Good news! The élan vital has finally been discovered. 

At least, according to Stuart A. Kauffman and Andrea Roli. In their paper “Beyond the Newtonian Paradigm: A Statistical Mechanics of Emergence” (in the 2023 volume Evolution “On Purpose”), they write:

Cells literally construct themselves. The evolving biosphere constructs itself. Automobiles do not construct themselves. We construct our artifacts. Living cells constitute a new class of matter and organization of process that is a new union of thermodynamic work, catalytic closure, and constraint closure (Montévil & Mossio, 2015). In a real sense this is the long sought “vital force,” here rendered entirely nonmystical.

The authors’ willingness to use the phrase “vital force” is noteworthy, even with their immediate caveat that they mean it in a totally normal scientific way. After all, vitalism is one of the most disreputable ideas in biology. 

Flirting with Vitalism

But a willingness to flirt with vitalism seems to be growing in certain scientific circles. Back in 2012, philosopher of science James Barham pressed the prominent University of Chicago microbiologist James Shapiro to come out and say that he was a vitalist in the broad sense of the term: that he believes in some fundamental property that makes life different from nonlife. In a reply in the Huffington Post, Shapiro said that he would decline Barham’s suggestion “at least for the time being,” noting that vitalism “acquired a bad name in the early 20th century.” He did not, however, say that he believed vitalism to be wrong.

Since then, several evolutionary theorists have been arguing for the existence of some principle or set of principles that can be found only in living things — while avoiding the term “vitalism” itself. One of the most recent examples is a paper of a few weeks ago by Peter Corning. In the paper, Corning digs up a quote from the prominent 20th century biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky: 

Purposefulness, or teleology, does not exist in nonliving nature. It is universal in the living world. It would make no sense to talk of the purposiveness or adaptation of stars, mountains, or the laws of physics.

Corning goes on to bolster this assertion with the support of names such as Samir Okasha, Jacques Monod, and even Ernst Mayr. Some of Corning’s colleagues argue that this teleology is connected to consciousness and subjective experience, and that plants and fungi and even bacteria possess it, and that it makes evolution possible. If vitalism is the idea that life contains some special, fundamental element that isn’t generally found in non-life, then this is vitalism — with internal teleology or consciousness filling the role of the “vital principle.” 

So while Kauffman and Roli may be unusual in their willingness to acknowledge that their views fit in the broader category of vitalism, they are not at all unique in having views that do in fact fit in that category. In many cases, the substance is there even if the name is left off. 

Naturalistic Vitalism?

Most of these scientists would probably say that they are avoiding the term “vitalism” because it is tainted with supernaturalism. They are arguing for a naturalistic vital principle, not some spooky supernatural force. 

That is well and good, but the weakness of the theories tends to be in clearly defining what this natural principle actual is. And in taking this tack they are admitting (by implication) that the much-ridiculed vitalists had a point all along. They are acknowledging that there really is something special going on in living things, while insisting that it can be explained naturalistically. 

This is a dangerous move. The naturalist-vitalists may offer all sorts of explanations for what the (purely materialistic!) principle is that sets living things apart from non-life and allows them to thrive and evolve. But these explanations tend to be either vague or tautological. And in the meanwhile, the existence of the vital principle has been conceded. These sorts of arguments are obviously risky, and would not be necessary if Darwin’s theory were doing its job of explaining all of life without recourse to the supernatural.

The Wöhler Myth

For proponents of intelligent design, there is a natural temptation to respond to this sort of explanation with derision: “Look! Evolutionists are so desperate to avoid ID that they are willing to dredge up old nonsense like vitalism.” 

I suspect this reaction may be short-sighted. It calls to mind 19th-century Irish immigrants embracing racism against black people as a way to keep themselves above the bottom of the pecking order. “ID may be considered disreputable, but at least it’s not vitalism. Right?” 

At the very least, before we make this kind of argument, we should consider carefully why vitalism has such a bad name. Vitalism is like the Kardashian family of biology; if the Kardashians are “famous for being famous,” vitalism seems to be infamous for being infamous. It’s hard to talk about vitalism without mentioning how very, very disreputable it is. But why? 

If you had a normal school education, you might remember being taught that Friedrich Wöhler caused vitalism to be discarded by synthesizing urea in the lab. I remember being confused as a child about exactly why this disproved vitalism, rather than merely disproving one very specific vitalistic hypothesis (that organic molecules like urea can only be synthesized in living organisms). 

In reality, it didn’t. The experiment was not nearly so revolutionary as all that. As historian of science Peter J. Ramberg has convincingly demonstrated, the “Wöhler myth” (Ramberg’s term) is just that: a myth. Yet for some reason it has been repeated constantly in American chemistry textbooks for decades. 

Ramberg can trace how the myth grew up, but he is less sure about why it did. He offers some speculations, but he leaves out what to me is the most obvious answer: since vitalism had not actually been disproven, but could not be tolerated to persist as an intellectual option, a mythical demise had to be fabricated for it. 

For in reality, vitalism has not been experimentally debunked. To prove such a negative proposition (“there is no vital force”) you would have to exhaustively catalogue every movement of every particle in an organism throughout the developmental process, and show that everything was comprised of and determined by the same matter and natural laws present in non-living things. We’re not even close to being able to do that.

Vitalism and ID

No, vitalism fell out of fashion not for empirical but for philosophical reasons. It was associated with supernaturalism, and any theory that seemed to contradict naturalism had to be done away with somehow. It couldn’t be left on the table and debated! 

It’s not surprising, then, that many of the philosophical arguments against vitalism are essentially the same arguments that are used against intelligent design: 

• Vitalism is an argument from ignorance. Similar to the “God of the gaps” critique of ID. 
• Vitalism just brings back the question — what causes the vital principle? Similar to the “Who designed the Designer?” argument.
• Vitalism is unscientific because it invokes supernatural forces. The exact same argument is made to exclude intelligent design on principle. 
• There is no need to invoke vitalist explanations for the wonder of life because we already have a perfectly good naturalistic explanation. And ditto for design.
• Vitalism is unfalsifiable. The same charge is levied against ID (but not, for some reason, against, say, the theory that fish exist.) 
• Vitalism was disproven long ago, and to reconsider it would be attempting to turn back the clock.  Sound familiar? 

As far as ID is concerned, vitalism could be either true or false — it doesn’t matter. An ID proponent is not bound to either accept or deny it. However, consistency is important, and there’s no reason to give any weight to the same incoherent philosophical arguments that have been used to throw ID in the garbage heap. Biology doesn’t care if a theory has a “bad name.” Many once-disreputable theories have been proven true, and many once-reputable theories have been proven false. 

It may be that there is nothing special about life except that it was designed. Or it may be that there is some other non-physical aspect to life apart from the mind that designed it. Either way, the new trend of reconsidering vitalistic explanations points to the fact that there are more things in biology and chemistry than are dreamt of in materialist philosophy. It shows that even scientists who are not at all sympathetic to supernatural explanations are not satisfied with the naturalistic explanations that have been given. And the fact that vitalism is making some sort of comeback just goes to show that no idea can be simply shamed out of existence, no matter how hard you might try.