Vitalism and Chemistry

As demonstrated in Chap. 5 , a comprehensive historical understanding of vitalism requires reference to a range of concepts and theories from the physical sciences. However, that list omits an important physical science: chemistry. In fact, chemistry played an indispensable role in the history of vitalism, a fact clearly evident in the work of Hans Driesch. As briefly mentioned in Chap. 2 , Driesch meticulously clarified the relationship between his entelechies or vital agents, and physico-chemical entities or processes. Besides energy, enzyme particularly captured Driesch’s attention. In his work Organism, Driesch (1908) offered several brief but intriguing remarks on the relationship between “entelechy and ‘catalysis’” (pp. 180–184, 186–187). First, Driesch asserted that, unlike an enzyme in catalysis, an entelechy “is quite unable to remove any kind of an ‘obstacle’ to happening” (p. 180). Second, although Driesch conceded that “the effect of the ready made ferment or enzyme is inorganic, just like that of the inorganic ferments studied by [Georg] Bredig and others” (p. 186), he speculated that “in the formation or activation of ferments we hypothetically see the fundamental role played by entelechy” (p. 187). To support his vitalistic hypothesis, Driesch highlighted that even the contemporary chemist Georg Bredig, well-regarded through his research on catalysis, “is by no means a dogmatic enemy of vitalism” (p. 186). Now, to make sense of the historical relationship between vitalism and chemistry, this chapter undertakes two interconnected tasks. First, it is useful to contextualize Driesch’s remarks to clarify why he believed that the study of enzymes might pose an obstacle to his vitalism. To do this, I will provide a case study on the intriguing historical relationship among vitalism, fermentation, and enzyme. Second, using existing historical literature, I will reconstruct the relationship between vitalism and chemistry in the early modern and modern eras. This chapter concludes by briefly comparing the characteristics of vitalism in the early modern and modern eras with respect to chemistry.