The Scientific Rejection of Vitalism (continued):

2006-11-20T18:57:00.000-08:00

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

Calow, P. (? ?) {ed.} states:

[in “Encyclopedia of Ecology and Environmental Management”(1999)]

“the existence of evolutionary trends does not imply that evolution is directed. There are no profound trends in evolution that would support vitalistic or teleological explanations of evolutionary change [p.256...] teleology: this comes from the Aristotelian fourth cause and implies goal directedness, design in nature, even the future in some way influences processes of the present [...] scientists do not accept conscious design in nature except when it emanates from the consciousness of humans [p.742]”;

(ISBN 0632055464)

Campbell, A. (? ?) states:

[in "Homeopathy in Perspective"(2008)]

"as Hahnemann aged he began to take homeopathy in new directions. He introduced an explanation for how the medicines work based on vitalism [...] vitalism [...] the doctrine of vitalism. The term Hahnemann used was dynamis, which is usually translated as 'vital force.' By this he meant a spirit-like principle that gives life to the body. Disease, he came to believe, results from disturbances in the vital force [...] and the function of homeopathic medicines is said to be to stimulate the vital force to bring about healing. Hahnemann did not of course invent the idea of the vital force [...] it appears to be an almost universal primitive belief that there is such an animating spirit in man, often identified with the breath (pneuma in ancient Greece and the writings of St. Paul, prana in India), which leaves the body at death and is responsible for its functioning during life [p.030...] this idea [...] is dead in mainstream science today. [But] in Hahnemann's time vitalism was still a serious scientific idea [...] Hahnemann adopted vitalism as a basis for homeopathy [...] Hahnemann's increasing sympathy for vitalism is symptomatic of a general shift in the centre of gravity of this though, from what might be called the scientific to the spiritual or metaphysical pole [p.031...] potentized medicines were for him the vital force captured in a bottle [p.033...] Pasteur and Koch had proved that some diseases, at least, were caused by microbes, while Virchow claimed that disease could be understood by considering the body as a commonwealth of cells - an idea that contained the seed of the ultimate destruction of vitalism as a scientific concept [p.059...] Kent is therefore deeply anti-scientific, and his version of homeopathy is founded on metaphysics [p.086...] Kentian homeopathy represents Hahnemann's later, more extreme, idea taken to their logical limit and furnished with a Swedenborgian underpinning. It's principle features could be summarized as follows: insistence on the theoretical aspects of Hahnemann's through, especially the miasm doctrine and vitalism; a corresponding rejection of modern scientific and pathological knowledge as a guide to prescribing [p.090]";

(ISBN 1847537375)

Campbell, N.A. (PhD{plant biology} UC), Reece, J.B. (PhD {bacteriology} UC) state:

i.a.

[in "Biology" (2004, 7th ed.)]

"[historically] the new discipline of organic chemistry was first built on a foundation of vitalism, the belief in a life force outside the jurisdiction of physical and chemical laws. Chemists began to chip away at the foundation of vitalism when they learned to synthesize organic compounds in their laboratories [...e.g.] Wohler [...] made urea [...] Kolbe [...made] acetic acid [...] the foundation of vitalism finally crumbled after several more decades [...when] Miller [...] helped bring the abiotic (nonliving) synthesis of organic compounds into the context of evolution [...] the[se] pioneers of organic chemistry helped shift the mainstream of biological thought from vitalism to mechanism, the view that natural phenomena, including the processes of life, are governed by physical and chemical laws [...] the same rules of chemistry apply to inorganic and organic molecules alike. The foundation of organic chemistry is not some intangible life force, but the unique chemical versatility of the element carbon [p.059]";

(ISBN 080537146X)

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

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

(for a digg.com social bookmark of this slideshow, click here,

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

http://www.amazon.com/review/R10IKBFSGZ28GE/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm)

i.b.

[on the CD-ROM that accompanies this book]

"vitalism: the belief that natural phenomena are governed by a life force outside the realm of physical and chemical laws";

(see CD-ROM)

Campos, H. (? ?), Martinez-Gil, F. (? ?) state:

[in "Current Studies in Spanish Linguistics"(1992)]

"the new field of molecular biology emerged just a quarter of a century after the emergence of the new quantum mechanics. Thus the discovery of Mendelian genetics were 'accommodated within known biochemistry, eliminating the last vestige of vitalism from scientific biology' [p.014]";

(ISBN 0878402349)

.
.
Canales, J. (? ?) states:
.

[in "A Tenth of a Second: A History"(2010)]

"in the eyes of physiologists, Helmholtz's work heralded a new physicalism that displaced a vitalism based on the concept of the lebenskraft or 'life force' [p.026]";

(ISBN 0226093182)

Cao, T.Y. (? ?) states:

[in "Conceptual Foundations of Quantum Field Theory"(2004)]

"there is no undiscovered vital principle underlying biology or even (in my view) consciousness [p.079]";

(ISBN 0521602726)

Carus, P. (? ?) states:

[in "Fundamental Problems: The Method of Philosophy as a Systematic Arrangement of Knowledge"(1903)]

"the view of life as a substance yielded to the belief in a life principle (a kind of life energy), a view which is generally called vitalism. Vitalism, however, had also to be abandoned, and the life of organisms is now recognized as a phenomenon of nature which depends on the presence of neither a special life-substance or life-principle [p.089]";

(archived here,

http://www.archive.org/details/fundamentalprobl00caruiala)

(ISBN 0548034893{2007})

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

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ii.

[in "The Soul of Man: An Investigation of the Facts"(1891)]

"vitalism and the conservation of energy [...] in former centuries people were satisfied to state that the animal was alive, while a stone was not alive [...but] what is life? In past ages it was assumed, that certain things were alive, because they contained vitality or a vital principle. This simple explanation was called vitalism [...] things that contained no vital principle were not alive [p.047...when] the idea of a life-substance [...was] abandoned [...] scientists now tried to explain the problem of vitality from the supposition of a vital energy. This vital energy was considered as different from any other kind of energy, and many very prominent scientists looked upon it as a supernatural quality which lay beyond explanation. The theory that a vital energy animates living bodies was maintained until half a century ago by our [p.048] most prominent physiologists. But it received its death-blow, when the law of the conservation of energy was recognized to the full extent of its importance [p.049...] is vital force different from both these energies? [potential and kinetic energy...] no! The energy which living beings expend in their activity [...] is the same energy that we meet with everywhere, and which is produced in animal bodies in a more complicated way, yet in a similar manner as work is done by machines [p.051]";

(archived here,

http://www.archive.org/details/soulofmaninvesti00carurich)

(ISBN 1428613595 {2006})

Cassirer, E. (? ?) states:

[in "The Problem of Knowledge: Philosophy, Science, and History Since Hegel"(1950)]

"[throughout the 1800s] it soon became clear that through the advance of empirical investigation vitalism was losing the very positions formerly believed by its advocates to be impregnable. Whereas it had once been thought that the difference between the animate and the inanimate worlds could be defined in terms of matter, and the existence of a specific 'vital substance' might some day be demonstrated, hope disappeared in 1828 when Woehler succeeded in synthesizing urea from inorganic compounds. And further, after the principle of the conservation of energy had been discovered, the concept of 'force' offered no support to those wanting to secure some exceptional position for the phenomena of life. It could no longer be doubted that the transformation of energy obeys the same general laws in both living and nonliving matter [...previous to the 1890s] in science the idea of a 'vital force' had long since been wholly discredited [p.188]";

(ISBN 0300010982)

Chaisson, E.J. (PhD{astrophysics} Harvard) states:

[director of the Wright Center For Science Education at Tufts University:

(click here,

http://www.tufts.edu/as/wright_center/eric/ericpage.html)]

[in "Cosmic Evolution: The Rise of Complexity in Nature"(2002)]

"life likely differs from the rest of clumped matter only in degree, not in kind. We admit no vitalism, no special life force that would set animate beings manifestly apart from all other forms of inanimate complexity [p.122...] a 'life force' [...] something akin to vitalism or vis vitae [p.149...] no one has ever discovered anything akin to an elan vital, or special life force, that would truly set aside life from all other organized systems [p.217]";

(ISBN 0674009878)

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

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

(for a digg.com social bookmark of this slideshow, click here,

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http://www.amazon.com/review/R24M0U442VU8T2/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm)

ii.

