vitalism

Noun

Meaning

The doctrine that all the functions of a living organism are due to an unknown vital principle distinct from all chemical and physical forces.

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Examples

Exact knowledge is the enemy of vitalism. Francis Crick

I also suspect that many workers in this field [molecular biology] and related fields have been strongly motivated by the desire, rarely actually expressed, to refute vitalism. Francis Crick

In societies where one sees a higher prevalence of 'modern values' - individualism, vitalism and self-expression - there's also higher reported job satisfaction. Edmund Phelps

According to the concept of vitalism (vital force theory), organic matter was endowed with a "vital force". citation During the first half of the nineteenth century, some of the first systematic studies of organic compounds were reported. Source: Internet

The results of this experiment implicitly discredited vitalism — the theory that the chemicals of living organisms are fundamentally different from those of inanimate matter. Source: Internet

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