006)]

"according to Aristotle [...] there is in living creatures a fundamental vital principle, a 'life force,' which distinguishes them from nonliving material. The gods breathed this vital principle into living things, and thereby gave them their life [...] life force (spirit) [...] this idea, vitalism, was still a respectable theory in the hazy days when qualitative alchemy was being transformed into quantitative chemistry [...] the theory started to fall to pieces in 1828 when [...] Wohler [...] was able to synthesize urea [p.263...and] in 1894 [...when] Rubner [...] found that the amount of energy which the body extracts from food can be predicted by the laws of thermodynamics [...and] 1896 [...] Buchner [...per] fermentation does not require the prescience of living cells was merely the final nail in the coffin [...] yet, vampire-like, the theory refuses to stay in that coffin [...per] Reichenbach [...] odic force, od or odyle [p.264]";

(ISBN 1904332498)

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Gratzer, W. (? ?) states:

[in "Terrors Of The Table: The Curious History Of Nutrition"(2007)]

"Galen taught that life derived from pneuma -- the cosmic breath [...which] entered the body in the form of air [and] underwent transformation in the brain, the heart, and the liver. The first turned it into animal spirit [...] the last into natural spirit [...] the venous blood was transformed by a 'vital spirit,' derived from the pneuma in the inspired air [p.038...for] Paracelsus [...] living matter, and in particular the organs of the body, were pervaded by vital forces, or archei, reminiscent of Galen's pneuma [p.042...] Muller [...also] was a vitalist, who believed that living organisms were governed by an elan vital, or lebenskraft, that was not derived from material, animal, or plant sources [...overall,] vitalism was the belief that reactions in the living body required the participation of a 'life force' or elan vital, on the lines of Galen's pneuma, and could never be reproduced in the laboratory. This theory should have been buried once and for all by an experiment performed in 1828 by Friedrich Wohler [p.074...Liebig's 1842] Animal Chemistry [...] did away with the vitalism of earlier years [p.077...Graham's] obdurate vitalism, which caused him to reject all explanations of biological processes in terms of chemistry [p.193...] this primitive vitalism [p.198]";

(ISBN 9780199205639)

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Greenberg, A. (? ?) states:

[in “From Alchemy to Chemistry in Picture and Story”(2007)]

“Paracelsus [...] in the stomach he felt that there exists a vital force – the archeus [p.141...] the true end for vitalism came in the 1840s when the German chemist [...] Kolbe demonstrated the [p.431] synthesis of acetic acid [p.432...] Kolbe 'killed vitalism' by quite effectively synthesizing acetic acid [p.436...] the archeus, the spiritual alchemist, a vital spirit, thought by Paracelsus to reside near our stomachs [...] happily, there was no return to vitalism by serious scientists [p.512]”;

(ISBN 0471751545)

Greene, J.C. (? ?) states:

[in "Debating Darwin: Adventures of a Scholar"(1999)]

"more than three quarters of a century intervened between the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species and the general acceptance by biologists of the concept of natural selection as the centerpiece of evolutionary theory. In the interim, evolutionary theorizing was dominated by non-selectionist theories of orthogenetic, neo-Lamarckian, or saltationist-mutationist character. With the revival in the 1930s and 1940s of the idea of natural selection in the so-called 'modern synthesis', however, there was an efflorescence of metaphorical language seeking to give value and meaning to evolutionary processes and to the science of evolutionary biology. Gone, for the most part, was the evolutionary deism that had sustained Darwin throughout much of his scientific career. Most of the champions of the modern synthesis were agnostics or atheists violently opposed to any suggestion of theism, vitalism, or teleology in nature or in natural science. For them the meaning of evolution had to be found in the evolutionary process itself, but without imputing any aim or purpose to that process. Scientific explanations, they insisted, must be 'mechanistic'";

(click here,

http://www.cnn.com/books/beginnings/9907/debating.darwin/index.html)

(archived here,

http://web.archive.org/web/20010123080600/www.cnn.com/books/beginnings/9907/debating.darwin/index.html)

(for the archive.org history of this page, click here,

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(ISBN 0941690857)

Greenwood, J.D. (? ?) {ed.} states:

[in "The Mark of the Social: Discovery or Invention?"(1997)]

"[per Gordon, S. (? ?)] a notion that was becoming very prominent and popular in the early decades of the twentieth century. This was the doctrine of 'vitalism' [...] the argument of vitalism was that the difference between organisms and mechanisms is that there is present in organisms a special thing or property, which Bergson called the elan vital [...] indeed it explains absolutely nothing. Noting that organisms can do things that mechanisms cannot, and attributing this to the existence of an elan vital, is like the Moliere character who 'explained' that opium makes on drowsy because it possesses a 'dormative property.' Bergson, Driesch, and the other proponents of vitalism were unable to show how the vital force works. Without doing that, one may as well say that mechanisms differ from organisms in that the former are governed by physical forces and the latter are governed by fairies [p.078]";

(ISBN 0847683087)

Gregory, R.L. (? ?) states:

[in "Eye and Brain"(1997)]

"seeing the eyes' lenses as within physics was a significant step [p.051] away from vitalism which blocked biological understanding [p.052]";

(ISBN 0691048371)

Griffin, D.R. (? ?) states:

[in "Animal Minds: Beyond Cognition to Consciousness"(2001)]

"the difficult but important questions about animal mentality can best be approached from the viewpoint of a materialist who assumes that mental experiences result from physiological processes occurring in central nervous systems […] in the scientific investigation of animal minds there is no need to call on immaterial factors, vitalism, or divine intervention [p.017…] there is no need to call upon immaterial, vitalistic, or supernatural processes to explain how some function of human or animal brain activity results in consciousness, subjective thoughts and feelings […] I will proceed on the basis of emergent materialism as analyzed by Bunge […] Bunge and Ardilla […] and Mahner and Bunge […] I will take it for granted that behavior and consciousness (human and nonhuman) result entirely from events that occur in their central nervous systems […I will] assume that subjective consciousness is an activity of central nervous systems, which are of course part of the physical universe [p.004]";

(ISBN 0226308650)

Grigg, R. (? ?) states:

[in "Gods After God: An Introduction to Contemporary Radical Theologies"(2006)]

"McFague's talk of God as an enspiriting force that animates the universe sounds uncomfortably like the thoroughly discredited notion of vitalism [...which] was a philosophy that held that life cannot be explained exhaustively in terms purely physical, biological processes [...per] some immaterial vital force that fructifies the world of living things. But science has advanced to the point that physics, chemistry, and biology can explain themselves how life works without any need for the sort of power that vitalism advocates [p.072]";

(ISBN 0791466396)

ii.

