Talk:Vitalism/Archive 1

"Naive biological theories"
The way this is phrased is ambiguous, and does not reflect the phrasing of the source. In the source, it talks about "naive biology" as a field of study that is conducted by young children. This would translate to (naive biological) theories. The way it reads right now however, it seems to say naive (biological theories). Not only is this a gross misrepresentation of the source, it's does so in violation of NPOV. Starting the sentence with "more recently" is a clever lie designed to imply that those theories which rely on vitalism have largely been abandoned across the board, which is simply untrue (Ref: TCM, Homeopathy, Naturopathy). Further, the words don't add anything to the sentence.

I'm going to remove the "more recently" immediately, because it doesn't add anything to the article, and represents an inappropriate use of wikipedia. I'm going to leave the rest as is for a week or so, to see if anyone has thoughts, but if nobody does, I'm changing it to something along the lines of "Vitalism is common within naive biology (children's understanding of biology)" --Dove

Not A Vital Article
Well, this is a bad article. Perhaps the worst ever. Tell me, did the writer[s] consider the possibility that the reader is interested in vitalism? Or in learning about the history and ideas of biological vitalism? No, of course not. What the reader hopes to find, when he types "vitalism" into the search box is yet more tiresome rants about pseudoscience, bioenergy, phlogiston, homeopathy, the definition of science, Popperism, falsifiability, Mesmerism, acupuncture, New Age, etc. - those hot topics skeptics like to think about when they are masturbating. What does phlogiston have to do with vitalism, I know not, but there is a nice fat paragraph about it here. But let us examine one of the very first statements of "fact" in this article: It was argued that the essential difference between the two forms of matter was the "vital force", present only in organic material. If the author knows of a vitalist who has claimed that crystals of urea or chunks of roast beef have "vital force", I would like to hear about it. Lionel Beale was a notable proponent of vitalism in the late 1800s (and I notice he is not mentioned in the article, nor are his opinions given, but no matter, we have Daniel Dennett!! What more need we?). Beale says (Protoplasm, 1874): ''The most earnest vitalist will no more deny that albumen may some day be made artificially, than that phosphate of soda may be produced in the laboratory. All he maintains is that the formation of albumen, &c., in the organism is not due to the same circumstances, or effected in the same way as would obtain, if it were possible to form it in the laboratory... It seems almost puerile on the part of opponents to what they term a vital principle to go on reiterating such statements... ''

It is an ill omen when an article about vitalism begins with an assertion that vitalists denied, and then ends with an assertion that vitalists absolutely denied... Vitalism, or bioenergy, is often explained as being an electromagnetic(EM) field and is supported by the theory of quantum physics. This is absolutely contrary to what biological vitalism was. "EM fields", bioenergy, and all that are physicalism. Vitalists maintained the diametric opposite position, that 'vital force' is not physical energies, fields, forces, etc. If there is a statement more opposed to biological vitalism than what is written above, I can't think of it. I recommend that this article be split into two - an article about vitalism, and another article where interested parties can rave about qi, prana, UFOs, astrology, parapsychology, new age, Reiki, witches, goblins, witchdoctors, the Inquisition, Popperism, 'magical thinking', Hollow Earth, pyramid-energy, Kirilian fields, and whatever else they like. The first can be put up on Wikipedia, the second article can be tossed in the dumpster, or maybe put up on talk.origins.

Korkscru 09:09, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

The four humours
It seems like "the humours" in the second paragraph should link to http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_four_humours rather than the page on "Humour"

It seems to me this article is mis-categorized. The thing that distinguishes this topic from science is the lack of the rigorous application of the Scientific Method, and a lack of of peer review by recognized experts in the associated scientific disciplines. I am not sure which other Wiki category this article belongs in, but Science or Biology is not correct, IMHO. SailorfromNH 03:00, 21 November 2005 (UTC)


 * This is an interesting point and one that has been debated in recent critical scholarship on the subject. Of course, Vitalism as a cultural/intellectual movement and preoccupation which is to be distinguished from Vitalism as a pure scientific discourse as is described above.  Vitalism in Modern Art, 1900-1950 (Richard Lofthouse) investigates the cultural aspects of this phenomenon.

emergent process = vitalism??
I think this passage is a bit weird:
 * ''In terms of the biology of the cell itself, a return to vitalism may be seen in the holistic idea that life is an emergent process which cannot be accurately described simply by understanding any number of chemical processes which occur in the cell.

AFAIK, despite of proposing emergent phenomena, it does not states that it is due to something like a special "vital principle", but it is yet totally mechanistic. Actually, seems to me that the idea of life being an emergent process, rather than "something by itself" is much more mechanist than vitalist. What would be a non-vitalist vision of a life that also is not an emergent process? --Extremophile 19:31, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

WTF?
This has got to be the most over-wikied article I've ever seen on Wikipedia. A link for ATTENTION???  WTF?  --dreish~talk 15colon18, 2 June 2006 (UTC)


 * OK, fair point about "attention", but it does not seem over-wikied elsewhere. Paul B 10:58, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Excellent job!
Paul, you have done an excellent job restructuring and clarifying this article and concept. Thank you! --Dematt 11:54, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

There is a clear confusion here in this article about emergent behaviour; emergent behaviour is not a controversial phenomenon as far as I am aware, but a simple consequence of complexity in non-linear dynamical systems. The controversy is only about whether things like intelligence are "emergent properties" of a complex system, and possibly whether life itself is. The relevance here is simply that not all phenomena at a high level can be explained in lower level terms, so exactly what is meant by vitalism must be clearly specified if it is not to include clearly conventional "high level" concepts.Gleng 12:40, 19 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Thank you Gleng. Emergentism is very controversial. If you have evidence or sources that show that chiropractic proponents have that view (not all phenomena at high level can be explained in low level terms), then that will be useful for the article as an example.  KrishnaVindaloo 05:01, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Not aware that it's controversial; the current explosive growth in "systems biology" in molecular biology, and in cognitive neuroscience (but pretty well all neuroscience) is predicated on the knowledge that, above a certain level of complexity, the behaviour of non-linear systems cannot be solved analytically but must be studied empirically through simulation. The goal to achieve wiring diagrams, of cells and circuitries are not blueprints for direct understanding, but blueprints for understanding through subsequent simulation; they are intermediate goals not final goals. If you are interested, then Eric Bonabeau has written a number of popular articles as well as his technical contributions in PNAS and elsewhere, and Burggren WW, Monticino MG. "Assessing physiological complexity". J Exp Biol. 2005 Sep;208(Pt 17):3221-32. Review. is one starting point. In the UK, the major challenge in biology is seen as "integration across levels" -this theme is prominent in the missions of the MRC and BBSRC; and is evident in the establishment of many new research centres in Integrative Biology or Systems Biology (including the one I work in). Phrased most simply, the general problem is that while strict reductionism has found low level answers for low level problems, relating these to higher level problems has not been conspicuously successful because of the complexity problem. This is apparent perhaps most strikingly in molecular biology, where the focus is now shifting to studying gene networks as complex systems with emergent behaviour as a way to understand gene function. Whether you call it holism, or integrative biology, or systems biology, the names are different but the ethos is not so different, it is the recognition that complex and interesting behaviours are often the properties of intact systems but not readily recognisable if at all in the behaviour or properties of the component parts. Nobody would call it holism because of mystical connotations; strip away the mysticism and its not so much controversial as conventional. As far as chiropractic is concerned, probably the article here on WP is a good an entry as anything, as it's a very well and carefully sourced article. Gleng 12:45, 20 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Emergent behaviour, non-linear dynamical systems? Wow, Gleng, you seem to have your finger on the pulsebeat of the universe.


 * But KV, I noticed that Gleng tells you that emergent beaviour is not controversial, and you then asked Gleng for evidence or sources about chiropractic. Unless I missed something, he never mentioned chiropractic when he originally asked you about confusion in emergent behaviour. What's up with that?  I thought we were finished with your fixation on anti-chiropractic themes. I hope that we are not about to begin yet another endless loop.  Can you please clear this up?  Thanks  Steth 23:29, 20 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry Steth, emergentism is controversial. The quantum mechanical explanation of chemical bonding and the enusing successes of molecular biology led to the almost complete demise of emergentist views of chemistry and biology. (McLauchlin 1992). Only in philosophical circles has there been some attempts to develop a notion of emergence, but it still implies an ontological irreducibility. Its a minor topic of intense debate in psychology, biology, systems thinking and philosophy in general, and its not used in scientific testing because it goes against classic scientific reductionism. I have not mentioned chiropractic at all here, and only Gleng has added some rather narrow minded and transparently over-defensive New Age POV to the article without sourcing. I was giving him a chance to either source or remove it. Ref: McLaughlin, The rise and fall of Bristish emergentism, in A Beckermann, HFlohr, J Kim eds; Emergence or reduction? Berlin. Walter de Gruyter.  KrishnaVindaloo 03:38, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

''Rise and Fall of British Emergentism, Berlin, Chiropractic! Of course. I always use them in the same sentence. NOT!''

Sounds like a lot of gum-flapping to me, KV. It seems to me that you are revealing your usual hatred for all things holistic/alternative/chiropractic and you are just trying to spray your sticky scent in a new corner of WP.

Gleng, who has an exemplary record and the credentials, not to mention a few barnstars (I have one myself, you know), is much more credible as an editor. Unfortunately you, I am sorry to have to remind our audience, has a history of deceptive subterfuge in order to soapbox your severely biased POV. Yet you dismiss Gleng's very polite replys with a wave of your tongue and state your opinion as fact and as everyone's view.

For example, you seem to throw around Williams as you used Ford over in Pseudoscience (remember?) So if you lied to us then, how do we know you are not lying to us now? You see what I mean, KV? Others in Pseudoscience have questioned your use of Williams. With your documented history of lying, we don't have to assume good faith anymore you know. So maybe Gleng has some good points and edits. What do you think? Steth 05:01, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

KrishnaVindaloo and the validity of vitalism.
I created a criticism section for those who want to argue against the validity of vitalism and KrishnaVindaloo takes and runs... They turned it into the "vitalism in alternative medicine" section that included several well respected professions, homeopathy, naturopathy, acupuncture, anthroposophy, biodynamic agriculture and chiropractic in between the critical citations. A Blatant lack of collaborative intent. These actions are not beneficial to the spirit of WP. Or should I say the vitality of it? KrishnaVindaloo should be encouraged to "collaborate" with the fellow editors and learn to discuss controversial edits on the discussion pages. Thanks! --Travisthurston 04:33, 21 September 2006 (UTC)


 * homeopathy, naturopathy, acupuncture, anthroposophy, biodynamic agriculture and chiropractic maybe respected by some but they are not science. --Pjacobi 06:11, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

It seems that Krishna Vindaloo has a history of not playing well with others. Perhaps you are familiar with how he crashed the Pseudoscience article and wore out all the editors:

-- Steth 05:04, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Vindaloo's Waterloo


 * Steth, Gleng, and Travisthurston. You are pushing a minority POV on the vitalism article. The claims made for vitalism (either weak or strong) of being scientifically supported are fringe. You are persistently failing to produce verifiable sources, and you are making a set of fringe practices look like they are supported by science. Wikipedia is not a soapbox. NPOV policy states that pseudoscience is to be explained how science sees it. And could you somehow find a way to stop each other from throwing unfounded accusations. Thank you. KrishnaVindaloo 05:28, 21 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Fair enough KV. We will try to find a way to stop each other from throwing unfounded accusations and will you please stop giving us reasons to continue. Thank you   Steth 12:42, 21 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks Steth for joshing me, I appreciate your humour so don't stop. I slipped into jargon - (although I am primarily a medical biologist, I have a first class Honours degree in Mathematics, and have published fairly extensively in computational neuroscience) apologies. Yes Pjacobi, absolutely, these are not science as I understand it, but this article is about Vitalism, and these fields use vitalist concepts, as does much of science, depending on what you mean by vitalism. I didn't reference my comments on emergent behaviour except to point to a few recent articles as this article is not about emergent behaviour - there is already a good article here on that, and an article on emergent behaviour could readily be sourced wholly from Nature, Science and PNAS.


