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Article ID: CBB001551176

Vital Instability: Life and Free Will in Physics and Physiology, 1860--1880 (2015)

Annals of Science: The History of Science and Technology
Volume: 72, no. 3
Issue: 3
Pages: 381-400
Publication date: 2015
Language: English

DOI: 10.1080/00033790.2014.935954

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Physics Physiology Science and religion Free will and determinism 19th century Maxwell, James Clerk Cournot, Antoine Augustin Boussinesq, Joseph

During the period 1860--1880, a number of physicists and mathematicians, including Maxwell, Stewart, Cournot and Boussinesq, used theories formulated in terms of physics to argue that the mind, the soul or a vital principle could have an impact on the body. This paper shows that what was primarily at stake for these authors was a concern about the irreducibility of life and the mind to physics, and that their theories can be regarded primarily as reactions to the law of conservation of energy, which was used among others by Helmholtz and Du Bois-Reymond as an argument against the possibility of vital and mental causes in physiology. In light of this development, Maxwell, Stewart, Cournot and Boussinesq showed that it was still possible to argue for the irreducibility of life and the mind to physics, through an appeal to instability or indeterminism in physics: if the body is an unstable or physically indeterministic system, an immaterial principle can act through triggering or directing motions in the body, without violating the laws of physics.

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