[in "Beyond the God Delusion [...]"(2008)]

"the decidedly unscientific notion of vitalism. Science can understand the dynamism of the universe and wonder of life purely in terms of the categories supplied by physics, chemistry, and biology; it does not need the added idea of a vitalistic force. That idea was buried a long time ago, and it ought not be disinterred now [p.055]";

(ISBN 0800662725)

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Grossinger, R. (? ?) states {admittedly}:

[in "Planet Medicine: Origins" (2001) {likely a pro-VFS, science-delimitation argument}]

"there is perhaps no more succinct way to define vitalism than to say that it is everything which modern science is not [...and offers this reason] the universal acceptance of Darwinism is what doomed vitalism and continues to [p.234]";

(ISBN 1556433697)

Gruman, G.J. (? ?) states:

[in "A History of Ideas About the Prolongation of Life"(2003)]

"the key belief in Chinese alchemy was vitalism [...] somewhat different from the modern sort. The taoists accepted the vitalist teaching that there is in living things some unique property or principle [...] but they would not subscribe to the postulate of modern vitalism that there exists a sharp unbridgeable gap between the animate and inanimate domains. The point of view of taoism is quite the opposite: all things in the world contain at least a small amount of the vital spirit or essence [...] a vitalism that extended beyond biology to include the phenomena of physics and chemistry [...] a strain of vitalism runs through all ancient and medieval chemistry: it was not finally expunged from inorganic chemistry till the overthrow of phlogiston theory by Lavoisier [...] to the taoists, everything was made of 'breath' of varying degrees of purity, and we already have seen how the taoist concept of 'breath' was associated with those of life and spirit and finally to the tao itself [...] this idea of an all-pervading 'breath' [...] a vitalist interpretation of all natural events [p.090...] so long as vitalism held the field, physicians could not hope for a precise understanding of the working of the body, but now all such phenomena were reduced to mechanical interrelationships [p.138]";

(ISBN 0826118755)

Haeckel, E.H.P.A. (? ?) states:

[in "The Wonders of Life: A Popular Study of Biological Philosophy"(1905)]

"the usual metaphysical vitalism affirms in a thoroughly dualistic sense that the vital force is a teleological and super-mechanical principle, is essentially different from the ordinary forces of nature, and of a transcendental character [...] this theory of a supernatural vital force [p.048...] a supra-mechanical vital force [...] this is transcendental and beyond the range of scientific inquiry [p.051...] vitalism [...] the phenomena of life are wholly or partly independent of the plasm, and determined by a special immaterial force, the vital force (vis vitalis) [...] the energy of the plasm is wholly or partly subject to the immaterial vital force [p.052...] not a single fact compels us to assume a 'vital force' [p.198...] in this we emphasize our opposition to vitalism [...] the supernatural vital force [p.260...] we postulate no supernatural vital force for the explanation of physiological functions [p.360]";

(ISBN none, too old; Harper and Brothers)

Haldeman, S. (? ?) {ed.}states:

[in "Principles and Practice of Chiropractic"(2004, 3^rd ed.)]

"a strong belief in vitalism and the so far scientifically unsubstantiated 'subluxation complex' and its clinical implications has aided the profession's opponents in maintaining the stigma against chiropractic [...] quacks (i.e., pretenders to medical knowledge) [p.056...] Stahl's vitalism saw the soul as an external principle penetrating the inert body and vivifying it in a way that generated movement and hence life [...] quite similar to the definition of innate intelligence given by Stephenson in 1927 [...] and yet, as science progressed, Stahl's views were eventually considered false and misleading by most thinkers [p.067...] one of the reasons why vitalism (e.g., the vitalism of innate intelligence) is generally rejected in biological science is its lack of utility. It is difficult if not impossible to imagine testable proposition (hypotheses) that could only be spawned by belief in spirits (immaterial intellect) [...] innate intelligence fails as an essential, a priori assumption for a science [p.086]";

(ISBN 0071375341)

Hall, B.K. (? ?), Hallgrimsson, B. (? ?) state:

[in "Strickberger's Evolution"(2007, 4th ed.)]

"[development] at first, this was believed to occur because of nonphysical forces, such as [...a] 'vis essentialis.' Such explanations are vitalistic: the ascribe to living beings a vital force that cannot be explained by any physical or chemical principles [...and] Wohler's [...] 1828 synthesis [...] showed there was no mystical essence in organic molecules that could not be explained by the laws of chemistry [p.014...] biology, especially development and evolution, continued to be subject to vitalistic interpretation (vitalism), according to which all living organisms are imbued with a vital force [p.660...] vitalism: the concept that the activities of living organisms cannot be explained by any underlying physical or chemical principles but arise from unknowable internal or supernatural powers [p.733]";

(ISBN 0763700665)

Hall, N. (? ?) {ed.} states:

[in "The New Chemistry"(2000)]

"[per Lehn, J.M. (? ?), Ball, P. (? ?)] that the raw material of life is the product of chemical processes alone has been in little doubt since Friedrich Wohler's synthesis of urea [...] Wohler's discovery sounded the death knell for the idea of vitalism which ascribed some ethereal, non-chemical, 'vital force' to living matter [p.300...] Schrodinger's perusal of life's mystery led him to appreciate that living organisms find a way to keep ahead of the continual drift towards disorder, towards increasing entropy. This prompted him to suggest that organisms are somehow able to extract 'negative entropy' from their surroundings, a proposal that sounds suspiciously like vitalism dressed as thermodynamics [p.301]";

(ISBN 0521452244)

Hancil, T. (? ?) states:

[in "Evolution, Culture, and Theology..."]

"one possible exception that influenced a larger group of scholars would be the philosophy of Henry Bergson who is clearly an evolutionist. However there is a substantial difference between Darwin's position and Bergson's particular kind of vitalism. In fact, Bergson criticized Darwin's: evolution by natural selection as a mechanical and naturalistic notion which cannot explain life forms as experienced. Bergson saw evolution is having an internal force (élan vital) that assures the favorable direction of changes [evolution as vitalistic and teleological; the Textbook of Natural Medicine 3rd 2005 iterates a very similar 'vitalistic-teleological evolution' position 'defying the 2nd law of thermodynamics']";

(click here,

http://www.etf.cuni.cz/~hancil/texty/final.pdf)

(archived here,

http://web.archive.org/web/20030711051017/http://www.etf.cuni.cz/~hancil/texty/final.pdf)

Harman, W.W. (? ?), Sahtouris, E. (? ?) state:

[in "Biology Revisioned"(1998)]

"vitalism [...] a 'life force,' an elan vital [...] was drummed out of the biological sciences generations ago [p.105]";

(ISBN 1556432674)

Harris, R.A. (? ?) states:

[in "The Linguistics Wars"(1995)]

"mentalism in psychology and linguistics went the way of vitalism in biology, phlogiston in chemistry, ether in physics, and, also like those other notions, mentalism packed its bags when it left [p.026]";

(ISBN 019509834X)

Harrison, E. (? ?) states:

[in "Cosmology: The Science of the Universe"(2000)]

"the containment principle states: 'the physical universe contains only physical things' [...including] spacetime [p.003...] vitalism introduces nonphysical agents into the physical universe and hence violates the containment principle [...] many biologists oppose vitalism and regard it as an attempt to enliven the physical universe with an inlay of magical properties, an sort of magic universe animated by unseen spirits [...] life, viewed objectively, seems sufficiently explained in terms of organic structures and their functions [p.543]";

(ISBN 052166148X)

Haught, J.F. (? ?) states:

[in "Science and Religion: From Conflict to Conversion"(1995) {a consilience argument?}]

"vitalism, the view that a special, nonmaterial force is necessary to bring life into the universe, is now defunct. From the point of view of chemistry and physics there is nothing extraordinary about life at all [p.028...] every slightest opening for a directional or teleological interpretation of nature must be carefully closed up before science has any opportunity to regress to the arcane mysticism and vitalism of the past [p.058...] even without resorting to 'mysticism' or a dubious vitalism we can agree that there is something about life that slips through the wide meshes of the chemist's net [...per] a holistic, as distinct from reduction, mode of cognition [p.088; holistic without supernaturalism]";

(ISBN 0809136066)

ii.