 * There is an important point here; the early part of the last century saw a determined effort to eliminate vitalism from psychology, this effort was to eliminate "mystical" vitalism. If you separate vitalism from its mystical aspects and identify it with all "higher level concepts", then it becomes unproductively indistinguishable from many very conventional aspects of science. This needs to be discussed, as it is in the article tentatively. However if you characterise vitalism as unscientific, it is important to be rigorous, because if you define vitalism in a way that includes emergent behaviour then that conclusion is simply utter nonsense.


 * On references, I agree with Steth. I do not rate Williams as a source; good sources are peer reviewed, this is not; it's a popular book not an academic book; the author is not one who has published in the academic literature extensively as far as I can see, so is not transparently an academic authority; useful sources are available for verification and reference on line, via PubMed for instance; this is not. Personally I would strip out all references that are not international peer-reviewed sources, indexed in e.g. Index Medicus, and available at least in abstract form openly online. Sources do not merely need to be verifiable in theory; they need to be verified in practice.Gleng 09:55, 21 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Williams is written by many contributors, and Williams is the chief editor. They are all experts and PhDs or professors of some kind or other, and they review each others contributions as a habit. All of the edits being used on various pages from that book are corroborated either on the web or in other reliable sources. The whole book is written from the standpoint of science and it gives reliable views on how science sees pseudoscientific concepts and activities. It is a reliable source. KrishnaVindaloo 08:16, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

OK, let's be brutal. I have published over 300 reviews, papers, articles and book chapters. Of these, only about 150 are in international, peer-reviewed journals, and I wouldn't recommend that anyone cite anything of mine from an unreviewed source if thre is a reviewed alternative. If you're now citing an authored chapter within Williams as a source, at least give the chapter source and the chapter author. My biggest problem with this is verifiability, exactly who says exactly what and in exactly what context. My second question is, if the source is authoritative, why there isn't a peer reviewed alternative? We scientists after all invented, own and operate the peer review system, we can at least use it.Gleng 09:46, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

POV pushing?
Finally I note the attempt by KV to smear me (and others) by accusing me and others of POV pushing. I won't speak for the others, they can do so for themselves if they wish, but if they are wiser than me they will rise above it.

I have noted, that many advocates of "alternative medicine" here on WP, often advocates of views that I personally consider not to be well founded, complain that their opponents hold "double standards". In particular, they claim that the standards of V RS demanded of claims on behalf of alternative practice are high, but the standards of V RS for derogatory views are low. I cannot defend this, and will never try to; I see no excuse for "scientists" ever to be less than meticulous and rigorous in their sources for what they insert into articles, choosing the very strongest, and citing them carefully and accurately. I have also noted, that advocates of a pro-science position sometimes seem to regard it as dishonourable to present an argument with which you might disagree in a clear lucid and coherent form, as though "making an argument sound plausible" is somehow itself POV. I am so deeply a part of the scientific and medical establishment that I might hardly be expected to dissent, but again I do dissent, and indeed I cannot dissent too strongly from this. It seems to me that as scientists we have a duty to address not some strawman cariicature of a position with which we disagree, but have a duty to address the most compelling and coherent version of that argument that can be phrased. Our duty therefore is first to "write for the enemy", in WP terms, in expressing their arguments in a serious form. If we cannot counter these, the best arguments, then we should indeed pause for thought, but if we can, then with Popper our views have withstood a determined assault and have survived.Gleng 10:55, 21 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Amen! -- Fyslee 09:18, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Specific source: McClaughlin
Trying to verify KVs reference to McClaughlin. McClaughlin is a distinguished philosopher of science and historian, writing apparently mainly about "emergentism" in early 20th century views. Haven't found the original source (book, not available online), but it's widely cited and discussed. This is what the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says about it: "Still, the apparent independence of various confirmed high-level principles and the practical impossibility of deriving them from fundamental principles suggest that Brian McLaughlin's (1992) claim that there is ‘not a scintilla of evidence’ in favor of any sort of ontological emergence is overstated or at least highly misleading." . So it seems that "emergentism" is controversial in some quarters, even if it is accepted in science; although maybe philosophers find everything controversial - this is their job after all. To be honest I'd never even come across the term emergentism, I don't think it's one that scientists commonly use. Emergent behaviour really hit the biology radar after Kauffman's work on complexity in the 1990s and after the shock of finding that the human genome contained many fewer genes than expected.Gleng 11:39, 21 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Finally finally, I've inserted a reference that discusses the various meanings and uses of innate. It's a balanced source, the perspective is from a chiropractic critic but an "insider critic", it's a scholarly source available online from a notable academic, it discusses criticisms of the use of the concept of innate both past and present and identifies the various different senses in which it is used today. It's cited for fact (that innate is used to mean particular things) not for opinion, so I don't think the fact that he is a chiro critic is relevant. As a source of opinion who believes that chiropractic should actively exclude vitalist concepts though, this is a good example of a good source, if anyone wishes to use it in this sense.


 * Incidentally, any chance of a better source than Carlo - 1966 predates even the molecular biology revolution, and certainly all emergent behaviour work, so it looks to me as though he's making a historical comment but again, the work isn't available online, which is a shame, so I can't be sure what he actually is talking about. Maybe you can post the exact words here?
 * Gleng 12:40, 21 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the source, Gleng. I'm making the article fit the source in context.


 * Just a few pointers for yourself Travisthurston and others.


 * Gleng, your representation of Keating was erroneous, and made it look like chiropractors once worshipped innate as a god, and now they don't. I wasn't born yesterday. The fact is innate intelligence is still taught as a vitalistic subject, and it is still considered in exactly the same way that acupuncturists, homeopaths, vedic scienctists, and other alternatives consider their version of vitalism. So please don't make such promotional misrepresentations.


 * There's no such thing as modern medical vitalism. It doesn't exist. Unless you count those chiropractic machines that claim to measure innate


 * Keating concludes that theres no evidence for innate. He says its a spiritual concept.


 * Lets try to make the article represent what the majority science view think about vitalism. If there are theorists that say vitalism is emergent, then it should be represented as such. If alternative therapists believe stuff about vitalism they should not be made to look like vitalism is testable and real. It is not. The reality is, vitalims was dismissed as pseudoscience centuries ago in favour of biochemical explanations. The majority sees vitalism as PS. They see it as pseudoscience within alternative therapies such as qigong, chiropractic, and all the others. Whether biochemically explained or mystically explained, vitalism is untestable and pseudoscientific. Evolution does not prove the existence of God, and biochemistry does not prove the existence of elan vital. So lets try to adhere to reality and write a properly representitive article. Thank you. KrishnaVindaloo 04:30, 22 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I give up. KV's edits have made this article a shabby and unscholarly mingling of OR, weak sourcing, and personal opinion. I have to leave it to others to build this article from V RS, leaving OR and interpretion aside. My advice is as above; strip out all weak sources as above, strip out all personal opinion, rebuild from what V RS actually say; report, don't interpret.Gleng 07:15, 22 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Please be more specific Gleng. Your accusation is very sweeping and entirely unhelpful. If I am to improve this article, I need to know exactly what you are complaining about. From my work today, I have adhered tightly to the sources presented. If you wish to present vitalism as a new science, then present some sources that state that it is. Otherwise, the majority science view is that vitalism is pseudoscientific, untestable doctrine, and metaphysical. KrishnaVindaloo 07:33, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Integrity in citation
For example, look carefully at your recent edits, and now look exactly at what Keating says: he summarises in the Introduction, and then expands, but the introduction is a good preview:

''What are we to think of Innate Intelligence? Is this a legitimate metaphysical proposition, a worthy basis for the science and art of chiropractic? Is there a justifiable place for concepts like innate intelligence in a discipline which seeks advancement in knowledge by means of critical thinking and empirical evidence? The answer I suggest, depends on what is meant by innate intelligence, and at least four meanings (and several derivatives) are available to us ''

The bold for emphasis is mine. KV, is there any sense in which your edit is true to the source it cites?

"...vitalism is pseudoscientific, untestable doctrine, and metaphysical..." Well this depends on what you mean by vitalism. Vitalist concepts that do not pretend to be scientific can hardly be called pseudoscientific. Nobody would sensibly call a religious concept pseudoscientific. Whether vitalist concepts are untestable depends on what you mean by vitalist concepts; if you do define vitalism in a way that goes beyond mysticism to encompass all high level descriptions, and this encompasses for instance motivational states (anger, fear, stress etc) or emergent behaviours, whether in computational systems or biological systems, then the ideas either that there are no testable predictions or that the concepts are not wholly scientific must be met with utter bemusement. If you go on to call it a doctrine (presumably with literal not merely perjorative intent), then find the lines of the doctrine in the doctrine as laid down, not in what it you assume to be.

If you want to know how chiropractors mean by innate, and don't wish to find out yourself by reading, then you could after all always ask them, there are several editors here who are chiropractors after all, and I would have thought that chiropractors are the best people to explain what chiropractors mean, and I'm not sure what they might have to gain by lying. So let's ask them.

Dear chiropractor, when you use the term "innate intelligence" do you use it literally, in the sense that Palmer did, of an internal mystical intelligence separate from the body but overseeing its health, a kind of "Gaia" of the body? Or are you using the concept metaphorically, to "stand for" the physiological systems of self repair as regulated by the nervous system, some of which are well understood and others of which are known to exist but which are as yet very poorly understood?


 * My chiropractic POV: Innate Intelligence today is used to describe the physiological systems of self repair that are too complex for the patient to understand and have not yet been fully described by science. As it was not necessary to understand the mechanisms that caused self healing in order to assist it, the term innate intelligence can be used to lump all these mechanisms into one so that discussion concerning its effects could be continued, similar to the use of the word homeostasis.  In other words, this is just the language of chiropractors.  It is expected that one day the full mechanisms will be understood as scientists are able to map and investigate the processes of thought and expression of what creates intelligent life and self healing. If not, it remains a good metaphor to describe all of these functions. --Dematt 15:14, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

One thing that distinguishes chiropractic from conventional medicine, for good or bad, is that chiropractors talk to their patients more, and talk in simple terms to try to give the patient the sense that they understand what the chiropractor is trying to achieve - the Science and Technology Committee Report into Alternative Medicine in the UK specifically addresses this, and you can find this citation in chiropractic. Whether it's a good thing to make the patient feel they understand, or whether it's a bad thing that things are oversimplified or expressed in what seem to be woolly terms, is a matter of opinion. But not to understand how terms are used, why and in what context and what sense, and to then simply assert a misrepresentation, is a failing of scholarshipGleng 09:04, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm lost
KV, Gleng, Steth, what the heck are arguing about all the time? Can you please re-state the hotly debated dissens in a short, accessable form, so that latecomers can learn, what's the problem here? --Pjacobi 09:56, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Sympathies. The allegations, and they are serious ones (hence the heat) are these:

A) That KV is using WP to assert an opinion of what he believes to be true, and appearing to support it by weak references that are not easy to verify, and that when they are checked they do not say what they have been claimed to say. The allegation is thus one of intellectual dishonesty in the use of sources.

My advice is to first find V RS and then build an article reporting what these actually say, explaining the context and meaning with care and balance.

