This would nevertheless be a wrong conclusion mainly because Driesch did not only view HES as an *explanandum*, but above all as his crucial *proof for vitalism*: "in the theory of the harmonious-equipotential system", he stresses, entelechy "*must necessarily be applied*" (Driesch's emphasis 1913). As we previously saw (Sect. 3.1), in this peculiar case he blurred the demarcation between the problem and the solution as both were parts of the same argument. The formula with the "E*"* factor, the diagrams, the abstract regulative power: the more the behavior of HESs seemed far from pure mechanical capacity, the more the entelechy hypothesis looked convincing.

This is why HES was from the beginning a very controversial concept. As "Driesch himself remarks that it is only 'an approximate, as it were, fgurative, method of speech,'" notices the American zoologist Herbert S. Jennings, "*no such thing as an equipotential system exists* among organisms" (Jennings' emphasis, 1918: 586). In fact, it was Child (1908: 580) who frst made a highly critical analysis of Driesch's concept, which he called an "apparent problem" (*Scheinproblem*). Firstly, he raised that material likeness does not follow from prospective equipotentiality. Driesch's belief that the material basis of the system is a relatively formless *means* for achieving the end of entelechy makes him deny the existence of not yet visible material differences between elementary parts coming from their past histories or external conditions: the problem then falsely appears to be "the selfproduction of heterogeneity from homogeneity". Secondly, parts that are isolated from the whole are in fact never equivalent, as regional differences often remain from their previous differentiation and various internal and external changes result from their isolation. Finally, size invariance of regulative development or regeneration is only achieved *approximately* and with pieces of a certain size.

Spemann signifcantly pointed out what may be the paradox of HESs: although they "are perhaps never either harmonious or equipotential exactly in the sense of Driesch" (Spemann 1938: 347), they are still considered as a *real* problem. By abstracting and extrapolating essential properties from empirical events, by giving to these properties graphical and mathematical representations and by opposing them to existing and virtual mechanical realizations, Driesch failed to convince that entelechy was the answer but had nevertheless a lasting impact on how organic development was viewed and scientifcally approached.

#### **4 Conclusion**

Driesch's vitalistic thesis, whereby HESs cannot be machines and hence are driven by non-spatial and purposeful "entelechies", did not falsify explanatory models nor reveal their faws. The Roux-Weismann thesis was rather severely questioned by the discovery of the part formation in sea urchin embryo, which was achieved by Driesch under a pure mechanistic framework. Similarly, Driesch abandoned his induction model for his vitalistic thinking because it was not up to the newly discovered secondary regulatory phenomena. Nor did the concept of entelechy directly serve as a positive heuristic; because it was not empirically measurable nor testable, it could not guide insightful experiments towards the discovery of new facts. However, Driesch's notion of HES constituted an important positive heuristic for developmental biology throughout the twentieth century: though Child interpreted it as an unfaithful representation of empirical events, his metabolic gradient theory was nonetheless presented as an answer to the problem of organic individuation as conveyed by Driesch; among other biologists, Spemann openly considered the HES as the ultimate *explanandum* of embryology and saw the feld theory as a promising step towards its explanation; Wolpert based his positional information theory on the French Flag problem, which is a formalized illustration of HESs. While it is true that the elaboration of the HES concept started with the axiom of part formation in 1892 and with the prospective approach to the problem of epigenesis in 1894, Driesch designed the reference and most impactful version of this *explanandum* as an essential part of his main proof for vitalism. In 1908, holistic or "harmonious" outcomes of development were: (1) systematized and abstracted from real material restrictions; (2) represented in persuasive diagrams and by the mathematical formula with the "E" factor; (3) defned as dynamically purposeful and irreducible to mechanical means.

I believe that these results provide further insights into the process of discovery at least in developmental biology. They show that, despite having often been labeled as unscientifc, substantival vitalism (Wolfe 2011) can have a real scientifc value; in this case it was able to infuence the way the problem of development was understood by biologists and addressed within leading research programmes. As Child suggested, the specifcity of vitalistic theories may consist in recognizing the *essence* of the problem. One reason for this may be that vitalists do not carry the burden of offering a convincing mechanical13 solution to it. However, this study also highlights that the boundary between the *explanandum* and its *explanans* is often permeable; by aiming attention at the holistic and "purposeful" dimension of organic development, Driesch's concept of HES leaves in the dark the complexity of the chromatic structure and the material and functional manifoldness underlying (inter)cellular activity. But in this historical case at least, vitalistic and mechanistic thinking appear to have scientifcally complemented each other, insofar as the former tended to establish what organisms can do and the latter, why or how they do it.

#### **References**

———. 1916. The Basis of Physiological Individuality in Organisms. *Science* 43 (1111): 511–523.

13Here again, "mechanism" is taken in its *causal* sense. As Roux clearly stated, mechanical explanation of development mostly involves the analysis of *complex components* – which are not yet explicable in physico-chemical terms – into more elementary causal processes (Roux 1896; Needham 1936: 20, 21). Metabolic gradients, embryonic felds and patterns related to positional information are therefore complex components in Roux's sense and are subjected to causal analysis.

———. 1885. Beiträge zur Entwicklungsmechanik des Embryo. *Zeitschrift für Biologie* 9 (3): 411–526.

———. 1938. *Embryonic Induction and Development*. New York: Hafner.

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# **A Historico-Logical Re-assessment of Hans Driesch's Vitalism**

#### **Bohang Chen**

**Abstract** Today vitalism is widely dismissed as a metaphysical heresy. For instance, Brigandt and Love (Reductionism in biology. In: Zalta EN (ed) The stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, 2017) claimed that "the denial of physicalism by vitalism, the doctrine that biological systems are governed by forces that are not physico-chemical, is largely of historical interest" (p. 3). Perhaps the most "infamous" vitalist is the German biologist Hans Driesch. However, Driesch (In Rádl E (ed) Actes du Huitième Congrès International de Philosophie a Prague 2–7 septembre 1934. Comité d'Organisation du Congrès, Prague, pp 10–30, 1936) himself very explicitly stated that his vitalism is "neither 'mysticism'[…]nor 'metaphysics'" (p. 27). So, in order to address the mismatch between the present conception of vitalism and his own, I seek to offer a historico-logical re-assessment of Driesch's vitalism. From the historical point of view, I show that Driesch had provided long ignored theoretical refections on the nature of entelechy (the central concept in his vitalism), especially those in relation to evolution and physics. From the logical point of view, following logical empiricists (Phillipp Frank and Rudolf Carnap), I indicate that Driesch's vitalism should be rejected due to its lack of vital laws, at least with respect to current biology; it is an unestablished theory rather than a metaphysical heresy. Ironically, some current theoretical biologists have proposed similar theories (or principles and laws) of life, even though they (incoherently) reject Driesch's vitalism. In the end, I briefy conclude that the failure of vitalism actually alludes to the fact that even today we understand very little about the nature of life (I mean, the pure concept/phenomenon of life!) (While I cannot elaborate here, it is of extremely importance not to confate knowledge about the pure concept/phenom-

B. Chen (\*)

Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

School of Philosophy, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

© The Author(s) 2023

I thank Ghyslain Bolduc, Charles Wolfe and Christopher Donohue for their comments on earlier drafts of this chapter.

C. Donohue, C. T. Wolfe (eds.), *Vitalism and Its Legacy in Twentieth Century Life Sciences and Philosophy*, History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences 29, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12604-8\_4

enon of life and knowledge about objects predicatable of life (Ben-Naim, manuscript, p. 281). For instance, it is common among philosophers of biology today to cite elementary knowledge in a particular biological discipline as offering a better understanding of life. Yet their promise fails to be delivered. At best, they are merely relying on knowledge about objects predicatable of life (in most cases, merely knowledge about complex organizations of matter: about heredity, reproduction, development, metabolism, etc); but such knowledge has not been shown of any relevance to the pure concept/phenomenon of life).

#### **1 Driesch's Vitalism: Introduction**

The general attitude towards vitalism today is dismissive. While there is no need for the majority of working biologists to care about vitalism, it seems quite expedient for philosophers of biology to dismiss rival stances as vitalistic heresies. This phenomenon was summarized by Susan Oyama: "one need not be a scholar of vitalism to know that it can be a potent instrument of abuse, albeit one that often contaminates by association and innuendo rather than outright accusation" (2010, p. 401). Oyama offered a good example. As an anti-reductionist in philosophy of biology, Oyama has been classifed as a vitalist by her reductionist opponents, especially for her enthusiasm for concepts like complexity and organization. But Oyama also shot back. For her, some reductionists are genuinely hard-core vitalists, because they reply on mysterious concepts such as information (Oyama 2010).

Vitalism is rejected by biologists and philosophers today because they treat physicalism (or materialism) as the default stance of modern science. In the entry "Reductionism in biology" of the *Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy*, Brigandt and Love gave an exhaustive summary of metaphysical or ontological issues relevant to the rejection of vitalism:

Ontological reduction is the idea that each particular biological system (e.g., an organism) is constituted by nothing but molecules and their interactions. In metaphysics this idea is often called physicalism (or materialism), which assumes in a biological context that (a) biological properties supervene on physical properties (i.e., no difference in a biological property without a difference in some underlying physical property), and (b) each particular biological process (or token) is metaphysically identical to some particular physicochemical process... Ontological reduction in this weaker sense is a default stance nowadays among philosophers and biologists...The denial of physicalism by vitalism, the doctrine that biological systems are governed by forces that are not physico-chemical, is largely of historical interest. (2017, p. 3)

This summary was written in 2017. In my view, it provides one of the most forceful illustrations of how vitalism is rejected today by presupposing metaphysical/ontological positions such as materialism or physicalism (also see Haraway 1976; Mayr 1982).

Despite the dismissive attitude towards vitalism, there has recently developed a new trend of reconsidering vitalism in its historical context, and the leading scholar

is Charles Wolfe. Wolfe started with the French Montpellier school of medicine in the eighteenth century. Deepening the points made by Peter H. Reill (2005), Wolfe emphasized that at least some forms of vitalism in the eighteenth century went "without metaphysics" (Wolfe and Terada 2008; Wolfe 2008, 2017a). In addition, Wolfe identifed what we might call the doctrine of Newtonian vitalism, inspired by Newton's conceptual innovations in classical mechanics. Importantly, Newtonian vitalism, according to Wolfe (2014), was also without metaphysical baggage. Moreover, Wolfe in another article cast doubts on the traditional dichotomy between vitalism and materialism. He identifed a few vital materialists in the eighteenth century who attributed inherent vital forces to matter (Wolfe 2013). In the end, Wolfe also aimed to show that themes of vitalism were deeply embedded in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment context; vitalism was associated with issues like the continuation of the Scientifc Revolution and anti-mathematicism (Wolfe 2011a, 2017b; Normandin and Wolfe 2013; for positive evaluations of vitalism, also see Lenoir 1982; Richards 2002; Zammito 2018; Steigerwald 2019).

Thanks to Wolfe's and others' efforts, now it has been confrmed that the term "vitalism" was used in many different meanings. So, it might not be incorrect to claim that there are a variety of vitalist doctrines in the history of science. Given all of these, a categorization of these different meanings and doctrines should be highly desirable. Based on his extensive works on the history of biology, Wolfe (2011b) proposed that there are three kinds of vitalism, substantival, functional and attitudinal. For the purpose of this article, only the frst two will be discussed. According to Wolfe, substantival vitalism presupposes the existence of "a (substantive) vital force" (p. 212); functional vitalism indicates "an attempt to 'model' or 'describe' organic life without reducing it to fully mechanical models or processes" (p. 213). Regarding this distinction itself, my view is that it is valid, with respect to biologists' thoughts and attitudes in the history of science;1 but here for our interest, it seems that Wolfe's attempt to distinguish between different meanings attributed to the term "vitalism" has also an implicit purpose of legislating vitalism. For Wolfe, the reputation of vitalism might be saved, if it can be shown that not every doctrine of vitalism in the history of biology was a metaphysical heresy.