[in "God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution"(2001)]

"'vitalism' [...the view that] the emergence of living organisms from dead matter cannot be accomplished by matter acting alone but requires an informing causality of a 'vital principle' to bring life and mind into being out of lifeless matter [...] an intangible force or spiritual principle that lifts the lower level of matter up onto the higher plane of life [...] vitalism's most famous proponent, Henri Bergson [p.061...] modern science, however, has seemingly demystified this vitalistic hypothesis. In the neo-Darwin perspective, it now seems that 'matter' is able, over the course of natural history, eventually to give birth the life and mind without any assistance from beyond [...] meaningless 'matter' itself seems to be the mother of all things [...] for Bergson it was still possible to posit the primacy of a supernatural kind of force -- an elan vital -- that surges through matter on the way to expressing itself creatively in all the diversity of living beings [...] Bergson's vitalistic rescue operation has lost out to the intellectual cogency of the newer atomizing and historicizing of nature [...] the growing awareness that life arose and evolved in a historical manner over an immense period of time has helped snuff out the last gasp of supernaturalism in science. As a result, the hierarchical view of nature, and with it any sense of cosmic purpose, as also disintegrated [p.062...] in the scientific world today, however, vitalism has lost out [p.063]";

(ISBN 0813338786)(2007 2nd ed. is ISBN 0813343704)

Have, K.T. (? ?), Kimsma, G.K. (? ?), Spicker, S.F. (? ?) state:

[in “The Growth of Medical Knowledge(1990)]

"a major paradigm shift in medical science can, however, be claimed for the mid-19^th century. It was then that experimental medicine, founded by Claude Bernard and others, came under the spell of Descartes' mathesis universalis. As long as vitalistic principles were adhered to, living organisms were to some degree exempt from the laws of natural science. Vitalism was discarded by Bernard in his Medecine Experimentale as was Aristotelian space by Newton. To metabolism, laws of chemistry were applied just as two centuries earlier mechanical principles were applied to the heart [...] the transformation of medical science into a natural science in the second half of the 19th century [...] academic medicine which was by now firmly rooted in natural science and had entered a most fertile phase of 'normal science' (in Kuhnian terms) lasting until the present day. Continuing in the tradition of late 19th century medicine, modern medicine still considers itself a branch of natural science [p.097]";

(ISBN 0792307364)

Hazen, R.M. (PhD{earth science} Harvard 1975) states:

[for a bio., click here, http://hazen.gl.ciw.edu/cv/biography]

[in "Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origin"(2005)]

"two centuries ago [...per] ancient scholars [...there was the belief that] a life force permeates the cosmos [...] this doctrine, known as vitalism [p.083...per] an invisible life force [...] Pasteur helped abolish vitalism and the theory of spontaneous generation once and for all [p.084...] in the early nineteenth century, conventional wisdom held that life's chemical compounds formed by their own mysterious rules, perhaps governed by a 'vital force' [p.133]";

(ISBN 0309094321)

Hegeler, E.C. (? ?) states:

[in "The Monist"(1898)]

"when some advanced physicists came to the conclusion that phlogiston did not exist, they were first ridiculed [...] the same process again occurred when in physiology the time-honored 'vital force' was denied to have an substantial existence [...] vitalism as an independent force in animated substances [...] it took half a century for the new physiology to overcome this time-honored superstition [...] the old vitalism is entirely overthrown [p.316]";

(ISBN none, too old; Open Court)

Heller, H.C. (? ?), Orians, G.H. (? ?), Purves, W.K. (? ?), Sadava, D. (? ?) states:

["Life: The Science of Biology"(7th. ed., 2003)(in this Introductory Biology college textbook)]

"a major discovery in biology is that living things are composed of the same types of chemical elements as the vast nonliving portion of the universe. This mechanistic view -- that life is chemically based and obeys universal physiochemical laws [...] the concept of a 'vital force' responsible for life, different from the forces found in physics and chemistry, was common in Western culture until the nineteenth century [...] a mechanistic view [...] is the cornerstone of medicine and agriculture [p.015]";

(ISBN 0716798565)

[defunct](for a youtube.com slideshow of this, click here,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oI5ovxmu_x4)

Hellman, H. (? ?) states:

[in "Medical Feuds Quiz"]

"vitalism is the belief that the particles of living matter are somehow different, intrinsically, from those of non-living matter. This belief was still strong in the mid-19th century. Why did this hold back progress in medical science? [...] belief in vitalism stifled research because anything that was not understood was put down as an example of a 'vital force,' which meant that it didn't have to be explained";

(click here,

http://www.greatfeuds.com/Quizmed.htm)

(archived here,

http://web.archive.org/web/20010613054631/http://greatfeuds.com/Quizmed.htm)

(for the archive.org history of this page, click here,

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.greatfeuds.com/Quizmed.htm)

ii.

[in "Great Feuds in Medicine"(2001)]

"though Harvey had opened a door to use of experimental methods in physiological inquiry two centuries earlier, vitalism remained a [p.055] force in explanations of life's operations. Anything that was not understood was put down as an example of a 'vital force,' which meant it didn't have to be explained. As with the case with Harvey, vitalistic theory still stood in the way of sensible investigations at almost every turn [p.056]";

(ISBN 0471347574)

Herter, C.A. (? ?) states:

[in "Biological Aspects of Human Problems"(1911)]

"so long as the biological sciences advance, new territories are certain to be reclaimed from the gossamer kingdom of vitalism . If it ever happens that science ceases to make new discoveries in biology and the human mind ceases to grow in capacity, the time will have come to turn seriously [p.026] to vitalism. If we accept vitalism in the present state of science as a substitute for the mechanistic hypothesis of life, we must do so with the knowledge that a stimulating working hypothesis is being displaced by one which holds out no helping hand to the investigator. For we cannot look on a belief in vitalism except as an act of faith. The conception is too vague, to inexpressible in terms that are clearly intelligible, to serve as a real aid to the progress of scientific thought. There is little room for doubt that the mechanistic theory is the one which now best serves the interests of humanity [p.027...] if we consider the mechanistic hypothesis as it bears on the transmission of hereditary characters, we find if capable of bringing a high degree of order and simplicity out of a tangle of facts which the suppositions of vitalism left in a state of confusion [p.043]";