B) KV's allegation is that I and others are using this argument as a screen to promote our own POV, and that what he is asserting is self evidently true, whereas chiropractors for instance are not "legitimate" editors and cannot be expected to be able to present issues in a balanced way. I am, according to KV, clearly biased because I have supported their arguuments on some issues, and so anything I say should be discounted similarly.

Specifically, KV seems concerned to represent chiropractic (inter alia) as a pseudoscience because it uses vitalistic concepts like innate intelligence. This argument requires characterising innate as a vitalistic concept, which depends on a) what you mean by vitalism, b) what is meant by innate and c) what is meant by pseudoscience. What is apparent in all the above is a) that innate is used in many different ways now and different ways again in the past; b) that the concept of vitalism needs to be "precised" whenever it is used because different people mean different things by it in different contexts, and there is a sense in which many minstream science concepts can be described as essentially "vitalist"; c) that the use of the word pseudoscience is essentially derogatory, and many believe that it should be strictly and carefully applied to subjects that appear to be scientific but which in fact are not, so excluding mysticism for instance, which cannot plausibly be confused with real science. Because of the inherently derogatory use of the term we believe that discussion on pseudoscience should be carefully confined to reporting how it is used in V RS.Gleng 10:43, 22 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Pjacobi, I understand your confusion. There is a long and unfortunate history with this user, which I, as a fellow skeptic, find distressing. I often agree with his POV, but find his manner of editing to be counterproductive. He even removes edits that other skeptics have fought hard battles to get included, which have been included because of good sourcing and consensus among editors with opposing POV. That takes a lot of effort! It's not so much his POV, but his manner of editing that's the problem. Skeptics must have a higher standard than can be expected of others, and KV is failing us in this regard. When he meets resistance from fellow skeptics, he even attacks them, which means he alienates potential friends here at Wikipedia. Without such friends, even the best of edits that are well-sourced by all the rules, won't stick, since alties will just remove them, and other skeptics find it hard to defend him. -- Fyslee 10:58, 22 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I was more looking for the factual dispute in a nutshell, not in characterisation of the involved editors. Like ''faction A wnats to write X, faction B wants to write that.
 * And a very pragmatic consideration to minimize wasted editor's time: If the dispute is about Chiropractic, why isn't it battled out there?
 * Pjacobi 11:14, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Good question; it was of course, long ago now, and long settled. The discussions on the pseudoscience page have been ground down by the same conflict, now transported here because KV wants to associate vitalism with pseudoscience in a generalised form. But it clearly isn't just about chiropractic, but seems to be about everything. What I want is this to be an article about vitalsim, how it has been used in V RS, what people meant by it, the nature of the disputes etc all through V RS and avoiding POV. What KV seems to want is to use this article to pass judgement - vitalism is bad, vitalism is pseudoscience, XYZ have vitalist elements, therefore they are bad and pseudoscientific. Chiropractic is merely an example here of an approach that permeates this article, and an approach bolstered by misleading use of citations.

So what would I like to see. Strip out every disputed assertion that isn't backed by a V RS that has been verified; why I press that they must be actually verified not just verifiable, you can find out on pseudoscience Talk. I would like every mention of vitalism qualified by the context in which it is used - in what sense was X using it, and when? I would like mention of specific examples to be qualified to specify the context and meaning. I would like assertions that can be taken as derogatory to be declared as opinion (not as fact), and identified as the opinion of a notable source, and given V RS for that opinion, and enough context given for the opinion to be understood in the context in which it was stated. Why I can't do this here myself, again see the PS Talk page. But this strategy for building a good article needs the clear will of the editors here to back the kind of rigorous revision that is needed. Gleng 13:10, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Restored homeopathy specifying historical vitalist elements, referenced fully in homeopathy so think the wikilink is adequate here.Gleng 10:57, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Recent article evolution
I've edited generally as an illustration to remove material that I think is badly sourced, logically unsound, or opinionated without source for the opinion.

Falsification: this edit needs some explanation. Curiously, this section contradicted an earlier section claiming that vitalism was not falsifiable and had no predictions by displaying an example both of prediction and falsifiability. I edited this section because "Vitalism" is not A Theory, but a characterisation of many different ideas.

Dawkins is an excellent source for opinion of courcse; it needs only to be clear what he actually said about what, enough to understand exactly what he meant by vitalism and exactly what he meant by pseudoscience, and exactly where to find his words in the book.

The children quote was moved simply because it was a non-sequitur as placed, and moved to the lead. Whether their ideas are in fact misleading or whether they are at that age valuable guides to understanding the world I don't know - what did the authors say? Pro tem I deleted a suspected inference beyond the authors conclusions, but it may have been the authors' own inference
 * Note, since checked, it was indeed an inference beyond the authors words, I have replaced it anyway with a secondary referenceGleng 21:08, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Finally removed the "wiring diagram" account for reasons discussed previously. Not because biologists like myself are not trying to construct wiring diagrams through reductionist approaches, of course we are. But we don't necessarily expect these to constitute an explanation, because of the issues of complexity and emergent behaviours. They are however necessary steps towards developing models that might lead to an explanation, by simulation of complexity and emergent properties.

Gleng 13:57, 22 September 2006 (UTC)


 * As an aside: Why was the Category:Obsolete scientific theories lost? --Pjacobi 14:58, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

? If I took that out it was a mistake, sorry? Gleng 15:12, 22 September 2006 (UTC) Found it and restored it.

OK williams - I've restored this as source for the contention that vitalism is not testable, but cannot verify this myself directly. I have found no other source that makes this claim, so I can't substitute any better (or indeed any other) source; it looks as though this might be a unique claim; please give exact words and author name?Gleng 22:24, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Cat: Agree, cat no problem for the article as it is at present as I can't see any derogatory implications in the article itself.Gleng 23:07, 22 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi PJacobi. Here's the process: I came here to clarify the article as it seemed mostly about "scientific" versions of vitalism. There was already a statement saying that vitalism is considered pseudoscientific in practice. I changed the subheading to development of vitalism. Gleng arrived and added the extra information about chiropractic and innate intelligence. It is now stated in a way as to imply that the chiropractic version of vitalism is testable and used in scientific method. There is no evidence for this at all in any of the references presented. It implies that chiropractic used to have an unscientific notion of vitalism, but now they use the scientific version. No evidence whatsoever. Also, the more majority view (that vitalism is used in pseudoscientific treatments) has been removed even though it was supported by perfectly verifiable sources. There have been many ad hominem attacks on myself by pro-chiropractic editors. Thats basically the way it has occurred.


 * It seems to me that references are being used very spuriously to make chiropractic seem scientific, and any majority view that vitalism is closely associated with pseudoscience is being deleted or moved as far as possible from the chiropractic term. NPOV policy states that the science view is to be used to explain pseudoscientific subjects. Thats the policy that should be followed. Wikipedia should not be used as a soapbox for displaying fringe excuses for chiropracic's widely known vitalistic and pseudoscientific notions. KrishnaVindaloo 04:33, 23 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I added the section on "emergentism" as that seems to be the most specific term for the passage in question. Keating writes about science and pseudoscience in chiropractic, and that should be properly stated. There is no "modern medical vitalism".  Vitalism is discredited by medics and scientists the world over. Vitalism is not used in the scientific method at all. The majority view is that vitalism is anti scientific and anti mechanistic. It still remains to be seen if those theoretical statements about emergentism and vitalism are fringe or not. Certainly that sections needs more clarity, and more support from refs with opposing views. Moving forward. KrishnaVindaloo 04:46, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the ref; I've removed it from where it was a clear non-sequitur to replace a duplicate reference that I was unable to verify as Talk. Could you now lease verify this as it is not available on-line by stating the exact words with which they declare vitalism to be untestable?

I have removed your account of Keating's cite for the reasons given above; the direct quote I listed above shows that Keating describes several different ways in which "innate has and is used; by selecting just one you are distorting what he said and unbalancing the article by selecting a single POV. However, I have already called upon any chiropractors to clarify exactl;y in what sense innate is used today, so I'll repeat that call for their advice on what is after all their area of expertise:

Dear chiropractor, when you use the term "innate intelligence" do you use it literally, in the sense that Palmer did, of an internal mystical intelligence separate from the body but overseeing its health, a kind of "Gaia" of the body? Or are you using the concept metaphorically, to "stand for" the physiological systems of self repair as regulated by the nervous system, some of which are well understood and others of which are known to exist but which are as yet very poorly understood?

I'm happy to follow their advice on whatever they mean by a term that they use. Or do you think that you know better than them what they mean by what they say?

Not sure why you removed the distinction between hard and soft vitalism; don't know weho wrote that but seems OK, though it does lack V RS, so if you dispute its accuracy I won't argue but will delete it or find a V RS.

Finally, still awaiting the exact words from a Williams chapter and McLaughlin; can't proceed on these without verification of words and context....Gleng 06:44, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Not clear exactly what vitalist concepts are in homeopathy? They postulate a purely physico-chemical basis for the efficacy; might or mightnot be nonsense, but it's not vitalism. Checking the othersGleng 06:52, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Added detail with references, used reviews in peer reviewed journals where at least the abstracts are available on line mainly, though there are one or two primary sources there too. The originalreference to a review on "Molecular Vitalism" wasn't immediately recognised as authoritative by KV; as his understanding of what constitutes V RS and mine differ I guess the significance of this must be judged by others. Its relevance seems to be displayed by the title, it is a review, the quality of a journal can always be questioned but Cell is often described as the leading molecular biology journal, and as its impact factor is consistently (and considerably) greater than that of either Science or Nature so they probably have a case. In all the disagreement lets not lose sight of what we have agreed on; KV has clearly agreed that emergent behaviour is a modern form of vitalism, as indeed expressed in the Cell review. So the status of this modern form of vitalism as scientific or not seems relevant to oher issues of disputed wording in the article. Had I found any V RS proposing that "emergent behaviour" is a currently disputed concept I would be delighted to have included it.Gleng 08:32, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Last two paras- I've not included V RS within these as the Wiki likks are themselves well referenced sources, but if there's anything that needs a V RS still let me know, it's not a problemGleng 09:43, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Trying to verify the Bechtel cite and see the context, but I came across this ; seems to be the same Bechtel, but a rather different argument? Won't include as not a V RS; not peer reviewed.Gleng 12:37, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Ah! found "Discovering Complexity: Decomposition and Localization as Strategies in Scientific Research William Bechtel and Robert C. Richardson. To quote: The book examines in detail the usefulness of these heuristics in biological science, but also discusses their fallibility: underlying their use is the sometimes false assumption that nature is significantly decomposable and hierarchical. When a system does not appear to be decomposable, a classic response has been to abandon the pursuit of mechanistic explanation and to settle for accurate descriptions of phenomena. More recently, with advances in mathematical modeling, an alternative has emerged. Described in this work is an approach to explanation that appeals to interactions between simple components, rather than assigning functions to individual components.

OK, let's look closely at what words are put in their mouth in this article.Gleng 12:41, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Here is the cite as inserted by KV: Vitalism now has no credibility (Bechtel and Williamson 1998) because vitalism is often viewed as unfalsifiable, and therefore a pernicious metaphysical doctrine.