The purpose of legislating the term "vitalism" becomes clearer when it comes to judging Driesch's vitalism. Since Driesch appealed apparently to entelechy as the living principle, Wolfe took Driesch's doctrine of entelechy to be a representative of (the bad) substantival vitalism, in contrast to (the good) functional vitalism. Yet, if Wolfe tried to save vitalism by disassociating this term from Driesch's doctrine of

1But to emphasize, this distinction might not be valid, with respect to biological knowledge itself. In that case, biologists (arguably most in the history of biology) who made the distinction would themselves be hopelessly confused. Such confusions are already detected in Wolfe (2011b). On the one hand, as Wolfe admitted, substantival vitalism was also "scientifcally studied" (p. 212). Then, does this, even in the slightest sense, indicate that substantival vitalism can be used as a heuristic tool and therefore become functionalized? On the other hand, when functional vitalism claims to capture "the uniqueness of living bodies" (p. 218), does it succeed in doing that? Maybe in order to do that, it has to advance quasi-substantival claims as well?

entelechy, a few other scholars wanted to do more justice to Driesch and turn to his empirical achievements in biology (Freyhofer 1979; Innes 1987). For them, Driesch's achievements are underestimated. Indeed, Driesch's numerous experiments addressed relational and structural aspects of embryological processes (Driesch 1929; for an updated summary, see Bolduc's Chapter "On the Heuristic Value of Hans Driesch's Vitalism"**,** in this volume), and in this respect there seems little difference between Driesch and Wolfe's functional vitalists. Further, as these scholars requested, Driesch's empirical achievements should be separate from his vitalism or his doctrine of entelechy. The historian Reinhard Mocek, for instance, even suggested that Driesch was almost an organicist or systems theorist, despite his unfortunate vitalist heresy (Mocek 1998; Nyhart 2000). In sum, even though the term "vitalism" can receive different interpretations compatible with modern biology, once it is presented as Driesch's doctrine of entelechy, it will be quickly dismissed as a metaphysical heresy. By terming Driesch's vitalism "substantival vitalism" or separating Driesch's empirical achievements from his doctrine of entelechy, Wolfe and other scholars have appeared to re-affrm the mainstream view. For all of them, it seems legitimate to refute Driesch's vitalism as a metaphysical heresy.

However, I would like to recall that this conception of Driesch's vitalism, unfortunately, goes sharply against his own evaluation of the doctrine of entelechy. In his lecture given in 1934 at the Eighth International Congress of Philosophy in Prague, Driesch emphasized that, in response to common misunderstandings, the choice of entelechy was "a matter of pure logic" and entelechy was "neither 'mysticism'[…]nor 'metaphysics"' (Driesch 1936, p. 27). Seen from this response, it seems that scholars often revoke Driesch's vitalism for their own purposes, despite Driesch's explicit denial. While it is of course inadequate to trust blindly everything he said, it seems more desirable to judge Driesch's doctrine of entelechy after checking its details. This clarifes the intent of this chapter, namely, a historicological re-assessment of Driesch's vitalism. In what follows, Sects. 2 and 3 elaborate Driesch's doctrine of entelechy from the historical perspective, with a focus on his theoretical speculations in relation to evolution and physics. Sects. 4 and 5 address the nature of entelechy from the logical point of view. Section 6 concludes by briefy comparing entelechy and life.

#### **2 History I: Driesch on Entelechy and Evolution**

It is well known that Driesch intended his doctrine of entelechy to explain some peculiar embryological phenomena about sea urchins. However, it is little known today that Driesch, in his doctrine of entelechy, also dealt with evolutionary phenomena. In Driesch's words, vitalism must concern "the relation of transformism in general to our concept of entelechy" (1908a, p. 293). For this, Driesch introduced a new phrase to study the relation between vitalism and evolution, that is, "systematics of entelechies" (p. 293). It is not diffcult to appreciate Driesch's theoretical concern. As a biologist living more than half a century after Darwin popularized the

thesis of descent, Driesch took facts of evolution for granted. Further, since Driesch also proposed the doctrine of entelechy, naturally he would have to face the following question: "we know that entelechy...uses material means in each individual morphogenesis...what then undergoes change in phylogeny, the means or entelechy?" (p. 295). Thus, according to Driesch, in a concrete case of organic transformation, either the same entelechy used a different mean to "construct" a new organism, or a different entelechy emerged in evolution to "give rise to" the new organism.

On this question Driesch opted for the latter, in favor of "entelechy, rather than "the means". Let us quote him in full:

We know that entelechy, though not material in itself, uses material means in each individual morphogenesis, handed down by the material continuity in heritance. When then undergoes change in phylogeny, the means or entelechy? And what would be the logical aspect of systematics in either case?

Of course there would be a law in systematics in any case; and therefore systematics in any case would be rational in principle. But if the transformistic factor were connected with the means of morphogenesis, one could hardly say that specifc form as such was a primary essence. Entelechy would be that essence, but entelechy its generality and always remaining the same in its most intimate character, as the specifc diversities would only be due to a something, which is not form, but simply means to form. But the harmony revealed to us in every typical morphogenesis, be it normal or be it regulatory, seems to forbid us to connect transformism with the means of morphogenesis. And therefore we shall close this discussion about the most problematic phenomena of biology with the declaration, that we regard it as more congruent to the general aspect of life to correlate the unknown principle concerned in descent with entelechy itself, and not with its means. Systematics of organisms therefore would be in fact systematics of entelechies, and therefore organic forms would be *formae essentiales*, entelechy being the very essence of form in its specifcity. (p. 295)

For Driesch, in evolutionary history it is less probably the case that a single entelechy "gave rise to" the whole variety of organisms through different means; rather, it is more probable that in each concrete case of evolution, a new entelechy emerged to "construct" a new organism.2

However, as Driesch alluded, with facts of evolution he had a different concern with systematics. In particular, he asked for "a law in systematics" which would make a truly "rational" science. Then what did Driesch mean here? For this let us look at his discussion of vitalism and evolution in detail. To start, there is little doubt that Driesch accepted Darwin's "theory of descent" (p. 250) or "the idea of transformism" (p. 251), namely, "the hypothetical statement that the organisms are really allied by blood among each other, in spite of their diversities" (p. 251). Like us today, he agreed with Darwin that "there certainly is a great amount of probability" in "the idea of transformism" (p. 251). In particular, he classifed "two different

2Yet later in 1927, Driesch frankly acknowledged the other possibility that there might be a "superentelechy which possesses a fxed essence and does nothing but copy its essence once more into matter, and realize phylogeny in this way" (1927, p. 6). To emphasize, no matter which possibility Driesch choose, he strictly followed the logical rules. Indeed, regarding these two possibilities, Driesch concluded that with "empirical phylogeny as it is…we possess no means whatever to decide" (p. 7).

groups of facts" as supportive evidence, "the geographical distribution of animals and plants and to paleontology" (p. 251) and "similarities and diversities" observed "in the system of animals and plants" (p. 253).

While Driesch approved of the thesis of descent, he could not consent to the claim that the descent thesis explains "the diversities of the organism" (p. 255). On this point, Driesch raised strong criticisms of Darwinism and Lamarckism in his time. Driesch took Darwinism held by his contemporaries to be "dogmatism in one of purest forms" and very far removed from "the opinion of Charles Darwin" (p. 260). And he maintained that he was "speaking against Darwinism of the most dogmatic form only, not against Darwin himself" (p. 269). Dogmatic Darwinism, according to Driesch, consisted of two theoretical parts, natural selection and "fuctuating variation" (p. 264). First on natural selection. For Driesch, it was self-evident that natural selection "always acts negatively only, never positively" (p. 262). So, Driesch continued, it could be correct to state that natural selection explained "why certain types of organic specifcations, imaginable a priori, do not actually exist" (p. 262). But Driesch stressed that it was misleading to assert that natural selection explained "the existence of the specifcations of animal and vegetable forms that are actually found" (p. 262). For this, Driesch turned to "fuctuating variation the alleged cause of organic diversity" (p. 264). But he remained deeply unsatisfed. In response to contemporary Darwinians in the biometric tradition, Driesch agreed with them that the concept of fuctuating variation might be useful to explain "new quantitative differences" (p. 266); yet he insisted that it was illegitimate to merely use fuctuating variation to explain "organic diversities" (p. 269, for reasons see below).

Driesch also criticized the doctrine of Lamarckism or Neo-Lamarckism. Again, Driesch emphasized that he was not against the opinion of Lamarck himself; instead he only attacked Lamarckism "in its dogmatic modern form" (p. 271). For Driesch, Neo-Lamarckism had two basic parts, the idea of the "inheritance of acquired characters" (p. 275), and "the hypothesis of storing and handing down contingent variations" (p. 282). On the frst Driesch said little as he viewed it as basically an empirical question. He concluded that "not one case is known which really proves the inheritance of acquired characters", yet it is not advisable to "deny the possibility...in an absolute and dogmatic manner" (p. 278). Driesch focused on the second part, which was open to similar objections made against the Darwinian concept of fuctuating variation. For Driesch, "the whole anti-Darwinistic criticism...may also be applied to Lamarckism with only a few changes of words" (p. 288).

Indeed, Driesch took issues with the Darwinian concept of "fuctuating variation" and the Lamarckian assumption of "storing and handing down contingent variations" *for exactly the same reason*. According to Driesch, Darwinism and Lamarckism in his time were similarly problematic in that they "shake hands on the common ground of the contingency of organic forms" (p. 288): Darwinism tended to explain the diversity of organic forms through fuctuating variation and natural selection, Lamarckism tried to do it by referring to contingent needs of organisms in their living environment. But for Driesch, the appeal to contingency was unacceptable in science, and "other principles (were) wanted" (p. 281). Here Driesch requested "law(s) of systematics" (p. 295), even though he knew well that these laws might only be available "at some future date" (p. 295).

According to Driesch, laws of systematics were concerned with "the totality of possible forms" (p. 296). Ideally, with such laws all possible organic forms and species could be placed into a unifed system, and knowledge about then could accordingly be deduced from laws of systematics. Then, what would such laws of systematics be like? On this Driesch wrote, with an illuminating reference to physics and chemistry (and Kant!):

In physics and chemistry no perfect rational systems have been established hitherto, but there are many systems approaching the ideal type in different departments of these sciences. The chemical type of the monohydric saturated alcohols, for instance, is given by the formula CnH2n+1OH, and in this formula we not only have an expression of the law of composition which all possible alcohols are to follow, but, since we know empirically the law of quantitative relation between n and various physical properties, we also possess in our formula a general statement with respect to the totality of the properties of any primary alcohol that may be discovered or prepared in the future. But chemistry has still higher aims with regard to its systematics : all of you know that the so-called "periodic law of the elements" was the frst step towards a principle that may some day give account of the relation of all the physical and chemical properties of any so-called element with its most important constant, the atomic weight, and it seems to be reserved for the present time to form a real fundamental system of the "elements" on the basis of the periodic law by the aid of the theory of electrons. Such a fundamental system of the elements would teach us that there can only be so many elements and no more, and only of such a kind…we are dealing here with some of the most remarkable properties of the so-called synthetic judgments a priori in the sense of Kant…(p. 244)3

Further, Driesch compared phylogeny (as the study of the evolutionary history) and rational systematics. For Driesch, in contrast to the pursuance of rational laws, the study of the evolutionary history only attended to "actual diversities" (p. 264) of organic forms, both existent and extinct, found in the history of nature. But importantly, according to Driesch, the study of the history did not contradict rational systematics. Driesch wrote:

Is there no contradiction between historical development and a true and rational system...by no means. A totality of diversities is regarded from quite different points of view if taken as the material of a system, and if considered as realized in time. We have said that chemistry has come very near to proper rational systematics, at least in some of its special felds; but the compounds it deals with at the same time maybe said to have originated historically also, though not, of course, by a process of propagation. It is evident at once that the geological conditions of very early times prohibited the existence of certain chemical compounds, both organic and inorganic, which are known at present. Non the less these compounds occupy their proper place in the system. And there may be many substances theoretically known to chemical systematics which have never yet been produced, on

3 It might be helpful to show what Driesch (and Kant) meant here by "a priori" here. Important theories in science, like Newton's thee laws in classical mechanics and the periodic table of elements in physico-chemistry, are of course a posteriori, as empirical achievements in science; yet they are also a priori, in relation to more concrete works in classical mechanics and physicochemistry. In sum, these are both a posteriori and a priori, but only at different levels. I thank my friend Ghyslain Bolduc for raising this issue.

account of the impossibility of arranging for their proper conditions of appearance, and nevertheless they must be said to "exist". "Existence", as understood in systematics, is independent of special space and of special time, as is the existence of laws of nature: we may speak of a Platonic kind of existence here. Of course it does not contradict this sort of ideal existence if reality is added to it. (pp. 257–8)

Driesch's reference to the laws of systematics in chemistry (e.g., the periodic table of elements) is illuminating. For Driesch, similar to those in chemistry, laws of biological systematics in relation to evolution, if they were available, would only determine "possible forms", from which the evolutionary history would pick up "actual forms". In other words, the evolutionary history should proceed partly in accordance with a pre-determined system of possible species governed by laws of systematics.

