In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • d & D: duplo Dilema: du Bois-Reymond e Driesch, ou a vitalidade do Vitalismo
  • Sebastian Normandin
Silvia Waisse-Priven . d & D: duplo Dilema: du Bois-Reymond e Driesch, ou a vitalidade do Vitalismo. São Paulo: EDUC—Editora, 2009. 340 pp. No price given (978-85-283-0392-6).

It is no exaggeration to suggest that vitalism has undergone revitalization in recent years. There is evidence of this in both contemporary continental philosophy and the more well-grooved discourses of the history and philosophy of science and medicine. Waisse-Priven's text sits squarely in this latter tradition, but at times skirts closely to the former. While she concedes that vitalism is not on the "map" of modern science, this does not prevent her from arguing how important aspects of the idea were in the formation of the scientific and medical culture of nineteenth-century Europe. Waisse-Priven's investigation of late-nineteenth-century debates between mechanists and vitalists culminates in a focus on Germany, the physiologist DuBois-Reymond, and the primary figure in early-twentieth-century "neovitalism," Hans Driesch.

Her solid introduction to the history of vitalism comes by way of a masterful and exhaustive review of the existing literature. Waisse-Priven reminds us of important themes—the persistence of metaphysics in medicine, the move away from [End Page 307] dogmatic vitalisms in favor of more subtle analytical frameworks, and the overarching suggestion that biology is, in essence, a science rooted in vitalist principles. Turning from the general to the specific, she shows how state, industry, and science in Germany helped shape patterns of thought, and how the broader cultural clime of naturphilosophie was seminal in the development of biology. Exploring the concept of bildung ("structure" or "formation"), Waisse-Priven shows how it migrated from the social realm of the "nation" to the construction of individual character and finally into the realm of life and living development.

Charting the decline of "classic" (i.e., superadded) notions of vital force, Waisse-Priven moves to describe the development of physiology proper, beginning with the enormous influence of DuBois-Reymond's mentor, Johannes Müller. As romantic medicine and biology give way to teleo-mechanism, the enterprise of physiology moves steadily toward the models of physics, and even geometry and mathematics, giving rise to what she calls the "group of 1847," a cadre of German mechanistic materialists (DuBois-Reymond prominent among them) who wanted to reduce all understandings of living function to a question of simple physical and chemical forces.

Enter Driesch. Looking at the initial development of his career gives Waisse-Priven the opportunity to explore the myriad complexities of developmental biology—social, institutional, intellectual, and epistemological—in the late-nineteenth-century German context. She discusses the development of Entwicklungsmechanik, a term championed by Wilhelm Roux that described the dominant mechanical, and mechanistic, conception of living development. Perhaps the greatest concern underlying developmental theory in this era was causality, a notion that had growing importance across many areas of the life sciences; in physiology, for example, Claude Bernard was causality's greatest champion. Driesch functioned within this paradigm of Entwicklungsmechanik, but was also starting to think in terms of "dynamic biology," an epistemological mode inspired by the dynamic geology of the age. One can, admittedly, see elements of neovitalism as a kind of catastrophism applied to the living.

Waisse-Priven's close reading of Driesch's work and career shows us how difficult it is to separate the idea of vitalism from the larger questions of science in the late nineteenth century. We are struck by how his research into morphology and embryology also implicated him in debates about physics, chemistry, and even mathematics. Through her serious and sophisticated treatment of Driesch, we come to realize how deeply imbedded in the teleo-mechanical paradigm his idea of neovitalism is, recalling the implied subtlety, for example, in his use of the word entelechy.

Waisse-Priven concludes that much of DuBois-Reymond's life work is taken up in Driesch's research, reminding us time and again of important continuities and trends in the German life sciences, rerooting vitalist thought in a sophisticated matrix of ideas, ideologies, and institutions. Finally, through...

pdf

Share