Abstract
During the nineteenth century vitalist theories of life were contrasted with mechanistic and materialist hypotheses regarding the nature of life. Religious, philosophical and empirical reasons were offered for vitalism by numerous thinkers. Mechanistic theories of life appeared problematic, despite their steady empirical success. Emergent evolutionism was thought by some (mostly English-speaking thinkers) to be a compromise position between vitalism and materialism, taking mechanism from the materialists and nonreductionism from the vitalists. The debate was interrupted by World War II and largely forgotten after the discovery of the double helix. In this chapter I introduce some of the thinkers involved and articulate the fundamental tenets and aspirations of vitalists and emergent evolutionists, explaining the philosophical debate (and confusion) over the concepts invoked by each side. I draw on philosophers and biologists from 1900 to 1930 in this study.
… and unless … there is absolute emergence the whole movement and travail of the creation is but a barren shuffling about of the same pieces.
Arthur Lovejoy (1927)
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Santayana (1905).
- 2.
- 3.
Cf. Blitz (1992).
- 4.
Nouvel (2011).
- 5.
Alexander (1920).
- 6.
Burroughs (1912).
- 7.
‘Materialism’ is here limited to biology alone. Descartes is thus a mechanist about biology but obviously not a mechanist or materialist regarding psychology. Indeed, many early twentieth-century materialists in biology conceded that the mind was another problem altogether. Second, all the thinkers I discuss hold the conditional “if x is mechanical then x is material or physical”. But it should be noted that very diverse views of the physical are consistent with this conditional. Drake held that all physical events have a psychic aspect to them, some of which is revealed in self-consciousness. Thus, although Drake accepts the conditional above he would not accept the claim that if x is psychic then x is not mechanical. Third, the very concept of “mechanism” was part of the debate. For example, could a mechanism be a self-maintaining entity, as organisms appear to be?
- 8.
- 9.
Hein (1969).
- 10.
Whitehead (1929).
- 11.
Lloyd Morgan self-consciously traces emergentism to the empiricist philosophy of J.S. Mills [1806–1873] and G.H. Lewes [1817–1878]. Since this is well known I will not touch on it. C.D. Broad and Lloyd Morgan’s views are rightly the subject of essays on emergentism – for this reason I examine the less discussed figures J. Arthur Thomson and H.S. Jennings. But the influence of Hegel and Herbert Spencer on the popularity of emergentism is not fully appreciated and is the subject for another paper. Related to this theme I also ignore discussions of cosmic emergence. And finally, I merely touch upon the criticisms of mechanistic evolution leveled by emergent evolutionists. Exactly why they thought mechanistic evolution was incapable of creating “novel” modes of action, or of unity, is somewhat obscure but much was connected to common criticisms of Darwinism, also a topic for another chapter.
- 12.
- 13.
Cf. Nagel (1961) for the postmortem nail in the coffin.
- 14.
Cf. O’Connor (2000). Emergentism is not a doctrine that, in itself, necessarily supports libertarian conceptions of freewill, for one might not apply it to consciousness. Although I am not sympathetic, the idea of an irreducible self that produces “novel” unpredictable choices is an idea many find necessary for free will.
- 15.
Not always made explicit is the further necessary Ockhamist premise that no event has more than one sufficient cause. The argument is this: (1) all physical events have physical causes (2) No event has more than one complete cause (3) biological or mental events are not identical with physical events (non-reductionism), therefore, (4) no biological or mental event causes a physical event: epiphenomenalism.
- 16.
James (1890, 133).
- 17.
The conceptualist is one who relies on conceptual thought-experiments for their nonreducibility. So David Chalmers’ defense of the irreducibility of consciousness will count here as conceptualist. In the last section I note how things have changed from the 1920s and one of these is the sad retreat away from the empirical as a defense of a non-reductionism.
- 18.