To connect evolution with his vitalism, recall that Driesch came up with the concept of "systematics of entelechies" (p. 293). Indeed, it is clear that, in Driesch's doctrine of entelechy, the system of entelechies must be correlated with the system of all possible organic forms. To put it more explicitly, it is not incorrect to say that evolution is partly governed by the system of entelechies. Hence in Driesch's doctrine of entelechy the relation between vitalism and evolution becomes clear. He summarized this as follows:

Thus the problem of systematics remains, no matter whether the thesis of descent be right or wrong. There always remains the question about the totality of diversities in life: whether it may be understood by a general principle, and of what kind that principle would be. As, in fact, it is most probably by history, by descent, that organic systematics is brought about, it of course most probably will happen some day that the analysis of the causal factors concerned in the history will serve to discover the principle of systematics also. (p. 258)

For Driesch, if Darwin's doctrine or even Darwinism was understood merely as the thesis of descent, then it was the most plausible answer to the question of actuality: how "organic systematics is brought about". However, the question of possibility, that is, the question of "the totality of diversities", remained entirely untouched, and here laws yielded by the systematics of entelechies must be requested.

Finally, to emphasize, it should be kept in mind that the systematics of entelechies or the systematics of all possible species or organic forms, even till today, have not been given in any rational form, i.e., as a system of rational laws. Indeed, Driesch was not the frst, nor the last to envisage such rational systematics for evolution. Rather, Driesch's request of laws of systematics represents the central concern of theorists of evolution in more than two hundred years, both before and after Darwin. Before Darwin we have the great name of Kant and other German philosophers of nature such as Schelling (for more, see Chen 2019). After Darwin, as we will see later (Sect. 5), the theoretical biologist Brian Goodwin has also come up with similar research projects. Therefore, it should be clear now that the relation between vitalism and evolution envisaged by Driesch is not the product of some boundless speculations offered by a discredited biologist.

#### **3 History II: Driesch on Entelechy and Physics**

As in Sect. 2, I begin with Driesch's *The Science and Philosophy of the Organism* (1908a, b). We have seen that in the frst volume (1908a) Driesch with much rigor discussed the relation between vitalism and evolution in detail. In the second volume, in like manner, he went on to dealing with issues in relation to vitalism and physics. In his own words, he was going to show "how our concept of entelechy as an elemental natural factor is related to those concepts of general ontology which play any part in the science of inorganic nature" (1908b, p. 153). Here Driesch demonstrated his non-trivial learning in physics, admittedly rare among biologists at any time.

Driesch frst touched on the principle of the "conservation of energy" (p. 158), which is now termed the frst law of thermodynamics. In relation to his doctrine of entelechy, Driesch raised the following question, "how stands entelechy to the concept of energy itself?" (p. 164). According to Driesch, some contemporary physicists such as the distinguished Wilhelm Ostwald conjectured that "in cases of morphogenesis...some unknown potential forms of energy may be at work" (p. 167) and entelechy was just vital energy peculiar to life. But Driesch endorsed an unequivocal rejection of this supposition. Two reasons were advanced by Driesch to support his rejection. First, "at least in all [functional and developmental] cases where the economic equation [the principle of the conservation of energy] is fulflled there would seem to be no place for a 'new' energy" (p. 168). Second, "all energies, actually known to exist or invented to complete the general energetical scheme, are quantities" (p. 168), but "entelechy lacks all the characteristics of quantity" and it is "order of relation and absolutely nothing else" (p. 168). Clearly, Driesch, in his own words, "decline(d) any kind of 'energetical' vitalism" (p. 170).

Driesch next dealt with the principle of the "augmentation of entropy" (p. 158) or the principle of "dissipation" (p. 174), which is now termed the second law of thermodynamics. Unlike many physicists and philosophers who have always been producing mysterious interpretations of the second law, Driesch took it to be "a mere fact that is encountered in almost all felds of physics" (p. 174). Since this principle was merely empirical, according to Driesch, "it of course offers no special ontological problem with regard to entelechy" (p. 176). Then regarding possible functions of entelechy in relation to physico-chemical factors, Driesch came up with some rather imaginative and entertaining suggestions. According to Driesch, entelechy might be able to "suspend possible becoming" (p. 179) in physicochemical systems. More concretely speaking, suppose a chemical reaction, with all its necessary chemical compounds ready, was about to take place; yet at this time entelechy was able to suspend the chemical reaction. On this Driesch wrote:

...Entelechy is able, so far as we know from the facts concerned in restitution and adaptation, to suspend for as long a period as it wants any one of all the reactions which are possible with such compounds as are present, and which would happen without entelechy. And entelechy may regulate this suspending of reactions now in one direction and now in the other, suspending and permitting possible becoming whenever required for its purposes. (p. 180)

Driesch took "this faculty of a temporary suspension of inorganic becoming" (p. 180) to be "the most essential ontological characteristic of entelechy" (p. 180). In other words, entelechy was able to interfere the principle of the augmentation of entropy in physico-chemical systems, as "the non-physico-chemical agent" (p. 180). After this, Driesch moved to speculating about the function of entelechy in organic systems. Driesch started with his famous concept of the "harmonious-equipotential system", which he considered to be a "system of equally distributed potentialities" (p. 192). Then in the embryological process, according to Driesch, "entelechy transforms a 'homogeneous' distribution of given different elements and given possible reactions into a 'heterogeneous' distribution of effect" (p. 193). In other words, "entelechy...is capable of augmenting its diversity of distribution in a regulatory manner" (p. 192), as "an intensive manifoldness, embracing a real system of preexisting diversities in itself" (p. 197).

According to the principle of the augmentation of entropy, the increase of entropy signifes a decrease of diversity. Given this principle, did Driesch ever consider the role of entelechy to be contradicting the entropy principle? Not at all. For Driesch, the entropy principle only held in physico-chemical systems, empirically. Then regarding a biological system, Driesch suggested, even though the entropy principle still tends to eliminate its inner diversity, entelechy, on the contrary, elevates the diversity of the system as a biological agent. As a result, being biological, "organic systems may acquire a higher degree of diversity of distribution" (p. 197), due to the presence of entelechy. In a positive formulation, Driesch could say, entelechy and the entropy principle operate simultaneously, although in opposite directions, to give rise to relevant effects in relation to the biological system. So, for Driesch, "there is no opposition between inorganic and vital phenomena" (p. 196). To summarize, in Driesch's doctrine of entelechy, it is perfectly fne to conclude that a biological system, thanks to the presence of entelechy, might be able to overcome the principle of the augmentation of entropy only ascertained in physico-chemical systems.

More generally speaking, for Driesch, in biology entelechy gave rise to diversities not found in physico-chemistry, just like gravity did with respect to Cartesian mechanics (p. 193) and human mind did in creating artifacts from chaos in nature (p. 194). Entelechy is just a new concept, which introduces a new type of causal factors. Since the presence of entelechy was assumed by Driesch to be unique in biology, it could then justify the autonomy of biology and revive the organicinorganic distinction "forgotten by physics and chemistry" (p. 196). With entelechy, Driesch reminded us that:

There also was a great contrast between vital phenomena and the complete "science of inorganic or spatial becoming" that is to be written in the future. Entelechy, as endowed with the faculty of enlarging the amount of diversity in the distribution of given elements, was in opposition to that future science. (p. 225)

By the way, given Driesch's clear formulation, no one will fail to recognize the similarity between entelechy and the famous Maxwell's Demon. Indeed, Driesch commented twice on Maxwell's Demon. First, regarding mere physico-chemical systems, "of course, the empirical law of the dissipation of energy would be contradicted by Maxwell' fction" (pp. 199-200). Second, In the case of entelechy, "the work of the 'demons' of Maxwell is here regarded as actually accomplished" (p. 225).

Driesch's discussion on entelechy and thermodynamics, or more generally, "vital and physical principles" (p. 198), alludes to many interesting, but long-ignored historical details about vitalism. Although these details cannot be presented here due to the lack of space, there is an important lesson to learn from the logic of science. As I have shown, according to Driesch, even though the effects of entelechy run against the second law of thermodynamics, it does not necessarily follow that the existence of entelechy should be forbidden in science. Further, in no way it follows that vitalism should be banned as a metaphysical heresy. Then, why is vitalism still not a scientifcally valid theory? To answer this question, we must now execute a logical analysis of Driesch's doctrine of entelechy.

#### **4 Logic I: The Logical (in Contrast to the Metaphysical) Refutation**

As I have shown in the Introduction, vitalism is now almost universally refuted as a metaphysical heresy by presupposing materialism and physicalism. Sometimes it is even used as "a potent instrument of abuse, albeit one that often contaminates by association and innuendo rather than outright accusation" (Oyama 2010, p. 401). In this section I frst make the structure of the metaphysical refutation clear. To do this, let us frst quickly review a few negative remarks on vitalism, from contemporary biologists and philosophers:

To those of you who may be vitalists I would make this prophecy: what everyone believed yesterday, and you believe today, only cranks will believe tomorrow. (Crick 1966, p. 99)

Both scientists and philosophers take ontological reductionism for granted. Vitalism is dead. organisms are nothing but atoms, and that is that. (Hull 1981, p. 282)

[Vitalism] virtually leaves the realm of science by falling back on an unknown and presumably unknowable factor… (Mayr 1982, p. 52)

No "vital forces" exist, and all living phenomena consist only of chemical and physical processes. Such an ontologic position (i.e., a stance as to what exists in the universe) is called materialism, and it provides the basis for contemporary natural science. (Gilbert and Sarkar 2000, p.1)

[Vitalism] faded as the mechanistic side of biology advanced. (Godfrey-Smith 2014, p. 10)

The denial of physicalism by vitalism, the view that biological systems are governed by forces that are not physico-chemical…is largely of historical interest... (Brigandt and Love 2017, p. 3).

These passages contain both "innuendos" and "outright accusations". In sum, especially in Gilbert and Sarkar (2000), vitalism is rejected with forceful statements asserting that vitalism violates an overarching worldview legitimized by modern science. Hull termed this worldview "ontological reduction", Gilbert and Sarkar termed it "materialism", and most recently Brigandt and Love went for "physicalism". In spite of this terminological diversity, it is clear that vitalism today is refuted by presupposing materialism and physicalism, and it is a metaphysical refutation.

A few more remarks on the metaphysical refutation. In the frst place, my impression is that scientists are more used to the term "materialism", and they are very inclined to accept Hull's ontological statement, "organisms are nothing but atoms, and that is that" (I have encountered no exception!). In contrast, philosophers prefer "physicalism" with the intent of being more precise. From "materialism" to "physicalism", on the one hand, philosophers take apparently non-materialistic concepts (gravity, electro-magnetism, feld, energy, etc.) in modern physics into account; on the other hand, they can claim that physicalism relies on ongoing physical sciences, rather than knowledge in physics in a particular time.

In the second place, I anticipate that some will raise objections to my characterization of materialism and physicalism, since today there are diverse "philosophical" doctrines of materialism and physicalism (Stoljar 2021). I cannot clarify all relevant issues here, but I do think that such a diversity is more or less a result of terminological confusions. Further, the essential point I want to make is that materialism and physicalism, whatever they mean, are used in this context to issue dismissals of vitalism. In sum, the existence of life forces, entelechies and other similar vital entities are judged as violating the metaphysical tendency of current scientists and philosophers, and they all receive a metaphysical refutation.

However, there is a different way of rejecting vitalism, and I call it a logical refutation. This refutation was endorsed in the early twentieth century by a few biologists and philosophers (for details see Chen 2018). In this logical refutation, frst of all, vitalism is not treated as a metaphysical heresy; rather, it is received as a promising (or at least not-too-bad) scientifc theory. According to the Russian biologist Alexander Gurwitsch, "practical vitalism claims the right to be restricted in formulating hypotheses only by postulates of logic and of the general theory of knowledge, and by nothing else" (1915, p. 765). It is also important to notice that logical empiricists essentially agreed with Gurwitsch. For instance, Philipp Frank wrote in his early years:

To be sure, Driesch shows that we can assume for the living processes a specifc state variable, not that we must. For it is not possible to foresee every trick that one might invent in the fction of hidden combinations of inorganic state variables. In favor of vitalism I should like to remark that, just as I cannot force someone who regards heat as a specifc state variable to consider it as a motion of particles, so I cannot force the adherents of entelechy to replace it by fctitious state variables. (Frank 1941/1908, pp. 26–7)

Frank did not refute vitalism by presupposing any metaphysical materialism or physicalism, as present biologists and philosophers do.

According to the logical refutation, second, vitalism is defective for a different reason. On this Carnap wrote:

Driesch did not give laws. He did not specify how entelechy of an oak tree differs from entelechy of a goat or giraffe. He did classify his entelechies. He merely classifed organisms and said that each organism had its own entelechy. He did not formulate laws that state under what conditions an entelechy is strengthened or weakened… the notion of an entelechy does not give us new laws, it does not explain more than the general laws already available. It does not help us in the least in making new predictions. (Carnap 1966, pp. 15–16)

According to Carnap, the central defect of vitalism was that Driesch failed to give new laws after he advanced the concept of entelechy.4 Without such laws, even today, we simply have no idea about what the nature of entelechy is.

