LECTURE III 

 MECHANISM, VITALISM, AND TELEOLOGY 



MANY non-mechanistic explanations of organic adap- 

 tations have been proposed, but they all agree in 

 this that they attribute organic structures and functions, 

 especially those that are directed to particular ends, to some 

 sort of will which is present as an uncaused cause, either in 

 some supernatural being or beings, in the universe as a 

 whole, or in organisms themselves. 



Primitive people have generally regarded all the activities 

 of nature as expressions of will, and a similar view has been 

 maintained by certain philosophers even in modern times. 

 As the only cause of his own actions which the primitive 

 man knew was his will, so he attributed all activities every- 

 where to will. Even inorganic nature was personified, not 

 merely poetically, but actually; winds and waves, lightning 

 and thunder, rain and snow, the regular succession of day 

 and night, of seed-time and harvest, of life and death, were 

 presided over by certain deities. Of course the actions of 

 all animate things were supposed to be voluntary; their wills 

 moved their bodies and directed their activities to desired 

 ends. 



But step by step, before advancing knowledge of nature, 

 supernaturalism withdrew from ordinary phenomena until 

 it dwelt only on the misty mountain tops of origins and crea- 

 tions. Likewise the voluntaristic conception of inorganic 

 phenomena was gradually abandoned, though it has long 

 persisted, and in a rather obscure form still persists, as an 

 explanation of vital phenomena, and especially of organic 

 adaptations. 



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