(ISBN {2007} 1406755133)

(also archived here, http://www.archive.org/details/biologicalaspect033537mbp)

[defunct](for a youtube.com slideshow of this, click here,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51d9l_h1oLo)

(for an amazon.com short review of this, click here,

http://www.amazon.com/review/R3KWG3KFIXJH0T/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm)

Heynick, F. (? ?) states:

[in "Jews and Medicine: An Epic Saga"(2002)]

"as rationalist in an age that had seen the complete discrediting of vitalism in the biological sciences, Freud [etc....p.387]";

(ISBN 0881257737)

Hickman, C.P. (? ?), Larson, A. (? ?), Roberts, L.S. (? ?) state:

[in "Integrated Principles of Zoology"(2003)]

"life obeys physical laws [...] vitalism, the idea that life is endowed with magical life force that violates physical and chemical laws, was once widely advocated. Biological research as consistently rejected vitalism, showing instead that all living systems obey basic laws of physics and chemistry [p.009...] vitalism [...] the discredited viewpoint that natural processes are controlled by supernatural forces and cannot be explained through the laws of physics and chemistry alone, as opposed to mechanism [p.843]";

(ISBN 0072439408)

Hodgson, G.M. (? ?) states:

[in "Economics and Evolution: Bringing Life Back Into Economics"(1997)]

"for a long time the opposition to physicalism from within biology came from those who followed Aristotle and proposed that a living organism had some kind of constituent that clearly distinguished it from inert matter. This 'vital force' was deemed not to obey the lows of physics and chemistry. As Ernst May [...] puts it, 'for a vitalist, at least an extreme vitalist, there are two entirely separate words, that of the physical sciences and that of the world of life' [...] since the 1940s, however, vitalism has had no significant following [p.244]";

(ISBN 0472084232)

Holm, N.G. (? ?) ed. states:

[in "Marine Hydrothermal Systems and the Origin of Life [...]"(1992)]

"[Shock, E.L. (? ?) writes] Wohler's synthesis of urea [...] dealt serious blows to the 'vital force' concept [...per] a special force in living organisms [...] vitalism was dealt a deadly blow in the 1950s with Miller's famous spark-discharge experiments [p.135]";

(ISBN 0792320182)

Horgan, J. (? ?) states:

[in "The End of Science"(1997)]

"the romantic idea of vitalism, which holds that life springs from some mysterious elan vital that cannot be explained in terms of physical laws. As a result of the findings of molecular biology -- beginning with the structure of DNA in 1953 -- 'there are relatively few well-educated people' who admit to a belief in vitalism [p.027...] Hawking hoped to rout mysticism, vitalism, creationism from one of their last refuges, the origin of the universe [p.094...] Crick [...] his DNA discovery had gone far toward eradicating vitalism, and now he hoped to stamp out any last vestiges of that romantic worldview through his work on consciousness [p.164...] Stent accused Bohr of trying to revive the old, discredited concept of vitalism, which holds that life stems from a mysterious essence or force that cannot be reduced to a physical process. But Bohr's vitalist vision has not been borne out. In fact, molecular biology has proved one of Bohr's own dicta, that science, when it is most successful, reduces mysteries to trivialities [p.116]";

(ISBN 0553061747)

House, H.W. (? ?) {ed.} states:

[in "Intelligent Design [...]"(2008)]

[intelligent design is, of course, not science]

"[vitalistic teleologist Moreland, J.P. (? ?) admits, concerning] the shift from vitalism to mechanistic biology [...] there was a time when scientists [...] spoke of a vital fluid or a vital force behaving teleologically in a living organism [...this] vitalistic view of organisms [...and their] final cause[s...now] mechanistic biology only appeals to efficient causes, causes that actually produce an effect [...a] change from vitalistic to mechanistic biology [...modern biology] explain[s] things by avoiding final causes and explaining things in terms of efficient causes only [p.047]";

(ISBN 0825427819)

Hufford, D.J. (? ?) states:

[in "An Analysis of the Field of Spirituality, Religion, and Health"]

"the emergence of modern scientific medicine was accompanied by the abandonment of vitalism and an explicit and intentional disentanglement from religion";

(click here,

http://www.metanexus.net/metanexus_online/show_article2.asp?ID=9387)

Hunter, G.K. (? ?) states:

[in "Vital Forces: The Discovery of the Molecular Basis of Life"(2000)]

"the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries overthrew Ptolemaic astronomy and Aristotelian mechanics. The chemical revolution of the late eighteenth century overthrew the phlogiston theory of combustion and the four-element theory of matter. The biochemical revolution of 1770-1970 overthrew the vitalistic belief that the characteristic features of living organisms were manifestations of a special force operating only in living organisms and known variously as pneuma, archeus, Lebenskraft, elan vital, entelechy, 'biotonic laws,' etc. By discrediting vitalism, the biochemical revolution achieved for biology what the scientific revolution had achieved for physics [p.xii]";

(ISBN 0123618118)

Irwin, L.N. (? ?), Schulze-Makuch, D. (? ?) state:

[in "Life in the Universe"(2008)]

"[with] the abandonment of vitalism in the 19th century, life increasingly became recognized as a state state or process [...] with scientific acceptance of the theory of evolution came the derivative notion of the origin of life from non-living precursors [p.013...] if a mechanistic view of life which precludes the invocation of vitalism is accepted, it follows that life arises from elements of the non-living world which are simply packaged and processed in a special way [p.017]";

(ISBN 3540768165)

Jacquette, D. (? ?) ed. states:

[in "Philosophy of Logic: An Anthology"(2002)]

"one way of rejecting physicalism is called 'vitalism': it is the view that there are irreducibly biological facts, i.e., biological facts that aren't compatible in nonbiological terms (and hence not in physical terms). Physicalism and vitalism are incompatible, and it is because of this incompatibility that the doctrine of physicalism has the methodological importance it has for biology [p.091...but we can explain biology via genetics, i.e. a genetic disorder such as hemophilia] so much for vitalism [p.093]";

(ISBN 0631218688)

Jacob, F. (? ?) states:

[in “The Logic of Life”(1993)]