[in “Epic of Evolution...”(2006)]

“the theological or philosophical idea that life resulted from such a supernatural process is a belief [...] it remains just that – a belief -- for no unambiguous information, acceptable in a laboratory of science or a court of law, confirms the creation of life by a supernatural being or beings [...] we have no way to test experimentally the idea that divine intervention created life. Science is agnostic when it comes to god – not atheistic, as some people prefer to read that laden word wrongly – just agnostic. Aside from personal feelings or cultural persuasions, most professional scien- [p.254] tists just don't know what to make of a god or gods. We simply have no bona fide data on which to base a judgment. The belief that life suddenly arose by means of some vitalistic process is outside the realm of modern science. Today's scientific method, which is a philosophy of approach based on reasoned logic bolstered by experimental and observational tests, cannot be used to study supernatural ideas for the origin of life. Accordingly, such ideas, unprovable in principle, seem destined to remain beliefs forever, hence beyond the subject of science [p.255...] nothing 'extra' infuses the mind or consciousness, just as no vitalism or elan vital informs life [p.419]”;

(ISBN 0231135602)

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

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(for a digg. com social bookmark of this slideshow, click here,

)

Chan, M.L.Y (? ?), Chia, R. (? ?) states:

[in "Beyond Determinism and Reductionism: Genetic Science and the Person"(2003)]

"there are various forms of vitalism, with the least persuasive of these being the depiction of the individuated essence as a spatially located life force [...] scholarly opinions today seem united in rejecting vitalism, the view that living beings have in addition to the physical parts a vital life force that sets them apart from inanimate things, and Cartesian dualism [p.208]";

(ISBN 1920691014)

Chase, A. (? ?) states:

[in "In a Dark Wood: The Fight Over Forests and the Myths of Nature"(2001)]

"both men tacitly embraced the teleological doctrine of vitalism, the view that things are infused with a purposive spirit; yet spiritual objects cannot be studied empirically, and the supposed something extra that makes the whole 'greater than the sum of its parts' can never been seen. Science studies particular observable events, not abstract superorganisms [p.098]";

(ISBN 0765807521)

Clark, D.P. (? ?) states:

[in "Molecular Biology: Understanding the Genetic Revolution"(2005)]

"history of DNA as the genetic material. Until early in the nineteenth century, it was believed that living matter was quite different from inanimate matter and was not subject to the normal laws of chemistry [...] there was supposedly a special vital force that mysteriously energized living creatures. Then, in 1828, Friedrich Wohler demonstrated the conversion in a test tube of ammonium cyanate, a laboratory chemical, into urea [...] this was the first demonstration that there was nothing magical about the chemistry of living matter [p.076]";

(ISBN 0121755517)

Clark, S. (? ?) states:

[in "Life on Other Worlds and How to Find It"(2000)]

"the vital spark of life. The scientists of antiquity assumed that living matter required some special essence that was absent from all else. These ideas were encapsulated in the scientific doctrines known as 'vitalism' [...] that some vital force, unknown to humankind, must infuse matter with the spark of life [p.045...but] Wohler successfully synthesized urea [...and] it began to appear as if the defining quality of life was not a vital force but that, somehow, it was wrapped up in chemistry [p.047...] vitalism: the outdated belief that life can be created only if inorganic matter is suffused with some mysterious vital force [p.167]";

(ISBN 185233097X)

Clarke, B. (? ?) states:

[in "Energy Forms: Allegory and Science in the Era of Classical Thermodynamics"(2001)]

"the concept of scientism has generally provided a derogatory category for inappropriate extensions of scientific procedures and prestige into nonscientific activities [p.007...] one way to counter the dire visions of thermodynamic scientism [!] was by recourse to another significant modern scientism [!], the doctrine of vitalism – the idea that life is fundamentally irreducible to material causes [...] for several centuries vitalism developed as a broad romantic reaction against the mechanistic reductionism of the Newtonian paradigm [...] in medical, physiological, philosophical, poetic, and spiritualistic forms, vitalism and its counterscientisms flourished in the gaps left open by the program of classical physics. For most of its history [but no longer] vitalism operated within the pale of mainstream chemistry and biology as a valid countertheory to materialist mechanism. The cultural history of vitalistic ideas is a good example of the way that critical scientisms can be a form of ideological defense, a resistance to the violence [!] of [the?] partisan scientific [sp.?, science?] dogmatizing itself [...] at the same time, vitalism's phantasmagoric [!] remythologizing [Nanda terms such 'reenchantment'] of nature has also impelled a long parade of cultural wish images. Conducted by its master trope – the life force that drives living things up the escalator of evolution just as the force of gravity pulls Newton's apple down – the energetic vitalisms of the era of classical thermodynamics conveyed scientific aura into a number of metaphysical and progressivistic [!] discourses [p.072]";

(ISBN 0472111744)

Clayton, P. (? ?) states:

[in "Mind and Emergence: From Quantum to Consciousness"(2004)]

"Polanyi's sympathy for Aristotle and vitalism clashes with core assumptions of contemporary biology. Aristotle is famous for the doctrine of entelechy, whereby the future state of an organism (say in the case of an acorn, the full-grown oak) pulls the developing organism towards itself [...] Polanyi's advocacy of Bergson's elan vital [...] the doctrine of vitalism that Polanyi took over from Driesch [...is] a whole-scale break with the neo-Darwinian synthesis on which all actual empirical work in biology today is based [...per] beyond structural features and mechanical forces [p.021...] Polanyi went to far, opting for 'finalistic' causes in biology [...] it is one thing to say that the evolutionary process has given rise to individuals who can exercise rational and responsible choices; but it breaks with all empirical biology to argue that 'we should take this active component into account likewise down to the lowest levels' [...] this would make all of biology a manifestation of an inner vitalistic drive; and that claim is inconsistent with the practice of empirical biology [p.022]";

(ISBN 0199272522)

Clayton, P. (? ?), Peacocke, A. (? ?) state:

[in "In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God's Presence in a Scientific World"(2004)]

"in the early twentieth century it was proposed that something had to be added to matter to explain the difference between living organisms and the inorganic. Such 'vitalism' is now universally rejected by biologists [p.140]";

(ISBN 0802809782)

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

[in "Dictionary of Energy"(2006)]

"vitalism: history. a (former) theory that life depends on a unique force and cannot be reduced to chemical and physical explanations [p.475]";

(ISBN 0080445780)

Coen, E. (? ?) states:

[in "The Art of Genes: How Organisms Make Themselves"(2006)]

"epigenesis seemed to need a special ‘making force,’ a vital force […] a force quite unlike any other […] able to organize and make things […] a rather extraordinary vital force […] the egg being thought of as almost a blank sheet, a tabula rasa, with all the information about the structure of an organism coming from the vital force that worked upon it […] why limit the vital force to the development of eggs: why not also use it to explain the apparently spontaneous appearance of maggots on rotting meat or of microscopic organisms in broth that had bee left for a while? […] epigenesis therefore become aligned with another theory prevalent in the seventeenth century: the theory of spontaneous generation [refuted like epigenesis…i.e.] Spallanzani in 1767, who showed that microscopic organisms only grew in flasks of boiled broth if they were left open to the air […] because they argued against a vital force […] within the broth […] these experiments were taken by many to be [p.004] strong evidence against epigenesis [p….] epigenesis seemed to require a vital force that could make the adult from the egg […] a vital force seemed to be needed to account for the formation of organisms […] it was difficult to escape the idea that there is some sort of underlying vital force. The only way to get round this would be to demonstrate a source or organization in the living world that was not ultimately dependent on a vital force […per] heredity […and] considering ] heredity in relation to a broader problem: evolution [p.007…] the idea that species had evolved through a gradual change in the hereditary make-up therefore undermined preformation […and] the study of evolution was also to challenge certain forms of epigenesis by dispensing with the need for a vital force […] Darwin […] came up with an alternative mechanism to account for organization in the living world: the theory of natural selection [p.008…] the organized nature of development evolved through natural selection, acting within the bounds of physical and chemical laws. There need be no recourse to special vital forces to account for orderly development […] the fertilized egg […] is not a blank sheet: it contains genes contributed by each parent, and these affect the characteristics of the final organism […with] the whole process […having] arisen as a consequence of natural selection acting over many millions of generations, rather than being the manifestation of a special vital force […] Darwin’s theory of natural selection suggests that no real magic need be involved; it is not necessary to invoke a vital force [p.009…the choice of] postulating a vital force […or] evolution by natural selection [p.010…] various arguments against mysterious vital forces […I am not] suggesting that human creativity was itself imbued with some sort of supernatural spiritual force [p.013]";

(ISBN 0198503431)

Cohen, J. (? ?), Stewart, I. (? ?) state:

[in “Figments of Reality: The Evolution of a Curious Mind”(1999)]

“some people think that living material is simply a different kind of stuff from non-living matter. This belief is known as vitalism. Its greatest defect is that there is no evidence in its favor: none of this different kind of stuff has ever been isolated [p.013]”;

(ISBN 0521663830)

Combs, A. (? ?), Robertson, R. (? ?) state:

[in "Chaos Theory in Psychology and the Life Sciences"(1995)]

"in the classical understanding [actual science], the idea of an ordering principle in the universe is pseudoscience nonsense (teleology, vitalism ...) [p.037]";

(ISBN 0805817379)

Cooper, C.L. (? ?), Dewe, P. (? ?) states:

[in "Stress: A Brief History"(2004)]

"[that] some 'vital force' animated physiological functioning [p.007...] the vitalists 'maintained that life could not be explained by the interactions of physical and chemical processes along' [...] to the vitalists, life was something more. Humans possessed some 'vital force' or 'life force,' and so could never be understood simply in terms of mechanical laws [...] Darwin's writings were about to deromanticize nature and give to the world a mechanistic view of evolution [...] providing another impetus to the mechanistic view of biology and science and the mechanization of human nature [...] by the end of the nineteenth century [...] one conflict [as if there is a scientific debate] underlies all others: the conflict between the belief [how about evidence] of scientific mechanism which reduce the individual 'to a collection of chemicals laboring in a vast industrial machine' [...] on the one hand, and the [supposed, habituated] 'spiritual reality' of the individual on the other [p.006]";

(ISBN 1405107456)

(also, see

http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/content/BPL_Images/Content_store/Sample_chapter/1405107456%5CCooper_sample%20chapter_stress.pdf)

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

[in “The Evolutionary Trajectory...”(1998)]

“it is important that we not confuse emergence with an older notion of a 'vital force' of life [...] a supposition that, since the earliest biological systems appeared, something beyond the chemical/physical body has been a part of organic systems, to make them live and develop [...] such an elan vitale has no basis other than the idea itself [...] today it is acknowledged as a regressive suggestion, based on a mystical response to a difficult question, and it has been rejected by nearly all students of life. Not only is it ad hoc, i.e. without evidential support, but it is nonproductive in that it leads to no new avenues of investigation [p.083...] the old, rejected, idea of elan vitale, a special property of life”;

(ISBN 9056996010)

Corey, M.A. (? ?) states:

[in "Evolution and the Problem of Natural Evil"(2000)]

"this 'life force' came to be known by various names, including vis viva, elan vital, lebenskraft, and entelechy. Those who believed in the existence of this vital life force thus came to be known as vitalists [...] the spectre of vitalism [...] has fallen into severe disrepute amongst biologists during the previous half-century, largely because no one has been able to demonstrate the existence of a vital life force in living tissue that transcends the laws of physics and chemistry [p.047...] I am not advocating a return to any type of dualistic vitalism, as there is no evidence that there are any other physical forces in living organisms besides those known to modern physics [p.073]";

(ISBN 076181812X)

ii.

