A biological sidelight: vitalism

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There used to be a doctrine in biology, widely taught. It was called vitalism. (see Wikipedia article on the topic) Vitalism was the belief that being alive could not be explained solely in chemical and physical terms. Although not an exact parallel, the idea of vitalism and what has happened to it seems related to the question "can we explain and even duplicate the human mind?"

Vitalism was the belief that being alive could not be explained solely in chemical and physical terms. According to Sunetra Gupta ("A victim of truth: Vitalism was an attempt to reconcile rationality with a sense of wonder," Nature, 407:677, October 12, 2000. Article available with registration.) the idea of vitalism had its roots in chemistry. Organic compounds were destroyed by heat. "The implication that the latter were imbued with a vital force gave birth to an idea that eventually came to occupy a very tricky position between materialism and idealism by endorsing the viewpoint that, although organic material might obey the same physical and chemical laws as inorganic material, life could not be governed by these laws alone." In 1828, Wohler synthesized urea. As Gupta puts it, "Vitalism did not die with the synthesis of urea, but its boundaries were pushed back a little further. Vitalists now began to contend that it was an organism's functioning rather than its constituent substances that lay outside the boundaries of human comprehension."

There was no incontrovertible evidence for this, but such vitalism was the prevailing belief among many biological scientists in the first part of the twentieth century. The opposing view was called mechanism. One of the several meanings of that word is believing that being alive can be explained in chemical, physical, and mathematical terms.

Erwin Schrödinger was a prominent mechanist. He was a Nobel prize-winning physicist, for whom the notorious Schrödinger's cat is named. Schrödinger gave a lecture series, reprinted in the book What is Life? & Mind and Matter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1944) in 1943, which concluded with lectures entitled "Is Life Based on the Laws of Physics?" and "On Determinism and Free Will." Schrödinger concluded that the chromosome was an "aperiodic crystal," not something wondrously peculiar to life. He stated that "My body functions as a pure mechanism according to the Laws of Nature." (p. 92) He went on to say that, in spite of that fact, "I ... am the person who controls the 'motion of the atoms' according to the laws of nature." (p. 93) In other words, even though it is theoretically possible to explain such a complex entity as a functioning human in physical and chemical (or mathematical) terms, yet there is a consciousness, also explicable in such terms. In a later lecture series, he tackled "Mind and Matter." In his own mind, he seems to have been satisfied with the idea that all the phenomena of life, including consciousness, can be explained in physical and chemical terms, although he was well aware that such explanations were far from complete in his day.

In the late 1950s, scientists disassembled the tobacco mosaic virus, and reassembled a new virus from the parts of two previously existing virus. The resulting virus behaved like a virus. I believe that this was done for legitimate scientific reasons, not to prove that there was no such thing as vitalism. There was considerable hue and cry over the "playing God" aspects of this experiment, misplaced hue and cry, I believe. A virus isn't alive, in the same sense that a cell is. The experiment did not involve starting with simple raw materials, but reassembly of what was already there. We are by no means yet able, in 2000, to describe a living thing in chemical and mathematical terms. I don't expect to hear about the production of an artificial cell from its constituent chemicals, any time soon. But, on the other hand, there doesn't seem to be any theoretical reason why it wouldn't be possible, just practical reasons--we don't know enough yet, and even if we did, the process would be immensely complex. There are now few scientists who are vitalists.

Both Watson and Crick have credited Schrödinger's ideas with giving them the inspiration to seek what they were pleased to call "the secret of life," DNA. Both of them were, in part, explicitly trying to discredit a religious explanation of the existence of life. Part of this pursuit was, no doubt, their fault and choice, but part of it probably was due to the unfortunate "God of the gaps" notion, that proposes that God is the explanation for anything that we cannot explain by other means, and gives the impression that, if we can explain something, that proves that God can't have had anything to do with it, which is, of course, nonsense. Knowing how an auto engine works doesn't mean that Detroit (or Tokyo) doesn't exist! Christians are treading on dangerous ground when they claim that something that we cannot now explain will never be explained, or leave the impression that God is a sort of magician to call in when we can't explain something. As Don Wood said at least once, "God is not only the God of infinity, he is the God of 2 + 2." Amen. God is the explanation for life, consciousness, and everything else. But, just because He is, doesn't mean that we can't develop at least part of a natural explanation for these things, too. We haven't yet explained consciousness in physical, chemical, or mathematical terms. This does not prove that we will never be able to.

In eliminating the bath water of vitalism, too many have thrown out the baby of a real personality, in the image of God. Or, to put another way, even if there is nothing about living things that can't be described by mathematics, chemistry and physics, that does not mean that there is nothing but math, chemistry, or physics about living things.

It seems to me that there are serious parallels with our conception of the mind. Whereas most people used to think that the mind was, if you please, vital, most of them now believe that it is mechanical--it can be explained in chemical, physical and mathematical terms. Are they right? Who knows. But, if they are, this will not disprove any Christian doctrine, except that if Christians claim that a mechanistic explanation of the mind is impossible, and are proved wrong, this will make a doctrine held by Christians wrong. We must not fall into that trap. (There were Christians who claimed that the earth was flat, or that humans couldn't go to the moon. Such claims did not advance, but discredited, Scripture and Christian faith.)

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