To some it may appear that even to embark on such discussions as this is to enter into a perilous flirtation with vitalistic theories.
Though not inclined toward thevitalistic view of human evolution, M.
I must also express my obligation to him for having suggested through his Oxford lectures a good share of the important material interwoven into chapter xii touching the vitalistic view of evolution.
This also supports our vitalistic view of the evolution of human instincts.
The origin of the belief that stimulation is necessarily followed by a depressive recoil is obviously to be found in the old vitalistic ideas.
The vitalistic position may be assailed from two points, the scientific and the philosophical.
Apart from this, vitalistic theories would appear to be in the main of two kinds.
We turn now to the philosophical objections that may be raised to vitalistic speculations; and here we must be careful to distinguish what we may term the psychological from the metaphysical form of the theory.
There is still one other vitalistic theory to which we must allude, although its interest is now merely historical.
Views of this kind represent a return, in some measure, to earlier vitalistic conceptions, but differ from the latter in that they are an outcome of definite and exact experimental work.
Here, too, accordingly, we find ourselves confronted with wide gaps in our knowledge which open the way to vitalistic or transcendental theories of development.
I believe only that we should make use of it as a working program, because the history of biological research proves it to have been a more effective and fruitful means of advancing knowledge than the vitalistic hypothesis.
The vitalistic hypothesis may be held, and is held, as a matter of faith; but we cannot call it science without misuse of the word.
An epigenetic theory would lead right beyond natural science, Weismann thinks, as in fact, all such theories, if fully worked out, have carried their authors to vitalistic views.
An immanent vitalistic phylogeny *without* a pre-established end has recently been advocated by H.
Entelechy*” But shall we not give a name to our vitalistic or autonomous factor *E*, concerned in morphogenesis?
There is no evidence that he was influenced by Erasmus Darwin, who forestalled his evolution theory, and was indeed more aware of its vitalistic implications.
But how does he reconcile this essentially vitalistic conception with his strictly materialistic philosophy?
A curious mixture of mechanistic "explanations" and vitalistic hypothesis!
Not without reason have the later schools of evolutionary thought, who developed the psychological and vitalistic side of his doctrine, called themselves Neo-Lamarckians.
If a vitalistic principle were needed to enable us to understand the workings of the ordinary body cells, how much more is it required for the workings of brain cells.
In a word, the old vitalistic principle has become popular once more and even great physiologists have insisted that there is a principle of life which guides and controls and co-ordinates the different portions of the body.
Reflection on the physical mechanism underlying mental operations of various kinds, demands the vitalistic explanation much more than the physiological phenomena which have converted physiologists to the old way of thinking in our time.
They would scorn to postulate such a theory, or accept any such absurd remnant of the old vitalistic school.
This we say with all due deference and respect to our learned Agnostic friends, and wish they would treat their vitalistic brothers with the same becoming courtesy.
The ineffably bright lancers that stand guard over the elemental hosts are the light brigade with which to rout the vitalistic enemy.
This empiricism existed in competition with a declining, richly vitalistic Aristotelian rationalism which had virtually eliminated empiricism during the scholastic period.
However, the decline of this vitalistic rationalism coincided with the rise of a mechanistic rationalism which had its roots in ancient Greek atomistic theories of matter.
This criticism is not so applicable to Highmore, whose theory of development is more vitalistic than Digby's, and is more akin to the concepts developed by Gassendi than those of Descartes.
This is good vitalistic doctrine, as far as it goes, yet Huxley saw no difference between the matter of life and other matter, except in the manner in which the atoms are aggregated.
That is, the growth of the mechanical theory has driven back the vitalistic one.
The essential feature of religion is that it offers a vitalistic explanation of the world as against the mechanical explanation offered by science.
Driesch started from their ranks, and is a most interesting example of consistent development from a recognition of the impossibilities of the mechanistic position to an individually thought-out vitalistic theory.
The most important investigators in their special domain, the physiologist Johannes Mueller, the chemist Julius Liebig, remained faithful to a modifiedvitalistic standpoint.
All this does not arise directly out of the vitalistic ideas, though the latter are fitted into an idealistic framework.
They believe in this ideal, and without concealing that it is still very far off, do not doubt its ultimate attainability, and regard vitalistic assumptions as obstacles to the progress of investigation.
And from the vitalistic standpoint it has to be asked whether detailed biological investigation and analysis can ever accomplish more than the observation and tracing out of these chemical and physical processes.
All this was well enough in the days of naively vitalisticideas of the world as having a life and soul.
With Du Bois-Reymond, Virchow, Haeckel, the anti-vitalistic trend became more definite and more widespread.
And as the intelligence of atoms implies their vitality, we really return in scientific monism to the vitalistic attitude of the primitive observer of Nature.
Professor of Biology and Geology, first at Dunedin and after at Christchurch, New Zealand, puts forward a strongly vitalistic view, and adopts Hering's teaching.
It is a method of proof which has frequently been applied to the vitalistic problem, and with the greatest effect, as it is admitted by some of those who would greatly like to find a materialistic explanation for that problem (cf.
With these expostulations we may turn to the writer's pronouncements on the vitalistic question which seem to us to be worthy of serious consideration.
His experiments still hold the field in a region of study which has vastly extended itself in recent years, becoming of prime importance in the vitalistic controversy.
There was a Weismann tide, now nearly at dead water; there was an anti-vitalistic tide, now ebbing fast.
Hence the schools of thought called vitalistic and mechanistic.
From the solar plexus first of all pass the great vitalistic communications between child and parents, the first interplay of primal, pre-mental knowledge and sympathy.
It may be that even the hair of the head acts as a sensitive vibration-medium for conveying currents of physical and vitalistic activity to and from the brain.
There can be no vivid relation between two adult individuals which does not consist in a dynamic polarized flow of vitalistic force or magnetism or electricity, call it what you will, between these two people.
All the time they quiver with the interchange, there is one long endless flow of vitalisticcommunication between members of one family, a long, strange rapport, a sort of life-unison.
No vitalistic factor is needed for the interpretation of divergencies of this kind.