OK, I really think we need to see here exactly what they said, because in this source, they seem to be saying pretty well the exact opposite (the sometimes false assumption that nature is significantly decomposable and hierarchical.Gleng 12:50, 23 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Deja vu all over again. KV please refrain from misquoting reliable sources.  The result is considered WP:OR with the consequence is that the reader is misled.  This degrades the value of WP and is potentially liable. --Dematt 14:23, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Not really the same. I have now found the reference, and the wording given by KV is accurate, it is the context that explains the contradiction between the two quotes. In the Encyclopedia article, B and W are strictly talking abot mystical vitalism - i,e, the literal view, in their own words, that "vitalism holds that living entities contain some fluid, or a distinctive ‘spirit’". In this limited definition what they are quoted as saying is not controversial. When it is attached to a generalised or wider notion of vitalism, stripped of its overt mystical connotations, then it becomes nonsense, and thus when B and W talk of emergent properties they clearly regard these as normal science, but do not call them vitalist. In the narrow sense then, theirs is an opinion, held about obsolete vitalist notions that have been superceded or refuted. If the article extends beyond this literal definition then the quotes are clearly incompatible. So it's an honest mistake, just needed attention to context.Gleng 17:03, 23 September 2006 (UTC)


 * My apologies to KV for my kneejerk reaction. I will certainly consider good faith in your edits from here on.  Do us a favor, though, if your source is not available to the rest of us, please place at least some of it on this talk page so that we can all evaluate it.  --Dematt 17:51, 23 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Gleng, are you saying that a V RS source suggests that vitalism itself is not wholly considered "unscientific". Only when the "spiritual" or "mystical" portion is evoked as the "Force" is it considered unscientific.  However, when the concept is seperated from the "belief" system, if it can be considered mechanistic (such as emergent theory suggests), then it can be considered "scientific" or otherwise "testable"?

I'm saying that the source quoted as calling it iunscientific was explicitly talking about mystical literal vitalism. The same source, when talking about emergent behaviors, is clearly (very) supportive of their scientific nature. Now, as the article makes clear, many paople use vitalism in a brioad sense to encompass all "holoistic" theories that involve higher level properties, forces or phenomena, phenomena not reducible to the properties of component parts. This is clearly not what B and R were tallking about - they don't use "vitalism" in this sense at all.

As far as testability is concerned, clearly most early vitalist theories were testable - they were indeed tested and falsified, and this is true of mesmerism, the phlogiston theory in particular. Although they were mystical, they nevertheless had concrete predictions. In this sense therefore they are scientific.

Today we would not consider any theory that invoked a spirit or mystic entity as being scientific - but not because they aren't testable, but because they a) go beyond parsimony in invoking more than strictly needed and b) because they are overtly religious, and in these aspects are outside the remit of science

Gleng 21:40, 23 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Hello Gleng. You may want to believe that vitalism is testable, but please provide sources to back up your assertion. Otherwise its just your POV. Thanks KrishnaVindaloo 03:41, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Not about my beliefs, this is not a matter of belief at all but of sourced fact if you care to read the article. Not only were Mesmerism and the phlogiston theory testab;le, they were tested and falsified. Now if you want the article to include a named opinion as stating that vitalism is not testable I'll be delighted to place this in the relevant place; it will make them look stupid, but I'm afraid I can hardly take responsibility for that.Gleng 13:39, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Clarity on Mesmer
Gleng, I'm having trouble deciding how this experiment was supposed to work. Can you clarify it a little: See what I mean? IOW, I think if we can exlain what was supposed to happen, then the conclusion would be clearer. --Dematt 18:59, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
 * The commissioners learned about Mesmeric theory, and saw its patients fall into fits and trances. In Franklin’s garden, a patient was led to each of five trees, one of which had been mesmerized; he hugged each in turn to receive the "vital fluid", but fainted at the foot of the wrong one (was he supposed to faint at a different one?). At Lavoisier’s house, four normal cups of water were held before a mesmerized woman; the fourth produced convulsions, but she calmly swallowed the mesmerized contents of a fifth (I thought there was only four?), believing it to be plain water.

OK, this was an early example of "blind" testing; one cup of water was "mesmerised" but the subject was misled into thinking that a different one had been, similarly with the trees. The experiment showed that it was the suggestion that was effective, and not the actual supposed "mesmerising". I'll clarify tomorrow. thanksGleng 21:33, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi Dematt, I found a better reference available free in full text online which describes the experiments in detail; added to text.Gleng 18:20, 24 September 2006 (UTC)


 * That defintely makes more sense once reading the reference. Thanks Gleng. --Dematt 01:36, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Vitalism's place in scientific history
Just a few thoughts about where to place vitalism on the scientific spectra:

"Prescientific" is a term that can be used to judge the historical significance of a phenomena, whether it be a body of alleged knowledge, methodology, belief or practice. As such its usefulness as a term is limited to discussing the history of a phenomena, and does not accurately describe the phenomena's present day status.

A prescientific phenomena can follow at least one of three paths leading to extremely different conclusions:


 * 1) It can be scientifically validated and accepted, becoming a part of scientifically accepted fact. In medicine, such phenomena often start as traditional medicine, or "alternative" medicine, and end up becoming evidence based medicine (EBM).
 * 2) It can be disproven and rejected after much experimentation shows negative results. Such phenomena are relegated to the history books as historic artifacts.
 * 3) It can, in spite of a lack of scientific validation - and even in spite of clear rejection - be preserved and believed, thus becoming a current pseudoscientific phenomena. In medicine, such phenomena are often labeled quackery by the medical community and skeptics.

Translation: Vitalism was a prescientific concept, and for those who continue to espouse it, it is a pseudoscientific idea, and makes them vulnerable to being labeled with the pejorative term "vitalist." -- Fyslee 19:22, 23 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Good point. Your "translation" certainly brings up a very interesting POV.  But don't you think it is a jump to go from prescientific to vitalism.  IOW, vitalism was around before mechanism and never made claims to be scientific.  At one time, all concepts were spawned under vitalism.  Mechanism has been chipping away at them ever since.  IOW, things that once were considered to be "mystical" are now reclaimed as mechanical.  Also, to say "vitalist" is a pejorative word would be like saying "priest" is a pejorative term.  A true vitalist certainly doesn't concern himself with the science, so how could he be a pseudoscientist?  But, this is not my field, that's just my two cents.  I woud have to do some research to see if I have a leg to stand on. --Dematt 20:04, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

many thanks, tired now, will return when I can and digest this, but quickly (and perhaps inaccurately), no I think that historically the vitalist theories were thought to be perfectly scientific, and indeed were proposed by some of the greatest scientists of the time - these are not fringe loonies, but the Newtons etc of their ageGleng 21:41, 23 September 2006 (UTC)


 * So much for my legs:) Go ahead, set me straight! --Dematt 22:12, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

As always Fyslee, you are wise and thoughtful; I've added a quote at the end from Mayr as his opinion seems to be worthy of being thought notable.

I'm a little shaky about "pre-scientific" because this depends upon when you date the start of science, or how you define the threshold for consideration of something as scientific, and these seem to be moving targets. Some would date the start to Aristotle, and it might be worth adding here his concept of ultimate causes as the first recorded expression of vitalist concepts in scientific (or pre scientific) thought.

I guess it's important to be clear about the historical nature of theories, like the phlogiston theory, and not inadvertently imply that they would be considered scientific today. Maybe a discussion on historicism would be appropriate as a separate section to make the point you raise if there is any danger in the article as written at present of indicating that obsolete theories would be regarded as scientific if proposed in the same form today.?

On perjorative use, of course there are some distinguished (and entertaining) examples of very high profile "spats" between very distinguished authorities that might be worth referencing here, certainly will do so if there is any dispute about whether it is indeed used in a perjorative sense. Might be right to do so anyway?

We have focused on vitalist ideas in biology, and obviously I selected examples from biology through familiarity with my own spheres of expertise, but I do recall a seventeenth century philosopher, name I forget, proposing unseen "forces" inherent in physical bodies that acted invisibly on other bodies at a distance, pretty untestable but maybe worth a mention? Should I chase the sources and refresh my memory, which is probably unreliable? Or should we stick to biology? Gleng 16:39, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Essay writing
Hi all. I know it may be fun to formulate arguments for defunct notions, but this is Wikipedia and OR is not allowed. The chiropractic bias may be inducing people here to create reality out of nothing in a postmodernistic sort of way. Lets stop writing argumentitive lines in the article please, and if you could, please stop "interpreting" skeptics to make them look like supporters. Nowhere in Keatings writings does he say that chiropractic has rejected all non-scientific notions of vitalism. On the contrary, the literature says that it is very much maintained today in many alternative medicine followings. Emergentism as it is commonly known, rejects the notion of vitalism. It is discredited by all but the fringe. KrishnaVindaloo 03:45, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I wonder where I heard this? ''Sorry Steth, emergentism is controversial. The quantum mechanical explanation of chemical bonding and the enusing successes of molecular biology led to the almost complete demise of emergentist views of chemistry and biology. (McLauchlin 1992). '' KV, it does appear that having argued that emergentism is indeed vitalism in a modern form (as indeed argued in the Cell review, and an argument I'nve always agreed with), you now seem to have decided that as emergentism is perfectly respectable it can't after all be vitalism. Have I got you right here?


 * McLauchlin is correct. You've taken my statement out of context. Emergentism has reduced in popularity despite the recent minority interest. It is far less common now than before the 30s. Vitalism is an interesting notion.  I like thinking about it, as do many others. But to tell cancer sufferers that spinal manipulation will increase vital force, innate, or any other type of voodoo, is entirely unethical, it spreads misconceptions about the nature of reality and biology, puts the patient at a high risk of forgoing proper treatment, and it is ridiculous by normal medical standards. KrishnaVindaloo 00:15, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, KV, we all agree that telling cancer sufferers that spinal manipulation will increase vital force, innate, or any other type of voodoo, is entirely unethical, it spreads misconceptions about the nature of reality and biology, puts the patient at a high risk of forgoing proper treatment, and it is ridiculous by normal medical standards. But, the concept here is that we do know drugs such as erythropoetin can increase WBCs and RBCs for those whose immune system is so diminished so that  cancer treatments can now proceed.  The concept, as I understand it (and I am not the expert), is if someone said erythropoetin summoned up the vital force, that also would be unethical, blah, blah, blah... By the same token, if someone could show that spinal manipulation increased WBCs and RBCs by some mechanism (I doubt that will be the case, but lets pretend), it is no longer vitalism.  Set me straight if I'm wrong. --Dematt 01:14, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * That doesn't change anything here Dematt. The fact remains, according to majority view, vitalism is largely dismissed as a discredited quasi-religious notion that remains in use in only pseudoscientific developments. As a theoretical notion in fringe emergentism it is still highly dubious and controversial. KrishnaVindaloo 01:19, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Surely it wasn't my intention to change anything here; only illustrate it. I beg your pardon. I'll step out of the conversation so that someone else may address the first part of your comment; that McLaughlin is correct, etc.--Dematt 01:57, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Alternative medicine
Alternative medicine uses a great deal of vitalism concepts, and that is the majority definition of vitalism. I repeat, the majority sees vitalism as anti-reductionist, anti-science, and pseudoscientific. We are talking about qi, prana, odic force, mana, innate, vital force etc. There may well be vitalism theories floating around but they are either fringe or just metaphysical, or maybe things that look a bit like "vitalism" in inverted commas. But that is outside the scope of alternative medicine, and the scientific method prevails. So far there is no better method than the scientific method, which uses reductionism and positivism. That is the majority view. KrishnaVindaloo 03:50, 24 September 2006 (UTC)


 * OK, KV, so you have stated your views about chiropractic many times. Your viewpoint is understood. We got it. Have you noticed that you are having a discussion with yourself? If you want to discuss chiropractic, then why don't you take your soapbox over to the Chiropractic page?  Steth 11:28, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

