Publications

Mechanism, Vitalism and Organicism

Allen, G.E. (2005). “Mechanism, vitalism and organicism in late nineteenth and early twentieth century biology: the importance of historical context.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36(2):261–283.

Amundson, R. and G.V. Lauder (1994). "Function without purpose: the uses of causal role function in evolutionary biology." Biology and Philosophy 9(4): 443–470.

Beckner, M. (1968).The Biological Way of Thought. Berkeley and Los Angeles: The University of California Press.

Berryman, S. (2009). The Mechanical Hypothesis in Ancient Greek Natural Philosophy. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press.

Bertalanffy, L. (1952). Problems of Life: An Evaluation of Modern Biological Thought. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Bowler, P.J. (2001). Reconciling Science and Religion: The Debate in Early Twentieth Century Britain. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Breitenbach, A. (2006). “Mechanical explanation of nature and its limits in Kant’s Critique of judgment.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 37(4): 694–711.

Churchill, F.B. (1969). “From machine-theory to entelechy: two studies in developmental teleology.” Journal of the History of Biology 2:165–185.

Craver, C.F. (2013). “Functions and mechanisms: a perspectivalist view.” In Functions: selection and mechanisms. Edited by P. Huneman. Spring Dordrecht, 133–158.

Des Chene, D. (2001). Spirits and Clocks: Machine and Organism in Descartes. New York: Cornell University.

Drack, M. (2009). “Ludwig Bertalanffy’s early system approach.” Systems Research and Behavioral Science: https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.992.

Dresow, M. (2020). “Re-forming morphology: two attempts to rehabilitate the problem of form in the first half of the twentieth century.” Journal of the History of Biology 53: 231–248.

Driesch, H. (1908). The Science and Philosophy of Organism, Volume 1. London: Adam and Charles Black.

El-Hani, C. N., & Reis, C. R. M. (2021). Research Strategies and Value Outlooks in Scientific Practices: For an Organicist Thinking and a Pluralist Methodology in the Biological Sciences. Philosophy World Democracy.

Esposito, M. (2014). Romantic Biology, 18901945. New York: Routledge.

Ghiselin, M.T. (1994). “Darwin’s language may seem teleological, but his thinking was another matter.” Biology and Philosophy 9:489–493.

Lenoir, T. (1982). The Strategy of Life: Teleology and Mechanics in Nineteenth Century German Biology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lewens, T. (2004). Organisms and Artifacts: Design in Nature and Elsewhere. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press.

Loeb, J. (1912). The Mechanistic Conception of Life: Biological Essays. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lovejoy, A. (1911). “The meaning of vitalism.” Science 33:610–614.

Mensch, J. (2013). Kant’s Organicism: Epigenesis and the Development of Critical Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Newman, L. (1991). “Unmasking Descartes’s case for the bête machine doctrine.” Canadian Journal for Philosophy 31:389–425.

Nicholson, D. (2019). “Is the cell really a machine?” Journal of Theoretical Biology 477:108–126.

Nicholson, D. and R. Gawne. (2015). “Neither logical empiricism nor vitalism but organicism: what the philosophy of biology was.” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 37:345–381.

Normandin, S. and C.T. Wolfe. (2013). Vitalism and the Scientific Image in Post-Enlightenment Life Science, 1800–2010. Springer Dordrecht.