In this section I have contrasted the metaphysical refutation of vitalism with its logical refutation. I also want to endorse the view that the logical refutation is to be preferred. While there is no space to elaborate here (but see Chen 2019), the main defect of the metaphysical refutation, in my opinion, is that it relies on a rather problematic conception of matter, in which matter is treated as a Kantian thing in itself, rather than ever-changing physico-chemical principles. As a result, it has not, even in the slightest, captured the historical development of science. Indeed, in the history of science metaphysical versions of materialism and physicalism were often obstacles to scientifc progress.

#### **5 Logic II: Theoretical Biologists and Their Envisaged Vital Laws**

In this section, I show one, arguably the most important, implication of the logical refutation of vitalism. In current biology as well as the history of biology, there have been theoretical biologists who take the metaphysical refutation of vitalism for granted and propose speculative research projects to search for principles of life. For instance, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, once infuential for his general systems theory, took biological organisms to be far-from-equilibrium open systems; based on his knowledge in thermodynamics, Bertalanffy was eager to have "a thermodynamic criterion that would defne the steady state in open systems in a similar way as maximum entropy defnes equilibrium in closed systems" (1968, p. 151). Bertalanffy himself was not so hostile to vitalism (1933, p. 30), but he still complained that vitalism "refers…to a metaphysical or psychical factor and consequently renounces the possibility of a natural scientifc explanation" (1933, p. 46). More recently, similar to Bertalanffy, the well-known theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman envisaged "the fourth law of thermodynamics" (2000, p. xi) for life. Kauffman did not think highly of vitalism, either. Obsessed with holism and emergentism, he further claimed that "no vital force or extra substance is present in the emergent, self-reproducing whole" (1995, p. 24).

Yet is Driesch's vitalism really different from Bertalanffy's and Kauffman's research projects to fnd either a new thermodynamic criterion for open systems or even the fourth law of thermodynamics? My view is that, there is little difference,

4This refutation can also be found in other contemporary authors, such as Morris Cohen (1931, pp. 253–4). I thank Christopher Donohue for this reference.

from the logical point of view. Recall Driesch's discussion on how entelechy might function in the physico-chemical world; in its very least, the search for either a new thermodynamic criterion or the fourth law of thermodynamics can be read as an attempt to give laws to capture the effects of entelechy. In other words, these are just vital laws envisaged by Driesch. Therefore, despite a shared but actually unfounded metaphysical superiority, their research projects, from the logical point of view, can be received as disguised forms of vitalism. Meanwhile, needless to say, like Driesch's search for vital laws, so far Bertalanffy's and Kauffman's ambitious proposals have not found anything even close to a new thermodynamic criterion or the fourth law of thermodynamics.5

In addition to Bertalanffy and Kauffman, another theoretical biologist with interest in a general or universal theory of life is Brian Goodwin. Goodwin stood out among theoretical biologists as a rare admirer of Driesch (Webster and Goodwin 1981, pp. 5–6). In his research project, Goodwin not only proposed "biological feld theory" (1982), he also made essential use of the analogy between the system of possible biological forms and the periodic table of elements: "(we need) a theory of organismic form analogous to the theory of atomic structure" that is, "the universal laws or constraints which defne what is possible" (1982, p. 45). Like Driesch, Goodwin wrote:

The rational taxonomy which could emerge from a logical classifcation of these forms would be quite independent of the actual historical sequence of appearance of species, genera and phyla, just as the periodic table of the elements is independent of their historical appearance, and is compatible with a great variety of possible sequences. (1982, p. 51).

In Goodwin's rational morphology, every possible biological organization is a dynamic whole governed by its own unique (morphogenetic) feld equations. Then, all these unique feld equations are further unifed into a common scheme. For all these, Goodwin's project cannot fail to remind us of Driesch's "systematics of entelechies". In addition, it is clear that Goodwin's proposed "biological feld theory" correspond to Driesch's envisaged vital laws.

Finally, to emphasize, vital laws envisaged by Driesch, like Goodwin's biological feld theory and Bertalanffy's and Kauffman's new thermodynamic principles, have never been obtained till today. Indeed, Driesch's claim that his concept of entelechy must be invoked to explain embryological phenomena is untenable. On this point Carnap's criticism of vitalism is temporarily adequate. However, Driesch would not be wrong, if he merely proposed to look for vital laws. As a matter of fact, if vitalists could offer such vital laws, Carnap's criticism of vitalism would fail (and he would acknowledge this, for sure) and vitalism would consequently be as valid as any respectable theory in science. While it might not be very promising to attain such vital laws even in future biology, but the possibility of such vital laws can never

5To emphasize, this is not to dismiss other important but more concrete contributions made by theoretical biologists. Yet, it is also important to understand that those more concrete contributions so far have not given any genuine theory of life. Driesch also had genuine contributions in theoretical biology; however, those did not help his doctrine of entelechy, which in its essence tends to be a theory of life (see below).

be denied decisively. The validity of vitalism relies on vital laws, and this is a logical point. As we have seen, a lack of clarity on this point misleads some theoretical biologists (e.g., Bertalanffy and Kauffman) to envisage theories and principles with fancy names, which, from the logical point of view, turn out to be scarcely different from Driesch's vital laws.

#### **6 Conclusion: Entelechy and Life**

The logical refutation shows that at least in current biology vitalism is invalid. In other words, the statement that "the organism is governed by its entelechy" should be viewed with suspicion. Due to the lack of vital laws, this statement cannot be treated as a serious piece of biological knowledge. But now consider a different statement, "the organism is alive". Indeed, even though this statement is treated as trivially true, its logical status is similar to that of the previous statement about entelechy. Unfortunately, due to a lack of principles or laws of life (in Bertalanffy's and Kauffman's words), the statement that "the organism is alive", although presupposed, is of little real use in biology. It stands very isolated from all other well established biological statements. As a matter of fact, it seems possible to treat the two previous statements as synonymous (but note that vitalism is still invalid, since to explain life by appealing to entelechy amounts to nothing but a tautology), and the invention of entelechy can be read as a desperate and failed attempt to explain life (I mean, the pure concept/phenomenon of life). Nevertheless, such a failure should also remind us of the gloomy fact: even in current biology our knowledge about life does not go beyond our knowledge about entelechy, because both amount to almost nothing (for an elaboration of this point, see Chen 2019).

#### **References**

Crick, F. 1966. *Of Molecules and Men*. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Goodwin, B.C. 1982. Development and Evolution. *Journal of Theoretical Biology* 97 (1): 43–55.

———. 2013. Sensibility as Vital Force or as Property of Matter in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Debates. In *The Discourse of Sensibility*, ed. H.M. Lloyd, 147–170. Cham: Springer.

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# **"A Mountain of Nonsense"? Czech and Slovenian Receptions of Materialism and Vitalism from c. 1860s to the First World War**

#### **Christopher Donohue**

**Abstract** In general, historians of science and historians of ideas do not focus on critical appraisals of scientifc ideas such as vitalism and materialism from Catholic intellectuals in eastern and southeastern Europe, nor is there much comparative work available on how signifcant European ideas in the life sciences such as materialism and vitalism were understood and received outside of France, Germany, Italy and the UK. Insofar as such treatments are available, they focus on the contributions of nineteenth century vitalism and materialism to later twentieth ideologies, as well as trace the interactions of vitalism and various intersections with the development of genetics and evolutionary biology see Mosse (The culture of Western Europe: the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Westview Press, Boulder, 1988, Toward the fnal solution: a history of European racism. Howard Fertig Publisher, New York, 1978; Turda et al., Crafting humans: from genesis to eugenics and beyond. V&R Unipress, Goettingen, 2013). English and American eugenicists (such as William Caleb Saleeby), and scores of others underscored the importance of vitalism to the future science of "eugenics" (Saleeby, The progress of eugenics. Cassell, New York, 1914). Little has been written on *materialism qua materialism* or vitalism *qua vitalism* in eastern Europe.

The Czech and Slovene cases are interesting for comparison insofar as both had national awakenings in the middle of the nineteenth century which were linguistic and scientifc, while also being religious in nature (on the Czech case see David, Realism, tolerance, and liberalism in the Czech National awakening: legacies of the Bohemian reformation. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2010; on the Slovene case see Kann and David, Peoples of the Eastern Habsburg Lands, 1526-1918. University of Washington Press, Washington, 2010). In the case of many Catholic writers writing in Moravia, there are not only slight noticeable differences in word-choice and construction but a greater infuence of scholastic Latin, all the more so in the works of nineteenth century Czech priests and bishops.

© The Author(s) 2023

C. Donohue (\*)

National Human Genome Research Institute, Bethesda, MD, USA e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
C. Donohue, C. T. Wolfe (eds.), *Vitalism and Its Legacy in Twentieth Century Life Sciences and Philosophy*, History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences 29, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12604-8\_5

In this case, German, Latin and literary Czech coexisted in the same texts. Thus, the presence of these three languages throws caution on the work on the work of Michael Gordin, who argues that scientifc language went from Latin to German to vernacular. In Czech, Slovenian and Croatian cases, all three coexisted quite happily until the First World War, with the decades from the 1840s to the 1880s being particularly suited to linguistic fexibility, where oftentimes writers would put in parentheses a Latin or German word to make the meaning clear to the audience. Note however that these multiple paraphrases were often polemical in the case of discussions of materialism and vitalism.

In Slovenia Čas (Time or The Times) ran from 1907 to 1942, running under the muscular editorship of Fr. Aleš Ušeničnik (1868–1952) devoted hundreds of pages often penned by Ušeničnik himself or his close collaborators to wide-ranging discussions of vitalism, materialism and its implied social and societal consequences. Like their Czech counterparts Fr. Matěj Procházka (1811–1889) and Fr. Antonín Lenz (1829–1901), materialism was often conjoined with "pantheism" and immorality. In both the Czech and the Slovene cases, materialism was viewed as a deep theological problem, as it made the Catholic account of the transformation of the Eucharistic sacrifce into the real presence untenable. In the Czech case, materialism was often conjoined with "bestiality" (*bestialnost*) and radical politics, especially agrarianism, while in the case of Ušeničnik and Slovene writers, materialism was conjoined with "parliamentarianism" and "democracy." There is too an unexamined dialogue on vitalism, materialism and pan-Slavism which needs to be explored.

Writing in 1914 in a review of O bistvu življenja (Concerning the essence of life) by the controversial Croatian biologist Boris Zarnik) Ušeničnik underscored that vitalism was an speculative outlook because it left the feld of positive science and entered the speculative realm of philosophy. Ušeničnik writes that it was "Too bad" that Zarnik "tackles" the question of vitalism, as his zoological opinions are interesting but his philosophy was not "successful". Ušeničnik concluded that vitalism was a rather old idea, which belonged more to the realm of philosophy and Thomistic theology then biology. It nonetheless seemed to provide a solution for the particular characteristics of life, especially its individuality. It was certainly preferable to all the dangers that materialism presented. Likewise in the Czech case, Emmanuel Radl (1873–1942) spent much of his life extolling the virtues of vitalism, up until his death in home confnement during the Nazi Protectorate. Vitalism too became bound up in the late nineteenth century rediscovery of early modern philosophy, which became an essential part of the development of new scientifc consciousness and linguistic awareness right before the First World War in the Czech lands. Thus, by comparing the reception of these ideas together in two countries separated by 'nationality' but bounded by religion and active engagement with French and German ideas (especially Driesch), we can reconstruct not only receptions of vitalism and materialism, but articulate their political and theological valances.

**Keywords** Vitalism · Materialism · Pantheism · Neovitalism · Eastern Europe · Slovenia · Czechia

Although a rich historiography attends the histories of vitalism and materialism in Western Europe, to my knowledge there have been no systematic attempts to discuss vitalism and anti-materialism in eastern Europe (or more properly east central Europe, according to recent scholarly conventions). The reasons for this are puzzling and can only be partially explained in the context of this paper. A signifcant reason, I suspect, is presentism. Charles Wolfe has been instrumental in providing a number of contexts and contextualization for vitalism and materialism in Western Europe (Normandin and Wolfe 2013; Wolfe 2016, "Canguilhem and the Logic of Life", see also this volume) and arguing that the histories of vitalism and materialism add to our "philosophical technology" (my term) for understanding contemporary science and more importantly, the implications of those life sciences now undergoing (one may argue). Vitalism in "Eastern Europe" or "East Central Europe" has been in English language literature more or less ignored or exoticized (Chirot 1991). Marius Turda has likewise referenced "Balkanism" and "Orientialism" (2011).1

This is due in part to what I have recently called "occidentalism" (Donohue, 2020) in which Eastern Europe is placed outside of the development of Western science and culture and onto the path of an alternative or "backward" modernity. Even for very recent scholarship somewhat more responsible in the anglophone world, "science" in Czech speaking lands is science in the "German" language and, according to Michael Gordin, reducible to physics, where writing in the Czech language was the consequence of "linguistic purism" and a "dilemma" (Gordin 2020: 219). Those who identifed as "Czechs" were conficted over the use of German or Czech in their scientifc publications. Although Gordin's work is here singled out, such almost ethnographic accounts of Czech-language intellectual output are widespread in the feld.