[in "Back to Darwin: The Scientific Case for Deistic Evolution"(1994)]

"in the last forty to fifty years, however, the spectre of vitalism has fallen into severe disrepute in the biological community, largely because no one has been able to demonstrate the existence of a vital life force in living [p.263] tissue that transcends the laws of physics and chemistry [p.264]";

(ISBN 0819193070)

Corning, P. (? ?) states:

[in "Nature's Magic: Synergy in Evolution and the Fate of Humankind"(2003)]

"[as regards] the French philosopher Henri Bergson's 'elan vital' (1907), the German philosopher Hans Driesch's 'entelchie' (1909) [et. al....] most of these grandiose visions have been dismissed by mainstream scientists as 'vitalism' - a class of explanations that, like creationist theology, fall outside of the scientific pale";

(ISBN 0521825474)

Cornish-Bowden, A. (? ?), Cárdenas, M.S. (? ?) state:

[in "Systems Biology May Work When We Learn to Understand the Parts in Terms of the Whole"]

"Buchner's demonstration that the capacity of yeast cells to convert glucose into ethanol did not need an explanation in terms of a vital force. This discovery sounded the death knell of vitalism in biology" [often considered so in retrospect p.516];

(click here,

http://bip.cnrs-mrs.fr/bip10/bst2005.pdf)

(archived here,

http://web.archive.org/web/20060207235415/http://bip.cnrs-mrs.fr/bip10/bst2005.pdf)

Coulter, I. (? ?) {a vitalist} states:

[in "The Mainstreaming of Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Studies in Social Context"(2004) {ed.s Adams, J. (? ?), Easthose, G. (? ?), Tovey, P. (? ?)}]

"vitalism accepts that all living organisms are sustained by a vital force that is both different from, and greater than, physical and chemical forces [...] vitalism stands in direct opposition to materialism, which holds that disease can be explained entirely in terms of materialistic factors, and therefore there is no need to invoke vitalistic forces [...] in the extreme form, the vital force is supernatural [...above and beyond to typical] vis medicatrix naturae [...] in philosophy, vitalism is usually held to be a metaphysical belief that failed the death of a thousand qualifications [...] involving vitalistic forces was seen as unnecessary. In CAM there are numerous ways of expressing vitalism (qi, life force, yin/yang, prana, universal intelligence, innate, etc.) [p.113]";

(ISBN 0415267005)

ii.

[in "Chiropractic: Alternative Health Care"(1999)]

"chiropractic suffers the same problem as many, if not all, the alternative health paradigms, most of which subscribe to some form of vitalism [...] probably more than any other single element of the [chiropractic] paradigm, the metaphysical elements have often given chiropractic the appearance of a religious dogma [...per the metaphysical and vitalism] historically, such beliefs have been counterpoised with those of science in medicine [...] within philosophy, vitalism is generally portrayed as a failed metaphysic [...i.e. Kekes states] the demise of vitalism was due to death by a thousand qualifications [...i.e. due to] biological materialism [...that] all illness and disease can be explained empirically by biological determinism, [then] metaphysical systems that input such concepts and vitalistic forces become irrelevant [...per] if 'life' can be explained in material terms [...] if no difference exists between inanimate and animate objects in terms of scientific analysis [...] then the major distinction of vitalism loses it force [punning?!?!...and] the philosophical justification for vitalism becomes suspect [p.026]";

(ISBN 0750640065)

Craver, C.F. (? ?) states:

[in "Explaining the Brain"(2007)]

"ghostly entelechies (that is, vital forces), souls, or 'spooky' emergent properties [...] there is no evidence that souls or entelechies exist. They cannot be detected by measuring devices [...] there is no clear criteria for determining when souls or entelechies are present or absent [p.015]";

(ISBN 0199299315)

Dacey, A. (PhD{philosophy} BGSU) states:

[in "The Secular Conscience [...]"(2008)]

"vitalism gave way to mechanism in biology. Vitalism was the idea that living things are distinguished from nonliving things because they possess a sigle mysterious life force, elan vital, or 'protoplasm,' whereas mechanism held that living things are just qualitatively different arrangements of nonliving matter [...science has dismissed] the life force [p.112]";

(ISBN 1591026040)

ii.

[in "Does God Belong in Science?"{2005-10-10}]

"the rational response to this past experience is to assign a far lower likelihood of truth prior to investigation—or a lower prior probability—to a supernatural explanation relative to a natural explanation. Adding to this commonsense experience are over three centuries of progress in modern science in which naturalistic theories have prevailed and in many cases displaced previously accepted supernatural theories, as germs cast out demons, DNA and cellular machinery made obsolete the idea of a mysterious life force. Even in cases where a naturalistic explanation was not obvious, when people looked in the right way in the right place, they
found it. By contrast, supernatural explanations have a very bad track record in science";

(click here,

http://www.austindacey.com/pdf/Does_God_belong_in_science.pdf)

(archived here,

http://web.archive.org/web/20060711232000/http://www.austindacey.com/pdf/Does_God_belong_in_science.pdf)

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

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.austindacey.com/pdf/Does_God_belong_in_science.pdf)

Dancy, J. (? ?), Sosa, E. (? ?) state:

[in "A Companion to Epistemology (Blackwell Companions to Philosophy)"(1994)]

"when a super-empirical purpose is invoked [...] god's purpose, or the vitalistic explanation of biological phenomenon in terms of an entelechy or vital principle [...] all such explanations have been condemned by many philosophers as anthropomorphic [p.130...] the history of human thought about the nature of the external world is littered with what are now seen (with the benefit of hindsight) to be egregious errors -- the four element theory, phlogiston, the crystal spheres, vitalism, and so on [p.446] ";

(ISBN 0631192581)

Dani, S.U. (? ?), Hori, A. (? ?), Walter, G.F. ( ? ?) state:

[in “Principles of Neural Aging”(1997)]

“for a time, the doctrine termed vitalism frontally rejected the idea that similarities between the principles governing the animate matter and the inanimate matter exist at all. Vitalists stated that biological processes are not bound by the physical laws that govern inanimate objects, but by an immaterial principle: the entelecheia, for Aristotle and Hans Driesch; the elan vital, for Henri Bergson and Bernard Shaw. Modern biologists no longer need vitalistic principles to account for biological processes. The view of an immaterial principle governing life has been refuted, both theoretically as well as by careful experimental measurements on living animals and plants that are entirely consistent with the predictions of physics [p.019]”;

(ISBN 0444823298)

Darling, D. (? ?) states:

"it was once commonly believed that life was fundamentally different from non-life: that living things possessed a 'vital principle' which was absent from non-living matter. This notion of 'vitalism' began to seem less sustainable following the laboratory synthesis, in 1828, by Wöhler, of an organic substance (urea). Although Henri Bergson and others continued to champion vitalism into the twentieth century, the overwhelming consensus emerged that life could ultimately be reduced to a complex series of physical and chemical processes";

(click here,

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/L/lifenature.html)

(archived here,

http://web.archive.org/web/20041031224424/http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/L/lifenature.html)

Davidovits, P. (? ?) states:

[in "Physics in Biology and Medicine"(2007)]

"it was thought that the large molecules found in living matter could be produced only by living organisms through a 'vital force' that could not be explained by the existing laws of physics. This concept was disproved in 1828 when Friedrich Wohler synthesized an organic substance, urea, from inorganic chemicals. Soon, thereafter many other organic molecules were synthesized without the intervention of biological organisms. Today most scientists believe there is no special vital force residing in organic substances. Living organisms are governed by the laws of physics on all levels";

(ISBN 0123694116)

Davidson, K. (? ?) states:

[in "Carl Sagan: A Life"(2000)]

"'vitalists believed that living creatures possess mysterious qualities that cannot be reduced to physics and chemistry. In American biology, vitalism was essentially dead by the early twentieth century [p.444]";

(ISBN 0471395366)

Davies, E.B. (? ?) states:

[in "Science in the Looking Glass: What Do Scientists Really Know?"(2003)]

"vitalism, the centuries-old belief that the behavior of living creatures involves some non-physical vital spirit [...was] quite popular during the nineteenth century. Vitalism whithered during the twentieth century because no evidence to confirm the existence of such an influence was ever found, in spite of enormous research into physiology [p.239...] vitalism, the outmoded philosophy that inanimate, even organic, matter could not gain life without the addition of a 'vital spirit' [p.248]";

