Doctrines Held as Vitalism

Abstract

In conclusion, the point of view developed in the foregoing may be briefly characterized and compared with that presented in certain other discussions. It agrees, 1 take it, with Lovejoy, Spaulding, and others, in admitting the possible validity of a "vitalism" that makes no distinction between the science of the living and that of the non-living, holding merely that mechanistic formulation is not adequate to nature in general; such "vitalism" being synonymous with "energetics" or "temporalism," or some similar doctrine. Confusion of such a doctrine with a vitalism that holds to a deep-lying distinction between the science of the living and that of the non-living is a common source of misunderstanding. As to doctrines which attempt to make such a deep lying distinction, dividing science into two contrasted kinds, vitalistic and non-vitalistic, it farther admits (with, I judge, Lovejoy, Bergson, Woodruff, Ritter, Spaulding, Glaser and others) that configurations perhaps exist in the living, whose laws of action are not predictable from a formulation of what happens in configurations occurring in the non-living. But this is held to be merely an example of a general principle, equally well exemplified when diverse inorganic configurations are compared: from formulating the action of one configuration, that of another can not be predicted with certainty, until its action has also been experienced; this continual recourse to observation and experiment being one of the essential features of science in general. Hence it holds that such facts present no ground for dividing science into two divisions, vitalistic and non-vitalistic; but also that study of the organic configurations of matter gives results that are as fundamental as the study of inorganic configurations; results which no exclusive study of the latter could ever supply. Parts of biology are therefore "antonomous" in the same sense, and in no other sense, that the science of the compounds of carbon is autonomous in comparison with that of the compounds of copper. It thus holds, in agreement with Driesch, that any "static" doctrine, in which admittedly the perceptual conditions determine what happens in the living system, does not make a difference in principle between the laws of the living and those of the non-living; but that to make such a difference, it must be held that the same conditions may act diversely in the two fields; thus giving rise to experimental indeterminism (and perhaps to the assumption of a non-perceptual factor for determining the diversities not otherwise accounted for, as in the vitalism of Driesch). But it holds (I take it with Lovejoy, Glaser, Woodruff, Spaulding, Sumner and perhaps most investigators) that we do not have grounds for supposing that such a condition exists; and that even Driesch's presentation results in the non-existence of any actual cases of experimental indeterminism.

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