Although the processes of transformation of the scientifc languages of the Czech and Slovenian speaking lands are not the central focus of this paper, the subsequent material discussed will illustrate that many Czech especially and Slovenian writers were quite comfortable moving between their native languages, French, German and even occasionally English. It is also worth noting that Gordin as a historian of physics, is focused on physics journals in Central Eastern Europe, and thus would not necessarily be aware of journals in the biological, theological and sociological sciences such as *Ceska mysl* (Czech mind) begun in 1900 as an international pedagogical review in the social and the biological sciences, with articles in the physical sciences as well.

1A key issue in the literature on the national awakening was to what degree it was particularistic versus universal. Based on a Cold War framework, nationalist movements in the nineteenth century were divided into "ethnic" and "civic" varieties, with civic nationalists being those of the "West" (the classic case being France, the failed exemplar being German state unifcation) with states and peoples in "Eastern" Europe being subject to a vague kind of exclusionary belong which made universalism impossible. In the Soviet period and afterwards, the strength of ethnicities and "tribal loyalties" has supported a consistent narrative of "backwardness." This helped to explain the embrace of Communism as well as the rather uneven pace of modernization throughout most of the twentieth century. On this see among others (Chirot 1991; Gerschenkron 1965).

Magazines such as *Czech Mind* as well as a number of theological periodicals discussed below used a number of languages which showed Czechs critically engaged with a number of European intellectual currents. As importantly, while Czech physics was attempting to migrate into the German language, Czech biology, social sciences and theology remained intermixed with languages and a reception to pan-European and American intellectual currents. Incidentally, the Habsburg infuence on Catholic theology in Czech speaking lands lead to some interesting vocabulary differences between the predominately Catholic areas of Moravia and the "standard" Protestant version of literary Czech used in the universities in and around Prague see (Bartoš 1905).

Vitalism itself has only recently been subject to sustained critical analysis. For a generation of scholars, particularly after the Second World War, vitalism was synonymous with irrationalism and political messianism and among the progenitors of the Nazi racial state and of the Holocaust or Shoah. Many years ago, Emile Brunner wrote bluntly that "National Socialism springs from a view of man which may be described as vitalism" (Brunner 1947, 56.) "Vitalism" has also not fared particularly well in the work of the past generation of intellectual historians (and intellectuals) who sought to understand the ideas driving the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century and the eras of fascism. Georg Lukács, commenting on Ludwig Klages in his *Destruction of Reason*, noted that the philosopher and physiologist Klages "transformed vitalism into an open combat against reason and culture" (Lukács 1981, 248). Roger Griffths locates Mussolini's "ethical revolution" in "Fascist vitalism" which would "lift the apathetic, cynical individual…into a new spiritual orbit" (Feldman and Griffn 2008, 8). Various efforts have been made more recently to connect various kinds of vitalism with French fascism for example in the work of Maurice Barrès (Soucy 1972), and the varieties of Spanish fascism (Priorelli 2020) and the elitist and eugenic political theory of vitalism and 'life-force' in George Bernard Shaw (Linehan 2000).

Moir ("What Is Living and What Is Dead in Political Vitalism?", this volume) underscores that the links between fascism and vitalism in the twentieth century are often tenuous and vitalism itself is often unfairly conjoined with totalitarian and other forms of political and social reaction. Oftentimes, Moir argues, it was not vitalism itself, but conceptions often viewed as closely related to vitalism, such as holism in the case of National Socialism, monism or animism. Today, vitalist understandings of the distinction between life and non-life (properly defned) often lead to precisely the kinds of pluralistic politics and anti-reductionistic accounts of social life and of the person which work against totalitarianism and its brethren. Vörös (in the chapter "Is There Not a Truth of Vitalism? Vital Normativity in Canguilhem and Merleau-Ponty", also this volume) underscores that vitalism- even in the work of its skeptics or opponents- amounts to an openness to complexity and to spontaneity where vitalism is capable of both establishing as well as transcending norms.

Materialism from the second half of the nineteenth century to the First World War in the Czech-speaking lands especially, enjoyed the same dubious reputation of being connected with unsavory forms of politics and social life. Vitalism in both Czech and Slovene contexts was viewed, as I will show in the following pages, was a complex, perhaps a bit frustrating alternative to materialism by both secular and religious intellectuals in the Czech case (discussions of the Slovene case will be more limited). The relative openness to vitalism (of all kinds) and to understanding vitalism in their late nineteenth century present as a historical development of scientifc inquiry in the Czech case, especially, allows for a discussion of the richness of international conceptual inquiry. As importantly, the virulent reaction of Czech writers to materialism, from the very mainstream of the literary and cultural 'national awakening' and national literature, as well as the unity of Catholic religious opinion from the 1840s and 1850s to the First World War presents a reasonable explanation for the openness of Czech writers from the 1840s to the First World War to sophisticated accounts of vitalism. As importantly, there is a never articulated sense that materialism was connected (at least in the latter portion of the nineteenth century) with "Hapsburg" or "Germanness," and this cultural eversion, while not suffcient, perhaps contributed.

A full study of anti-materialism in Catholic thought in so-called "Eastern Europe" remains to be written. If anything, the rather colorful language used to describe materialism and its social, political and spiritual consequences would provide resources for rhetorical analysis and its function in scientifc polemic. To take one example, perhaps the most important Polish Catholic theologian of the nineteenth century, Piotr Semenenko (1814–1886) described philosophical materialism as an "enemy" (*nieprzyjaciel*) "who is in our houses" who uses his "poisoned sorcery" to make the faithful believe it was not God who created the world out of nothing. Materialism, he continued, which Semenenko often confates with pantheism, was "a bad taste, a rotten consolation" (*zgnila pociecha*) "which does not dare come to an honest tongue, but lives there in a despondent heart" (Semenenko 1885: 116–118). On 'materialism' Semenenko is somewhat vague. Materialism and pantheism were "that unhealthy science" "mainly from Germany" "smuggled to us mostly through France" (Semenenko 1885 :119). Regarding materialism (most probably Büchner's), Semenenko underscored that modern materialism (as opposed to the materialism of the Greeks) is much more "audacious" or "brash" (*zuchwały*) as it "combines atoms and motion, matter and force into one…thereby abolishing the core difference between what is passive and what is active in itself, the most intrinsic and aboriginal difference of all" (ibid, 124.)

For Semenenko,"Materialism wanted to derive the whole world from atoms" and in order to do so, according to Semenenko, it "begins with a core intellectual contradiction" which "endows atoms with motion, and makes passive things active without any reason or law" (*żadnej racyi i prawa*) only because the materialist wishes it. According to Semenenko, a body cannot have the properties of matter and force at the same time; it is either matter or force, not both. He declared: "If the materialist choses the active atom, [it is] a motion endowed by itself….it is motion (*ruch*), it is force, it is a center (*srodek*) of force, but it is not atoms!" (ibid, 129.)

Czech writers were no less sparing and colorful regardless of religious observance. Josef Durdík (1837–1902) was among the most important philosophers of the natural and the biological sciences in the nineteenth century. He produced, among other texts, one of the frst history of philosophy in the Czech language in 1870, the "Historical Outline of Modern Philosophy" (*Dějepisný nástin flosofe novověké*). He observed in his "On the progress of the natural sciences" that Darwin was "as little a materialist as all men who have faced the truth…matter is a mystery, therefore materialism does not explain anything" (Durdík 1874: 232). Durdík understands modern materialism as emerging in part from the "naturalism" of Ludwig Feuerbach (or more accurately Feuerbach exemplifes for Durdík the naturalism of the day). This "war over the soul" with Rudolf Wagner struggling against Karl Vogt, and Moleschott against Liebig. But for Durdík, materialism was exemplifed by its "Bible" Buchner's *"Kraft und Stoff"* (*Síla a hmota*) (Durdík 1876: 25).

Durdík responded to the work of the materialist philosopher George Stiebeling. Stiebeling wished to refute Hartmann's "philosophy of the unconscious" and to a certain extent, to promote "realism" in philosophy. Durdík observed that Stiebeling's work *Natural Science Against Philosophy* made the intentions of materialism clear, to confate natural science and the scientifc method with materialism. Durdík contended that this was not true (as many branches of science did not depend upon materialism) and many scientists were not themselves materialists (Durdík 1876). As importantly Durdík also observed that Stiebeling when discussing philosophy had a very narrow account of philosophizing in mind, namely, the philosophy of Hartmann and the dialectic of Hegel. Durdík underscored, contra Stiebeling, that "Philosophy is broader," containing not only the metaphysics of Hegel but others (albeit equally problematic). Stieberling, moreover, constructs his own system, in many ways equally obtuse. Durdík observed that Stieberling "mechanizes a view of the world, and zealously upholds it, glorifying it as a panacea for future prosperity" as have many philosophers of a "lesser order" (Durdík 1876: 12).

Matěj Procházka (1811–1889) was a Moravian church historian and social philosopher. In his rather polemical work for high school students (approved by his colleague and close collaborator Antonín Lenz (1829–1902) whom I will say more about below) he opened: "In our times, materialism makes brazen attacks on the fundamental truths of religion, an odd enlightenment forgetting of spirit for matter, an unwillingness to believe anything that they can not see, hear, or taste; (materialism) wages war (*brojí*) against the teachings of the Church about God, about creation, about man, about redemption…." Of materialism itself Procházka complains that the doctrine is (literally) "full of resistors" (*plno odporů*). He continued that "Materialists" (such as Vogt) claim that "atoms are eternal (without transformation), that they do not have certain properties, but that they are different from each other, that they are unconditional in themselves, and yet that they co-condition, that is, they are conditioned" (Procházka 1876: 9).

For Procházka, as for Lenz, materialism was the doctrine not only attacking the Catholic faith, but the ideology confronting both the political order as well as the order of nature. For Procházka, materialism was synonymous with Darwinism and liberalism. He declared that "odd liberalism" (*lichý liberalismus*) "is holding the scepter of government" and where materialism has "reached its zenith" it has begun "terrorizing in an imperial tone all naturalists and other writers in other felds of science, proclaiming all scientists as idiots and fools who do not yet proclaim: Omnia in majorem Darvini gloriam!" and whom do not " wish to venerate the golden calf of matter" (*se klaněti zlatému teleti hmoty)* but to recognize the existence of a higher world (Procházka 1876: 17).

Materialism too according to Procházka could not explain the basic phenomena of life and consciousness. He observed "by what right can materialists just style mere movements or brain tremors (*záchvěje mozku*) thoughts?" What was the connection, Procházka asked, between thought and "brain matter"? How was it possible that a "mere physical process at once and immediately be transformed into a spiritual process, so that mere movements of matter can be transformed immediately into movements of spirit, i.e. into thoughts, feelings, and desires?" What, Procházka asked, was occurring in this transformation, in which for him, the cause of this transformation from matter into spirit was also its effect? (Procházka 1876: 328–9).

But what was as concerning as the political, Darwinian, and reductionistic dimensions was materialism's theological connotations. Against the "murderous attacks" of materialism against the Catholic faith, Procházka and others such as Lenz had written a number of works. Just how disturbing Procházka believed materialism to be was revealed by his catechismal discussion of the Book of Genesis where he described in a long footnote how materialism led to pantheism and bestiality. Footnoting a discussion of how God himself created the world "by the freest will" (*nejsvobodnější vůlí*), Procházka argued that materialism and its close corollary pantheism were both equally pernicious. Procházka wrote that while "ancient teaching" sought to "elevate man", the school of pantheism and materialism "drives him directly into bestiality (*zvířeckosti*)" (Procházka 1876: 3, 35).

The association between "bestiality" and materialism was a serious association for Catholic theologians in Czech speaking lands. Their furor came from two sources: theological and political. On the frst, according to Lenz, a materialist could not philosophically believe in the miracle of transubstantiation or in the divinity of the person, of in life after death. Materialism then threatened for Czech Catholic theologians (and others) both sacramentology and philosophical anthropology. According to Lenz, "Man is a compound *ex materia et forma*", he is not simply matter but whose "essential form" was an "intellectual or immortal soul." And it was this immortal soul which is the principle of a "a living, psychic, and spiritual human life." The doctrine of materialism and the materialist does not make a real, substantial difference between things and beings (*mezi věcmi a bytostmi*) or between a plant, an animal and a human being" (Lenz 1889: 28).

