Vitalism

Melvyn Bragg, always an informed and interesting interviewer, has a podcast up from BBC Radio of an interview on the topic of vitalism in biology. Here the experts chosen are Patricia Fara, Fellow of Clare College and Affiliated Lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University, Andrew Mendelsohn, Senior Lecturer in the History of Science and Medicine at Imperial College, University of London, and Pietro Corsi, Professor of the History of Science at the University of Oxford.

It's an excellent introduction to both the myths and facts about how modern biology developed. In particular, listen carefully to Corsi. He knows the broad and fine detail very well and points out that the mechanical approach to the explanation of biology is derived from the Epicureans, and that Aristotelian finalism was a reaction to the nascent mechanism of the atomists. Just listening to him is a privilege.

Mendelsohn made a comment that I completely disagree with - that Aristotelians held that the universe as a whole, physics, was finalistic. This is not true. That opinion was down to the neo-Platonists. Aristotle and those who followed him closely used finalistic explanations only for living things. Mendelsohn's comment is widely held, because a distinction between pre-Harveyan biology as the outcome of and reaction to the neo-Platonists' view of the macrocosm/microcosm (the universe is an organism), and the views of Aristotelian physics, is not made.

Stuff like this makes the internet worthwhile.

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On Vitalism Itself

Could it be that living animals produce pheromones that tell others that the subject is alive? A sort of, "I'm alive, don't bury or eat me or nothing." chemical message. Certain medical conditions suppress this pheromone production leading the observer to erroneously conclude that the subject is dead.

Finalistic? Odd, I'd never heard of that word. I take it that it is the same as teleological; has it replaced that fine old word they used in the good old days when I was in school and men were men and no one was afraid of Greek roots?

Greek roots. My my, that has a lot of meanings. At least two or three beyond the suggestion of the gray showing just above the scalp when one has run out of Grecian Formula 44. (A hair darkener)

By Porlock Junior (not verified) on 17 Oct 2008 #permalink

Yes: it's the Latin version: the four aitia, usually mistranslated as "causes" includes the final cause, which has no nice Greek equivalent, rendering "the that for the sake of which" in Aristotle. It is teleology, but not in the common acceptation.

If I had hair, I'd worry about the roots.

Posted by John S. Wilkins
Stuff like this makes the internet worthwhile.

But John, Australians won't have access to the full internet, no opt out from government filter

Learning from the Chinese?

I wonder if they'll publish the list of sites Australian adults will be banned from seeing.

It'll be for your own good of course, just like the UK goverments stated desire to ban naughty bloggers who don't praise their policies.

No philosophising against the goverment.

By Chris' Wills (not verified) on 17 Oct 2008 #permalink

Mendelsohn made a comment that I completely disagree with - that Aristotelians held that the universe as a whole, physics, was finalistic. This is not true. That opinion was down to the neo-Platonists. Aristotle and those who followed him closely used finalistic explanations only for living things.

John, Edward Grant in his The Foundations of Science in the Middle Ages discussing Aristotle's physics or natural philosophy says that both animate and inanimate (my emphasis) objects have final causes, you obviously disagree. Can you elucidate or direct me to a source that elucidates?