"if vital force became a concept of such importance at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was because it then played a role subsequently assumed by two new concepts [overthrown as an explanation]. Today, living organisms are seen as the site of a triple flow of matter, energy, and information. In its early days, biology was able to recognize the flow of matter; but, lacking the other two concepts, it had to postulate a special force […for] modern biologists […] ‘vital force’ is replaced by ‘energy’ [the scientific meaning, NOT the woo-woo New Age vitalistic-spiritistic 'energy,' p0.95…] at first sight, living beings, by their growth, development and ability to maintain their structures through successive generations, seem to contravene the second law of thermodynamics which causes the continual decay of the universe […] thermodynamics imposes a general direction on a system […but] it does not exclude local exceptions, nor forbid a counter-movement of certain components at the expense of their neighbors […] because they receive energy from their surroundings in the form of food, living beings are able to preserve their low level of entropy […] without breaking the laws of thermodynamics, [they can] continually produce the large specific molecules which characterize them […] energy and its conservation played on of the roles that biology had previously attributed to vital force […it was thought] at the beginning of the nineteenth century, an [p.194] organism expended vital force in order to perform its work of synthesis and morphogenesis […but by the end of the century] it consumed energy [p.195...] the demon of vitalism [p.234...] by the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, there was nothing left of the old form of vitalism, the vitalism which early biology had had to postulate in order to acquire independence. With the development of experimental science, of genetics and biochemistry, it was no longer possible, except for the mystic, seriously to invoke some principle of unknown origin, as x [p.244] eluding the laws of physics by its very essence, in order to account for the existence and properties of living organisms. If physics did not seem able to explain all the phenomena of life, this was no longer because of a force peculiar to the living world and beyond the reach of all knowledge; it was because of the limitations inherent in observation and investigation and because of the complexity of living organisms as compared within inanimate matter [p.245...] recognition of the unity of physical and chemical processes at the molecular level has deprived vitalism of its raison d'etre [p.299]";

(ISBN 0691000425)

Jain, J.L. (? ?), Jain, N. (? ?), Jain, S. (? ?) state:

[in "Elementary Biochemistry"(2007)]

"consequently, this rendered the vitalistic theory of organic materials untenable. Vitalistic theory (= the doctrine of vitalism) maintained that organic compounds could be synthesized only through the agency of a vital force, supposed to be present in living tissues [...] the final blow to the theory of vital force was given by a French chemist [...] Berthellot [...] who synthesized a host of organic compounds [...] from inorganic compounds in the 1850s. Vitalism was, thus, quietly laid to rest [p.003]";

(ISBN 8121928168)

Jenkins, A.P. (PhD PSU) states:

"vitalism. Health philosophies based on 'life force:' acupuncture - chi; Chinese herbalism - yin/yang; Ayurvedic - prana; Naturopathic - vis medicatrix naturae. Vital energies are not measured by Western science i.e. chemistry, physics, biology, etc.";

(click here,

http://www.cwu.edu/~jenkinsa/alternative/alternative_files/alternative.ppt)

(archived here,

http://web.archive.org/web/20040725221927/http://www.cwu.edu/~jenkinsa/alternative/alternative_files/alternative.ppt)

Johnson, C. (DDS ?, PhD ?) {U. Illinois Chicago} states:

[in “Alternative and Complementary Medicine (Part 1)”]

“the concept of vitalism. Vitalism is the proposition that more is needed to explain life that just physical or mechanical laws. Practitioners of most alternative healing believe that one source of their intervention is a kind of 'vital energy' their system uses that is not appreciated by conventional biomedicine. The idea is not their creation, however. It came from elite European universities in the 18th and 19th century. Vitalism has been forced to retreat in the face of scientific discovery and has largely faded from mainstream biomedicine. Vitalism can be an attractive idea. According to it, life is more than chemistry and mechanics. Its imprecision allows for enormous flexibility and adaptability. Unfortunately, its vagueness places it beyond scientific evaluation [...] vitalism suffered a fatal blow in 1894 when German physiologist Max Rubber demonstrated that the energy produced by the body from food was exactly the same in quantity as it would have been if those foods were burned in a fire. This meant the laws of thermodynamics governed living tissues as well as the inanimate world”;

(click here,

http://www.uic.edu/classes/osci/osci590/1_1%20Alternative%20and%20Complementary%20Medicine%20Part%201.htm)

Jonas, H. (? ?) states:

[in "The Imperative of Responsibility"(1985)]

"'vitalism' [...] the view [...] that life involves forces other than those found in the interaction of inorganic bodies [...] 'vitalism,' a discredited cause, throughout the life sciences [...per 1845, du Bois-Redmond, Brucke, von Helmholtz antivitalism] 'no other forces than the common physical chemical ones are active within the organism' [p.205]";

(ISBN 0226405974)

Jones, R.H. (? ?) states:

[in “Reductionism: Analysis and the Fullness of Reality”(2000)]

“any form of vitalism in which a second substance – a life-force – is added to inanimate objects to create living beings has been rejected by biologists for generations [p.029...] contemporary antireductive materialists share some of the British emergentists' middle path between reductive materialism and vitalism, but they are squarely grounded in materialism [...] everything is made of matter [p.057...] vitalism can be traced to Aristotle, but in its modern forms, as advanced by Henri Bergson and Hans Driesch, it is the idea that there is a nonmaterial ingredient, an entity-like reality called an 'entelechy,' 'vital fluid,' 'life-force,' or 'elan vital' – in addition to matter present in all living forms of reality, which is responsible for the property of being alive. This second substance is supposedly a 'current of life' that infuses inert matter, thereby creating organisms and guiding the entire course of the evolution of all organisms in all their diversity and novelty. This position, however, produced no testable hypotheses and thus proved to be a dead end as a guide to biological research. Today all [!] biologists deny the need for such a second substance and claim life can be completely explained in terms of the organization of the matter within living beings. Organisms consist of the same atoms and molecules as inorganic entities [...] in sum, all contemporary biologists are substantive reductionists [...] the day of vitalism has passed [...] life is not the result of some special supernatural intervention in the natural order or some special substance or nonphysical structures. All living phenomena are merely distinctive arrangements of inanimate material that have appeared during the historical development of the universe [...] no structures other than physical ones are needed to explain it [p.169]”;

(ISBN 0838754392)

Josey, C.C. (PhD ?) states:

[in "The Social Philosophy of Instinct"(1922)]

"vitalism is generally discredited; -- and rightly so, for granting that the vitalist can point to certain phenomena that cannot be adequately explained by science, in as far as they are explained, they are explained in terms other than those of vitalism, which can serve at most only as a label of our ignorance [p.192]";

(ISBN none; Charles Scribner's Sons)

Kabat-Zinn, J. (? ?) states:

[in "Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness"(2005)]

"vitalism, the belief that some special energy other than those explainable through physics, chemistry, biology, natural selection, and a huge amount of time, is required to give life its unique properties and that would include sentience. Vitalism was seen as mystical, irrational, anti-scientific, and just plain wrong. And in the historical record, of course, it was and is just plain wrong [...] from the biological perspective, there is nothing but impersonal mechanism at the very base of living systems, including us [p.322...] if we ourselves are the product of impersonal causes and conditions [Darwin!] following on the laws of physics and chemistry, however complex, and if there is no 'vital force' behind it all, then we can see why the anti-vitalism of science, especially biology, would lead to the declaring that there is no such thing as a soul, a vital center within a sentient being that is following laws other than the laws of physics and chemistry [p.325]";

(ISBN 0786867566)

Kaku, M. (? ?), Thompson, J.T. (? ?) state:

[in "Beyond Einstein..."(1995)]

"biology since the fall of vitalism [p.197]";

(ISBN 0385477813)

Keeton, W.T. (? ?) states:

[in “Biological Science”(1997)]

“central themes in the study of life [...] the central organizing ideas of biology [...] the unifying themes that serve as the solid foundation for biological knowledge [...] living organisms are composed of the same chemical and physical components as nonliving things, and all life processes obey the laws of chemistry and physics [...] vitalism – the old belief that life is driven by unique forces that defy explanation – is rejected by modern biologists [p.ix]”;