(ISBN 0198525435)

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHA17qxplzA)

Davies, P. (? ?), Gribbin, J. (? ?) state:

[in "The Matter Myth: Dramatic Discoveries That Challenge Our Understanding of Physical Reality "(1992)]

"taking nature too much at face value [...e.g.] biological organisms are so remarkable in their properties it is easy to suppose that they are infused with some special substance, or life force. This theory is known as vitalism, and it was very popular in the early part of the twentieth century [...e.g.] Driesch [...saw] some unseen guiding force, which he called entelechy. Today vitalism is totally discredited [...] life is based upon chemical reactions that do not differ in any fundamental respect from those that take place in inanimate systems. Driesch and others were misled [p.022]";

(ISBN 0671728415)

Davies, P.C.W. (PhD{physics} UCL) states:

[some of his books: The Mind of God, Other Worlds, God and the New Physics, The Edge of Infinity, The Runaway Universe, The Cosmic Blueprint, Are We Alone? The Fifth Miracle, The Last Three Minutes, Superforce, The Accidental Universe, About Time, How to Build a Time Machine, The Goldilocks Enigma, Dropping the Chase: The Enigmas of the Goddess, and Cosmic Jackpot]

(for his wikipedia page, click here,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Davies)

[in "The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life"(1999)]

"[regarding vitalism] the life force and other discredited notions. Given the elusive character of life, it is not surprising that some people have resorted to mystical interpretations. Perhaps organisms are infused with some sort of essence or soul that brings them alive? The belief that life requires an extra ingredient over and above ordinary matter obeying normal physical laws is known as vitalism [...] as scientific understanding advanced, so the life force became associated with more sophisticated concepts [...yet] unfortunately for the mystics, no properly conducted scientific experiment has ever demonstrated a life force at work, nor do we need such a force to explain what goes on inside biological organisms [...] a further reason to reject vitalistic explanations of life is their totally ad hoc character. If the life force manifests itself only in living things, it has little or no explanatory value [...] in seeking to understand the origin of life, scientists look to normal molecular processes to explain what happened, and not to an external life force to enliven dead matter. What makes life so remarkable, what distinguishes the living from the nonliving, is not what organisms are made of but how they are put together and function as wholes [...] vitalism is discredited [...that] there is a nonmaterial 'something' inside living organisms, something unique and, literally, vital to their operation. It is not an essence or a force or an atom with a zing [...but] information [...per, it is] DNA [in other words, the scientific explanation of the living being is via molecular biology]";

(click here,

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/d/davies-miracle.html)

(archived here,

http://web.archive.org/web/20010913043241/http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/d/davies-miracle.html)

(ISBN 068486309X)

ii.

[in "Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA"(2004)]

"[regarding life via vitalism violating natural laws] it was commonly supposed at the turn of the twentieth century that life somehow circumvents the strictures of thermodynamics and brings about increasing order [anti-entropy...per overriding] the trend into chaos predicted by thermodynamics [...] this was initially sought through the concept of vitalism -- the existence of a life force that somehow bestows order on the material contents of living systems [p.194...] in spite of detailed scrutiny, however, the second law of thermodynamics remains on solid scientific ground. So solid, in fact, that the astronomer Arthur Eddington felt moved to write, 'if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope: there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.' Today, we know that there is nothing anti-thermodynamic about life [p.194]";

(ISBN 0521829496)

iii.

[in "The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Nature's Creative Ability to Order the Universe"(2004)]

"the belief that life cannot be explained by ordinary physical laws, and therefore requires some sort of 'extra ingredient,' is known as vitalism. Vitalists claim a 'life force' or 'elan vital' which infuses biological systems and accounts for their extraordinary powers and abilities [...] Driesch [...] revived some old Aristotelian ideas of animism [...] postulated the existence of a causal factor operating in living matter called entelechy, after the Greek telos, from which the word teleology derives. Entelechy implies that the perfect and complete idea of the organism exists in advance [...and] systems with entelechy are goal-oriented [...] entelechy acts as a sort of organizing force that arranges the physical and chemical processes within an organism in accordance with this goal [...] in spite of the compelling simplicity of vitalist ideas, the theory was always regarded as intellectually muddled and disreputable. Today it is completely disregarded [p.097]";

(ISBN 1932031669)

iv.

["God and the New Physics"(1984)]

"some people have argued that it is impossible to build life out of non-life, so there must be an additional, nonmaterial, ingredient within all living things -- a life-force -- or spiritual essence which owes its origin, ultimately, to god. The is the ancient doctrine of vitalism. An argument frequently used in support of vitalism concerns behavior [...] living things [...] appear to behave in a purposive way, as though towards a specific end. This goal-oriented or 'teleological; quality [...] the occult spirit of life [...] the mysterious life-force [...] apparently the only way in which the hypothetical life-force manifests itself is through life; living things display the life-force, non-living things do not. But this reduces the life-force to a mere word, not an explanation for life. For what does it mean to say that a person, or a fish, or a tree, has the life-force? Only that it is living [...] the mistake in invoking a life-force is to overlook the fact that a multi-component system may possess collectively qualities that are [p.060] absent, or meaningless, or the individual components [...] the secret of life would not be found among the atoms themselves, but in the pattern of their associations -- the way they are put together, in the information encoded within the molecular structures. Once the existence of collective phenomena is appreciated, the need for a life-force is removed. Atoms do not need to be 'animated' to yield life, they simply have to be arranged in the appropriately complex way [p.061...] so far we have no evidence for truly holistic laws of physics [...] a truly holistic law would be, for example, a case where a new force or organizing influence emerged at the collective level that did not have its origin in the component parts individually. This was the assumption of vitalism in the explanation of life [p.225]";

(ISBN 0671528068)

[in "About Time: Einstein's Unfinished Revolution"(1995)]

"some biologists, especially in France, downplayed Darwin's central thesis of random mutations in favor of a mysterious quality called elan vital, or life force, responsible [p.035] for driving organisms in the direction of progress, against the chaotic tendencies of inanimate processes. Belief in such a life force persists in certain nonscientific circles even today [...] biologists have long science abandoned the life force [p.036]";

(ISBN 0684818221)

vi.

[in "Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe is Just Right for Life"(2007)]

"two hundred years ago, many scientists were content to treat life as a fundamental phenomenon because they believed that some sort of life force or vital essence was responsible for the remarkable qualities that living organisms display [...] today we know that there is no life force [p.224]";

(ISBN 0618592261)

(for a naturocrit blog entry that cites this, click here,

http://naturocrit.blogspot.com/2008/09/there-is-no-life-force-pcw-davies-isbn.html)

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

http://www.amazon.com/review/R2ZN3MNE5ASISY/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm)

vii.

[in "The Goldilocks Enigma: Why Is the Universe Just Right for Life?"(2008)]

"two hundred years ago, many scientists were content to treat life as a fundamental phenomenon because they believed that some sort of life force or vital essence was responsible for the remarkable qualities that living organisms display. This 'life stuff' was not supposed to be explained by anything deeper but was accepted as a primitive, given property of biology. Today we know there is no life force [p.224]";

(ISBN 0547053584)

Dawkins, R. (PhD{evolutionary biology} UO) states:

[who held the appointment 'Professor of the Understanding of Science' at Oxford University from 1995-2008]

[in "The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing"(2008)]

"what neither Mendel nor anyone else before 1953 knew was that genes themselves are digital, within themselves [...] life is the execution of programs written using a small digital alphabet in a single, universal machine language. This realization was the hammer blow that knocked the last nail in the coffin of vitalism and, by extension, of dualism. The hammer was wielded, with undisguised youthful relish, by James Watson and Francis Crick [p.030...] for me, the greatest achievement of Watson and Crick was to turn genetics from a branch of wet and squishy physiology into a branch of information technology, in the process slaying, as I suggested above, the ghost of vitalism [p.226]";

(ISBN 0199216800)

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

http://www.amazon.com/review/R3JXV7RIU24XRC/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm)

ii.

[in “The Digital River” from “The Science Book”{Tallack, P. (? ?)}(2006)]

"our genetic system [...] there is no spirit-driven life force, no throbbing, heaving, pullulating, protoplasmic, mystic jelly. Life is just bytes and bytes of digital information";

(ISBN 1841882542)

iii.

[in "River Out of Eden"(1996)]

"after Watson and Crick, we know that genes themselves [...] are long strings of pure digital information [...] the genetic code [...is] a quaternary code, with four symbols [...] the machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like [...] this digital revolution at the very core of life has dealt the final, killing blow to vitalism -- the belief that living material is deeply distinct from nonliving material [p.017...] there is no spirit-driven life force, no throbbing, heaving, pullulating, protoplasmic [p.018], mystic jelly. Life is just bytes and bytes of digital information [p.019]";

(ISBN 0465069908)

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

http://www.amazon.com/review/R29A79BF23V8TO/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm)

(for a digg.com social bookmark of this review, click here,

http://digg.com/general_sciences/Regarding_Science_s_Ejection_of_Vitalism_ISBN_0465069908)

iv.

