Wolfe, Charles T. (Author)
Science in Context
Volume: 21
Pages: 461--463
Publication date: 2008
Language: English
Edition Details: Special issue.
Despite the renewed attention paid in recent years to the doctrine or doctrines associated with the Faculty of Medicine of the Université de Montpellier in the second half of the eighteenth century, and known as vitalism -- chiefly Roselyne Rey's 1987 thèse d'État, which only appeared in print in 2000, and works by François Duchesneau, Elizabeth Williams, Timo Kaitaro, and Dominique Boury, some of whom have contributed to this volume -- the existence of a specifically medical vitalism in the eighteenth century still continues to pose a problem. Commentators speaking in rather monolithic terms continue to describe vitalism in terms entirely derived from late nineteenth- or early twentieth-century neo-vitalism, that is, in the language of vital force, of supplemental, extra-causal agents powering the living body. Philosophers of biology and, more surprisingly, historians of ideas tend to sound like the very confident Francis Crick, speaking like a prophet from a mountaintop to the entire scientific community: To those of you who may be vitalists, I would make this prophecy: what everyone believed yesterday, and you believe today, only cranks will believe tomorrow (Crick 1966, 99). In less prophetic, but still very polarizing tones, a recent review discussion on biological development promotes organicism as a scientifically viable view -- one which the authors of the review quickly distinguish from the more metaphysically laden vitalism, according to which (they write), living matter is ontologically greater than the sum of its parts because of some life force (`entelechy,' `élan vital,' `vis essentialis,' etc.) (Gilbert and Sarkar 2000, 1).
...MoreDescription Contents:
Article Giglioni, Guido (2008) What Ever Happened to Francis Glisson? Albrecht Haller and the Fate of Eighteenth-Century Irritability. Science in Context (p. 465).
Article Cheung, Tobias (2008) Regulating Agents, Functional Interactions, and Stimulus-Reaction-Schemes: The Concept of “Organism” in the Organic System Theories of Stahl, Bordeu, and Barthez. Science in Context (p. 495).
Article Boury, Dominique (2008) Irritability and Sensibility: Key Concepts in Assessing the Medical Doctrines of Haller and Bordeu. Science in Context (p. 521).
Article Wolfe, Charles T.; Terada, Motoichi (2008) The Animal Economy as Object and Program in Montpellier Vitalism. Science in Context (p. 537).
Article Huneman, Philippe (2008) Montpellier Vitalism and the Emergence of Alienism in France (1750--1800): The Case of the Passions. Science in Context (p. 615).
Article Witt, Elke (2008) Form---A Matter of Generation: The Relation of Generation, Form, and Function in the Epigenetic Theory of Caspar F. Wolff. Science in Context (p. 649).
Article Williams, Elizabeth A. (2008) Of Two Lives One? Jean-Charles-Marguerite-Guillaume Grimaud and the Question of Holism in Vitalist Medicine. Science in Context (p. 593).
Article Kaitaro, Timo (2008) Can Matter Mark the Hours? Eighteenth-Century Vitalist Materialism and Functional Properties. Science in Context (p. 581).
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