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Mechanism, Vitalism, Naturalism

A Logico-Historical Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Edgar A. Singer Jr.
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Extract

The literature of our day shows experimental scientists to be divided between two schools of thought, now generally called Mechanist and Vitalist. The literature of any day these last 2000 years would tell the same tale, but for occasional changes of name. Where an issue dividing scientists is seen to be an experimental issue, it presents no challenge to the philosopher. His interest is limited to the question, How shall we find out? and where all are agreed as to the way of settling a difference of opinion, he can wait with patience to learn the result. But the very history of this world-old and world-wide conflict between schools of experimental science shows that it never has been, is not now, could never become one whose issue turned on the outcome of this or that experiment; nor in all the 2000 years the conflict has lasted, has science been able to come upon any other type of evidence by which the issue might be settled. As one of a class of similar issues, ancient, pervasive, persistent, the manner of whose decision lies still beyond the grasp of experimental science, this Mechanist-Vitalist controversy gives the philosopher much to think about.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , April 1946 , pp. 81 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1946

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References

Notes

1 The restriction here put upon the Euclidean use of “theorem” (i.e., the requirement that a theorem of our deductive system shall need all the postulates of that system as premises) is introduced for no other reason than to effect a certain economy of subsequent wording not otherwise to be achieved. For sake of comparison, it may be noted that the “theorem” Elements, i, 29, would be our theorem, the preceding Euclidean “theorems” becoming for us protheorems.

2 That is, no historic system stands in opposition to both D and A so long as we take mechanical in nature, and functional in nature to imply no more than has here been set down in Common Notions I and II. When, in Part II, the meaning of these two terms has been expanded, we shall have occasion to reconsider the question of the historic filling of the class of opinions implying D′A′.