Can Matter Mark the Hours? Eighteenth-Century Vitalist Materialism and Functional Properties (2008)
Kaitaro, Timo (Author)
Science in Context
Volume: 21
Pages: 581--592
Edition Details: Part of a special issue on “Medical Vitalism in the Enlightenment”
Language: English
Eighteenth-century Montpellerian vitalism and contemporaneous French vitalist materialism, exemplified by the medical and biological materialism of La Mettrie and Diderot, differ in some essential aspects from some later forms of vitalism that tended to postulate immaterial vital principles or forces. This article examines the arguments defending the existence of vital properties in living organisms presented in the context of eighteenth-century French materialism. These arguments had recourse to technological metaphors and analogies, mainly clockworks, in order to claim that just as machines can have functional properties which its parts do not possess (e.g., showing time), so living organisms can, as material entities, also have organic or vital properties which its material parts do not possess. Such arguments, with the help of a healthy dose of epistemological scepticism, tend to strike a balance between two positions concerning the ontology of life which we now tend to label vitalism and emergentism. Although there is nothing inconsistent in viewing vital properties as emergent, some ambiguity results if one does not draw a clear distinction between properties and functions. The philosophical problems related to these ambiguities are revealed in Diderot's apparent hesitation concerning sentience as a general property of matter or the product of organization.
...MoreArticle Wolfe, Charles T. (2008) Introduction: Vitalism without Metaphysics? Medical Vitalism in the Enlightenment. Science in Context (p. 461).
Similar Citations
Chapter
Riskin, Jessica;
(2010)
Mr. Machine and the Imperial Me
(/isis/citation/CBB001023309/)
Article
Timo Kaitaro;
(2016)
Eighteenth-Century French Materialism Clockwise and Anticlockwise
(/isis/citation/CBB884514321/)
Book
Didier Contadini;
(2023)
Julien Offray de La Mettrie: Saggio sulla sua formazione filosofica
(/isis/citation/CBB801766488/)
Article
Lo Presti, Roberto;
(2010)
La machine plus que machine ou l'automate transfiguré. L'anthropologie de Julien Offray de La Mettrie et la réinvention du mécanisme médical
(/isis/citation/CBB001220548/)
Article
Witt, Elke;
(2008)
Form---A Matter of Generation: The Relation of Generation, Form, and Function in the Epigenetic Theory of Caspar F. Wolff
(/isis/citation/CBB000831765/)
Article
Wolfe, Charles T.;
Terada, Motoichi;
(2008)
The Animal Economy as Object and Program in Montpellier Vitalism
(/isis/citation/CBB000831761/)
Book
Christopher Donohue;
Charles T. Wolfe;
(2023)
Vitalism and Its Legacy in Twentieth Century Life Sciences and Philosophy
(/isis/citation/CBB947852171/)
Book
Cherni, Amor;
(2002)
Diderot: L'ordre et le devenir
(/isis/citation/CBB000201324/)
Article
Wolfe, Charles T.;
(2008)
Introduction: Vitalism without Metaphysics? Medical Vitalism in the Enlightenment
(/isis/citation/CBB000831757/)
Article
Williams, Elizabeth A.;
(2008)
Of Two Lives One? Jean-Charles-Marguerite-Guillaume Grimaud and the Question of Holism in Vitalist Medicine
(/isis/citation/CBB000831763/)
Article
Boury, Dominique;
(2008)
Irritability and Sensibility: Key Concepts in Assessing the Medical Doctrines of Haller and Bordeu
(/isis/citation/CBB000831760/)
Article
Paolo Pecere;
(2023)
Materialism, Lebenskraft and the limits of science: Metaphysical vitalism in post-Kantian scenarios
(/isis/citation/CBB196899682/)
Article
Emma Wilkins;
(2016)
‘Exploding’ Immaterial Substances: Margaret Cavendish’s Vitalist-Materialist Critique of Spirits
(/isis/citation/CBB644104711/)
Article
Erlingsson, Steinór J.;
(2002)
From Haeckelian Monist to Anti-Haeckelian Vitalist: The Transformation of the Icelandic Naturalist Thorvaldur Thoroddsen (1855--1921)
(/isis/citation/CBB000300488/)
Essay Review
Wahrig-Schmidt, Bettina;
(1999)
Leviathan without air-pump - but with system
(/isis/citation/CBB000110320/)
Book
(1995)
Gesundheit und Krankheit im 18. Jahrhundert: Referate der Tagung der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft zur Erforschung des 18. Jahrhunderts, Bern, 1. und 2. Oktober 1993
(/isis/citation/CBB000070236/)
Book
Raphaele Andrault;
(2016)
La Raison Des Corps: Mecanisme Et Sciences Medicales
(/isis/citation/CBB538945258/)
Book
Francesco Andrietti;
(2013)
Vitalismo e meccanicismo in biologia: dal XVII secolo agli inizi del XIX
(/isis/citation/CBB284016359/)
Article
Ishizuka, Hisao;
(2006)
The Elasticity of the Animal Fibre: Movement and Life in Enlightenment Medicine
(/isis/citation/CBB000771569/)
Chapter
Carvallo, Sarah;
(2006)
Histoire du tonus: ruptures ou continuité?
(/isis/citation/CBB001024260/)
Be the first to comment!