Yes, I think this sums it up nicely. From what I've read there were
historically two distinct groups of "vitalists". The first group
held that the vital force was somehow non-physical. The current and
most common use of vitalist would correspond to this group. The
second group believed that there were laws distict to living systems.
These laws were purely natural and physical and could be discovered
by the methods of science. But both groups would hold "...the view
that living things have something special about them." they would
just differ regarding whether that something was physical or not.
The second view apparently fell out of favor when no one was able
to find such laws :). But I wonder. One view of life is that living
things are composed of matter that is not fundamentally different
from the matter contained in inanimate objects, it's just organized
differently. This is generally taken as an anti-vitalist sentiment.
Yet if life is recognized in terms of the organization of matter
and if there turn out to be laws associated with this organization
then wouldn't this be a vindication of the second form of vitalism?
It seems to me rather problematic to provide any definition of
life which is not vitalistic in the second sense above. For example
in the above you say that vitalism would be the opposite of
biological mechanism, but "biological mechanism" is a loaded
term. Why do you say biological mechanism and not just physical
mechanism unless there were indeed some physical mechanisms
unique to living things?
Brian Harper
Associate Professor
Applied Mechanics
The Ohio State University
"He who establishes his arguments
by noise and command shows that
reason is weak" -- Montaigne