KV. Just present your sources. We're not excluding any well sourced notable opinion or fact from this. Feel free to question the credibility or accuracy of any source that I have inserted here on the Talk page, or to request further V RS in case you think that I have inadvertently included anything that needs a source; all the sources that I have inserted are available on line to make this easy for any reader to do this for himself or herself.Gleng 13:51, 24 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes Gleng, I made some changes according to the literature. KrishnaVindaloo 00:13, 25 September 2006 (UTC) More specifically, I removed your OR, and your rather argumentitive lines about emergentism. I also represented Keating properly again. Please refrain from adding your own POV to Keating's lines again. Thank you. KrishnaVindaloo 01:14, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Louis Pasteur as a vitalist
I wasn't aware that Louis Pasteur was a vitalist. He would be a good addition. Gleng, do you know anything about him that is worth mentioning? We could get a good picture of him as well. I didn't realize that he died in 1895. --Dematt 23:09, 24 September 2006 (UTC)


 * GREAT. Excellent idea. This is what Bechtel says about Pasteur "Pasteur, by contrast, fitted fermentation into a more general programme describing special reactions that only occur in living organisms. These are irreducibly vital phenomena. Pasteur demonstrated empirically in 1858 that fermentation only occurs when living cells are present and, further, that cells only carry out fermentation in the absence of oxygen, leading him to describe fermentation as ‘life without air’. Finding no support for claims such as those advanced by Berzelius, Liebig, Traube and other chemists that fermentation resulted from chemical agents or catalysts within cells, Pasteur concluded that fermentation was a "vital action" "  Outstanding example of a major contribution to science - thanks. Do you want to add this? I am out of time now - (I have an encyclopedia article to write that is late :), not as much fun as this one, but...); will help if you could start a stub; it will need better sourcing than Bechtel but I can do thatGleng 16:17, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Okay, I'll be able to do some tonight(really need to get some work done, too:). CHeck it over in the morning and see what I've missed. --Dematt 16:28, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I added the whole discussion as you placed it plus a couple sentences to introduce it. Please check to make sure I didn't misrepresent anything.
 * I also added some pictures just for the fun of it. I'm usually not too good at placing them, so feel free to move them around or cut them out. --Dematt 17:57, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes Dematt. Such researchers who still advocate the vitalism notion nowadays though are known as pseudoscientists. They just fail to move on and advance with science. KrishnaVindaloo 00:12, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Emergentism and OR
Hello Gleng especially. The main thesis of your POV laden argument for emergentism being vitalistic was based upon an erroneous use of the "biochemical vitalism" article. They state that they use the term in a lighthearted way. It is not serious. Please don't waste editor's time in checking up on umpteen references that don't even mention vitalism at all. Now I am not calling you a liar, but lets face it, in the light of accusations made against myself by a certain group, your recent edits have turned out to be far more than a bit ironic. If you have any evidence at all that vitalism (with a serious definition) is used in modern science, then please present it on the talk page and we can talk it through. KrishnaVindaloo 03:14, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi again. The only evidence I can find for vitalism being present in modern science is that of the laughably light hearted "biochemical vitalism" review. It does not warrant a section on vitalism as a part of modern science. It may be mentioned in the context of ridicule (Mayr). Otherwise, such information should not be placed in the article in such a misleading way. KrishnaVindaloo 03:20, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Excuse me, Krishna, but I believe Gleng to be an extraordinarily qualified and meticulously thorough editor with very exacting standards. As I am sure others will agree, his edits have always represented high quality, verifiable references and are on a professional level.


 * On the other hand, even if your additions are at best debatable as OR or POV, none the less, I feel it necessary to remind editors that you are the one with the documented history of untruthfulness. Pseudoscience/Talk So please refrain from personal attacks. While we no longer have to assume good faith from you according to WP policy because of your documented history of fabrication and deliberate deception (Pseudoscience/Talk) like it or not, you still must assume good faith from Gleng and the rest of us. Steth 04:01, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Steth. Ad hominem is generally the domain of pseudoscientists. That link you show is simply evidence of your overwillingness to make personal attacks on anyone who does not comply with your worldview. Read above, Gleng mentions that he may have inadvertently made errors with his edits. I may have inadvertently mentioned the name Ford instead of Christianson on another article some time ago. Yet you still seem to be desperate to call me a pathalogical liar once again. Even Jim Butler made that error. Assuming good faith is the solution and the Wikipedia way.


 * Read Gleng's sources for yourself. Gleng had written that Keating said chiropractors once believed such and such, but now they believe something else. I believe that to be a mistake of Gleng's and I corrected it (twice actually) because Keating says no such thing. He just says there is a variety of vitalisms in chiropractic. I listed them. One other rather glaring inconsistency is that emergentists generally reject the notion of vitalism. Bechtel et al, for example are at the head of the charge towards a minority resurgence of emergentism. They are pretty much flatly dismissive of vitalism, and even show ridicule towards it. So this rather cripples Gleng's interpretation of things. Its not my fault, or Gleng's fault. Its just a fact. Sorry! KrishnaVindaloo 04:24, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * KV, Steth made no ad hominem argument, he was stating facts. Odd, though, that you and you alone cannot see the facts for what they are.  To reiterate what Steth said, there can be no AGF where you are concerned.  Period.   &#0149;Jim 62 sch&#0149;  21:44, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Hello Jim62sch. I must remind you that you are under an obligation to assume good faith. You have shown no evidence at all for your, Steth's, and other chiropractic proponent's allegation that I am a "pathalogical liar". You have shown no evidence whatsoever. There is only evidence of chiropractic supporter's personal attacks on myself, and there is abundant evidence that my edits are positive and comply with NPOV policy to a high standard. I am willing to go all the way to arbitration on this point. If you have a problem with me personally, feel free to contact me on my talk page and we can discuss your problem in more detail there. Regarding Gleng's OR. He has partly made amends by removing the statement that Keating says chiropractors no longer use vitalism. Thank you. KrishnaVindaloo 05:21, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Constructive talk
OK, lets try to make a good article. Here are some suggestions:
 * If vitalism is a part of emergentism in modern (post 1930s) science, then lets look at the evidence if any.
 * Lets use refs that actually contain the term vitalism within the text.
 * Lets work on determining majority from minority from fringe views.

I'm not trying to be difficult here, its just that I see a lot of very odd or spurious editing going on. Thank you KrishnaVindaloo 04:19, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Of course; because "vitalism" has acquired pejorative connotations, using the term now in a modern context is deliberately provocative, because it draws attention to the essentially identical intellectual nature of the concepts while rejecting any supernatural connotations.

''Our discussion illustrates the nature of biological organization and explores the potential chemical principles behind them. Although the units we consider, proteins, cells, and embryos are manifestly the products of genes, the mechanisms that promote their function are often far removed from sequence information. In a light-hearted, millennial vein we might call research into this kind of integrated cell and organismal physiology “molecular vitalism.”''

The references that you deleted all exemplify explicitly modern conceptions in biology, that focus on "integrative", "holistic", "systems biology views of biological phenomena that are emergent properties of complex organisms, not amenable to explanation by reductionism alone.

What is apparent is that even in the 17th century "vitalists" were using vitalist concepts not literally as invoking supernatural causes, but metaphorically as representing higher level principles that were not understood. Some of these ideas look essentially (and indeed are essentially indistinguishable from current ideas of epigenesis for example. But don't take my word for it, look at what Mayr says for instance.

So personally, I don't think your argument has any merit. The references that you have deleted all strictly apply to modern intellectual concepts that, were they only given mystical names, would be indistinguishable from vitalism, which is Kirchner's point. The connection of these ideas to vitalism is made explicit in several of the references, those that don't explicitly mention vitalism except for instance in referring to vitalism are elaborations of those emergent behaviours which motivate the parallel drawn by Kirchner and others, so demonstrating that this contemporary biological thinking is neither marginal nor controversial, but indeed is the new orthodoxy. I'm afraid that modern biology is in the process of rejecting reductionism (as a panacea, not as a methodology) but embracing something that looks rather like vitalism, minus of course the occult. Either way, the references are there all linked, and they allow the reader to judge.

I suggest though that deleting V RS additions without prior discussion and agreement on an established controversial topic is vandalism. I won't revert your changes myself, but if anyone else thinks that agreement should be achieved on KV's wholesale deletions first, on these pages, then I would support that reversion. I'll take the Keating point separatelyGleng 08:41, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I reverted. KV's mass edits and ludicrous deletions most certainly are vandalism.  Any time significant changes to an article are envisioned, changes that will substantially and substantively alter the tenor and direction of the article, those changes need to be carefully discussed on the talk page first.  What amounts to a midnight raid on an article simply will not be tolerated.
 * KV you are being put on notice: your use of the same tactics and the same tendentious editing style with which you poisoned and held hostage the pseudoscience article for over a month will no longer be tolerated anywhere on Wiki. Either you learn to work and play well with others or there will be no choice but to work toward remedying your disruptive behaviour through the proper administrative channels.  &#0149;Jim 62 sch&#0149;  09:33, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * It is not vandalism at all. Gleng has a burden of proof to make those edits acceptable. Right now there is no proof at all that the majority of those edits are even relevant. Take a look again at that quite definitive piece on vitalism by Bechtel and Williamson. They are both into emergentism and it states very definitely that vitalism is discredited. That is the majority view. Any proper administrative channels will be fine by me. Disruption has been caused by a group who are intent on pushing minority POV, wikilawyering over WP R, repeatedly refusing to assume good faith, repeating personal attacks and so on. I'm raring to go. KrishnaVindaloo 09:52, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Good. Meantime, citing you earlier ''Thank you Gleng. Emergentism is very controversial. If you have evidence or sources that show that chiropractic proponents have that view (not all phenomena at high level can be explained in low level terms), then that will be useful for the article as an example. KrishnaVindaloo 05:01, 20 September 2006 (UTC)'' It is difficult not to think that you are changing your grounds as to what constitutes vitalism according to whether the evidence supports your opinion about it or not. However, the definition of vitalism in the article at present is as given by Merriam at present; two meanings; B and W confine their opinions about vitalism to their opinions strictly of the first sense in which it can be used, and when talking of obsolete vitalist theories; clearly they are not opposed to vitalism in the second sense, as proponents of emergentism themselves. Gleng 16:31, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * KV, let me explain to you the way it works: if you disagree with the sourcing on something, you add fact tags asking for citations, you do not do a wholesale delete and substantive rewrite. It is not up to Gleng to explain anything when you've not even taken that step.  Quite frankly, I find you to be a tendentious POV pusher who has done nothing but disrupt every article he has touched.
 * You're "raring to go"? Well, go you likely will.  The community can only tolerate obnoxious and puerile behaviour for so long.  As for AGF, we had that discussion on the Pseudoscience page -- there is no AGF where you are concerned; note: This policy does not require that editors continue to assume good faith in the presence of evidence to the contrary. Actions inconsistent with good faith include vandalism, sockpuppetry, and lying. Assuming good faith also does not mean that no action by editors should be criticized, but instead that criticism should not be attributed to malice unless there is specific evidence of malice. Accusing the other side in a conflict of not assuming good faith, without showing reasonable supporting evidence, is another form of failing to assume good faith..  Got it?  &#0149;Jim 62 sch&#0149;  21:31, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Hello Jim62sch. I've listed all the personal attacks on myself, and I've listed all your accusations. I repeat, I'm willing to go all the way to arbitration on this, and of course any recommendations for the addition to various articles of NPOV supported facts about chiropractic homosexuality cures, pseudoscientific use of innate in psychic development etc, will be followed to the letter. You may want to consider the consequences of your accusations. I am here to ensure NPOV policies on inclusion of all relevant views is to be followed correctly. Presently the article falls very short of the mark. Trying to resist NPOV policy is pretty futile and it will reflect very badly on editors who push minority views. Thank you. KrishnaVindaloo 05:35, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Burden of proof time
Hello Gleng.