Because of the lack of distinction between these elements, materialists could not believe in the doctrine of the transubstantiation of the eucharist, whereby the eucharistic wafer and wine becomes the actual body and blood of Christ. As Lenz explained, it was through transubstantiation that the bread and wine are changed "on the altar" (*na oltáři*) into the body and blood of Jesus Christ. On the altar, the bread and wine underwent a change in substance (where the accidental features of the bread and wine itself remained unchanged) where "a new essence arises after the change" while the matter, the material of the bread and wine stay the same. This was very different, according to Lenz, than a *transformation* of the bread and of the wine as it enters our blood, and there was a great distance between a natural change and a miraculous one (Lenz 1889: 28–9). According to Lenz, it was this kind of fundamental change which the materialist could not understand nor could his philosophy address. Drawing on the trope which connected materialism with bestiality too when turning to the political, Lenz thundered that any adoption of the materialist doctrine and acceptance of its "lies" "would lead to…atheistic and rationalistic stupidity [and] barbarism, which seeks to drive humanity to the troughs (*žlebům, old Czech koryto,*) of beasts and cattle" (Lenz 1878: 11).

Lenz, again discussing the political implications of materialism, commented on the syllabus of Pius IX "on errors" promulgated in 1864, underscored that materialism, pantheism, liberalism, atheism will all "unite…" against "the dogmatic, social, moral and political direction of the Church." Lenz continued that there was a "war of Christian civilization against materialism" in which Darwinism and atheism, along with materialism "have no truths in themselves." All of these doctrines, along with various political and philosophical systems (including the systems of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, which had nothing to do with materialism but were viewed, by Lenz and others as introducing a naturalistic and then a pantheistic view of the world) according to Lenz were to be rejected because they either "rejected the Divine Being" or imposed on God Himself qualities which he cannot possess (Lenz 1889: 37–38). For writers such as Lenz and Procházka any stance towards nature which was either materialist, atomist, "dynamist"2 was a stance towards politics and immortality.

For Lenz, as for Procházka, there was also an intimate connection between materialism, atheism, and political liberalism. For Lenz, both liberalism and nihilism were "modern heresies" and intimately connected to the reformation of Martin Luther (who according to Lenz paved the way for all other modern revolutions). For Lenz materialism, Lutheranism, and nihilism were all political-theological heresies, such as those which bedeviled the early Church, presenting views of nature and of politics which were untenable to Catholic dogma, insofar as it reduced soul and consciousness to base matter and motion, and could not admit any change of substance without fundamental change in accident (Lenz 1889, 5). Discussing in detail Pope Pius IX's "Syllabus of Errors", published in 1864, now infamous for its condemnation of liberalism, modernism, secularization and other modernizing forces, Lenz underscored that materialism and liberalism were "incompatible with the Christian" (Lenz 1891: 3).

For both authors, if one did not believe in the "miracle" of the Eucharist, or in the immortality of the soul, then one was radical and subversive politically. In the case of both authors, theology, politics and morality were intertwined. For both authors, whose rhetoric underscored their convictions, materialism was a philosophy (or

2 "Dynamism" was, for Czech writers, a kind of materialism, or at least a doctrine "that stood entirely on materialistic grounds" Dynamism referred to the tendency of materialist authors to use "mere matter and forces" to explain mental life and consciousness spiritual or mental "being" through recourse only to atoms. For a rather general and polemical defnition see (Pospíšil 1885, 344).

even ideology) which not only exhibited an untrue view of the natural world, but which also would lead to moral depravity and bestiality.

The association between materialism, pantheism and "bestiality" was not merely a connection made by Catholic theologians. The Czech politician and writer, one of the founders of the Czech "national awakening," František Palacký, whose work and writings have infuenced generations of Czech writers and statesmen (including Thomas Masaryk), also conjoined, as it was then understood, "bestiality" (*zvířeckosti*), materialism in order to denigrate his opponent Alfons Šťastný (Baár 2010; Trencsenyi et al. 2018; Baran-Szołtys et al. 2020).

Šťastný was a writer and political theorist who supported the agrarian movement in the Czech lands, meaning that he was a political and economic liberal, e.g. demanding a reform to agricultural laws and customary duties, education for farmers, and the relaxation of property regulations (Miller 1999: 19). Šťastný's "Concerning Salvation After Death" (*O spasení po smrti*) was part of a larger program which combined elements of materialism and a philosophical anthropology which attempted to ground man as a reasoned and thinking being without any reference outside of the human self (as he explained in his "Concerning Intellectual Morality" (*O mravnosti rozumove- Über die Verstandesmoral*)) Drawing upon Spinoza and others, Šťastný attempted to articulate an account of morality in the nineteenth century which did not depend in any way upon the external notion of salvation.

Paraphrasing Spinoza, Šťastný declared that "Man can only want his own good and he cannot wish for his own doom, assuming a man of common sense and sound reason." He argued that morality and reason could both exist without the immortality of the soul or without life after death (Šťastný 1874: 5, 6). Šťastný wanted to construct a morality based on entirely common-sense and empirical foundations, based upon his supposition that any reform of government and of society would have to begin with an account of man that did not depend on any theological structures.

Šťastný too believed that the God of Christianity was too anthropomorphized (echoing in many ways Feuerbach). Šťastný reasoned that if God created man and the world out of his own beatitude, rapture or blessedness (*blaženost*), then there was a fundamental contradiction between the attributes of God or a deity and his works, as a thing with needs could only be something which is mutable, changeable, and alive. As God had no needs this fundamentally pointed to a higher being, if he existed, which possessed the characteristics of non-life rather than life (*není života nýbrž neživot*) (Šťastný 1874, 90)

For this František Palacký accused Šťastný of not only political and social radicalism but amoralism and "bestiality." Palacký accused Šťastný of "denying everything that mere reason does not understand" not wanting to know "God as a personal being" nor giving humanity a "moral vocation." Šťastný 's teachings and the school of materialism "drives man directly into bestiality ( *zvířeckosti* )".

Šťastný immediately objected that it was not at all true that materialism and pantheism lead to bestiality, rather pantheism and materialism lead not to "bestiality" nor to atheism, but to "humanity", in the sense of humane feeling of

togetherness, brotherhood and humanity (*lidskost*). Pantheism as such was for Šťastný "a safe harbor or haven (*útulek*) for those who can no longer defend God as a being, but who wish to have God in name at least" (Šťastný 1874: 91, 92).

Very different was the reception of vitalism in the Czech context. In a 1906 issue of "Czech Mind" a review of Driesch's *Der Vitalismus als Geschichte und als Lehre* was favorable, although it complained of Driesch's obtuse style. The reviewer approvingly described Driesch's "entelechy" (which incidentally had normal declension rules and was thus part of the accepted Czech scientifc vocabulary, there was addition of a Latin or German word in order to clarify the scientifc meaning, and the word appears to have a normal declension pattern, which suggests wide usage.) The "entelechy" was a self-regulating, autonomous (*svézákonnost*) body, meaning the "autonomy of living bodies" where the entelechy "in the broadest sense" was a "real elementary natural agent that appears in living bodies." The entelechy was moreover a "constant," "an elementary constant" and "as such is (fundamental) element of natural extended reality." As such "vitalism has a place of honor in the history of the natural sciences." The reviewer continued that entelechy must be subject to the "general principle of causality" and was in the broadest terms "a real, natural, elemental agent which appears in living bodies" (Čáda et al., 1906: 455).

For the reviewer, however, "Nothing defnite could be said about the relation of the entelechy to the theory of descent." Nonetheless, the reviewer observed that "vitalism has a place of honor in the history of the sciences" having both roots in antiquity and a new phase called "neo-vitalism." The older vitalistic tradition, of which its very frst representative was Aristotle, "culminated in Blumenbach" and ended with the work of Johannes Müller. For the reviewer, the vitalistic tradition found new life in the critique of Darwin (Čáda et al., 1906: 456).

"Neo-vitalism", while having some roots in "older vitalism" was nonetheless a new movement. Able representatives of this new inquiry were scientists like Bunge, Hartmann and Otto Liebmann. Edmund Montgomery deserved particular mention for his solving "of the problem of the self and of individual organization, where Montgomery, approvingly turns against "any theory of mechanism" (ibid, 558).

The reviewer continued that so called "neo-vitalism" had "overcome the era of materialism" and could serve as a critique of Darwinism. This was among the most favorable attributes of vitalism in the years before the First World War. The reviewer continued that of the major problems which attracted the attention of neo-vitalists (such as Driesch, Fritz Noll, Eugen Albrecht) was the "psychological and organization problem of integration." The reviewer concluded that Driesch's work was "the best work on the nature of vitalism and its historical development" and although it was not appropriate for a general audience, for naturalists this was "an essential text" (Čáda and Krejčí 1908: 457–8).

For the physiologist and philosopher František Mareš, vitalism was a specifc antidote to both materialism and the various kinds of mysticism (spiritualism) which had propagated in the years before the First World War. For Mareš (1857–1942) there was a great "mystery" to life which was not appreciable by our external senses. As thinking, feeling beings we were only able to understand the phenomenon of life by appealing to our "inner sense" (Mareš et al. 1897: 165). He declared ,"Naturalists cry out: old mysticism, old vitalism is returning to physiology. No gentlemen. The nature of these phenomena cannot be determined empirically. It is only possible to describe the phenomena and determine their lawfulness, empirical exactness is no longer possible (Mareš et al. 1897, 167).

Mareš noted elsewhere, referring to the controversy that his writings on vitalism inspired, that the magazine "Life or Liveliness (Živa) wanted him to conclude that life was nothing more than a "very complex chemical process." Now Mareš was more than happy to admit that certain aspects of metabolism could be reduced to chemical analysis, and such analysis was essential for the science of physiology. However, Mareš quipped "even the world's physiologists are also living bodies, and I don't think they would recognize themselves as mere chemical processes." Mareš continued that "The living entity (*zivá bytost*)" while approachable and cognizable to physio-chemical analysis, "is also as yet something more." The analysis of the "living being" while of course belonging to physio-chemical research, cannot proceed only through physio-chemical analysis (Mareš 1904: 11).

Mareš also observed that "Mechanical-causal beliefs have dominated biology for the past half-century, and only in the last decade has there been strong opposition to it in the form of vitalism." Moreover, the dispute (*spor*) between mechanism and vitalism "was coming to an end" with the numbers of supporters of vitalism increasing, where, in the last few years supporters of vitalism outnumbered proponents of materialism and mechanism (Mareš 1904: 12).

Mareš specifcally singled out the work of Wilhelm Roux. Roux was a celebrated anatomist but who according to Mareš "also places great emphasis on inorganic experiments as explanatory analogies of life-forming processes." Roux "rejects vitalism" and like all other mechanists and materialists, "based [his] beliefs not on scientifc facts" since according to Mareš, "not the slightest process of life has been explained physio-chemically, or mechanically," not even the "circulation of blood" for example.

Mechanists, according to him, based this rejection of vitalism on the simple logical error that there is no action which is not "physio-chemical" and no action which is not "mechanical." However, in the natural world "concepts such as: power, action, cause, and so on, are vitalist in nature." The neo-vitalism of the present, according to Mareš, understood that physio-chemical explanations were indeed needed, but that mechanism and materialism did not capture all of the happenings (*dění*) of life such that "…life demonstrated its own specifc laws, which are not in inanimate nature" (Mareš 1904: 12).

The better-known (than the other Czech fgures discussed here) philosopher and historian of biology Emanuel Rádl (1873–1942) was discussed by Georges Canguilhem. Canguilhem underscored in his discussion of vitalism, with reference to Rádl, "that vitalism was an imperative rather than a method and more of an ethical system, perhaps, than a theory" (Delaporte 1994: 292). This is certainly true, but Canguilhem's discussion reduced the depths of Rádl's engagement with vitalism. Rádl, in his discussion of the history of vitalism from Leibniz to Stahl, observed that there was a great difference between "organism" and "mechanism" where movements occur upon a mechanism, while upon an organism, those movements happen

within an organism and are due to its own cause (*způsobovány*). This corresponded for Rádl to the distinction between *facere* (something else doing or making) and *effcere* (agent-activity working out, causing to occur). The latter is willed while the former is not as the latter supposes an agent which is doing, making, producing, or carrying out (Čáda and Krejčí 1905: 264).

