vi·tal·ism

(vīt′l-ĭz′əm)

The theory or doctrine that life processes arise from or contain a nonmaterial vital principle and cannot be explained entirely as physical and chemical phenomena.

vi′tal·ist adj. & n.

vi′tal·is′tic adj.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

vitalism

(ˈvaɪtəˌlɪzəm)

(Philosophy) the philosophical doctrine that the phenomena of life cannot be explained in purely mechanical terms because there is something immaterial which distinguishes living from inanimate matter. Compare dynamism, mechanism

ˈvitalist n, adj

ˌvitalˈistic adj

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

vi•tal•ism

(ˈvaɪt lˌɪz əm)
n.

1. the doctrine that phenomena are only partly controlled by mechanical forces, and are in some measure self-determining. Compare dynamism (def. 1), mechanism (def. 6).

2. Biol. a doctrine that attributes the viability of a living organism to a vital principle distinct from the physical and chemical processes of life.

[1815–25]

vi′tal•ist, n., adj.

vi`tal•is′tic, adj.

vi`tal•is′ti•cal•ly, adv.

vitalism

1. Philosophy. the doctrine that phenomena are only partly controlled by mechanistic forces and are in some measure self-determining.
2. Biology. the doctrine that the life in living organisms is caused and sustained by a vital principle that is distinct from all physical and chemical forces. Cf. mechanism. — vitalist, n. — vitalistic, adj.

See also: Philosophy

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

vitalism - (philosophy) a doctrine that life is a vital principle distinct from physics and chemistry

philosophy - the rational investigation of questions about existence and knowledge and ethics

philosophical doctrine, philosophical theory - a doctrine accepted by adherents to a philosophy

Translations

vitalismo

Mentioned in

References in periodicals archive

Another Finitude: Messianic Vitalism and Philosophy

During the nineteenth century, there was a very active debate between two basic schools of thought: vitalism and reductionism.

BIOLOGICAL INDIVIDUALITY: Integrating Scientific, Philosophical, and Historical Perspectives

The final section "From Neo-Hippocraticism to the Avant-Garde" opens with the materialist Pedro Mata y Fontanet, who debunked neo-Hippocratic vitalism equating it with the "unmodern," at the same time that Spanish Krausism recast vital force in social and moral terms, "instrumental in building the ideal society of the future, a society unhampered by the conservatism of State-sponsored development" (202).

Fernandez-Medina, Nicolas. Life Embodied: The Promise of Vital Force in Spanish Modernity

The invocation of both Einsteinian physics and Bergsonian vitalism here is telling: the new theories of atomic energy, on the one hand, and the new theories of the "elan vital," on the other, both suggest a theory of "forces" and "energies" as the necessary mode of existence of all the art forms.

History of a Shiver: The Sublime Impudence of Modernism

Consider "[r]hythm is the pulse of the unitary vitalism which flows through and permeates the African's mind and world....

Spiritualistic Energy as Dynamic

By denying humans the capacity to create categories, Deleuzean vitalism is ultimately no better than a form of spirituality.

Macrobial Cultures

(14) Ten years after the 2nd World War, the German Worterbuch der Philosophie (Dictionary of Philosophy) of 1955 lists Driesch very briefly a as neo-vitalist, (15) (in contrast to the classical vitalism of 1750-1850 before materialism became dominant), but does not mention at all Driesch's many contributions to various other branches of philosophy, in particular: the philosophy of perceiving and knowing (epistemology), the philosophy of mind, the science-philosophy of psychology, moreover moral philosophy and philosophical ethics, in which Driesch's initial biological theme does not stand in the foreground of attention.

HANS DRIESCH RE-VISITED AFTER A CENTURY: ON "LEIB UND SEELE--EINE UNTERSUCHUNG UBER DAS PSYCHOPHYSISCHE GRUNDPROBLEM"

Thus the history of the Church dogma itself was seen as having somehow fallen from a moment of authenticity into decrepitude; the redemption offered by modernism itself and indeed by Bergsonian vitalism was to revivify the doctrine.

MODERNIST MYTHS OF THE FALL: F.R. TENNANT AND T.E. HULME

For Jane Bennett, by contrast, new vitalism may have many of the fundamental qualities of life, but the solidarities of new vitalism are entangled in and across assemblages without distinction between life and nonlife.

Acts of life: Elizabeth A. Povinelli on ecology and power

Mechanism, vitalism and organicism in late nineteenth and twentieth-century biology: the importance of historical context.

Our future: what story will we share?