As we see below Thomson defines a view called “methodological vitalism” which echews ontological considerations for conceptual and methodological considerations. The language and concepts of biology are not mechanistic but neither do they refer to something nonphysical.
- 19.
See Malaterre (2013) (this volume). I concur with Malaterre’s narrative that the debate was mostly ontological in the 1920s and became theoretical or epistemological in the 1950s. However, I don’t think the definition of emergent phenomena, as those that cannot be deduced from physical theory, changed. Lovejoy uses it. Second, the uncertain ontological implications of the definition were already forefront in the debate during the 1920s since it was a common reply to the vitalist also. But ontology was put aside in the mid-century so there was little left to debate. The loss of interest in philosophy of biology and in ontology during this period is constitutive of what I call here amnesia.
- 20.
Strawson’s (1961) was the exception that proved the rule. At the time it was thought to be a radical departure from Wittgenstein, Austin and the positivist account of philosophy.
- 21.
- 22.
Cf. Grossman (1930) who refers to the play “RUR (Rossum’s Universal Robots)” by Karel Capek, first performed in 1921. Earlier, R.F. Alfred Hoernle invoked Samuel Butler’s Erewhon. In both cases the authors mention the dramatic fact that the machines revolt against their makers and both are dubious of the analogy between machines and organisms.
- 23.
Cf. Emmeche et. al. (1997). Despite their historical overview they still muddy ontology with epistemology, writing: “One of the main characteristics of emergence was the formation of new properties, that is, properties which could not be predicted” (101).
- 24.
I speak loosely here. The use of the term “supervenient” in the 1920s was just to mean “coming after,” not the asymmetric dependence relation familiar from Davidson and later, Kim. However, the emergent properties do seem to possess similar modal properties as those we dub supervenient today, as one can see in Jennings’ work.
- 25.
Is seventeenth-century materialism (i.e. Descartes and Gassendi, who both denied the need for nonphysical explanation in biology) much different from its ancient predecessors (Epicurus and Lucretius)? At one level of (gross) description, it is tempting to say that atomism was forgotten by the Christian West, hence the seventeenth century philosopher had to relearn the arguments for and against such views. We thus see Ralph Cudworth’s monumental and encyclopedic discussion of materialism and “atheism” in his Intellectual System of the World as offering a solution to their amnesia. Cf. Wolfe (2009) for a more subtle discussion of early modern Epicureanism.
- 26.
Santayana called Dewey’s naturalism “half-hearted” complaining that Dewey was stuck in the foreground (i.e. experience of the world) rather than in the background – the world itself. Dewey replied that Santayana’s epiphenomenalist materialism was “broken-backed.”
- 27.
Materialism then, as now, is defined as a commitment to the causal closure of the physical: that every physical event has a physical cause. As defined, it is neutral with regard to reductionism, allowing for nonreductive and reductive forms of physicalism.
- 28.
Santayana described Alexander as a Hegelian in 1900.
- 29.
We cannot describe Bergson or Driesch as supporting substance dualism since the concept of substance had come into some disrepute with both. But the élan vital and the entelechy do not emerge from the material properties of the organism despite their problematic relations or need for such properties. There were, of course, Hegelian-inspired idealists who were still offering teleological conceptions of the universe on idealist principles. Bosanquet is the best example. The problem of the individual’s relation to the absolute and the nature of the living or mental individual was thought to be related such that two otherwise distinct symposia could be reproduced together in one volume in Clark (1918). Cf. Neal (1916).
- 30.
Allen (2005).
- 31.
McDougall (1929). McDougall correctly complained, as Ernst Nagel would 30 years later, that deductive failure being epistemic, applied equally for unfamiliar physical conditions as it did for unfamiliar biological entities. Although a good point, McDougall was trying to defend dualism, whereas Nagel uses it in support of reductionism.
- 32.
The concept of substance was in some disrepute, however, so Bergson and Driesch avoided the term. Although both agreed that material properties were necessary for life, neither thought that life supervened upon the material.
- 33.