For Rádl, this conforms to the Kantian account of the organism whereby anything which is "caused" in the domain of the organism "does not make sense in and of itself, but only makes sense for the purpose for which it takes place" (Čáda and Krejčí 1905: 265). Because of this presence of purposefulness which is intrinsic to the organism, the sciences of physics and chemistry "obscure (*zastírá*) the true essence of biology." Physics as well only addresses "the most general descriptions of matter, and these abstractions only cover only a few real phenomena."

Physics, unlike biology does not address "the true and active causes (*pravé a činné příčiny*) of these phenomena." Rádl wrote that "today's physics places its emphasis on matter…but it ignores movements, forces and actions….the intensity of these movements and their changes" (Čáda et al. 1906: 265). He observed that the old adage of "where the physicist ends, the doctor beings" should be supplemented with the observation that today the physicist "does not care" where at the "very least" they would do well to tell us how the body "could be damaged (*poškozeno*) at all" (Čáda and Krejčí 1905, ibid).

In a similar way, Rádl noted that "it was not possible to build a general theory of life on chemistry, as there existed foundational differences between chemical processes and life processes." Living bodies, he continued, "are never sustained for an unlimited amount of time (*po neomezenou dobu*)" (ibid.) Living bodies moreover sustained themselves much longer than predicted by the chemical elements which compose them and while chemical processes in inorganic nature only depend on the chemicals themselves, in living organisms there was a process of regulation to keep the organism alive and "in its entirety" (*a ve své celosti*) (ibid, 266).

Writing a bit later in 1909, Radl observed that after 1880, the most current form of vitalism underscored that "the purposefulness of life is a phenomenon *sui generis*" which "cannot be explained as the result of a summation of chance effects." The organism, according to Radl, "is quite different in kind from any inorganic substance." The organism is "not an aggregate…but it is a unit which exerts defnite control over the actions and reactions between itself and its environment." Radl wrote that Driesch, reacting against the "decline of naturalism" and the rise of materialism and the mechanistic account of life, came into the view that "life 'is a law unto itself.'" Rádl, mirroring Mareš' language, noted approving that Driesch rejected that view that life "is only a very complicated chemico-physical process" and that he underscored the "autonomy of living processes" (Rádl and Hatfeld 1930: 356–7, 382).

Continuing with Driesch and contemporary vitalism specifcally, Rádl underscored that Driesch went further and was more successful than other vitalists. Driesch was ignored, according to Rádl, because of his opposition to Darwinism. Rádl is quick to observe later that Driesch adhered to the same critique of Darwinism as that of Otto Liebmann. For Liebmann, fundamental error of Darwin's theory was that although it served as a theory of development, such a theory of development, the concepts of reproduction, heredity and variability, upon which that theory is based "are completely unclear" (*jsou úplně nejasny*) (Rádl 1908: 35).

Driesch commanded Rádl's respect because he conducted his own experiments and also examined the philosophical consequences of his work (Rádl 1908: 36). Rádl underscored that in his break with Roux, Driesch frst attempted to explain living phenomena only through reference to physics and chemistry, but eventually had to abandon that scheme and then, in his articulation of vitalism opposed "the whole of modern biology" (*proti celé moderní biologii*).

In opposition to other vitalists (Bunge and Crossman) whose doctrines he calls "static teleology," Rádl underscored that for Driesch biological phenomena needed both causal and teleological explanations, and in this sense Rádl believed Driesch to be greatly indebted to Kant, although this indebtedness changed throughout his career (Rádl, 1908: 37). For Driesch, although some of life's processes could be explained through recourse to physics and chemistry, many organic phenomena are subject to "a special, pure vital lawfulness and demonstrate the autonomy of living actions" (ibid, 38.) Empirical evidence from among other subjects, sea urchins, underscored for Rádl the correctness of Driesch's "dynamic vitalism" which among other characteristics, yielded the specifc qualities by which living organisms differ from non-living entities.

Driesch's dynamic vitalism was also defned by his attempt to describe those laws which only pertained to living processes (ibid, 39.) For example, for Driesch (and Rádl) the organism was itself a constant, and as such, the organism had differing properties than the inorganic. Rádl noted that as a developing entity, the chicken egg (and later chick, and then adult chicken) had not only a capacity to respond specifcally to external stimuli, but also as a developing organism, could change its reactions over time. This was unlike inorganic matter, which exhibited the same reactions to environmental changes, i.e. an iron always becomes hot in the presence of heat (ibid, 40.)

Among the most important ideas that Driesch articulated was the principle of holistic organization. Driesch compared an organism to an army (*armade*) and understood that both the organism and the body have a hierarchy which followed a strict chain of command for organization, movement, and other activities. Driesch viewed the soul as a kind of "commander-in-chief" of the organism, in the same way that a commander is at the top of the chain of a particular army. The organism in its functions was controlled by a number of entelechies, some higher and some lower, some very specialized (though some are governed by merely mechanical processes, i.e. the action of the lens in the eye) (ibid, 41.)

Methodologically, Rádl noted that Driesch was against induction. For Driesch, conceptual analysis and science made progress by being against induction. Like Kant, Driesch wished to exclude all 'metaphysics' and to place science on a true foundation. However, such a stance against metaphysics and in support of Kant made the move back to Aristotle more surprising.

This was the case since, for Rádl, Driesch's "Naturphilosophie" (*naturflosofe*), a kind of metaphysics,3 represented the progress of a philosophy of development. For Rádl, Hegel understood development in too metaphysical a sense, divorced from experiment and from empirical data. Darwin understood life in too mechanical a way, and too materialistically (Rádl here was at odds with Durdík). Because of this, Driesch took the "radical step back to Aristotle" passing through *Naturphilosophie*. Because Driesch represented the culmination of the doctrine of development, it would "have great consequences for the future" (ibid, 123–124). This was the case since Driesch was able to develop an account of development which was neither dialectical nor metaphysical, rooted in empirical data, but against induction. In this way, Rádl believed that Driesch's vitalism had been purifed through its overcoming of the prior limitations of numerous systems of thought and inquiry, made possible through a return to the Greeks. This is a challenging account of Driesch's work which almost presumed a Heideggerian turn.

Rádl's vitalism, and his appreciative, detailed glosses on Driesch make more sense if one considers Mareš and Rádl as working within a nineteenth and early twentieth century space (which was appreciative of vitalism as an inquiry, and for the autonomy of biology as subject to its own specifc laws). Both men's vitalism underscored, some rhetoric aside, that while mechanism and physics and chemistry were able to explain some organismal properties, there was an additional modality to life and to the organism which could not be explained through reference to physics and chemistry alone.

Both Rádl and Mareš' hostility to mechanism and materialism and their insistence on the autonomy of organism, biology and physiology is rendered more explicable when it is understood that there exists a tradition against materialism in Czech philosophy and theology. As discussed above there was a continual emphasis placed on the supposed connections between materialism, liberalism, barbarism and bestiality. This was fertile soil for vitalism in Czech and Slovene speaking lands.

Josef Durdík and Rádl (though writing a bit later) differed in their reception but not in their engagement with Darwin, both were united in their understanding of life as not subject to materialist explanations. For Durdík, the inquiry into man and organic nature was moving further and further into a knowledge of the whole. He declared that as these sciences become more refned "the more they realize the detail does not destroy the whole." He continued that "life, organism, development" have been met with similarly spectacular social and political developments (Durdík 1876: 21).

For Durdík, Darwin's theory and the theory of evolution, was unlike the rest of the natural sciences, for he understood Darwin's theory as an aesthetic and artistic one as well, as opposed to other explanations of the modern world. For Darwin not only depicted an animal form as a naturalist, but also much like a painter or a poet, ensured that the specifc features of the horse are well-represented in their

3The connections between Driesch and *Naturphilosophie* have been outlined in more detail by (Rosenstock 2017).

distinctiveness. The horse, or any creature, will be considered more beautiful the more it was distinctive (Durdík 1876: 38). It was much the same with man, where man, especially in the realm of Darwinian theory, was both an aesthetic as well as a biological subject. It is worth noting here that the union of aesthetics and nature, art and biology was one of the main premises of Kant's *Critique of Judgement*.

Durdík's statement that "materialism explains nothing" was quite like Matěj Procházka's famous observation that materialist theories were a "mountain of nonsense" (Procházka 1876). Perhaps most importantly, Czechs believed themselves to not be Germans (or more correctly Hapsburgs) and rejecting "German materialism"; this is clear in the writings of Jaroslav Goll (1897) and in the writings of Palacký.

The writings of Slovenian theologians and intellectuals were not as colorful as Piotr Semenenko's, and their discussion of vitalism was more subdued than their Czech counterparts, but with a discussion of both there appears to be a pattern of acceptance of vitalism in "eastern Europe" for reasons that remain a bit mysterious. Aleš Ušeničnik (1868–1952) writing in "Čas" (The Times) observed in his review of Boris Zarnik's "Concerning the Essence of Life" (*O bistvu življenja*) that the choice in modern times really was between mechanism and vitalism. Ušeničnik, after surveying the discussions of vitalism and materialism since Aristotle, observed that vitalism must have some power to it, otherwise it would not keep returning to the surface (*površje*). Scientists like Driesch are to be commended, he continued, are to be commended because they are not simply "rechristening" older scientifc worldviews.

Life cannot be understood, except according to a "super-mechanical principle," that is, according to other principles than the "mechanical." Vitalism was then in many ways a negative concept based on its embrace of non-mechanical explanation. Vitalists were correct, Ušeničnik observed, that living beings do indeed have something quite unique "that is nowhere to be found in inanimate matter." Life, Ušeničnik continued, and living organisms had individuality, while "inanimate substance is indifferent." Life itself, according to modern science, is highly organized at the level of even the most simple cell, "it has different parts with different functions, all of which are in the service of the whole." (Ušeničnik 1914: 140–144). But for all of his agreements with vitalism Ušeničnik was clear that when vitalism morphed into a kind of pantheism, "where all nature is one", as it did in the writings of Zarnik, then the philosophy was "charlatanism" (Ušeničnik 1914: 152).

One of the consistent frustrations in the history of science is the limitation of science to one kind of practice (physics or chemistry) and to limit locality. Existing narratives which depend on a truncated account of "Europe" or the "West" or science itself tend to obscure the complex realities of those intellectual movements outside of self-imposed scholarly boundaries. The Czech and Slovene literature on vitalism is rich and especially illustrative, not least because it mirrors those debates going on elsewhere in Europe and the United States at the same time.

In the latter part of the nineteenth century Czech theologians especially were concerned with "materialism from Germany" which must be understood not only with the European-wide debate for and against modernizing forces but meshed with developing Czech national consciousness which was anti-German (and anti-Habsburg).

This intersected, in Czech speaking intellectual circles, with a deep understanding of German philosophy and a reliance on the German language itself as a medium of international philosophical communication. Slovenian theologies were certainly engaged in the same work against modernism, liberalism and secularism, as well as Darwinism and atheism, but this anti-German element (because of the particularities of language, culture, and history) was less strong than in the Czech case.

In the case of Czech intellectuals such as Durdík, Rádl and Mareš there was undoubtably a reception of eighteenth and nineteenth century philosophy, but as in the Slovenian case, vitalism and the critique of materialism, the rejection of modernism and liberalism, was in a clear sense an effort to develop a specifcally Slovene or Czech intellectual life and scientifc program. Although the reception of Darwinism was mixed in the Czech context, Rádl's suspicion of Darwinism melded well with Driesch's own anti-Darwinian stance. The combination of the critique of mechanism and Darwinism provided fertile soil for vitalism in Czech intellectual and scientifc circles.

This stance towards vitalism melded with tradition not in the reductive sense, but with the very individual opinions of Czech and Slovene intellectuals at the time. Vitalism and the critique of materialism not only had deep roots in the Czech and Slovene cases, but also allowed for a specifcally Czech and Slovene philosophical contribution, which melded well with social and political commitments. In an era were politics and philosophy and theology were indistinguishable, the position against a doctrine or ideology was also productive (i.e. anti-Darwinism) insofar that a position against Darwinism or against materialism, was also for vitalism or for a particular view of life. Thus, intellectuals in "Eastern Europe" were not merely reactive but developed those reactions into a positive program which developed alongside full expressions of scientifc and philosophical systems, which had their roots in the many enlightenments of Europe, the many romanticisms and the many industrial revolutions.

#### **References**

Čáda, F., and F.V. Krejčí. 1905. *Ceska mysl: casopis flosofcky*. Prague: Jan Laichter.

———. 1908. *Česká mysl (Czech Mind)*. Prague: Jan Laichter.

