The great biologic problem: vitalism, materialism, and the philosophy of organism
Haller, J.S.
New York State Journal of Medicine 86(2): 81-88
1986
ISSN/ISBN: 0028-7628 PMID: 3513069 Document Number: 3299
Those who sought to bring some form of resolution to the age-old debate believed that the controversy between the vitalists and materialists would end only when each camp recognized the limitations of their respective positions. As long as each considered itself the sole purveyor of truth, agreement would remain impossible. Arthur Lovejoy (1873 to 1962), a philosopher from Johns Hopkins University, was similarly displeased with the continued debate. "The term vitalism might, with real advantage to both biology and philosophy, he wrote, "be retired from service," because of the unsettled usage of the term and the lack of a uniform definition. A similar view was expressed by medical historian Fielding H. Garrison (1870 to 1935), who perhaps said it best when he wrote: "Never have medical authors been so verbose and to so little purposel". It is coming to be recognized that vitalism, catalysis, tropisms, and clinical entities are mere verbiage and their ultimate nature unintelligible. Despite those who tired of the issues, the debate surrounding the Great Biologic Problem continued into the 20th century and represented the intensity of the philosophic mind that resisted the substitution of the how of natural science for the why of metaphysics. Natural science seemed unable to appease the more troubled members who insisted on addressing the issue of first causes. Rather than resolve their differences, scientists and philosophers continued their discussion into the philosophy of organism. The ranks of the combatants, however, were significantly reduced from earlier generations. Curiously, the debate achieved popular status by entering the genre of science fiction. From the ideas of Russian biologist Alexander Oparin in 1936 to the theory of space gods introduced by Erich von Daniken, the catastrophist theory of Immanuel Velikovsky and the interstellar theories of Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramsinghe, it appears that reconciliation of the Great Biologic Problem remains somewhere in the future.
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