[in "The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution"(2004)]

"Andrew Huxley's elder brother Julian made a similar point when, long ago, he satirized vitalism, then usually epitomized by Henri Bergson's name of elan vital, as tantamount to explaining that a railway engine was propelled by elan locomotif [p.552]";

(ISBN 0618005838)

[in Forbes ASAP 1999-10-04: "Snake Oil and Holy Water - Illogical Thinking is the Only Thing Joining Science and Religion Together"]

"to an honest judge, the alleged marriage between religion and science is a shallow, empty, spin-doctored sham";

(click here,

http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Work/Articles/1999-10-04snakeoil.shtml)

(archived here,

http://web.archive.org/web/20030812141421/http://www.forbes.com/asap/1999/1004/235.html)

vi.

"is science killing the soul? [per, as I see it, does science operate within the strictures of an 'epistemic delineation?'; as 'no supernaturalistic dualism in science'...] the first and oldest meaning of soul, which I'm going to call soul one, takes off from one set of definitions. I'm going to quote several related definitions from the Oxford dictionary: ‘the principle of life in man or animals -- animate existence,’ ‘the principle of thought and action in man commonly regarded as an entity distinct from the body, the spiritual part of man in contrast to the purely physical,’ ‘the spiritual part of man regarded as surviving after death, and as susceptible of happiness or misery in a future state,’ ‘the disembodied spirit of a deceased person regarded as a separate entity and as invested with some amount of form and personality’ [...] so soul one refers to a particular theory of life. It's the theory that there is something non-material about life, some non-physical vital principle. It's the theory according to which a body has to be animated by some anima. Vitalized by a vital force. Energized by some mysterious energy. Spiritualized by some mysterious spirit. Made conscious by some mysterious thing or substance called consciousness. You'll notice that all those definitions of soul one are circular and non-productive. It's no accident. Julian Huxley once satirically likened vitalism to the theory that a railway engine works by ‘force-locomotif’ [...] in the sense of Soul One, science has either killed the soul or is in the process of doing so [there is no spirit in science!!!!!!; it's a different knowledge kind...] but there is a second sense of soul, soul two [which is a figure], which takes off from another one of the Oxford dictionary's definitions: ‘intellectual or spiritual power. High development of the mental faculties. Also, in somewhat weakened sense, deep feeling, sensitivity.’ In this sense [as a figure], our question tonight means, Is science killing soulfulness? Is it killing esthetic sensitivity, artistic sensibility, creativity [as opposed to the supernatural soul]? The answer to this question 'is science killing soul two?,' is a resounding no";

(click here,

http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge53.html)

(archived here,

http://web.archive.org/web/20011102221856/http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge53.html)

(similarly, in part per the J.H. quote, click here,

http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/04-03-11.html)

[also in part per the J.H. quote, on p.011 of Dawkins' "The Blind Watchmaker" (1996), ISBN 0393315703]

Dawkins, R. (PhD ?), Shanks, N. (? ?) state:

[in "God, the Devil, and Darwin: A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory"(2004); Dawkins wrote p.x]

"Huxley's elder brother Julian [...] satirized vitalism as tantamount to explaining that a railway engine was propelled by force locomotif [...] I can see no difference at all between force locomotif [...] and the really lazy luminaries of [...] intelligent design 'theory' [p.x...] vitalism was an idea with ancient roots that was prevalent, like intelligent design, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries [...] living systems were said to be animated by vital forces, the co-called elan vital [...and] only organisms possessed the vital force needed for organic synthesis [...in 1828] the idea was dealt an early blow by Friedrich Woehler [...who] synthesized an organic substance (urea) in the laboratory [...] without the aid or an organism and its alleged vital forces [...] the science of thermodynamics [...] was also relevant [...per] the heat generated by animals [...] vitalists thought the heat was a by-product of the operation of vital forces [...] but this idea was dealt a series of scientific blows [...quoting Phillip Johnston] 'to postulate a non-material cause -- such as an unevolved intelligence or vital force -- for any event is to depart altogether from science and enter the territory of religion [...] this is equivalent [...] for scientific materialists [Johnston's barb...] to departing from objective reality into subjective belief [...] intelligent design in biology is by this definition antithetical to science, and so there cannot conceivably be evidence for it' [...] Johnson evidently considers intelligent design to be on a par with the old idea of vitalism and its reference to vital forces [p.137...but the author answers this broadside] I think the claim that the theory of evolution [and science in general] rests on pernicious philosophy is false [...] evidence is what underlies scientific support [...which often is summated as] naturalism, materialism, physicalism, and modernism [...as opposed to Johnston and kind's general] opposition to naturalism [p.136...yet life does not defy thermodynamics] the chemical energy in food could be converted through chemical action into the mechanical energy and heat energy observed in animals [...per] the Law of Conservation [...therein] scientists eventually lost interest in vitalism because there was no evidence to support its central claims (no vital forces were ever measured) and because the very phenomena that seemed to call for vitalism could be given good scientific explanations without reference to vital forces [...vitalism like intelligent design similarly have] evidential and explanatory defects [p.138]";

(ISBN 0195161998)

de Duve, C. (MD CUL, PhD CUL) states:

[for a bio., click here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_De_Duve;

for his 1974 Nobel laureate page, click here, http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1974/duve-autobio.html]

[in "Many Worlds: The New Universe, Extraterrestrial Life, and the Theological Implications"(2000)]

"the nature of life [...] life is explainable in terms of the laws of physics and chemistry [...per] physical and chemical terms [...which is] the central postulate on which the scientific study of life rests [...it is not] a dogmatic a priori statement [...but] a working hypothesis that guides and justifies our investigations [...] the present state of our knowledge makes the hypothesis into something as close to established fact as can be affirmed within the self-imposed boundaries of science [...] the old concept of living organisms made of matter 'animated' and goal-directed by some special force or 'vital spirit' must be abandoned. Vitalism and finalism no longer are accepted by the vast majority of scientists [p.004]";

(ISBN 1890151424)

ii.

[in "Vital Dust: Life as a Cosmic Imperative"(1996)]

"all through the book, I have tried to conform to the overriding rule that life be treated as a natural process [...] as governed by the same laws as nonliving processes [...] I exclude three 'isms:' vitalism, which views living beings as made of matter animated by some vital spirit; finalism, or teleology, which assumes goal-directed causes in biological processes; and creationism, which invokes a literal acceptance of the biblical account [p.xiv...] called finalism, this doctrine is close to vitalism, the belief that living organisms are animated by a vital principle. Both views are largely discredited. Design has given place to natural selection. The vital principle has joined ether and phlogiston in the cemetery of discarded concepts. Life is increasingly explained strictly in terms of the laws of physics and chemistry [p.010...] vitalism -- the matter-life dichotomy once embraced as readily by physicists as by biologists -- is another form of dualism that had to yield to modern insights [...per] living organisms are no longer viewed as matter 'animated' by a (nonmaterial) vital spirit [p.259]";

(ISBN 0465090451)

iii.

[in "Life Evolving: Molecules, Mind and Meaning"(2002)]

"until recently, the answer to the question 'what is life?' posed no problem. Life, it was said, is 'animated matter,' from the Latin anima, soul. This, of course, was no explanation at all. It simply attributed to the soul, or vital spirit, all that was not understood about life [...] vitalism, as this doctrine is called, maintained a foothold until well into the twentieth century [...] often [...] in connection with religious beliefs [...] Bergson [...had] 'elan vital,' a vital surge [...] du Nouy [...had] 'telefinalisme' to designate what he perceived as the innate ability of living organisms to act purposefully, in opposition to the second law of thermodynamics [...] today, vitalism has few adherents as more and more of the remarkable [p.007] properties of living organisms are being explained in terms of physics and chemistry [p.008...] two centuries ago, the founders of chemistry designated as organic the chemistry of substances made by living organisms with the help, many believed, of a special vital force. This notion was [...per] Wohler [urea...] and it was first contradicted in 1828definitively disproved in 1897 [...per] Buchner [yeast juice...] space chemistry has shattered the last refuge[s] of vitalism [...] chemical germs of life are banal products of space chemistry. There is 'vital dust' everywhere in the universe [p.048...] did life arise naturally? [...] even outside any religious creed['s creationism], the origin of live is often viewed as an insoluble mystery, within the context of some unconscious latent vitalism. Rare are those who, being cultured but devoid of scientific grounding, picture life as having spontaneously arisen through the play of the same physical and chemical laws as rule other natural phenomena [...] all that we have so far supports a naturalistic explanation of the origin of life [...] life has proved entirely explainable in physical-chemical terms. What is true of life now is very likely to be true also of its origin [...] if life functions without the help of a vital principle, as we know it does, we are entitled to assume that its birth likewise took place without the intervention of such an entity [...] the vast cosmic chemistry [...] the chemical seeds from which life developed [...] it may be said that at least the first step in the birth of life was the outcome of natural processes [p.050...] we know that there is no such thing as a vital principle [p.053...] we saw in chapter 3 how the discovery that cell-free yeast juice could catalyze the fermentation of sugar struck the death blow to vitalism and, at the same time, launched the unraveling of [the mysteries of] metabolic processes [p.153...] modern science has refuted vitalism by demonstrating that the basic phenomena of life are entirely explainable in purely physical and chemical terms. Thus life, in turn, has come to be seen as a manifestation of matter. This fact has not been recognized without difficulty and remains hard to accept by the average person, as it requires a widening of the a priori vision we have of matter as something gross, inert, and brute, and life as 'animated' matter [...modern science's] rejection of vitalism [p.219...] the nature of life. As I have shown, the proof of life is a natural manifestation of matter that takes place without the help of any sort of vital principle is overwhelming. Adopted as a matter of course by the great majority of contemporary biologists, this mechanistic vision of life has yet to become commonly accepted knowledge among the general public [...] the feeling that the functioning of life involves something other than purely physical-chemical processes is often associated with religious belief [...] life is part of the universe; it is a normal manifestation of matter and obeys the laws of matter; in is explicable in terms of those laws [p.287...] the notion that life arose naturally just happens to fit with all we know of the nature of life and it is supported by a variety of observations and experimental data; it is an almost obligatory corollary of the abandonment of vitalism and the only working hypothesis capable of guiding research in a fruitful way [p.288]";

(ISBN 0195156056)

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

http://www.amazon.com/review/R17H2U141JJA7B/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm)

(for a digg.com social bookmark of this review, click here,

http://digg.com/general_sciences/Regarding_Science_s_Ejection_of_Vitalism_ISBN_0195156056)

[defunct](for a youtube.com slideshow of this {in part}, click here {entire},

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEFz0m3jqpU)

iv.

