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Peter Corning and the Taint of Vitalism

Photo credit: Ed Siasoco (aka SC Fiasco), CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.

It’s kind of funny how academic debates which seem rather dull or arcane or even pedantic from the outside can provoke such intense feelings on the inside. The Mexican philosopher Manuel DeLanda once said that, for decades, in the world of continental philosophy “admitting that one was a [metaphysical] realist was equivalent to admitting one was a child molester.”1 The nearest thing to that in biology is probably vitalism, the idea that life can’t be reduced to matter and the laws of physics and chemistry.2

That’s probably why biologist Peter Corning has gone to such great lengths to clear himself of the taint of vitalism, after an Evolution News post put his name and the v-word in the same paragraph. 

In the offending post, I suggested that the work of Corning and some of his colleagues may indicate that vitalism is making a comeback in biology. This aspersion was enough to make Corning devote a whole (short) chapter in his new book Evolution and the Fate of Humankind (2025) to rebutting the notion.

Corning seems to be concerned that someone might think he is advocating some sort of non-physical, “external” élan vital that cannot be explained by naturalistic evolutionary processes. This worry does not seem strongly warranted, given that the post clearly stated that Corning and his colleagues “are arguing for a naturalistic vital principle, not some spooky supernatural force” and referred to their view as “purely materialistic.” But then, I suppose a little overreaction is understandable when the risk is so dire. 

Two Kinds of Vitalism

The truth is, “vitalism” is not really a theory at all, but simply a vague umbrella term that can cover a broad range of theories, including materialist ones. So it may be useful to introduce some more precise terminology into the discussion.

The physicist Marco Masi helpfully distinguishes between “physical vitalism” and “metaphysical vitalism” (and argues that neither has actually been falsified by science). He does so in a 2022 peer-reviewed paper in Communicative & Integrative Biology. Under his definition, physical vitalism is essentially just anti-reductionism applied to biology. It says that life cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts and that it is characterized by abstract principles which set it apart from non-life, but it does not posit any actual metaphysical essences or entities. You might also call this view “compatibilism,” taking the term from the philosophy of mind, where it refers to the idea that the existence of free will is actually compatible with physical determinism. This is the kind of vitalism that Stuart Kauffman seems to endorse when he suggests (in a book co-edited by Corning) that the combination of thermodynamic work, catalytic closure, and constraint closure is, in a real sense,“the long sought ‘vital force,’ here rendered entirely nonmystical.” 4

This stands in contrast to the views of biologists like Michael Levin of Tufts University, who takes an explicitly anti-physicalist stance, and does invoke metaphysical entities.5 Contemporary biologists who hold similar metaphysical views include Richard Sternberg (who argues for an immaterial, Platonic genome, described in the new book Plato’s Revenge, but rejects the label of “vitalist”), the recently deceased German paleontologist Günter Bechly (who called himself both a Platonist and a “neo-vitalist”), and University of Zurich evolutionary biologist Andreas Wagner (who invokes metaphysical Platonic structures as an explanation for evolution).

Image source: Discovery Institute Press.

Two Kinds of Comeback 

Physical vitalism or compatibilism is quite clearly making a comeback in biology. It seems almost unfashionable these days to be an old-school eliminativist materialist and claim that everything can be reduced to mere physics and chemistry. This is what Trinity College Dublin neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell says about that philosophy: 

For me, that idea is not just wrong — it’s wrong-headed. A purely reductionist, mechanistic approach to life completely misses the point. On the contrary: basic laws of physics that deal only with energy and matter and fundamental forces cannot explain what life is or its defining property: living organisms do things, for reasons, as causal agents in their own right. They are driven not by energy but by information. And the meaning of that information is embodied in the structure of the system itself, based on its history. In short, there are fundamentally distinct types of causation at play in living organisms by virtue of their organization…We are not a collection of mere mechanisms.6 [Emphasis in the original.]

Meanwhile, scientists who openly support metaphysical vitalism are out there, and seem to be getting bolder, but they are still fewer and farther between (and, like physical vitalists, they often do not like to be called “vitalists”). This is to be expected, since methodological materialism is basically the law of the land in academia. A well-established scientist like Michael Levin might get away with stepping outside of the confines of physicalist explanation, but most sympathetic scientists are going to have to content themselves with hints and murmurs

It must be acknowledged, however, that some of the arguments for physical vitalism indirectly provide support for the metaphysical vitalist position. 

Take Corning’s own view as an example. He has argued that the complexity of life is the result of synergy. In many of the examples he offers, the synergy in question is actually created by the choices of intelligent agents. The following paragraph from Evolution and the Fate of Humankind is typical:

Cooperation in nest-building, and in the nurturing and protection of the young, may significantly improve the collective odds of reproductive success. Coordinated movement and migration, including the use of formations to increase aerodynamic or hydrodynamic efficiency, may reduce individual energy expenditures and/or aid in navigation. Forming a coalition against competitors may improve the chances of acquiring a mate, or a nest-site, or access to needed resources (such as a watering-hole, a food patch, or potential prey).  In all of these situations, it is the synergies that are responsible for achieving greater efficiencies and enhancing profitability.