 * Please list which of those references have the term vitalism in them and which do not.
 * Also, please support your main thesis; that there is a new version of vitalism that is accepted in an orthodox way within modern science

That will do for now. KrishnaVindaloo 09:47, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * "That will do for now"? ROFL.  What are you, the Mahatma of all things Scientific?  Nah, you can't be, the title of Mahatma is not bestowed upon those displaying pernicious arrogance.  You see, KV, you again fail to comprehend how Wiki works -- Gleng is under no obligation to do as you demand, and most certainly not when your demans is made in such an obnoxious manner.  Odd, but on your user page you proclaim yourself to be an admirer of Mohandas Ghandi, and yet you share none of his attributes.   &#0149;Jim 62 sch&#0149;  22:06, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Jim62sch. Civility is part of NPOV policies and it helps productive editing. So please comply. The onus is on the one who wants to include a view to prove that it is not irrelevant, unverifiable, or inaccurate. Gleng has provided no such information regarding most of his extensive and undiscussed edits. That needs dealing with now. Please do not resist such normal editing practice.  Thank you. KrishnaVindaloo 06:19, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Lighthearted?
I removed this, it's hardly encyclopaedic


 * In modern science, vitalism has been lightheartedly associated as "molecular vitalism".

&#0149;Jim 62 sch&#0149; 09:11, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Hello Jim62sch. I have no particular problem with you reverting entirely. If anything it shows the intensely high level of groupthink going on in a particular group of editors. If I may, I would like to point out the facts as they stand in reality, rather than in the wishful thinking of proponents. Kirshner states "In a light-hearted, millennial vein we might call research into this kind of integrated cell and organismal physiology “molecular vitalism.”
 * . Its a millenial joke. He talks of taking a "last whistful look at the 20th century". It is not a serious stab at getting vitalism back into science. Its tongue in cheek and its in inverted commas. Gleng seems to be betting his whole argument on it. But all the so called supporting evidence shows that vitalism is dead. Defunked. Discredited. Nowhere near reality. Nothing to do with the scientific method.


 * Here is his last sentence of the whole article: "Yet out of such a potentially nondeterminist world, the organism has fashioned a very stable physiology and embryology. It is this robustness that suggested “vital forces”, and it is this robustness that we wish ultimately to understand in terms of chemistry. We will have such an opportunity in this new century"


 * He is using a lighthearted label in inverted commas to refer to what may possibly be, perhaps, um, you know, if we can find a catchy enough title to get noticed. KrishnaVindaloo 09:44, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Interesting thought, that someone writing a review in Cell (impact factor 40? about twice that of Nature?) is going for a catchy title to get noticed. Yes it's provocative, they are deliberately provocatively drawing attention to the intellectual parallels.Gleng 09:49, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Kirshner's speculative conjecture is not anywhere near evidence for vitalism orthodoxy in majority thinking science. Sorry you will have to do better than that. KrishnaVindaloo 10:00, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Think you need to consider exactly what constitutes a V RS; but you are right, a single review, even in the best journal in science, is just one review; which is why I detailed the suport for the ideas of emergent properties and systems biology across a wide range of areas of biology, papers that cite Kirschner, explicitly link with vitalism, or make congruent arguments about emergent behaviour. You have to distinguish between the name and that which the name stands for, Kirschner's mischief was in recognising that although the name was obsolete, not all the ideas that it named were.Gleng 16:38, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Keating
Well, it seems that in quoting Keating above I stopped a sentence short for KV. That sentence is now added in bold.

''What are we to think of Innate Intelligence? Is this a legitimate metaphysical proposition, a worthy basis for the science and art of chiropractic? Is there a justifiable place for concepts like innate intelligence in a discipline which seeks advancement in knowledge by means of critical thinking and empirical evidence? The answer I suggest, depends on what is meant by innate intelligence, and at least four meanings (and several derivatives) are available to us These include II as a synonym for homeostasis, II as a label for our ignorance, II as a vitalist explanation of life, and II as a metaphysical concept

Now look at KV’s insertion: According to Keating, in chiropractic, vitalism "innate intelligence" has several variants; the belief in the unseen Innate spirit; the fraction of universal intelligence or God; vital force; and an “aspiritual spirit”, and less theologically; likening the vital force to electricity or substituting the idea of “nerve force”; and the belief in “Infinite Oneness.

Again, in what sense is KV’s insertion true to the context of the original? So what is Keating saying: He is rejecting ”a tradition in biology which proposes that life is sustained by an unmeasurable, intelligent force or entity”.

His is an opinion; but expressed in these terms it is an opinion shared by I think most contemporary scientists including myself, if the word “intelligent” is taken at face value. But if “vitalist” notions are used metaphorically not literally, then you take away the implication of an occult or mystical invocation of a guiding deity, (which is rejected by science not because of its lack of testability but because it fails the principle of parsimony). When you do so, then theories of the vitalists, who included many of the very greatest names in the history of Science, are simply predecessors of current thinking in biology.

What Keating is not doing is crudely denigrating chiropractic; indeed he is a chiropractor himself. What he is doing is arguing his case for one strand in chiropractic philosophy that seeks to actively purge any content that might even be read as mystical, however mistaken that reading of it might be; he clearly has a case, because it is too easy to make fun of a name like innate intelligence.

But it is worth pondering on another scientist of the seventeenth century who invoked an untestable assumption of an unseen force that permeated the universe, by which any one body could act upon any other body instantaneously, invisibly and mysteriously, over any distance, and with no intervening physical medium. He called it "gravity". Let us be thankful that he didn’t call it "attractive intelligence". And let us not let these articles on WP become part of the crude and casual derogation of men and ideas by mere association.

So I’d favour modifying the Keating reference to include the extended quote from him as above. Any support?Gleng 09:49, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi Gleng. I understand you are trying to get it right. My version was Keating's description of different types of vitalism. You are listing different ways to think of innate. Those are different issues. I listed metaphysical and less metaphysical versions of vitalism that Keating listed. I included his conclusion on the matter. You want different versions of vitalism. This article is about vitalism, not innate. KrishnaVindaloo 09:55, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, trying... maybe you'd now like to look again at the present wording in the article and say exactly how I failed to get it right?


 * I noticed you did make some effort to remove the unsupported view that chiropractic doesn't use vitalistic notions any more. We do need to focus on what is relevant to vitalism though. A lot of your edits are supported by good refs, but they seem to be irellevant or are weighted too strongly. They need condensing and placing in terms of where they stand in relation to the majority or minority, and where they stand in current status. I'll make the Keating line more representitive of his view. I may also do some condensing of the "emergentism" lines. The ref on the hazards of emergentism in psychology is interesting and that also needs proper representation in the article. The information shows quite clearly that emergentism is controversial, and that anti-reductionist emergentism is like vitalism and should be ditched if psychology is to advance as a science. This opens up the need for more clarity on the types of emergentism. Emergentism that is similar to vitalism, and emergentism more compliant with the reductionism (the current majority paradigm). So at least more information is coming to light, even though it has been misrepresented in the article to the extent that it makes it grossly misleading. I believe you can make some reasonable improvements as you have just shown at least some evidence in yesterdays edits. KrishnaVindaloo 05:51, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Direction?
To KV on innate, Absolutely. My objection was to you classifying innate as vitalism when this is mainly a historical usage, and so gratuitously intoducing a pejorative inference about current usage in chiropractic.

Howwever clearly there is a decision time for the direction of this article, with two very different courses for it:

a) to restrict the article strictly to vitalism as explicitly invoking a clearly mystical or supernatural agency. This interpretation would eliminate most of the current content, and it would need to be made clear that opinions about vitalism are understood as strictly applying to this limited definition. The content would be mainly historical, with the only contemporary applications I think being in fringe mysticism.

b) to also discuss the intellectual ideas that were posed in vitalist terms, and their successors, derivatives and equivalents in modern science. This takes the broad "vitalist" theme that biological phenomena are not in general, accessible to reductionism, as argued by Mayr, but involve emergent properties of complex systems that give rise to feature at a high level that are not reflected in the individual properties of lower level components. This after all was the great philosophical debate of the time of vitalism; in their time, vitalist ideas were attacked as not being amenable to reductionism; now, reductionism itself is under attack (actually, I'm not sure that this would be a fair representation f the current state of biology; it would probably be fair to say that reductionism is retained as a central and essential part of the methodology of modern biology, but that its limitations are now pretty universally acknowledged, and its claim to generalised explanatory power for higher level phenomena is discredited).

I am uninterested in the former direction for the article, (except in WP interests to see that it is based in V RS, that the references are true to context, and that the article does not fall into ahistorical fallacies or draw gratuitous judgements. The latter to me is more interesting, in considering the vitalist theories for their intellectual content. However; what do editors want to see? Roll back all my contributions, by all means, if that's the way that others feel is appropriate; I'm a democrat by instinct, and I'll probably publish them independently in some form. Just don't roll them back in part please to leave a muddled, illogical, incoherent and opinionated article, I have no interest in being associated with that. Gleng 10:29, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * If we want this to be a dictionary, use it the first way; the oversimplified traditional use. If we want encyclopedic, go the new way; a thorough discussion of where vitalism came from, where it is, and where it may be going.  It's all very interesting and could well end up being a featured article. That's my vote. --Dematt 11:53, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I definitely agree, it's all so interesting. --Dematt 21:16, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Well done Dematt, those are great. I was thinking we should probably expand a bit on Aristotle's theories, as the early history was a bit sparse Gleng 19:55, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree. The article needs to be far better presented. Presently the majority view is being obscured by speculative conjecture dressed up as scientific method. There are many unsupported statements that push minority or fringe POV. Ancient history is being presented as conclusion. The writing is akin to an essay, and reads as overdefensive, argumentative promotion of vitalism. I'll make more specific suggestions in the appropriate places. But the general direction should be towards the inclusion of all relevant views, the proper representation of the literature, and proper weighting on the various views as to majority, minority, and fringe.  There have been some minor improvements on removing OR, but they fall very short of the mark, and a lot more needs to be achieved. KrishnaVindaloo 05:43, 26 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I think this article is developing very nicely and is extremely informative, which I believe is the purpose of an encyclopedia. If we wanted a dictionary, we could have stopped with the first paragraph, which is where most people will stop.  The ones who continue will be able to get a feel for vitalism's past and present, and, who knows, there may even be a future...  but that scares some people. --Dematt 13:05, 26 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Excuse me Dematt. The one's who continue? Other than most people? Are you talking about minorities again? Who would dare read an encyclopedia?  If you would like to know more about how to write an online encyclopedia Dematt, please visit WP:NPOV, there is even a useful tutorial. KrishnaVindaloo 03:37, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

In a paraphrase of the alleged words of Huxley
"and the Lord has delivered him into my hands"

Again, and again, and again, and again, the complaint of other editors about KV's edits is that they are poorly sourced, misquoted, or quoted out of context, or quoted in a misleading way. Let us see now KV's latest addition It reads, in full

“A popular anecdote often told to introduce chemistry courses at universities, is that the birth of chemistry was the death of vitalism.”

..... and now read on, in that very reference, what KV left out but which reverses the very implication of his insertion

... In fact, contemporary accounts do not support the claim that vitalism died when Wöhler made urea.

... and on... ''The Wöhler Myth, as historian of science Peter J. Ramberg calls it, originates from one account by Bernard Jaffe, the author of a popular history of chemistry in 1931 that is still in print today. Ignoring all pretense of historical accuracy, Jaffe turned Wöhler into a crusader who made attempt after attempt to synthesize a natural product that would refute vitalism and lift the veil of ignorance, until ‘one afternoon the miracle happened’” (Ramberg, 2000, p. 170-195). ''

... and on, we find in this very example a recognition of parallels between modern biology and vitalism this very point that KV is resisting so hard... ''Historically, even scientists have not universally accepted the death of vitalism. Since the beginning of modern biology, there have been those who see in the increasing complexity of our understanding of life a multiplication of ways for vitalism to fit into our beliefs.''

