Vitalism, Thermodynamics, and Statistical Mechanics

As previously discussed in Chap. 2 , Driesch envisioned his entelechy to act as an agent directing energy transformation and transportation. In doing this, he adopted the second vitalistic response elaborated in the preceding chapter. Moreover, Driesch suggested that, with his entelechy, “the work of the ‘demons’ of Maxwell is… regarded as actually accomplished” (Driesch, 1908, p. 225)! Driesch drew an analogy, perhaps not perfectly identical, to the hypothetical creature known as Maxwell’s demon, named after the eminent physicist James Clerk Maxwell. By the early twentieth century, the conception of the entelechy as a directive agent akin to Maxwell’s demon gained modest popularity, particularly in relation to its role in directing heat or thermal energy—the type of energy addressed by thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. To be more precise, the vital agent was thought to have the capability to convert thermal energy, which consisted of the kinetic energy of molecules, into kinetic energy usable by living organisms, thereby theoretically enabling perpetual motion of the second kind. Now, this chapter briefly explores the development of this short-lived speculation with the following two goals. First, this chapter briefly introduces the idea of Maxwell’s demon and its impact on the late-nineteenth-century vitalist discourse. Second, it contextualizes the hypotheses that considered the vital agent in terms akin to Maxwell’s demon during the early twentieth century.