- 34.
- 35.
Canguilhem (2008, 68).
- 36.
Needham (1930).
- 37.
Ibid., 5.
- 38.
Driesch (1908, 133).
- 39.
Driesch (1914, 208).
- 40.
For want of space I shall ignore the particularly obscure “direct” argument.
- 41.
Driesch (1908, 140–141).
- 42.
Ibid., 168.
- 43.
Ibid., 180.
- 44.
Ibid., 153.
- 45.
Driesch (1914, 155).
- 46.
Compare Davidson (1993) on mental events and his appeal to anomalous psychology to preserve free will.
- 47.
- 48.
- 49.
Driesch (1908, 158).
- 50.
Thanks to one of the anonymous reviewers for this point.
- 51.
Clark (1918, 57).
- 52.
- 53.
Morgan (1923, 1–2).
- 54.
Thomson (1920).
- 55.
Ibid., 159.
- 56.
Ibid., 147.
- 57.
Cf. Hoernlé (1918) who argues that teleological concepts dominate biological theories while being consistent with mechanism. Hoernlé is the epistemic materialist that Thomson seems to attack in favor of emergentism. Hoernlé also appeals to Lovejoy’s notion of reduction as deduction and prediction from physical theory.
- 58.
Thomson speaks of perceptual versus non-perceptual forces by which he means experimentally observable and mathematically measurable.
- 59.
Thomson is not as subtle as he could be. Driesch denies that the entelechy is a force at all, but does agree to its directive ability, and Driesch also holds that he has captured the essential nature of machines and is not merely arguing from current examples. The objection might be re-tooled as this: future research will reveal a different essence to machines, allowing them to explain Driesch’s phenomena of restitution, etc.
- 60.
Thomson (1920, 157).
- 61.
D’Arcy Thompson’s broad sympathy for Oken’s Naturphilosophie, following in Hegel’s footsteps, did not prevent him from holding to the continuity of the physical. D’Arcy Thompson, it is tempting to say, was a Hegelian realist or materialist, somewhat as Samuel Alexander was. He was Hegelian in finding that a philosophical immanent account of teleology is required to supplement the mechanist account available from science.
- 62.
Thompson (1917, 8).
- 63.
Ibid., 5.
- 64.
Clark (1918).
- 65.
Clark (1918, 37).
- 66.
Thomson (1920, 37).
- 67.
Cf. Garrett (2003).
- 68.
Thomson (1920, 165).
- 69.
Smuts (1926).
- 70.
- 71.
Ibid.
- 72.
- 73.
Jennings (1930, 363).
- 74.
Ibid., 369.
- 75.
Norman Malcolm utilized a curious version of the exclusion argument in his 1969 paper “The Conceivability of Mechanism.” Malcolm inverts the argument to claim that mechanism is in fact incomplete. Malcolm’s argument depends on a dubious Wittgensteinian premise that psychological laws are not empirical, but a priori, hence only empirical physical laws can be up for denial or revision.
- 76.
Jennings (1930, 366).
- 77.
Ibid., 368.
- 78.
Jaegwon Kim and David Armstrong (along with some Australian metaphysicians) think of logical supervenience as a reductive thesis.
- 79.
Jennings (1930, 368).
- 80.
Jennings (1930, 369). Emphasis mine.
- 81.
Ibid., 379.
- 82.
Davidson (1993).
- 83.
Block and Stalnaker (1999).
- 84.
- 85.
- 86.
Silberstein and McGeer (1999).
- 87.
Burroughs (1912, 759).
- 88.
Dupré (1993).
References
Alexander, Samuel. 1920. Space, time, and deity, vol. 2. London: Macmillan.
Allen, Garland E. 2005. Mechanism, vitalism and organicism in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century biology: The importance of historical context. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36: 261–283.