KV asks for a citation to a statement (pejorative use) that is given an explicit, sourced and quoted example after his request; in fact an example that in his recent edit he put it into the text a second time, duplicating it, so it is hard to see exactly how he missed it. Finally KV asks for a reference to support the dual use of the term vitalism; the two definitions open the article, they are at the top of the page.

I am accordingly reverting all KVs edits. In future I suggest that KV places his proposed edits on this page first before disrupting the text. If any other editor sees any merit in his suggestion, then I will be happy to consider the points he has made. But chasing poorly sourced and mis-cited edits is something that now wearies me. Give me a reason to accord any of his edits credibility and I will look at it seriously.

The source that he has found does give an interesting light on the Wohler story, and so I think does merit inclusion, if quoted accurately. For the moment I've inserted this ref as a holding stage; it doesn't look like a great journal so I'll try to find a better source, but am guessing that the quote it gives is accurate

Gleng 08:15, 26 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Hello Gleng. The literture entitled "The Death of Vitalism" is indeed useful. It is only one such source. I will add the real conclusion of that piece in time. Bechtel et al say nothing at all about vitalism being used as a pejorative epithet. Right now that seems to be like multiple other edits you have made. Your opinion only. KrishnaVindaloo 08:38, 26 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I think the Click and Wohler additions are valuable. Keeping them accurate is also very important.  Also appreciate the discussions here on the talk page.  I think we just have to be resigned to double checking references.  The weight of the POV is determined by the reliability of the source, regardless of who inserts it.  --Dematt 13:50, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Argumentative writing
Gleng. I must remind you that argumentative writing is not one of Wikipedia's policies and it reflects extremely badly upon you as an editor. It make you look bullying and argumentative. You have presented multiple arguments and promotions in the article using argumentative language throughout. Please stop. KrishnaVindaloo 10:03, 26 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Whining makes you look worse. Perhaps you might say it like this: Gleng, I noticed you used the word "however" quite a bit.  I think it would flow better if we phrased it differently each time.  Then it wouldn't come across as argumentative.  Try that next time. --Dematt 14:08, 26 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry if Wikipedia editors seem to whine to you Dematt. Placing majority, minority and fringe is important, and writing encyclopedias is quite exacting. If you notice any more whining on about NPOV policy, I suggest taking a break. Because you will find a lot of it going on in Wikipedia. Its the norm here. KrishnaVindaloo 03:40, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

More specifically, stop it with putting all the buts and howevers all over the place. You are clearly making one view look preferable to another. Its a particularly crappy way of pushing your own POV. Stop doing it. KrishnaVindaloo 10:23, 26 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't know, Gleng seems to have some pretty strong refs, yours have been pretty weak. Maybe you have the crappy POV.  Try getting some good refs for it.  Don't forget to read the whole article, because you've made it necessary for us to read your sources as well. --Dematt 13:14, 26 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I do overuse however, but when it avoids a non sequitur by being inserted between two contrasting or mutually contradictory statements. As for your other comments I think the relevant WP rule is WP: Steth (nightmares are not good sources)Gleng 11:52, 26 September 2006 (UTC)


 * You've cleaned it up nicely. Everything is coming along well. --Dematt 13:14, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Revert, Cheng
Cheng is a sophomore at the University of Penn writing in an undergraduate University magazine. As I said, the factual information is probably correct (and I provisioally included the source for that) but even the facts will need better sources. However, this fails V RS.Gleng 10:11, 26 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, good revert in this case. Cheng wrote a pretty good piece, but he's no prof. KrishnaVindaloo 10:21, 26 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Would you have reverted it yourself if Gleng hadn't mentioned it? That would have been a sign of good faith. --Dematt 13:16, 26 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry Dematt and Gleng. In the light of better information I've changed my mind. Gleng's revert is really pretty bad. The paper in question is from a pre-eminent journal peer reviewed by professors.  The paper in question is sponsored by the chief edior and reviewer. The author in question could be a highly experienced professional with a deep understanding of philosophy. Peer reviewed, pre-eminent journal, sponsored and supported by pre-eminent scholars. It complies with WP:reliability and verifiability perfectly well. KrishnaVindaloo 03:44, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Criticism of the criticism section
A lot of the criticisms section seems to be original research to me. It also appears to contain very little criticism. Jefffire 18:08, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Maybe misnamed. Not sure what you think is OR. What else do you think needs V RS exactly?Gleng 20:01, 26 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Definitely OR. You hardly even need to specify where it is Jefffire. It should be blatantly obvious to even the most novice of editors.  The pattern is reproduced all over the article; Lots of refs that don't even mention the term vitalism, placed in the article according to Gleng's argument only, use of argumentative phrasing, non-sequiters used to push POV and so on. I've tried to clean up Gleng's OR in the past few days and have only recieved incivility and unjustified reversion/deletion of fact tags for it. I've got a pretty long list of Gleng and co's crimes and they are adding to it daily. KrishnaVindaloo 03:50, 27 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Ok I removed some more of your OR again Gleng. Please stop adding phantoms of your own bias. You are pushing minority POV. Bechtel and Mitch did not use the mystical definition of vitalism when they said it is discredited.  They simply made the statement. I will keep a very close eye on your other edits. As it is you have generated a huge amount of evidence of OR in your edits. You seem to be generating a reputation for fringe or minority POV pushing OR. KrishnaVindaloo 06:05, 27 September 2006 (UTC)


 * It was brought to my attention that a report was made upon myself on the admin noticeboard . I would like to say that, though frustrating, this incident has shown that Wikipedia policies are very sound. Consensus does not trump NPOV policy and POV pushing can be overcome by a minority of editors against a majority of pushers. RealDefender, whoever you are, perhaps I should thank you for bringing this to the attention of administrators. KrishnaVindaloo 08:27, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

KV.

1) Have you read the Cell article? How do you square your representation of this with the paper as a whole, but especially the last section? To me at least it looks like a travesty of what the authors actually say; perhaps it’s better to quote their conclusions verbatim? I’d be happy to replace my paraphrase with that.

2) Cheng: the journal is an undergraduate Penn State University journal, not international, not listed in Index Medicus or on PubMed. The information was fine, the source was weak, I located the same information from a strong source and inserted that, making the Cheng cite redundant as a source of fact. As a source of opinion, it can’t be replaced in this way, the only issue is whether you consider the opinion of an undergraduate writing in this journal as notable. You do, I don’t. (The author is identified as a sophomore).

3) Let’s get this done. KV, having repeatedly attacked my personal integrity now declares my actions as crimes. These are serious personal attack, directed at me personally not my edits; I am not anonymous and if they were given any credibility they would be libellous.

This was the state of the article on 22nd September 2006 after KV’s contributions and before any involvement of mine. 

It contained exactly 5 references, none of which had an internet link, only one of which was given with full access details. One was to a 1966 non peer reviewed Conference proceedings article not available on line, and one to an encyclopedia, no further details given of where exactly.

Yes, I raised concerns about sources and about the accuracy of the content, and argued extensively on the Talk pages that this article should be rebuilt from V RS with information available and checkable on line for verification. KV resisted, and though I have better things to do, I thought the only way to get a decent article here would be to show by example.

This was the article five days later, on September 27th 2006 , not only with my changes; Dematt in particular provided the illustrations.

This version of the article has 36 references linked to the text and the text includes another 5 that are not yet linked as refs; in all cases the access details are complete, all are available for checking on line, I think all are strong V RS, most I got through PubMed with keyword searches choosing reviews, others outside medicine through Google Scholar searching for keywords with pdf availability of text. All I’ve read, from beginning to end. The main text of the article, excluding the lead sense which is a direct dictionary quote, has about 2600 words on my counter of which about 250 are direct attributed verbatim quotes. The 40 references, together with about 100 unique wikilinks, reference about 2,400 words of text: an average of one on-line V RS and 2.5 wikilinks for every 60 words of text. The direct relevance of each citation to the text that precedes it is open for inspection as all are linked electronically. Is this a record for the most densely sourced article on WP?

I am busy with other things (very), but have detailed my positions rather fully on this Talk page. I provided a clear summary of my POV here and, or anyone can find what I have written in the public domain (or has been written about me) elsewhere for themselves.

Clearly I have had repeated concerns about the unreliability of KVs references, here on this page and on the pseudoscience Talk page; I have spent a large amount of time tracking them down, with results that have indicated that this is an essential task if anything he writes is to remain in WP. I am now reverting all KVs edits; it is my view that he has reinserted weak sources, disturbed the flow of the article, and that despite requests to do so he has made edits, knowing that they would be controversial, before explaining his rationale here on the Talk page and first gaining some support for specific changes. I don’t know about procedural routes etc; it seems to me that the community must decide what to do here because KVs editing is not compatible with my participation on WP. In my view his editing has been disruptive, tendentious, badly researched, and his comments rich with personal attacks on the motives and integrity of many editors, including myself. I don’t know about processes, but if anyone wants to transport this to an RfA then please do so. For now I am gone with other things, at least for a whileGleng 09:31, 27 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Hello Gleng. I have repeatedly explained the rationale for my edits on this article, and the replies I recieved were insufficient, rude and dismissive. I am following NPOV on everything I have done here. If you consistently push POV, encourage incivility and try to get me ousted from this and other articles just because I don't comply with your world view, then no doubt you will end up with a poor reputation. I have yet to remove the remainder of your OR from the article.  Many edits on emergentism you placed have yet to show any mention of vitalism in the literature at all. Your complaints are all very spurious, and RFa will reveal far more of the POV pushing nature of certain editors here. When I came here there was work to do. I was in the process of making changes to the article that involved placing minority and fringe view in proper proportion to majority view. Then the chiropractic team turns up and places minority way above majority to the extent that defunct ideas are being promoted and great thinkers are being quoted as if in testimonials for the promotion of vitalism. I will continue the work towards putting things into realistic proportion. And help from impartial editors will be very welcome. KrishnaVindaloo 10:04, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

If you'll pardon me for sticking to the topic, I've remove quite a large chunk of text which I reckon is not only OR, but incorrect as well, namely the section citing chaos theory as support for vitalism. Jefffire 10:32, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I can't insert the V RS I used for accuracy of the paraphrasing of butterfly effect statements for obvious reasons, but Dematt can if he chooses, as he has the full pdf. The wording didn't imply support for vitalism from chaos theory, but for the unpredictability and irreducibility of complex systems The thread on emergent behaviours was introduced first by KV, referenced and corrected by meGleng 10:42, 27 September 2006 (UTC) Gleng 10:42, 27 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I think those are two differnt topics, so I would disagree with equating them. It seems to me like there is a valid point in there, but that it is being stretched to breaking point to try and equate it with vitalism. Jefffire 10:51, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Trouble is the real historical debates about vitalism were about vitalism vs reductionism, this was the intellectual debate, and explicitly so, the appearance of supernatural elements wasn't really the issue. After the apparent triumph of reductionism, the nature of this argument was largely lost and vitalism merely derided, in the public mind, for the apparent superstitious nature. But the argument about reductionism is alive again, and the issues are essentially the same as those of the historical intellectual argument. Strip away the appearance of superstition, and the structure of vitalist theories is identical with the structure of modern theories of emergent behaviour - (not my argument, see the cited refs)Gleng 12:14, 27 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for intervening Jefffire. The article could well do with more outside input. KrishnaVindaloo 11:10, 27 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't neccaseraly with your deletions, mind. Due to time restraints now, I'll review them later if there if still a dispute going on. Jefffire 11:19, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Jeffire; I think that where a statement is disputed then the process as I understand it is to ask for V RS before concluding that it is OR. As exactly what was disputed was not clear and is not clear still, but here are the words of an editorial that I paraphrased; you can judge if I paraphrased accurately. You might dispute the opinions or the facts given, nut that I am not going to get into as WP is about verifiability not truth. So as not to overburden this page I insert the text and then delete it from the talk page so you can see it in the history Gleng 11:55, 27 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, after reading that I think they are talking about "holism" rather than "vitalism". Chaos theory and emergence are in no way contradictary to mechanism. Jefffire 12:14, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, absolutely, I think that the author would agree that there is no way that chaos or emergence is contradictory to mechanism, and would agree that it is wholly wrong to think otherwise. But vitalism always proposed mechanisms also, the key historical issue was whether the mechanism was reducible or not - but I thought your edit summary queried the link between CT and holism, not that between holism and vitalism?Gleng 12:20, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

So where are we? I hadn't sourced the statements you saw as OR as I did not consider them controversial, but have now shown the source. Happy not OR? I see you're happy that they link CT and holism in contrast to reductionism.

