Vital Reenchantments: Biophilia, Gaia, Cosmos, and the Affectively Ecological (original) (raw)
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Theory, Culture and Society, 2019
This paper considers whether and how 'vitalism' might be considered relevant as a concept today; whether its relevance should be expressed in terms of disciplinary demarcations between the life sciences and the natural sciences; and whether there is a fundamental incompatibility between a 'vitalism of process' and a 'vitalism as pathos' (Osborne, 2016). I argue that the relevance of vitalism as an epistemological and ontological problem concerning the categorical distinction between living and non-living beings must be contextualised historically, and referred exclusively to the epistemic horizon defined by classical physics. In contrast to this, drawing on the philosophies of Canguilhem, Whitehead, and Atlan, I propose an appreciation of the contemporary relevance of vitalism premised on the pathic and indeterminate character of nature as a whole. From this perspective vitalism expresses a politically significant ethos concerning the relationship between life, knowledge, problems and their solutions.
An evolving language coupled with a developing concept often will produce terminology that is a delight for etymological detectives but a hindrance to a person investigating the subject attached to that enigmatic term. While the linguist (and the layperson, for that matter) is fascinated by the complex lexical evolution, someone merely seeking corroborating or contradictory argumentation on a subject will often be overwhelmed by the diversity of investigation associated with such an evolved word. Vitalism fits this bill perfectly. Vitalism is a term that has appeared in various forms and been coupled with a variety of phrases or disciplines that alter (sometimes significantly, at other times not so) the plausibility and viability of the term as an indication of anything substantially beneficial. However, its use in the fields of rhetoric and human thought have been areas where theorists of all sorts have successfully appropriated this word to a great extent. Vitalism has a long and tumultuous history in the world of science and philosophy. The concept of vitalism as the idea that " life can be explained only by postulating a supernatural vital entity that animates the physical bodies of living beings " (Shaffer 553) can be traced back to at least the third century BC in the works of the Greek anatomist, Galen. However, the term as a representation of the idea that " living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things " began to be seriously examined and debated with the advent of modern science in the 16 th and 17 th centuries (Becthel 919). The development of vitalism was in large part a response to the mechanist ideas of Descartes in which he argued that animals (including humans) are " mechanical devices differing from artificial devices only in their degree of complexity " (Becthel 919). Two important branches of vitalism developed in the world of scientific inquiry to expand on the idea that " that processes of life involve some vitalistic