Baker, Lynne. 2007. The metaphysics of everyday life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Beckermann, Ansgar, Hans Flohr, and Jaegwon Kim (eds.). 1992. Emergence or reduction? Essays on the prospects of nonreductive physicalism. New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Bedau, Mark. 1991. Can biological teleology be naturalized? Journal of Philosophy 88: 647–657.
Bedau, Mark. 1992. Weak emergence. Philosophical Perspectives 11: 375–399.
Blitz, David. 1992. Qualitative novelty and the levels of reality. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Block, Ned, and Robert Stalnaker. 1999. Conceptual analysis, dualism and the explanatory gap. Philosophical Review 108: 1–46.
Boodin, John. 1925. Cosmic evolution. London: MacMillan and Co.
Burge, Tyler. 1979. Individualism and the mental. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 4: 73–121.
Burroughs, John. 1912. The new vitalism. The North American Review 196(685): 759–771.
Campbell, Richard J., and Mark A. Bickhard. 2011. Physicalism, emergence and downward causation. Axiomathes 21(1): 33–56.
Canguilhem, Georges. 2008. Knowledge of life, eds. Paola Marrati and Todd Meyers. Trans. Stefanos Geroulanos and Daniela Ginsburg. New York: Fordham University Press.
Clark, W. (ed.). 1918. Life and finite individuality: Two symposia. London: Williams and Norgate.
Conger, George P. 1929. New views of evolution. New York: Macmillan.
Davidson, Donald. 1993. Thinking causes. In Mental causation, ed. John Heil, 3–17. Oxford: Clarendon.
Drake, Durant. 1925. Mind and its place in nature. London: Macmillan.
Driesch, Hans A. 1894. Analytische Theorie der organischen Entwicklung. Leipzig: W. Engelmann.
Driesch, Hans A. 1907 [1908]. The science and philosophy of the organism: The Gifford lectures delivered before the University of Aberdeen in the year 1907 [and 1908]. London: Adams and Charles Black.
Driesch, Hans A. 1914. The history and theory of vitalism. London: Macmillan.
Dupré, John. 1993. The disorder of things. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Elkus, Savilla Alice. 1911. Mechanism and vitalism. The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 8(13): 355–358.
Emmeche, Claus, S. Køppe, and F. Stjernfelt. 1997. Explaining emergence: Towards an ontology of levels. Journal for General Philosophy of Science/Zeitschrift für allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 28(1): 83–119.
Freyhofer, Horst H. 1982. The vitalism of Hans Driesch. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Garrett, Brian. 1999. Pluralism, causation and overdetermination. Synthese 116(3): 355–378.
Garrett, Brian. 2000. Defending non-epiphenomenal event dualism. Southern Journal of Philosophy 38(3): 393–412.
Garrett, Brian. 2003. Teleology and vitalism in the natural philosophy of Nehemiah Grew (1641–1712). British Journal for the History of Science 36(1): 63–81.
Garrett, Brian. 2006. What the history of vitalism teaches us about consciousness and the hard problem. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 72(3): 616–628.
Grossman, Edgar F. 1930. Something about vitalism and mechanism. The Scientific Monthly 30(6): 541–546.
Gurwitsch, Aron. 1915. On practical vitalism. The American Naturalist 49(588): 763–770.
Haldane, John Scott. 1931. The philosophical basis of biology. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
Haldane, John Scott. 1932. Materialism. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
Hein, Hilde. 1969. Molecular Biology vs. Organicism: The enduring dispute between mechanism and vitalism. Synthese 20(2): 238–253.
Hoernlé, R.F.Alfred. 1918. Mechanism and vitalism. Philosophical Review 27(6): 628–645.
James, William. 1890. The principles of psychology. Reprint, 1950. New York: Dover Reprints.
Jennings, H.S. 1911. Vitalism and experimental investigation. Science, New Series 33(859): 927–932.
Jennings, H.S. 1912. Driesch’s vitalism and experimental indeterminism. Science, New Series 36 (927): 434–435.
