Article ID: CBB805385291

Models of Organic Organization in Montpellier Vitalism (2017)

unapi

The species of vitalism discussed here is a malleable construct, often with a poisonous reputation (but one which I want to rehabilitate), hovering in between the realms of the philosophy of biology, the history of medicine, and the scientific background of the Radical Enlightenment (case in point, the influence of vitalist medicine on Diderot). This is a more vital vitalism, or at least a more ‘biologistic,’ ‘embodied,’ medicalized vitalism. I distinguish between what I would call ‘substantival’ and ‘functional’ forms of vitalism, as applied to the eighteenth century. Substantival vitalism presupposes the existence of something like a (substantive) vital force which either plays a causal role in the natural world as studied by scientific means, or remains a kind of hovering, extra-causal entity. Functional vitalism tends to operate “post facto,” from the existence of living bodies to the desire to find explanatory models that will do justice to their uniquely ‘vital’ properties in a way that fully mechanistic models (such as Cartesian mechanism) cannot. I discuss some representative figures of the Montpellier school as being functional rather than substantival vitalists, particularly as regards the models of organic organization which they develop, and make some suggestions as to how these relate to the then-nascent science of biology.

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Article Tamás Demeter (2017) Introduction – Between Physiology and Ethics: The ‘Science of Man’ as a Middle-Range Discipline. Early Science and Medicine: A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine in the Pre-modern Period (pp. 125-129). unapi

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Authors & Contributors
Wolfe, Charles T.
Etxeberria, Arantza
Hendriksen, Marieke M. A.
Wade, Nicholas J.
Steigerwald, Joan
Rieppel, Olivier
Concepts
Vitalism
Biology
Mechanism; mechanical philosophy
Organicism
Philosophy of biology
Epigenetics
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
18th century
17th century
21st century
20th century, late
Places
France
Germany
Europe
Iceland
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