Science
Photo: Shannon Fagan
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The older and more traditional view of life can be described as "vitalism," the idea that there is some immaterial, non-biological "essence" to life which will never be discovered or understood through materialistic science. Modern science disputes this and argues that life is ultimately mechanistic -- the operation of chemistry and physics in large-scale system.
Vitalism today is relegated to religion and ignored by science because every discovery in science reinforces the material nature of life. One of the last nails in the coffin for vitalism may be the creation of a "synthetic cell" by scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI).
Arthur Caplan, Professor of bioethics, University of Pennsylvania, wrote in the May 27, 2010, issue of Nature:
Venter and his colleagues have shown that the material world can be manipulated to produce what we recognize as life. In doing so they bring to an end a debate about the nature of life that has lasted thousands of years. Their achievement undermines a fundamental belief as momentous to our view of ourselves and our place in the Universe as the discoveries of Galileo, Copernicus, Darwin and Einstein.
More than 100 years ago, the French philosopher Henri-Louis Bergson claimed that life could never be explained simply mechanistically. Nor could it be artificially created by synthesizing molecules. There was, he argued, an "�lan vital" -- a vital force that was the ineffable current distinguishing the living from the inorganic. No manipulations of the inorganic would permit the creation of any living thing.
This 'vitalist' view has come in many forms over the centuries. Galen wrote of the 'vital spirit' in the second century; Louis Pasteur in 1862 looked to 'vital action' to explain how life exists; and the biologist Hans Driesch posited an 'entelechy' or essential force as a requisite for life as recently as 1894. The molecular-biology revolution notwithstanding, science has continued to struggle with the reducibility of life to the material. Meanwhile, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, among other religions, have maintained that a soul constitutes the explanatory essence of at least human life.
All of these deeply entrenched metaphysical views are cast into doubt by the demonstration that life can be created from non-living parts, albeit those harvested from a cell. Venter's achievement would seem to extinguish the argument that life requires a special force or power to exist. In my view, this makes it one of the most important scientific achievements in the history of mankind.
Science undermines vitalism. Vitalism is vital to just about all forms of religion as well as most forms of superstitious, supernatural beliefs. This is ultimately why religious apologists can be so opposed to science: without science, their beliefs which depend upon some sort of vitalism may seem more secure and reliable. Religious apologists surely understand that every time a scientific discovery weakens the case for vitalism, it also weakens any possible case for many traditional religious dogmas -- and defending those dogmas is their primary concern.
In your experience, what have you found to be the best arguments against vitalism? What do you find to be the best ways to get people to seriously question vitalism (on the assumption that logical and scientific arguments often won't work when it comes to dogmas people never adopted based on logic and science to begin with)?
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