[in "Singularities: Landmarks on the Pathways of Life"(2005)]

"Miller's findings highlighted the possibility that the building blocks of life could have been the products of natural chemical phenomena, mandated by local physical-chemical conditions [...] consistent with the view, already solidly established at the time [early 1900s], that living processes take place naturally, without the intervention of some special 'vital force' [p.007]";

(ISBN 052184195X)

de Purucker, G. (? ?) states:

[in "The Esoteric Tradition Part Two 1935"(2004)]

"vitalism [...per] the general idea that behind or beyond or within [p.728] the physical and chemical processes in animal and plant bodies [...] the basic idea of the conception of vitalism was that the so-called 'life' is entirely immaterial, unsubstantial, and in no sense identical with or being anything that matter itself is, but which nevertheless worked through matter [p.729...] behind [per The Encyclopedia Britannica's Verworn, M. (1911, vol. XXI, p.554) as regards] in an general way the growth in Europe of the ideas of vitalism, and the nature of 'soul' and of 'spirit' as held in European thought from the Greeks down to this own day [...] 'the tendency to explain vital phenomena by mystical means [...per] the animism of Stahl [...] 'vitalism continued to be the ruling idea in physiology until about the middle of the 19th century ... by the second half of the 19th century the [p.730...] doctrine of vital force was definitely and finally overthrown to make way for the triumph of the natural method of explaining vital phenomena [p.731...] the mistake of vitalism or the vitalistic hypothesis [p.741]";

(ISBN 1417982810)

deGregori, T.R. (? ?) states:

[in "Origins of the Organic Agriculture Debate"(2003)]

"I find the thread of continuity that runs through these various antiscience views to be a belief in an unmeasurable, essentially unknowable vital force, or vitalism [... ] I agree that these vitalist beliefs are largely harmful in their impact [p.vii...] certain ideas such as vitalism were rejected by the mainstream of science as inquiry proceeded over the last two centuries, this rejected knowledge [p.xv...] I use the concept of vitalism as an integrating element in this stream of rejected knowledge [p.xvi...] mysticism, vitalism, and various contemporary antiscience systems are neither necessary nor helpful and are positively harmful in their opposition to the utilization of scientific knowledge for human betterment [...] it is the scientists who delivered [p.005...] vitalism and verification. Lavoisier's work began the process of freeing science from the vitalist belief in an invisible force or vis viva [p.009...] 'matter of fact knowledge' is central to scientific inquiry' (Hamilton 1982 [...] biologists may be 'materialists' in denying 'supernatural or immaterial forces' and accepting those that are 'physico-chemical' but neither do they accept 'naive mechanistic' explanations or any belief that 'animals are nothing but machines' [...and] science cannot operate on the basis of a 'factor' that is 'unknown and presumably unknowable' (Mayr 1982 [...] 'vitalism is irrefutable' and therefore incapable of being considered a scientific hypothesis or theory (Beckner 1967 [...science cannot] operate with theories that cannot be refuted and therefore cannot be tested [p.010...] a critical component of reductionism is the belief that scientific inquiry can proceed satisfactorily, and explain phenomena, and develop operational principles without the need for any 'vital principle [...] over the last to centuries [...] the history of science [...] demonstrates that vitalism is an impediment to understanding without any benefit to humanity [p.022...] vitalism has been driven from scientific inquiry [...] science can allow us to explain the functioning of biological phenomena in terms of basic principles of biology, chemistry, and physics without a need for reference to any vital principles [p.033...] twenty-first-century science simply has no need for vitalist principles. Two centuries ago, one could speak of Western science or Hindu science or any other qualifying definition of science because the vitalism in a body of science was often tied to the dominant religious beliefs of a culture [...] today, science and technology [...are] united by shared understandings about the nature of nonvitalistic scientific inquiry [p.034...] vitalism has been driven out of science [p.041...] vitalism persists (but not in science) [p.042...] organic chemistry may have sounded the death knell of vitalism [p.043...] [...] basic principles of homeopathy are [...] life is a spiritual force (vitalism) [p.046...] vital properties, or prana [p.061...] chi or qi from China, prana from India, or ki from Japan [p.076]";

(ISBN 0813805139)

Del Re, G. (? ?) states:

[in "The Emergence of Complexity in Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology"(1997)]

"vitalism, which is scientifically untenable [p.282]";

(ISBN 0691012385)

Dembski, W.A. (? ?), Ruse, M. (? ?) [ed.s] state:

[in "Debating Design"(2004)]

"[per Davies, P. (? ?)] it was commonly supposed at the turn of the twentieth century that life somehow circumvents the strictures of thermodynamics and brings about increasing order. This was initially sought through the concept of vitalism -- the existence of a life force that somehow bestows order on the material contents of living systems [...] today, we know that there is nothing anti-thermodynamic about life [p.194]";

(ISBN 0521829496)

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

[in "Brainchildren: Essays on Designing Minds, 1984-1996"(1998)]

"vitalism is deservedly dead [p.155]";

(ISBN 0262540908)

ii.

[in "Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness (Jean Nicod Lectures)"(2005)]

"vitalism -- the insistence that there is some big, mysterious extra ingredient in all living things -- turns out to have been not a deep insight but a failure of imagination [p.178]";

(ISBN 0262042258)

Depew, D. (? ?), Grene, M. (? ?) state:

[in "The Philosophy of Biology: An Episodic History"(2004)]

"it seems the vitalism-mechanism struggle reached its culmination, and its denouement, in the early twentieth century [...] per Driesch [...who posited] some kind of vital force supervising development, what he called an 'entelechy,' a special vital something unique to things that are alive [...and Loeb who proposed] so-called vital functions were thus plainly shown to be merely mechanical [...] by now, these positions seem quaintly dated. Nobody [I assume within legitimate science] would any longer proclaim the creed of vitalism, and Loeb's programmatic mechanism no longer appears necessary to as a counterfoil to it [...] nobody any longer wants to invoke some non-material something to explain biological phenomena [...] living systems are material [...today, the emphasis is upon] studying the[ir] organization [p.307...and quotes Crick per] 'the ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology [...] is in fact to explain all biology in terms of physics and chemistry' [p.310]";

(ISBN 0521643805)

Derry, G.N. (PhD{physics} ?) states:

[in "What Science Is and How It Works"(2002)]

"a theory that is an intellectual dead end is a poor theory, even if it explains all the current data (vitalism, in biology, might be an example) [p.203]";

(ISBN 0691095507)

Dewitt, R. (PhD{philosophy} OSU) states:

[in "World Views: An Introduction to the History and Philosophy of Science"(2004)]

"the issues at stake between biological vitalists [...] and biological mechanists [...] the vitalist view was that living substances were different from non-living substances [...] the laws (such as Newtonian laws) that apply to nonliving objects do not necessarily apply to living objects [...] the vitalist view [...] work in the 1700s, and continuing into the 1800s and 1900s, made it clear that the vitalist view is mistaken [...] biological phenomena are no different in kind than phenomena outside of biology [...e.g. #1] nerve fibers were long thought to be pipes or channels for the [p.189] vital fluid or vital force that was believed necessary for life, and this view of nerve fibers fit in well with the vitalist position [...until] Galvani and Volta [et al.,...who] established that nerve conduction is an electrical phenomena, which is a quite different view of nerves than the old view of nerves as pipes or channels for the vital fluid or force [...] what was originally viewed as a purely biological phenomena, and one that fit within the vitalist view, is now understood to be, at bottom, an electrical phenomena resulting from physical and chemical processes not different in kind from those found outside of biology [...per then] overall mechanistic, Newtonian understanding of physical and chemical processes [...e.g #2] organic chemistry was originally viewed as closely tied to vitalism, in that the vital fluid or vital force believed necessary for life was generally viewed as required to produce organic compounds [...] for a number of years, this seemed a reasonable view [...until] Wohler [...] managed to produce urea [...] this too substantially undermined the vitalist view of the sharp distinction between living and non-living things [...] this is again a brief sketch of [...] the sorts of major advances that were made in biology in the period from roughly 1700 to 1900 [...wherein] biological phenomena came to be viewed, at bottom, as no different from non-biological phenomena [...] there were still a few defenders of vitalism even into the early 1900s, by this time it was pretty clear that the mechanist view was correct. Discoveries in the twentieth century [...] sealed the case, and provided a good understanding of how living phenomena arise from molecular-level events [p.190]";

(ISBN 140511620X)

Dick, S.J. (? ?) states:

[in "Many Worlds: The New Universe, Extraterrestrial Life, and the Theological Implications"(2000)]