(ISBN 0393969215)

King, C.D. (? ?) states:

[in "The Psychology of Consciousness"(1932, 1999)]

"the traditional vitalistic view [...] the vitalistic theory that there is something superphysical in man which is capable of controlling at least some of the physical events in his organism [...] the vitalist [...] is always forced to fall back upon a soul in some form or other as constituting this something; and as we have seen, he is thus in the position of asserting a belief for which he can offer no evidence [...] we find it necessary to agree with the scientist, whose theory is constructed not for the ulterior purpose of supporting some prior view, but solely for the purpose of explaining rationally those facts that are actually found to occur [p.094]";

(ISBN 0415210283)

Klarsfeld, A. (? ?), Revah, F. (? ?) state:

[in "The Biology of Death: Origins of Mortality"(2004)]

"vitalistic conceptions [...] were vogue at the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment. According to the vitalists, living beings owed their existence, and especially their survival, to the action of a 'vital principle' that constantly struggled against physical properties. Physical properties were equated with the forces of death. In living bodies, vital laws had to be present in order to [p.006] opposed physical laws. Life was defined as a negation, a force that defied physical laws [...] Larmark rejected vitalism: 'nothing is more unlikely, and in fact, is less proven, than this supposed ability that one attributes to living bodies to resist the forces to which all other bodies are subjected.' He believed that living matter and raw matter were governed by the same physical laws. if these laws produced extremely particular results when applied to living matter, it was because of the extremely particular organization of living things. There is only one type of natural law, namely physical laws [p.007]";

(ISBN 0801441188)

Kleidon, A. (? ?), Lorenz, R.D. (? ?) ed.s state:

[in "Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics [...]"(2005)]

"[per Chaisson] science has abandoned the elan vital or peculiar 'life force' that once plagued biology [p.028]";

(ISBN 3540224955)

Ko, A.H. (MD ?), Dollinger, M. (MD ?), Rosenbaum, E.H. (MD ?) state:

[in "Everyone's Guide to Cancer Therapy: How Cancer Is Diagnosed, Treated, and Managed Day to Day"(2008)]

"qi [...] the life force said to run through all of nature, flows in the human body through vertical energy channels known as meridians. It is believed that chi must flow in the correct strength and quality through each of the meridians and organs for health to be maintained. Illness is thought to occur from blockages to the free flow of chi. Acupuncture [...] restore[s] the free flow of the life force [...] the very existence of qi or 'vital energy force' has never been proven [p.135]";

(ISBN 0740768573)

Kofahl, R.E. (PhD CIT) states:

[in "Handy-Dandy Evolution Refuter" (obviously a pro-Creation Science, anti-evolution text; yes, from the position of what is generally regarded as unscientific!; admits much while overall a failed agenda]

"what bold assertions can we make about the failure of evolutionary biology? [to be incomplete is not to fail, per science as still amassing knowledge...] this idea [that some aspects of living organisms are actively directed by special divine providence] is not a testable scientific hypothesis, because it involves a supernatural element [at least that much is admitted, and remember naturopathy claims 'bodymindspirit whatever' is scientific, though it obviously contains a supernatural element...] we have proposed here a type of divine 'vitalism' [anyway!]. Vitalism is the idea that living matter possesses some character radically different from non-living matter, something beyond the laws of physics and chemistry. This concept was repudiated by most scientists after the mid-19th century [that's the 1850s!!], for two reasons. First, they had begun to have some success [a deliberate understatement, me thinks!] in showing how living organisms function according to the laws of physics and chemistry [the parsimonious explanation, NOT scientifically refuted]. Second, following Darwin, they were moving toward the belief that everything in the universe has a completely materialistic cause and effect explanation [laws of physics, chemistry again - no need for vitalism, teleology, supernaturalism in science; plus modern biology; boy does Darwin rankle them]";

(click here,

http://www.parentcompany.com/handy_dandy/hder6.htm)

(archived here,

http://web.archive.org/web/19981202085405/http://www.parentcompany.com/handy_dandy/hder6.htm)

Küppers, B.O. (PhD{natural sciences} TUB, PhD{philosophy} UH) states:

[for a CV, click here, http://web.mac.com/bkue/iWeb/Kueppers/C.V..html]

[in "Information and the Origin of Life"(1990)]

"the best-known and in the history of science the oldest form of real material teleology is the so-called vitalism. In the formation of vitalistic theories, the phenomenon of 'life' is understood as the consequence of a life-specific force (vis vitalis) that arranges life processes in a purposeful and system -sustaining manner [p.074...] today, the vitalistic position, with its holistic thinking and its resulting notion of a system-preserving life force, is no longer tenable [p.113...] vitalism, even it its pseudoscientific form, has been shaken to the root by the findings of modern biology [p.185]";

(ISBN 026211142X)

(for an amazon.com short review of this, click here,

http://www.amazon.com/review/RJCNZ9TMHFDSV/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm)

Kurten, B. (? ?) states:

[in "The Innocent Assassins: Biological Essays on Life in the Present and Distant Past"(1991)]

"thinking biologically [...] vitalism, like essentialism, is a dead horse in modern biology [p.062...] emergentism is, philosophically, materialistic and must not be confused with vitalism. What emergentism claims, quite simply, is that 'explanatory reduction' does not give us the whole answer and that complex systems have to be studied on all their levels [p.063]";

(ISBN 0231072767)

Kurzynski, K. (? ?), Tuszynski, J. (? ?) state:

[in "Introduction to Molecular Biophysics"(2003)]

"central to the vitalists' doctrine is the concept of life force, vis vitalis, or elan vital, a nonmaterial entity that is not subject to the usual laws of physics and chemistry [...a] life force seen to animate the complex assembly and give it life [...a] concept [that] is ancient and virtually universal, having appeared in some form in all cultures and providing the basis for most religious beliefs [...] continued progress in biological sciences pushed the vitalistic view to the fringes of reputable science [p.157 ...] life force, or life energy [...] molecular biology systematically pushed vitalists (or animists) out of the spotlight [p.158]";

(ISBN 0849300398)

.
.
Kwok, S. (? ?) states:
.

