Re: Abiogenesis

Mike Hardie (hardie@globalserve.net)
Mon, 30 Nov 1998 08:37:45 -0800

>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?

One possibility occurs to me: social-scientific laws. For example, Jerry
Fodor argues that, although psychological events may be reduced to physical
events (i.e., neurological events), psychological *laws* cannot be reduced
to physical laws -- that is, *token* reductions of the special sciences to
the physical sciences are possible, but not *type* reductions. That is, if
there are psychological laws which cannot be effectively reduced to purely
physical laws, even though separate psychological events may be thus
reduced, then maybe there are indeed laws associated with the organic
organization of matter. (Is any of this stuff relevant here, or have I
gotten some issues confused?)

Just a few thoughts (and a sneaky way of studying for my Philosophy of
Science final ;) ...

Regards,

Mike Hardie
<hardie@globalserve.net>
http://www.globalserve.net/~hardie/dv/