Acronym
Vitalisme-1
Code
01SC1018
Duration
01 July 2018 → 14 November 2020
Funding
Regional and community funding: Special Research Fund
Promotor
Fellow
Research disciplines
-
Humanities
- Philosophy
-
Natural sciences
- History and foundations
- Evolutionary biology
- General biology
-
Social sciences
- General pedagogical and educational sciences
- Communication sciences
-
Medical and health sciences
- Social medical sciences
Keywords
Vitalism
materialism
the history of science (biology and physics)
the logic of science (formal and transcendental)
the nature of life
Project description
This project consists of three parts. First, a historical survey provides representative forms of vitalism in the history of science. Second, a logical analysis shows that quasi-vitalistic concepts in physics offer constitutive principles indispensable to science, while vitalism in biology is at best regulative and has no empirical significance. Third, at present life is a regulative and irreducible concept.