[for a bio., click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Kwok, http://www.scifac.hku.hk/kwok/]

[in "Organic Matter in the Universe"(2012)]

"[once] it was believed that living things possess a 'vital force' which was absent in nonliving things [...] scientists thought organic matter could not be synthesized from inorganic matter because it laced the 'vital force' [...] in 1823 [...] Wohler [...showed] it was possible to convert on inorganic molecule into an organic one by artificial means, without the magic of 'vitalism'. This was the beginning of the disappearance of the concept of 'vital force' from the scientific arena [p.001...] dispensing the idea of the 'vital force' [p.178]";

(ISBN 3527411194 9783527411191)

(for a short amazon.com review, click here,

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Lagerkvist, U. (? ?) states:

[in "The Enigma of Ferment [...]"(2006)]

"during the 19th century, the question of the nature of ferment leads to the long, drawn out, bitter conflict between the 'vitalists,' who believed in a 'vital force' peculiar to the living cell, and their opponents, the 'chemists' who regarded 'vital force' as superstition and instead advocated chemical explanations of the same kind as in ordinary test tube experiments [...] for a long time the vitalists, under their chieftan Louis Pasteur, seemed to have the upper hand, but finally in 1897 Eduard Buchner was able to demonstrate cell-free alcoholic fermentation in an extract of yeast. This definitely put an end to vitalism and at the same time won Buchner a Nobel Prize, the first to be awarded for a purely biochemical work [p.vii...] of the medical systems originating in the 18th century, 'vitalism' would turn out to be the most enduring one. It had its roots both in the ancient teachings of Hippocrates and the more recent notions about the role of spirit, or anima, that had been proposed by Georg Ernst Stahl. An early advocate of vitalism was the French physician Theophile de Bordeu [...who] was above all fascinated by the glands whose function he considered to depend on a mystical vital force, hence the name vitalism [...] Bordeu maintained that its [body] functions were in principle dependent on vital forces present only in the living organism [p.095...] the ideas of vitalism had been received with enthusiasm in Germany where the concept of 'lebenskraft' (vital force) was introduced by the brain anatomist Johann Christian Reil [p.098...] Buchner's somewhat fortuitious [p.125] discovery came at exactly the right moment and forever laid the disturbing ghost of vitalism to rest. Never again would we have to consider mystical powers that sustain unique processes, which can only take place in the living cell and cannot be reproduced in the test tubes of the biochemists. The history of cell-free fermentation teaches us that a problem is not necessarily unsolvable just because it has not yet found its solution [p.128...] Hammarsten emphasizes that Buchner's demonstration of cell-free alcoholic fermentation once and for all puts an end to vitalism and its belief in a mystical 'vital force' that did not exist outside the living cell [p.146]";

(ISBN 9812564217)

Lahav, N. (? ?) states:

[in "Biogenesis: Theories of Life's Origins"(1999)]

"vitalism: supernatural forces and their declining role in scientific hypotheses [p.021]";

(ISBN 0195117557)

Lane, N. (? ?) states:

[in "Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life"(2005)]

"'vitalism' -- the belief that life was animated by special forces, or spirits, which not be reproduced by mere chemistry [p.073...] Buchner had show that these chemical factories could be reconstituted even after the demise of the cells themselves [...] this discovery heralded the end of vitalism [p.078]";

(ISBN 0192804812)

Lange, M. {ed.} states:

[in “Philosophy of Science: An Anthology”(2006)]

“vitalism, for example, is false: there is no nonphysical 'vital spirit' that animates living things [p.376]”;

(ISBN 1405130334)

LaPorte, J. (? ?) states:

[in "Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change"(2003)]

"the main examples of progress upon which I focus are progress through the Darwinian revolution and progress through the rejection of vitalism [p.003...] the overthrow of vitalism [p.135...] scientists have not refuted the claim that organisms have nonmaterial substances as parts; scientists rather ignore the idea as unfruitful or occult or unscientific. Nevertheless, Mayr is right that the foregoing vitalist theses are no longer taken seriously [p.194]";

(ISBN 0521825997)

Lederberg, J. (? ?) {Nobel Laureate 1958, Medicine} states:

[in “Science and Technology – Overthrowing the Established Order” {a review of Cohen, I.B.’s “Revolution in Science”}]

"in fact, DNA research has brought an end to a long history of vitalistic speculation, namely the expectation that new principles transcending the existing framework of physics and chemistry would be needed to explain living phenomena. That [false] expectation was entertained even by heroic figures in the physical sciences like Niels Bohr and Max Delbruck, and it was especially rampant in French philosophy as any reader of Henri Bergson will recall";

(click here,

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A03E7D61138F932A15757C0A963948260)

Lenoir, T. (? ?) states:

[in "The Strategy of Life: Teleology and [...](1982)]

"the principle achievement of biologists in the early nineteenth century appears to be this: turning away from broad speculation and importing the methods of physics and chemistry along with a massive infusion of experimental technique and technology, they succeeded in preparing the ground for a comprehensive theory of life by eliminating the main conceptual stumbling blocks to genuine scientific advance in biology; namely, vitalism and teleological thinking [p.002]";

(ISBN 9027713634)

(for an amazon.com short review of this, click here,

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Letourneau, C. (? ?) states:

[in "Biology"(1878)]

"no doubt the lack of initiative [...] experimentalists have displayed, must in large degree be attributed to the metaphysical and mystical ideas which have been conceived of life. As long as the vital phenomenon were considered as an order altogether apart, as having no relation with the physical or chemical phenomena; as long as there is a belief that to explain what was called 'the miracle of life' there had to be invoked directing entities, independent of the bodies, a kind of immaterial gods set over the physiological government of every organism, an archeus, a vital principle, and so on, it was naturally almost impossible that the idea of reproducing artificially the principle physico-chemical acts of life should occur to experimentalists. In our days there is, fortunately, a complete change, and we see men of science venturing on paths which they would never have dreamed of entering half a century ago [p.080]";

(2007 ISBN 1406721891)

(archived at

http://www.archive.org/details/biologych00letorich)

Levitin, D.J. (? ?) states:

[in "Foundations of Cognitive Psychology: Core Readings"(2002)]

"the elimination of the now-discredited ideas of 'vitalism' in biology: the view that what distinguishes living from nonliving things is the presence of a mysterious and qualitatively distinct force or substance that is present in living objects and absent in nonliving ones. The discovery of the biochemical reactions that cause the replication of DNA by completely normal physical means ultimately undercut any need for such mysterious concepts, and so they were banished from scientific discussion, never to be seen again [p.007]";

(ISBN 0262621592)

Levy, S. (? ?) states:

[in "Artificial Life: A Report from the Frontier Where Computers Meet Biology"(1993)]

"the vitalists voiced the suspicions of the vast majority of the population, who though that of course there was a divine component to life and who thought it perfectly reasonable that some special material might well divide living from nonliving matter. Vitalism's final significant flag bearer was German biologist Hans Driesch [p.021...] that path would lead us back to vitalism, to superstition [p.347]";

(ISBN 0679743898)

Lewes, G.H. (? ?) states:

[in "The Physical Basis of Mind"(1893)]

"the metaphysiological hypothesis of an extra-organic agent, animating lifeless matter by unknown powers [...] known under the names of animism and vitalism [...] under vitalism are included all the hypotheses of a soul, a spirit, an archeus, a vital principle, a vital force, a nisus formativus, a plan or divine idea, which have from time to time represented the metaphysical state of biology. The characteristic of that stage is the personification of a mystery, accompanied by the persuasion that to name mystery is to explain it [...per] the difference between the metaphysical and the positive stages of a science [p.022...] unscientific as vitalism is [p.025]";

(ISBN none, too old; Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner)

Lewin, R. (? ?) states:

[in "Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos"(2000)]

