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).
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