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# **The Critical Difference Between Holism and Vitalism in Cassirer's Philosophy of Science**

**M. Chirimuuta**

*Spinoza would not have spent so much time considering a drowning fy if this behavior had not offered to the eye something other than a fragment of extension; the theory of animal machines is a "resistance" to the phenomenon of behavior. Therefore this phenomenon must still be conceptualized.*

*Merleau-Ponty The Structure of Behaviour (1942/1967, 126–7).*

*But we cannot deny that the equation between these two Weltanschauungen has not yet been found, even though it would provide us with all that we are striving for in the relationship between thought and reality. Perhaps it is erroneous to search for a stable balance between them; maybe it characterises the actual rhythm and formula of modern life that the boundary between the mechanistic conception of the world and the Goethean – whether we term that metaphysical, artistic or vitalistic – remains in constant fux. Simmel Kant and Goethe: on the History of the Modern Worldview (1906/1916).*

**Abstract** This chapter surveys Ernst Cassirer's responses to the vitalist and holist/ organicist movements in biology during the early decades of the twentieth century. I argue that examination of the combination of Cassirer's enthusiasm for holism, and rejection of vitalism, puts into relief many themes and preoccupations that are consistent across Cassirer's philosophical career, and aids the interpretation of his philosophy of symbolic forms. I propose that it is useful to read the third volume of the *Philosophy of Symbolic Forms* as a critical response to anti-rationalistic tendencies in the philosophy of Henri Bergson, and other proponents of *Lebensphilosophie*. Hence the availability of holism, as a purportedly less obscure alternative to vitalism, suits this broader agenda. At the same time, Cassirer's acceptance of holism depends on a commitment to the autonomy of biology which is at odds with the

M. Chirimuuta (\*)

© The Author(s) 2023 C. Donohue, C. T. Wolfe (eds.), *Vitalism and Its Legacy in Twentieth Century Life Sciences and Philosophy*, History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences 29, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12604-8\_6

Department of Philosophy, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
physicalism of the Vienna Circle, but consistent with Heidegger's favourable response to holism in comparison with vitalism. Yet, in the end we are left with an interpretative puzzle about how Cassirer proposes to avoid the encroachment of physicalism into theorising in the biological and human sciences while maintaining his view that progress in science is the result of increasing quantifcation.

#### **1 Introduction**

In the recent outpouring of works examining Ernst Cassirer's contributions to philosophy of science, far less attention has been paid to his writings on biology than to his numerous publications on mathematics and physics.1 However, as I aim to show in this chapter, Cassirer's refections on the science of biology and the phenomenon of life offer an interpretative perspective which affords a unifed view of many of the features of Cassirer's philosophy that would appear otherwise disconnected. Another lesson of my study is that the infuential view of Michael Friedman's (2000), of Cassirer as a philosopher holding an intermediate position between the logical empiricism of Carnap and the phenomenology of Heidegger, is questionable when one takes into account Cassirer's philosophy of biology – a topic not reviewed in Friedman's otherwise valuable book.

The quick statement to be made on the topic of Cassirer and vitalism, is that the philosopher rejected vitalism and endorsed holism or organicism.2 The quick explanation for the choice of this position is that Cassirer, staying true to his neo-Kantian heritage, reacted negatively to the ontological infationism of vitalism in biology – the positing of *entelechies*, etc.3 – and to the anti-intellectual tone of vitalism in philosophy, exemplifed in the writings of Henri Bergson. Yet, as I propose here, Cassirer's position deserves a more nuanced and involved account than this, and it is worth the trouble constructing it, because of the way that vitalism and the issues around to it – holism, the autonomy of biology, the very notion of vital phenomena – link together some of the disparate, but consistently held motivations for the philosophy of symbolic forms.

1But see Paci (1973), Krois (2004), and Stjernfelt (2011).

2For the purposes of accounting for Cassirer's opinion, it is not necessary to distinguish between these labels, except to say that 'holist' is a term applicable to a range of scientifc disciplines (e.g. Gestalt psychology and feld theory in physics), whereas organicism is more specifc to biology. I will say more about them in Sect. 3. I classify as vitalist those theories that posit some kind of nonphysical vital force, and hence the irreducibility of biological to physical laws, and as organicist/ holist those theories that assert the autonomy of biology through the positing of irreducible biological concepts of the whole, structure, or organism.

3For a more positive assessment of Driesch see the chapters in "On the Heuristic Value of Hans Driesch's Vitalism" and "A Historico-Logical Re-assessment of Hans Driesch's Vitalism" this volume by Bolduc and Chen.

In Sect. 2 I discuss Cassirer's engagement with *Lebensphilosophie* – the modish (according to Heinrich Rickert)4 philosophy of life of the frst decades of the twentieth century. Bergson is often (inaccurately) classifed as a vitalist in the same manner as Driesch, as well as a philosopher of life.5 Given that the culminating third volume of the *Philosophy of Symbolic Forms* (*Phenomenology of Knowledge)* begins with a rejection of Bergson's guiding notion of the immediate intuition of life, one might deduce that Cassirer's rejection of vitalism is conditioned by his setting this major philosophical project against Bergson, and *Lebensphilosophie* more generally. However, that would be to ignore the many ways that the agenda of the *Philosophy of Symbolic Forms* is continuous with the currents of *Lebensphilosophie,* especially the work of Georg Simmel who was once Cassirer's teacher in Berlin.

Section 2 compares Cassirer's response to the controversy between mechanism, vitalism, and organicism, with that of three philosophers associated with the Vienna Circle and/or logical empiricism – Rudolph Carnap, Philipp Frank, and Ernst Nagel. Vitalism and organicism are both positions that express the autonomy of biology, as opposed to a mechanism consistent with the proposal that the natural sciences be unifed under a physicalist standard where observation and linguistic report in biology are carried out under the same terms as in the sciences of non-living nature. As we see in Sect. 3, Cassirer's rejection of physicalism, and support for the autonomy of biology, are unsurprising given the high rank of Goethe in Cassirer's pantheon, and Cassirer's serious engagement with Kant's third *Critique.*

Section 3 also addresses the question of why Cassirer favours organicism over vitalism. Again, I show that the origins of this position can be found early in Cassirer's professional life – in the uptake of holistic principles on display in the 1910 book *Substance and Function*. The attachment to holism is persistent, and the story of the rise of holism in contemporary science is again told with approval in some of Cassirer's last publications. The more unexpected fnding is the convergence of Cassirer and Heidegger in their specifc arguments against Driesch who, it is claimed, did not suffciently differentiate the causal mode of explanation proper to the physical sciences from the a-causal mode that begins with the sui-generis *phenomenon of life.*

The role, for Cassirer's philosophy of biology, of the notion of the basic phenomenon of life, brings up the question of whether the supposedly most "primitive" symbolic form, the *expressive function* has an ineliminable role to play in the mature natural science of biology. I argue in Sect. 4 that an equivocation on this very question is a symptom of a deeper tension between a radical pluralism and Enlightenment rationalism that each fnd various outlets within Cassirer's extensive refections on scientifc thought.

4See Schnädelbach (1984, 139).

5Peterson (2016, 6). Bergson (1907/1944, 48) is careful not to align his philosophy with Hans Driesch – see Posteraro, Chapter "Vitalism and the Problem of Individuation: Another Look at Bergson's*Élan Vital",* this volume.

#### **2 Cassirer's Engagement with** *Lebensphilosophie*

One could even say, as Cassirer did of Aristotle (Krois 2004, 282), that the "centre of gravity" of Cassirer's philosophy is in the examination of living and not inorganic phenomena. This claim appears arresting, if not straightforwardly false, under consideration of the fact that the bulk of Cassirer's output in the history and philosophy of science was allocated to the physical sciences. Cassirer wrote three monographs on the philosophy of modern physics but none on contemporary biology. The depiction of the advance of knowledge offered in the *Philosophy of Symbolic Forms* vol. 3 is the story of the development of mathematical physics. Correspondingly, the secondary literature on Cassirer's philosophy of science has made physics central to his thought. However, a different picture is obtained as soon as one considers that symbolic forms are *living forms*6 – that Cassirer's mobile version of Kantianism is one in which the forms (erstwhile categories) of human thought grow and develop out of one another in an organic fashion; indeed, that the forms of the human mind are an outgrowth from a more comprehensive living order. Furthermore, it is the naturalist, Goethe, who contributes to the notion of living form, and whose infuence on Cassirer's philosophy is pervasive. Cassirer is, in his own way, a philosopher of life, even though his writing places itself in deliberate opposition to the current that runs from Nietzsche and Schopenhauer to Bergson and Ludwig Klages.

We can follow Schnädelbach in describing *Lebensphilosophie* as, "a philosophical position which makes into the foundation and criterion of everything something which essentially stands *opposed* to rationality, reasons, concepts or the Idea – life as something irrational" (1984, 141).7 Since this is a chapter on vitalism, I will concentrate frst on a thinker who has been classifed both as a vitalist and a philosopher of life, and with whom Cassirer directly engages – Henri Bergson. On the vitalism side, Bergson maintains that a fundamental vital impulse (*élan vital*) courses through the development of organic beings, rendering them unknowable by our discursive intellect – a mode of thought which must fall back on mechanistic explanations aiming at practical outcomes. Yet life is susceptible to a different form of intuitive knowing, whose basis is the insight disclosed in our own experience, since we are all living beings with an inner life. In particular, the true nature of

6The notion of "lebendige Gestalt" is discussed by Möckel (2005, 138–9), with reference to Cassirer's 1916 book, *Freiheit und Form*; and is deployed in *Feeling and Form* by Langer (1953), a book dedicated to the memory of Cassirer. A key feature of living forms is that they are unifed *wholes,* not mere aggregates of parts (see Sect. 3). For Cassirer, both biological and cultural forms are wholes in this sense (Ferrari 1996, 109–10).

7Krois and Verene (1996, xi) point out that Cassirer associates the term *Lebensphilosophie* with a broader range of philosophers than is common now, applying it to the work of Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, as well as Heidegger. See Skidelsky (2009, chapter 7) on Cassirer's response to *Lebensphilosophie*. Of course, Cassirer does not share the anti-rationalist tendencies of this movement.

temporality, *durée*, is revealed to intuition but never to the intellect.8 The antiintellectual tenor of this last point is, alternatively, something praised and condemned in Bergson's philosophy.9 At the same time, Cassirer argues, the recourse to a notion of immediate intuition of metaphysical truth puts Bergson in the ancient tradition of metaphysicians (Cassirer 1923/1955, 112). Indeed, Cassirer took *Lebensphilosophie* to be the modern manifestation of metaphysics (Krois and Verene 1996, xi).

Cassirer's rejection, but partial incorporation, of Bergsonian ideas, brings to light two of the major impulses that give coherence to the philosophy of symbolic forms: the renunciation of the metaphysician's ambition of *immediate* knowledge, in favour of the examination of symbolic mediacy; and the attempt to resolve the apparent confict between human culture ("Geist") and the realm of natural life ("Leben") – a clash much lamented within the *Lebensphilosophie* of Weimar Germany. Schnädelbach (1984, 148) writes that,

It was above all the infuence of Henri Bergson's philosophy of the *élan vital* ….. which introduced temporality as a fundamental dimension into the 'Absolute' of life-philosophy. The Heracliteanism of the ontology of life-philosophy was thus given a quasiepistemological justifcation. It is astonishing to what degree even those positions which explicitly attacked life-philosophy were affected by it. In the neo-Kantians, Kant's talk of the 'manifold' of sense became a 'heterogeneous continuuum', which was founded in the 'immediacy and irrational intuitiveness' of 'experienced life'.10

While we should not attribute these particular pieces of "neo-Kantian" terminology to Cassirer, the general claim is apt: that Cassirer's shaping of an alternative to the metaphysical philosophy of life utilised tropes of temporality and vitality congenial to that tradition.

On the frst of these impulses – the renunciation of aspiration to immediate knowledge – we may take the introduction to *Philosophy of Symbolic Forms* vol. 3 as a long argument to the point that the "paradise of immediacy is closed to philosophy" (Cassirer 1929/1957, 40).11 This piece seeks to reveal the inherent faws within various iterations of the philosopher's quest for immediate knowledge, including the attempts of Berkeley and Mach to "return to the primal stratum of sensation and its pure facticity" (p. 25). Bergson's proclamation, from the "Introduction to Metaphysics" that, "La métaphysique est la science qui pretend se passer des symboles" (quoted, Cassirer 1929/1957, 36) is the culminating point in this account – it

8This summary is based on "An Introduction to Metaphysics" (Bergson 1903/1912) and *Creative Evolution* (Bergson 1907/1944). See essays in Burwick and Douglass (1992) on Bergson and the vitalism debate.

9Compare James (1909/1936) with Russell (1912).

10 Indeed, one comes across the rhetoric of *Lebensphilosophie* in unexpected places. The fnal sentence of the "manifesto" of the Vienna Circle is: "*Die wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung dient dem Leben und das Leben nimmt sie auf* [The scientifc world-conception serves life, and life elevates it]" (Carnap et al. 1929).