"vitalism [...] a once popular but now discredited notion that much of the wonder of the natural world is the consequence of an elan vital, or vital spirit. Nature wasn't so much explained as explained away by this notion, and it is anathema to modern science [p.024]";

(ISBN 0226476553)

Lewis, D. (? ?) states:

[in "The Tao of Natural Breathing[...]"(2006)]

"in many traditional cultures, breath is envisioned as a direct manifestation of spirit. It is a subtle energy of the spirit that 'enlivens' us, and we receive subtle energy by breathing it in or having it breathed into us from above. Terms such as prana (India), pneuma (Greece), lung (Tibet), num (the bush people of the Kalahari), ruach (Hebrew), neyotoneyah (Lakota Sioux), baraka (Islam), and chi (China) are just a few of the many names of this higher life force [...] though Western science rejects any notion of a subtle energy or life force that animates us, it does [p.077...] Reich maintained the existence of a powerful life force energy which he called orgone energy [p.078]";

(ISBN 193048514X)

Lewis, R.A. (PhD(genetics) IU) states:

[for a bio., click here, http://www.mhhe.com/biosci/cellmicro/lewis4e/about_the_author.pdf]

[in "Discovery: Windows on the Life Sciences"(2001)]

"the origin of life: when chemistry became biology [...] disproving vitalism [p.iv...] vitalism held that different laws than those underlying chemistry and physics controlled living matter, and this proclamation was enough to stop people from questioning further. But experiments soon showed that living matter is indeed subject to the laws of nature. Throughout the nineteenth century, chemists and physiologists began to chip away at the vague and all-encompassing veil of vitalism [...e.g.] Wohler challenged the prevailing idea that chemicals that are part of an organism came from a 'vital force.' He synthesized urea [...] Berthelot synthesized many carbon-containing chemicals, some identical to those in organisms and some not [...] early physiologists also took a rational approach to replacing vitalism with demonstrations of the physical causes of biological functions [...] ultimately, experiments buried vitalism [p.026...] evidence for chemical evolution is certainly more compelling, in a scientific sense, than for a special creation, spontaneous generation, or vitalism [p.045]";

(ISBN 0632044527)

(for an amazon.com short review of this, click here,

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Linzey, A. (? ?), Yamamoto, D. (? ?) state:

[in "Animals on the Agenda[...]"(1998)]

"science is committed to the simplest and most economical solution of any problem [parsimony], and where natural explanations are possible these are always to be preferred to the positing of hypothetical entities [...] the last serious biologist willing to defend vitalism as Hans Driesch [...] around the turn of the century [1900]. According to Theodosius Dobzhansky [geneticist] in 1967, 'the all but unanimous consensus is that vitalism is useless as a working hypothesis in biological research ... it has been pretty nearly a dead issue in biology for about half a century' [...and according to Archbishop Habgood, "a research fellow in physiology [a scientist] before taking holy orders"] 'what must be absolutely rejected is the notion that at a certain point in the [scientific] study of living things one comes upon a mysterious something which no longer obeys recognizable physical or chemical laws [...which is] to retreat into mystery and put a stop to science... a vital principle which is not sharply defined and cannot be submitted to ordinary scientific tests explains nothing' [p.182]";

(ISBN 0252067614)

Lipton, B. (PhD ?) states:

[in Today’s Chiropractic, Sept-Oct 1998: 16-19]

"since vitalism is at the heart of chiropractic philosophy [for example], and vitalism is perceived as metaphysics, the philosophy of chiropractic is not recognized by conventional medical science";

(click here,

http://www.brucelipton.com/chiro1.php)

(archived here,

http://web.archive.org/web/20050204172146/http://brucelipton.com/chiro1.php)

Livingstone, D.L. (? ?) states:

[in "Putting Science in Its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge"(2003)]

"what Newton called 'vulgar' notions of vitalism and pantheism. According to these matter was inhabited, in one way or another, by spiritual forces and occult powers -- the kind of animated cosmos postulated by natural magicians [p.132]";

(ISBN 0226487229)

Longino, H.E. (? ?) states:

[in "Mutating Concepts, Evolving Disciplines: Genetics, Medicine, and Society"(2002)]

"vitalism is, of course, the discredited view that living organisms are animated by a vital force not identifiable with any material force. To accuse any contemporary scientist of holding a vitalist view is to accuse him or her of being hopelessly retrograde [p.184]";

(ISBN 1402010400)

Lorenz, K. (? ?) states:

[a Nobel Laureate - Physiology or Medicine 1973, click here,
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1973/lorenz-autobio.html]

[in "The Natural Science of the Human Species: An Introduction to Comparative Behavioral Research (The Russian Manuscript 1944-1948"(1997)]

"the last great domain of vitalism [...] can be mastered by the progress of inductive causal analysis [...] we shall see how greatly damaging the effect of vitalism can be in inhibiting research by dogmatically imposing a barrier between the rationalizable and the nonrationalizable at an arbitrary point where there is, in reality, no such barrier [p.193]";

(ISBN 0262621207)

Loudon, G.M. (? ?) states:

[in "Organic Chemistry"(2001)]

"by the eighteenth century, chemists were beginning to recognize the chemical aspects of life processes in a modern sense [...] certain compounds were associated with living systems [...] they were [then] thought to have arisen from, or to be a consequence of, a 'vital force' responsible for the life process [p.001...] although 'vitalism' was not so much a widely accepted theory so much as an intuitive idea that something might be special and beyond human grasp about the chemistry of living things [...and] Wöhler did not identify his urea synthesis with the demise of the vitalistic idea [...] his word signaled the start [...wherein the chemicals of life were] no longer regarded as something outside the province of laboratory investigation [and vitalism died p.002]";

(ISBN 0195119991)

Luisi, P.L. (? ?) states:

[in "The Emergence of Life..."(2006)]

"the consideration that life is an emergent property gives the notion of emergence a particular significance. No vitalistic principle, no transcendental force, is invoked to arrive at life -- and this, as mentioned already, has two consequences: (i) life, at least in principle, can be explained in terms of molecular components and their interactions; (ii) it is conceivable to make some simple forms of life in the laboratory [p.126...] the vitalistic idea that there is something special in DNA has long since gone from present-day scientific thinking. We all accept the idea that DNA is just a molecule like any other [p.249]";

(ISBN 0521821177)

Lumsden, C.J. (? ?), Sharpe, J. (? ?), Woolridge, N. (? ?) state:

[in "In Silico"(2008)]

"we can briefly consider the implications of the basic fact, now universally accepted in the scientific community, that all living things -- all organisms -- are composed of chemicals, that is, molecules whose complex interactions set in motion the processes of life. There is no evidence for some mysterious, supernatural 'life force' acting alongside the chemistry of matter. A deep understanding of biological molecules and their interactions appears necessary and sufficient to answer the question 'what is life?' if by that question we are seeking to understand the physical mechanisms sustaining biological activity [p.035]";

(ISBN 0123736552)

Appendix C.06.c. - No VFS in Sci. - Acad.s & Authors (G-L):

The Scientific Rejection of Vitalism (continued).