In other words, intelligent design (by animals, not God) causes synergy. For some reason, it does not seem to bother Corning that this sort of input from a mind would presumably be necessary in the cellular and even molecular systems where he also sees synergy at work. Since Corning does not think Darwin’s theory explains complexity, he maintains that synergies have been driving the emergence of biological complexity since the origin of life.7 Yet synergistic arrangements do not occur by default. They require coordination.8 And this coordination has to occur before natural selection can do its work. So if it turns out that these synergistic scenarios are extremely improbable (which seems likely); and if a system in question is too primitive to possess a brain or any internal computer-like mechanistic intelligence programmed to seek out and select synergistic outcomes (which must be the case in the earliest evolutionary stages of life, invocations of “teleonomy” and biopsychism notwithstanding); then the only remaining option is some sort of guidance external to the material structure of the organism. This could, in theory, be either guidance from an outside agent (i.e., intelligent design) or some sort of metaphysical guide or blueprint influencing the developing organism (i.e., metaphysical vitalism) — or both. 

Again, I am not saying Corning and his colleagues want to provide support for a non-physicalist hypotheses. I’m saying that they are, whether they want to or not. 

Imagine a dozen respected scientists gathered to discuss the scientific explanation for some phenomenon. 

The first eleven scientists all say: “We don’t need to consider the old Hypothesis X as an explanation for Phenomenon A, because all qualified experts agree that Hypothesis Y explains it.” 

But then the last scientist in the group, Scientist 12, speaks up: “Hypothesis Y actually doesn’t explain Phenomenon A, but my new Hypothesis Z does!”

Scientist 12 is indirectly supporting the dread Hypothesis X, because he is invalidating the claim that the first eleven scientists were using to exclude it a priori from the discussion. The fact that he is proposing another alternative hypothesis (which the other scientists have not yet ratified) does not undo the damage. 

Corning and his colleagues are filling the role of Scientist 12 when they say things like “the long sought ‘vital force,’ here rendered entirely nonmystical,” or “Darwin’s theory does not provide an explanation for the rise of biological complexity” (Peter Corning, Synergistic Selection, page 1). 

Intelligent Design and Vitalism

For proponents of intelligent design, physical and metaphysical vitalism are interesting hypotheses that may or may not be true. And they can both be seen as either a threat or as an ally. On the one hand, ID theory has largely focused on the mechanical complexity of life, and some theorists see vitalism as a way to try to weasel out of the design implications. On the other hand, physical vitalist models often point to the unique sophistication of living systems; and metaphysical vitalism entails the rejection of the doctrine of materialism, a doctrine which has been the main barrier to intelligent design arguments in the scientific community. 

I see this ambivalence as a great strength for investigating vitalist hypotheses. No one can be fully objective, but scientists should strive for it. If you have a prior commitment to methodological materialism you quite simply have no way of determining whether a non-materialist hypothesis is true or false; to determine whether there is anything outside a box, you have to look outside the box. But a scientist who wants to investigate the intelligent design hypothesis has to adopt a metaphysically neutral investigative methodology — which is also what is necessary to investigate metaphysical vitalism. Therefore, scientists working in the framework of intelligent design have an enormous advantage in exploring the evidence for and against vitalist hypotheses. 

Another advantage ID theorists possess in this discourse is simply that they are generally used to being treated as persona non grata in the scientific world, and therefore have a lot less to lose if their inquiry happens to lead them into the vitalist camp. If you’re not worried about stigma and rejection, you can follow the evidence wherever it leads.

I anticipate these advantages being especially relevant in the coming years, because, as the insightful work of Corning and many others has shown, the vitalist/mechanist debate in biology is nowhere near over. If anything, it’s just getting started. 

Notes

  1. Quoted by Graham Harman in the forward to A Manifesto of New Realism, by Maurizio Ferraris (2012). 
  2. In fact, the two leprous philosophies are related, since some of the most prominent contemporary biological theories that risk being labeled “vitalism” fall under the category of “Platonism,” which is simply the most extreme form of metaphysical realism.
  3. Masi, Marco. “Vitalism in a conscious universe.” Communicative & Integrative Biology, 15:1, 121-136, May 2022. DOI: 10.1080/19420889.2022.207110. 
  4. Kauffman, Stuart. “Beyond the Newtonian Paradigm: A Statistical Mechanics of Emergence.” In Evolution on Purpose: Teleonomy in Living Systems (page 145). Edited by Corning, Peter A., Stuart A. Kauffman, Denis Noble, James A. Shapiro, Richard I. Vane-Wright, and Addy Pross. The MIT Press, 2023. 
  5. Levin would probably not want to be classified as a vitalist, because he does not think that biological organisms are unique in this regard — he believes that immaterial Platonic forms can interact with non-organic structures as well as organic. That is an important distinction, but it basically means his view is more vitalist than vitalism. You might say that Levin’s view is to vitalism as panpsychism is to Cartesian dualism.
  6. Mitchell, Kevin. Free AgentsHow Evolution Gave Us Free Will (pages x, 22). Princeton University Press, 2023. 
  7. Corning, Peter. Synergistic Selection: How Cooperation Has Shaped Evolution and the Rise of Humankind (pages 1, 18). World Scientific Publishing, 2017. 
  8. Synergy that appears to occur “by default” is actually pre-written into the laws of mathematics, physics, or chemistry.