"we truly understand the basic processes that support life, and we successfully explain them in physical and chemical terms [...per] the powerful achievements of biotechnology. The old concept of living organisms made of matter 'animated' and goal-directed by some special force or 'vital spirit' must be abandoned. Vitalism and finalism no longer are accepted by the vast majority of scientists [p.004...] the rejection of vitalism and finalism [p.007...] creationism, vitalism, finalism, dualism, and anthropocentrism have all been left by the wayside by the progression of modern biology [p.11...] everything can be broken down into fundamental physical entities and no extra entities are to be inserted at higher levels of complexity, (e.g., at that of living organisms -- no vitalism, no elan vitale, and so forth) [p.98]";

(ISBN 1890151424)

Dickie, L.M. (? ?), Kerr, S.R. (? ?) state:

[in "The Biomass Spectrum [...](2001)"]

"this is not to argue that biology must therefore fall back on vitalism, as was suggested by nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century philosophy [...] the biological system necessarily exists as an integral part of the physical universe and obeys its laws [p.171...] Bohr's sensitivity to the limitations of language led him to emphasize that his concepts of the difficulty of biological research have nothing to do with a return to notions of vitalism, which obscure rather than explain the phenomenon of life [p.280]";

(ISBN 0231084587)

Dietrich, M. (PhD? ?), Harman, O. (PhD? ?) state:

[in "Rebels of Life: Iconoclastic Biologists of the Twentieth Century: A Book Proposal"]

“eventually despairing of learning about the intricacies of embryonic processes by the methods of physics and chemistry, Driesch adopted a vitalistic philosophy, invoking the Aristotelian principle of entelechy as a non-material, non-chemical guiding force that pervaded the embryo and organized its development toward completion [...] Driesch [...] abandoned mechanistic biology for philosophy [specifically vitalistic metaphysics], and specifically for a vitalistic philosophy that was out of sympathy with most biologists of the time [early 1900s!; imagine TODAY!]. Flying the face of a mechanistic tradition he had himself helped to create, Driesch claimed that living systems could never be understood in terms of physics and chemistry, and had to be considered vital entities that operated under their own, metaphysical rules”;

(click here,

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~dietrich/Rebels.doc)

(archived here,

http://web.archive.org/web/20070105130737/http://www.dartmouth.edu/~dietrich/Rebels.doc)

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

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Edietrich/Rebels.doc)

Dooley, T.R. (ND NCNM, MD OHSUSM) states:

[in "Homeopathy: Beyond Flat Earth Medicine"(2002, 2nd ed.)]

"[a vitalist, admits] modern science currently teaches that vital force is an outdated and discredited theory [...] rejected by modern science [...] it is now generally accepted that all of these life functions are the result of biochemical processes [...] it is felt that there is no need for any force which is unique to life [p.051]";

(ISBN 1886893012)

Drexler, E. (? ?) states:

[in "Engines of Creation..."(1987)]

"is there some special magic about life, essential to making molecular machinery work? [...] some special magic [...] this idea is called 'vitalism.' Biologists have abandoned it because they have found chemical and physical explanations for every aspect of living cells yet studied, including their motion, growth, and reproduction. Indeed, this knowledge is the very foundation of biotechnology [p.017]";

(ISBN 0385199732)

Durr, H.P. (? ?), Popp, F.A. (? ?), Schommers, W. (? ?) state:

[in "What Is Life? Scientific Approaches and Philosophical Positions: Scientific Approaches and Philosophical Positions"(2002)]

"[per Gottwald] research contexts of the 20th century [...include the] vitalistic: definition of life using non-physical, energy-causal factors (e.g. entelechy, elan vitale, orgone energy) [p.030...] vitalistic views of life [...] Aristotelian interpretations of the world [p.031...per Beloussov] can anything be more vitalistic than regarding life as a succession of isolated arbitrary acts, in no way derivable from physical laws? Contrary to this, our viewpoint can be formulated in this way: to develop means to play with physical forces and topological laws [p.090...per Fischbeck] for a long time the question has been asked: what is the essence of this extraordinary phenomenon life? Our immediate intuition suggests that life is qualitatively different from the inanimate world [...] biology [...] has tried to explain the peculiarities of life as the effect of special aim-directed forces, called vis vitalis or entelechy. The more biology established itself as an experimental and causally explaining science, the more it became clear that such basic forces cannot be found through the if-then-questions of experimentation, whereas biochemical and biophysical explanation patterns pushed ahead and succeeded in explaining life phenomena more and more [...] the [p.217] vitalistic concepts have been definitely put aside. We agree that three features characterize life sufficiently: metabolism, reproduction, and (variable) inheritance. All three features can be explained biochemically and biophysically in detail [...] life is 'nothing but' a peculiar, however astonishing, and most complex interplay of biomolecules within the framework of chemistry and physics. It differs from inanimate nature only phenomenally but not in inherent principle. [p.218]";

(ISBN 9810247400)

Dusheck, J. (? ?), Tobin, A.J. (PhD{biophysics} Harvard) state:

[for a bio. of Tobin, click here, http://www.braintumorfunders.org/tobin.php]

[in "Asking about Life"(2004)]

"nineteenth century chemists firmly believe that all biological processes were chemical in nature. To believe otherwise, to insist on some mysterious role for living organisms that was not purely chemical in nature, was condemned as vitalism -- the belief that living systems have powers beyond those of nonliving systems [p.109...] modern biologists reject vitalism, the belief that living systems have powers beyond those of nonliving systems [p.124]";

(ISBN 053440653X)

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

http://www.amazon.com/review/RILQNQFXKIXD0/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm)

(for a digg.com social bookmark of this amazon.com review, click here,

http://digg.com/general_sciences/Regarding_Science_Ejected_Vitalism_ISBN_053440653X)

Dutch, S. (PhD CU) states [Natural and Applied Sciences dept., University of Wisconsin - Green Bay]:

[in "Historical Background of Evolution"]

"one of the last holdouts of supernaturalism in science was the nature of life. Many thinkers held that there was something special about life that required a vital force or elan vital that was different from the laws governing inorganic matter. It was once held that chemists would never synthesize organic chemicals, but beginning in the mid-19th century that defense collapsed. The idea that life is driven by some sort of special force is termed vitalism. Lightning is just electricity. Life is chemistry and physics. So what? What does this have to do with God? The important thing to realize here is that hard-core supernaturalists weren't simply trying for a simple explanation of complex phenomena. They were desperately hoping for some phenomenon that would forever be inexplicable in conventional scientific terms, where nonbelievers would be compelled either to acknowledge the existence of the supernatural, or be put in a position of blatant intellectual dishonesty";

(click here,

http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/WestTech/darwin.htm)

(archived here,

http://web.archive.org/web/20011126193017/http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/WestTech/darwin.htm)

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

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/WestTech/darwin.htm)

Earle, W.J. (? ?) states:

[in "Introduction to Philosophy"(1991)]

"vitalism. View that there is a fundamental (or metaphysical) difference between living and nonliving things. Vitalists once held that organic chemicals cannot be synthesized outside a living organism. Of course, they have been proved wrong [p.298]";

(ISBN 0070187835)

Edis, T. (PhD{physics} JH) states:

(for a biography, click here,

http://www2.truman.edu/~edis/mbio.html)

[in "Science and Nonbelief"(2006)]

"biology, in turn, can be based squarely on the physical sciences. The processes of life are entirely physical, requiring no 'animal soul' or 'life force' [p.030...] until just about a century ago, the notion of a life force or 'animal soul' was still taken seriously. Today, we have learned much more about biology and integrated it with the physical sciences, and no serious scientist speaks of a life force animating living things [p.043...] although the ancient idea of a mysterious life force that animates living beings remains popular, continually resurfacing in science fiction and in new age spiritualities, it has long been discarded from biology [p.066...] there is no life force [p.223]";

(ISBN 0313330786)

Elsberry, W.E. (? ?), Perakh, M. (? ?) state:

[in "How Intelligent Design Advocates Turn the Sordid Lessons From Soviet and Nazi History Upside Down"]

"vitalism is a theory [nonscientific sense] (stemming from ancient philosophical systems, e.g. from the ideas of Aristotle) which explained the nature of life as allegedly resulting from a vital force peculiar to living organisms, whose essence is principally different from any other known physical or chemical forces. The development of natural sciences has led to the vitalism's losing its prestige as it has been abandoned by modern science, although its vestiges are still present in some philosophical systems [...] to my mind [...intelligent design will land in] the same ash heap [it has, per Dover 12/2005] of history where the theories of phlogiston, caloric fluid, vitalism, and other discarded concepts already reside";

(click here,

http://www.talkreason.org/articles/eandp.cfm)

(archived here,

http://web.archive.org/web/20040426005706/http:/www.talkreason.org/articles/eandp.cfm)

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

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.talkreason.org/articles/eandp.cfm)

Emmeche, C. (?{biology} ?) states:

[in "The Garden in the Machine: The Emerging Science of Artificial Life"(1996)]

"modern biochemistry and molecular biology are often considered to be the ultimate defeat of vitalism. Vitalism is here considered a quasireligious belief that living organs contain a unique vital principle, a mystical life-force or something similar, that cannot be explained within the framework of natural science. As the belief in metaphysical principles or supernatural forces [p.viii...] vitalism is dead yet again [...] vitalism is certainly dead [p.ix]";

(ISBN 0691029032)

Ernst, E. (? ?) {ed.} states:

