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THE AMEBIC AN NATURALIST [Vol. XLVII 



Two Diverse General Classes of Vitalistic Doctrine 

 2. Two fundamentally diverse questions are dealt with 

 in discussions of vitalism, often as if they were the same. 

 The two questions bear respectively upon (A) the need 

 for the division of science into two contrasted parts; 

 and (B) the nature of science. 



A. The doctrine perhaps most commonly signified by 

 vitalism is that there is a deep-lying distinction of some 

 sort between what occurs in the living, and what occurs 

 in the non-living; with a correlative deep-lying distinc- 

 tion between the sciences that deal with the two ; so that 

 science must on this account be divided into two kinds, 

 vitalistic and non-vitalistic. 



B. Vitalism is sometimes used to signify merely the 

 doctrine that mechanistic formulation is not adequate for 

 giving an account of nature. In place of it there must 

 then be put some other formulation, and this is at times 

 called vitalistic. The clearest statement I have found of 

 this is given by Radl : 



3. It is clear that this " vitalism" B is the doctrine held 

 for physics and chemistry under the name of "energet- 

 ics" by such men as Ostwald. It is not presented by 

 Radl as characterizing a difference between the living 

 and the non-living ; it merely holds that science is neces- 

 sarily non-mechanistic. It would be equally valid if there 

 were no living things as objects of study. 



4. Lack of clear distinction as to which of these two 

 doctrines is meant by vitalism results in discussion at 

 cross-purposes, one party dealing with the doctrine A, 

 the other with B. Not infrequently indeed the two ques- 

 tions appear to be confused in the mind of a single 



'Translation from Radl, "Geschichte der Biologisehen Theorien," Bd. 1, 