Jennings, H.S. 1913. Doctrines held as vitalism. The American Naturalist 47(559): 385–417.
Jennings, H.S. 1918. Mechanism and vitalism. Philosophical Review 27(6): 577–596.
Jennings, H.S. 1927. Diverse doctrines of evolution, their relation to the practice of science and of life. Science, New Series 65(1672): 19–25.
Jennings, H.S. 1930. The biological basis of human nature. London: Faber and Faber.
Lovejoy, Arthur O. 1911. The meaning of vitalism. Science, New Series 33(851): 610–614.
Lovejoy, Arthur O. 1912. The unity of science. University of Missouri Bulletin i(1): 1–35.
Lovejoy, Arthur O. 1927. The meanings of ‘emergence’ and its modes. Journal of Philosophical Studies 2(6): 167–181.
Mackenzie, W. Leslie. 1926. Methods of analysis. Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 6: 56–62.
Malaterre, Christophe. 2013. Life as an emergent phenomenon: From an alternative to vitalism to an alternative to reductionism. In Vitalism and the scientific image in post-Enlightenment life science, 1800–2010, ed. Sebastian Normandin and Charles T. Wolfe, 155–178. Dordrecht: Springer.
McDougall, William. 1929. Modern materialism and emergent evolution. New York: D. Van Nostrand.
McLaughlin, Brian. 2003. Vitalism and emergence. In The Cambridge history of philosophy: 1870–1945, ed. Thomas Baldwin, 631–639. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Morgan, C.Lloyd. 1923. Emergent evolution. London: Williams and Norgate.
Nagel, Ernest. 1961. The structure of science. New York: Harcourt.
Neal, H. V. 1916. The basis of individuality in organisms. A defense of vitalism. Science, New Series 44(1125): 82–97.
Needham, Joseph. 1930. Order and life. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.
Nouvel, Pascal (ed.). 2011. Repenser le vitalisme. Histoire et philosophie du vitalisme. Paris: PUF.
O’Connor, Timothy. 2000. Persons and causes: The metaphysics of free will. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Santayana, George. 1905. The life of reason, vol. 1. London: Constable.
Silberstein, Michael, and John McGeever. 1999. The search for ontological emergence. The Philosophical Quarterly 49: 182–200.
Smuts, Jan Christian. 1926. Holism and evolution. London: Macmillan.
Spaulding, Edward G. 1906. Driesch’s theory of vitalism. Philosophical Review 15(5): 518–527.
Strawson, Peter Frederick. 1961. Individuals: An essay in descriptive metaphysics. London: Methuen.
Strawson, Galen. 2006. Consciousness and its place in nature. Exeter: Imprint Academic.
Strong, Charles A. 1918. The origin of consciousness: An attempt to conceive of the mind as a product of evolution. London: Macmillan.
Thompson, D'Arcy Wentworth. 1917. On growth and form. Cambridge: The University Press.
Thomson, J.Arthur. 1920. The system of animate nature. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Warren, Howard C. 1916a. A study of purpose. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 13(1): 5–26.
Warren, Howard C. 1916b. A study of purpose II: Purposive activity in organisms. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 13(2): 29–49.
Warren, Howard C. 1916c. A study of purpose III: The role of purpose in nature. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 13(3): 57–72.
Warren, Howard C. 1918. Mechanism versus vitalism in the domain of psychology. Philosophical Review 27(6): 597–615.
Whitehead, Alfred. 1929. Process and reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wolfe, Charles T. 2009. A happiness fit for organic bodies: La Mettrie’s medical Epicureanism. In Epicurus in the enlightenment, ed. Neven Leddy and Avi Lifschitz, 69–83. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Garrett, B. (2013). Vitalism Versus Emergent Materialism. In: Normandin, S., Wolfe, C. (eds) Vitalism and the Scientific Image in Post-Enlightenment Life Science, 1800-2010. History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2445-7_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2445-7_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-2444-0
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-2445-7
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)