[in "Healing, Hype, or Harm? [...]"(2008)]

"[per Canter, P.H. (? ?)] Vitalism and other Pseudoscience in Alternative Medicine: The Retreat from Science. Vitalism is the doctrine that life processes arise from, or contain a non-material vital principle and cannot be explained entirely in terms of physical and chemical entities and processes [...] vitalism [...] the belief system [...e.g.] Aristotle [...] believed that the soul was a type of life-energy which keeps the organism alive [...] the notion of a vital energy is evident in the Greco-Roman idea of humours, the yogic concept prana, the Chinese concepts qi and yin-yang, Bergson's elan vital, Reich's orgone theory and bioenergtic fields, and pervades the pseudoscientific thinking used to explain the mechanism of unproven medical modalities such as homeopathy, acupuncture, spiritual healing, reflexology, crystal therapy, qigong and reiki [p.152...] the nineteenth century Swedish chemist Berzelius proposed that organic compounds are produced under the influence of a vital force and cannot, therefore, be artificially manufactured [...] however, in 1828, the German chemist Wohler successfully synthesized the organic compound urea [...] vitalism has since been regarded as pseudoscience [...yet] vitalism continue[s] to pervade the belief systems surrounding unproven therapies [...] science does not support the existence of meridians, qi or any other type of vital force [...] vitalism is unscientific and posits the existence of an ethereal force beyond the powers of science to detect [...] is there any empirical evidence that vital forces exist? The answer is no [p.153...] vitalism generates no testable hypotheses and can neither be proven nor disproven [p.154...] homeopathy is firmly based on vitalism. Hahnemann believed that life is a spiritual force which directs the body's healing [...] administration of homeopathic remedies stimulates the readjustment of the bodies own vitalistic healing mechanism [p.155]";

(ISBN 1845401182)

Fancher, L. (MS? ?) states:

[in "So What is Life?"]

"scientists have thoroughly discarded the notion of vitalism to explain the nature of life";

[the College of DuPage, IL](click here,

http://www.cod.edu/people/faculty/fancher/WhatIsLife.htm)

(archived here,

http://web.archive.org/web/20041026181727/http://www.cod.edu/people/faculty/fancher/WhatIsLife.htm)

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

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.cod.edu/people/faculty/fancher/WhatIsLife.htm)

Feldman, F. (? ?) states:

[in "Confrontations With The Reaper: A Philosophical Study of the Nature and Value of Death"(1994)]

"vitalism is dead. Since there is no point in beating a dead horse, it may seem that there is no point in trying to refute vitalism [p.040...] there are several reasons for rejecting vitalism. In the first place, there is no reason to suppose that there is any vital fluid [p.045]";

(ISBN 0195089286)

Fenchel, T. (? ?) states:

[in "Origin and Early Evolution of Life"(2003)]

"living organisms would appear to violate the second law of thermodynamics. An egg, for example, develops over time to become more and more complex and represent a very unlikely organization of matter and it appears to defy the universal tendency of dissolution of structure and complexity. At the beginning of the last century, many biologists still felt that life represented an exception to the second law due to 'vital forces.' The analysis of Erwin Schroedinger's book What Is Life (1944) showed, however, that while it is (still) not possible to explain all vital processes by reference to physical laws, then it is possible to establish that life obeys all fundamental physical laws -- including the second laws of thermodynamics [...] classical thermodynamics is concerned with small changes in isolated systems close to their equilibrium [...] life represents systems that are very far from equilibrium, and they are 'open' in the sense that they exchange energy and matter with their surroundings. The second law requires that the entropy of the entire system must increase, but it allows for a local entropy decrease as long as the entropy of the universe increases [p.032]";

(ISBN 0198525338)

Field, H. (? ?) states:

[in "Truth and the Absence of Fact"(2001)]

"one way of rejecting physicalism is called 'vitalism' [...] the view that there are irreducibly biological facts, i.e. biological facts that aren't explained 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 [...] we should look for nonbiological facts [...i.e.] the chemical foundation of genetics [...like] semanticalism [...] the doctrine that there are irreducible semantic facts [...] like Cartesianism [...] the doctrine that there are irreducibly mental facts [...] and vitalism [...] the view that there are irreducibly biological facts [...vitalism] posits nonphysical primitives, and as a physicalist I believe that all three doctrines must be rejected [p.012]";

(ISBN 0199241716)

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

[in "Nature's Chemicals: The Natural Products that Shaped Our World"(2009)]

"Berzelius believed and argued that only living organisms possessed the vital force [...] the merging of scientific ideas with what we would now regard as a mystical concept such as vitalism [...] the vital force [...] the simple disproof of the existence of Berzelius's vital force [...] vitalism, supported by authority [...] the majority of the new generation of organic chemists did not need the concept of vitalism [...] the concept of vitalism [...] vitalism lived on [...] until 1897 when Buchner found [...] enzymatic activity [...] in extracts of yeast cells which lacked any living cells [...] Berzelius's ideas on vitalism had been disproved by experiment [p.006...] the biological concept of vitalism had not proved productive [...] vitalism was finally discarded [p.010...] the belief in vitalism, once central to the scientific study of naturally occurring chemicals [...] the belief that living organisms possess some unique properties (the vital force) [notes]";

(ISBN 0199566836)

Fisher, P. (? ?), McCarney, R. (? ?) state:

[in "Alternative Medicine for the Elderly"(2003)]

"vitalism was generally abandoned by western medicine during the 19th century. As a consequence of the scientific revolution which transformed medicine, the vital force was perceived as metaphysical [p.153]";

(ISBN 3540441697)

Fleissner, E. (? ?) states:

[in "Vital Harmonies: Molecular Biology and Our Shared Humanity"(2004)]

"the premise is that a cell consists of a finite number of [...] microsystems [...] which, if combined together, will be a perfectly valid cell once more [...] there is something astringent, austere, and rather beautiful about this quest for simplicity in biology [...] no elan vitale a la Henri Bergson, no embryo-directing 'entelechy' as postulated, over a century ago, by Hans Driesch, no vital force need be supplied [...per VFS] these sorts of things have not been observed in in vitro systems, and have no place in the cell's total information store in its DNA, they can be relegated to the dustbin of philosophical romanticism [p.116]";

(ISBN 0231131127)

Forciea, B. (DC Parker) states:

[in "Unlocking the Healing Code: Discover the 7 Keys to Unlimited Healing Power"(2007)]

[Note: a woo-proponent's argument for sCAM]

"in the philosophical camp called vitalism, vitalists believed in a vital force, a life force that permeated all living beings. The vital force is what kept things alive, but no one was ever able to measure this mysterious force [p.013...] believers in vitalism believe [!!!] in a vital force that permeates all life. Some call it chi, others prana, still others energy. The presence of the vital force is what separates the living from nonliving. Alternative systems of healing work to support the vital force. Science has a problem with vitalism. Science has never been able to measure the vital force or even a vital energy […] this energy is not in any form known to science. Scientists have yet to measure a vital force […] science's view of life is founded on a different philosophy than vitalism. At the core of science and medicine is mechanistic materialism. In this view life emerged from matter. There is no hidden vital force, no living energy. Life is seen as a self-sustaining process that produces complex structures [p.003]";

(ISBN 0738710776)

Forsen, S. (? ?) states:

[in "Nobel Lectures in Chemistry 1971-1980"(1993)]

"the Nobel Prize for chemistry. Speech by Professor BO. G. Malmstrom of the Royal Academy of Sciences [...] modern biology has taught us that there is no vital force, and living organisms consist wholly of dead atoms [p.379]";

(ISBN 9810207875)

Frenay, R. (? ?) states:

[in “Pulse: The Coming Age of Systems and Machines Inspired by Living Things”(2006)]

“the theory of 'vitalism.' Life was animated not just by mechanical processes [...] but by a kind of divine energy – a vital force [...] vitalism would continue as a scientific theory until early in the twentieth century and remains a force today in its current form as the new age movement [p.013]”;

(ISBN 0374113270)

Frear, J. (? ?) states:

"vitalism is, of course, discredited in biology";

(click here,

http://expectoration.blogspot.com/)

Friedman, K.S. (? ?) states:

[in "Myths of the Free Market"(2003)]

"embryologists, faced with the palpable reality of the development of finely-tuned organs, skeletons, and nervous systems in living organisms, saw a need to circumvent the second law of thermodynamics. This led to vitalism, theories that living systems are characterized by some unique quality, Driesch's entelechy [...] or Bergson's elan original de la vic [...] in fact, mysterious qualities like entelechy are not necessary. Nonlinear thermodynamics can explain the development of order without the need to postulate anything new [p.102]";

(ISBN 0875862233)

Fryhle, C.B. (? ?), Solomons, T.W.G. (? ?) state:

[in "Organic Chemistry"(2003)]

"most historians of science date [...the science of organic chemistry] to the early part of the nineteenth century, a time in which an erroneous belief was dispelled [...] a belief called 'vitalism' [...that] the intervention of a 'vital force' was necessary for the synthesis of an organic compound [...] vitalism disappeared slowly from scientific circles after Wöhler's synthesis, it's passing made possible the flowering of the science of organic chemistry that has occurred since 1850 [p.003...] despite the demise of vitalism in science [etc. p.005]";

(ISBN 0471417998)

Appendix C.06.b. - No VFS in Sci. - Acad.s & Authors (C-F)

The Scientific Rejection of Vitalism (continued):