The History & Theory Of Vitalism

The History and Theory of Vitalism is the 1914 English edition of the survey by Hans Driesch (1867-1941), the German embryologist turned philosopher who became vitalism’s last great scientific defender. Driesch’s experiments on sea-urchin embryos, where divided cells grew into complete larvae, convinced him that no machine theory could explain life, and he revived Aristotle’s entelechy to name the organising factor. The book traces vitalist thought from antiquity to his own Gifford Lectures era. Biology went the other way, but Driesch’s challenge still sharpens debates on what explanation in biology means. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.