The question then is are you happy with presenting the view that modern "holistic" and "anti-reductionist" theories in biology as being structurally similar to the holistic anti reductionist historical approach of vitalists, as argued through the philosophy of science articles and in the Cell review? If so this section, on modern "versions" of vitalism seems OK, but might need more expansion and clarifcation? I had thought it better to be compact so that it would be a relatively small proportion of the whole. What do you think? Could cite the Cell conclusions more fully and verbatim of course as a way to develop?Gleng 13:18, 27 September 2006 (UTC)


 * The question of whether they link to "holism" or not is still OR, it's simply my opinion that they think they do. I'm really not happy comparing two different views as similar on the basis of a paper such as this, and calling CT or "emergance" a version of vitalism is deeply incorrect, as may be claiming that "the limits of reductionism have become apparent in recent years". If claims like this are going to be made and worded as fact, then it would need to be verified explicitely, rather than being interprated from another source. Jefffire 13:46, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Beginning with the status of emergence and emergent behaviour. This discussion began before my entry on this page and KV’s view then that this was basically vitalism minus mysticism. This is a common view and one I share, along with as far as I can see current philosophy of science generally and as referenced in the article. It is a view that KV appeared to drop because he decided that emergent behaviour was after all mainstream.

Here is the early exponent of emergentism, J.S. Mill:, quoted in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ''All organised bodies are composed of parts, similar to those composing inorganic nature, and which have even themselves existed in an inorganic state; but the phenomena of life, which result from the juxtaposition of those parts in a certain manner, bear no analogy to any of the effects which would be produced by the action of the component substances considered as mere physical agents. To whatever degree we might imagine our knowledge of the properties of the several ingredients of a living body to be extended and perfected, it is certain that no mere summing up of the separate actions of those elements will ever amount to the action of the living body itself.''

The link between emergent properties and (vitalism-mysticism) is the basis for the (cited)philosophical analysis that structurally they are equivalent. Modern theories of emergent behaviour express a mathematical foundation for emergence, and this indeed has little to do with chaos theory, and it’s a mistake to confuse these. However vitalism, historically was seen as in intellectual opposition to reductionism, as in many of the cited refs. This was the central debate through the nineteenth century, and vitalism lost essentially because it was seen as inferior to reductionism.

However through the late twentieth century, biology has seen many notably outspoken anti-reductionists, (Gould and Mayr are oddly on the same side here against Dawkins; a key quote from Mayr was deleted in Kvs edits). The key thesis of reductionism has been the promise of what has been called a “predictive biology”, and here’s where CT upset the apple cart, because it showed that reductionist models aren’t necessarily going to be predictive. This raises a second problem, because if they’re not predictive, how can they be falsifiable (as explanations of higher level phenomena). This really screws things, because reductionism itself looks now as though it might be unscientific (in Popper’s sense) as an explanation for higher level phenomena. Hence now the rush to networks, complexity, systems biology, emergent behaviours etc etc in an attempt to develop a fresh basis for understanding higher level phenomena.

Thus the revival of emergence is part of the questioning (and rejection by some) of reductionism, which itself had superceded vitalism, the analogue of emergence.

This is of course merely my paraphrasing of the arguments raised in the cited articles, you'll have to judge for yourself whether it's an accurate paraphrase of a pretty universal contemparary argument. I am not aware of any dissent from it, except in the sense that many may feel that reductionism will in practice have a lot of explanatory power. The new theories don't imply the rejection of reductionism, only acknowledge its limitations.

I noticed incidentally that one of my links wasn’t working (former ref 9) It was to Schultz SG. A century of (epithelial) transport physiology: from vitalism to molecular cloning. Am J Physiol. 1998 Jan;274(1 Pt 1):C13-23. This contains the following account, interesting in light of the discussion about the pejorative nature of vitalism as an epithet. ''Reid had clearly and, to the best of my knowledge, for the first time unambiguously demonstrated and recognized "active transport" by an in vitro preparation; that is, the flow of matter in the absence of an external (conjugate) driving force that was dependent upon a source of metabolic energy! ''...However, what should have been a clarion call heralding a major conceptual breakthrough in epithelial biology turned out to be barely a whimper. ... ''Why? Could it be because he used the phrase "vital force" to describe his observations, a phrase that was perhaps the naughtiest in the naturalist's lexicon during that era? ''

OK, I'm done for now, I have other things to do. Frankly, I'd rather you roll back to KVs version of a week ago than sustain what I honestly think is a POV hybrid. The POV that I see in KVs version is simply a wish to conclude that vitalist theories were foolish, untestable, and have been discarded as pseudoscientific. It's a popular view, but not in academic circles, and not one I've seen in V RS, except where the context restricts the inference to mystical vitalism. Instead you'll find in V RS that the popular view, promoted by KV as the majority view, is full of canards; vitalism was hugely influential, many of the great scientists were vitalists, the theories forged much of modern science, and the successors are alive and well. So far from being untestable and unfalsifiable, tests of vitalist theories are textbook examples of test and falsification. The name has gone, because of its derogatory implications. The mysticism has gone. But the mysticism went long ago, even when the mystical names stayed. It does rather depend on whether WP articles are about promoting popular misconceptions or take the science'academic POV as the majority in this context. But actually there isn't much opinion in this article, it's pretty well all sourced fact and quoted opinionGleng 15:18, 27 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Here's the (deleted image) that Gleng was talking about that he can't insert. Sorry this took me so long, but I had to figure out how to import it:)  Gleng is a past Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Neuroendocrinology for which he wrote this.  That's why he could not insert it as a reference. (You have to click on the Adobe picture to get it) --Dematt 16:11, 27 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I think I understands what is being said now. I believe what Gleng is expressing is that simplified models are not suitable for modeling higher level phenomenon, for example: chemistry wouldn't be suitable for modeling animal behaviour, despite it being entirely dependant upon the former. However as it is generally put, vitalism implies that something different is going on, independant of the lower level causes, so the quantum weather butterfly is actualy not an example of vitalism (although Gleng might disagree).


 * With regards to the article as a whole, it's look like it's suffered a lot from a lot of to-ing and fro-ing. It might be best to consider a rebuilding to try and sort it out. Jefffire 16:44, 27 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree that the quantum weather butterfly is not an example of vitalism, it is an example of how, in some cases, mechanism has yet to be able reduce some things enough to "predict" any outcome. Early scientists (indeed some of the worlds greatest scientists) would have resigned this dilemma as evidence of a "vital force"; now they call it emergence, basically saying that there is a higher function that cannot be explained by today's reduction abilities.  Is that your interpretation?


 * I think this line of thought certainly pertains to vitalism. I also think that KV's line is certainly status quo.  I would think that if KV could write something up that states his POV, instead of rewriting Gleng's work, then it will be easily fitted into the article.  The problem is when one editor tries to change the meaning of another editors work.  There should be no problem as long as everybody uses V RS sources.  It would be nice if you stuck around, though, because KV does not trust me as he thinks I am incapable of controlling my chiropractic bias, so I try not to interfere too much. --Dematt 17:30, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Chaos theory etc (specifically, the lack of predictability of complex deterministic non-linear dynamical systems) is part of the reason for a return of interest in emergence/modern "vitalist" explanations, certainly not part of those explanations. I think a separate section on "popular" conceptions/misconceptions/descriptions of vitalism would be a good idea and wouldn't need V RS as it would focus on what the mass internet sites/"popular" books say about it, maybe kept apart from what academics/historians/philosophers say. Vitalism, structurally, declares that high level phenomena needs high level modes of explanation. There is always a potential problem, paraphrasing academic arguments can look like OR, but if that's OR then what are we doing here? The issue is, is the paraphrasing accurate? In this case I didn't cite the source because the (direct) source was mine and I was waiting to see if it was disputed. The article content is expanded incidentally in a full review, (The Jacques Benoit Lecture) published this year and in a review in Nature Neuroscience Reviews, also this yearbut the editorial is more direct and gives the butterfly link explicitly. I'm not suggesting that these should be cited and rather steer clear of any citation of my work. However I mention them as presumably evidence that any paraphrasing of them is accurate for these. Gleng 19:22, 27 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I think perhaps it would be a good idea to take a stricter line on definition. To a degree this may be simply a matter of semantics since we appear to be using the word "vitalism" differently, leading to much confusion. It would probably help if we could agree to a standard definition. Jefffire 22:13, 27 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, I think we should get to the backbone of the problem. Certain chiropractic proponents are refusing the well known pseudoscientific aspects of chiropractic to be shown on some Wikipedia articles. They refuse the pseudoscience category despite the very reasonable description of the cat. Some of those members become abusive when their faith is even remotely near the word pseudoscience. The problem has become so bad that they are trying to change the way vitalism is defined in that context. They refuse any well supported view that chiropractic proponents claim all kinds of new age/exagerated things about their treatments, and they refuse to have any information about them claiming to cure homosexuality, schizophrenia, earache etc. It is all well supported and they do their best to make "consensus" trump NPOV every time. They tried their best to label me a pathalogical liar here and on the PS article, and they refused to refer to or acknowledge the literature that proves I was telling the truth. Chiropractic is used to treat homosexuality. I came because the whole article was full of PS notions of vitalism but it was headed "scientific versions". Chiropractic was already briefly mentioned on this article when I turned up, then Gleng added the present Keating information with his own OR added. I didn't add any information on chiropractic. Those abusive chiropractic proponents are the problem. So the solution right now is to remove any mention of chiropractic from the article, and only include it if more specific literature turns up.  I'll do that now. The sooner we get abusive editors off our backs the better. KrishnaVindaloo 02:09, 28 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes Jefffire, I believe you are correct, the definition part is important. When Gleng came here, he added OR about chiropractors no longer believing in mysical versions of vitalism. He also removed reliable sources about pseudoscience. He even tried to remove the article from the PS cat. I don't care if he's written the bible on vitalism. His edits concerning definitions have been strongly OR. He stated in the article that Bechtel and Williamson used vitalism as a pejorative epithet, and that they said the mystical version of vitalism has no credibility.  That is more OR. Bechtel and Williamson used broad definitions of vitalism and stated that it has no credibility.  Bechtel and Williamson are both emergentists and represent the majority of that minority. They don't believe in vitalism in any sense as being credible.  According to the literature there are some emergentists who use vitalistic ideas. They are the minority of that minority. So, we need to consider whether that fringe is even worth mentioning.  Certainly there is no need to paste butterfly and ant stories all over the article.  There is some literature on the hazards of emergentism that say psychology will not be able to advance if vitalistic notions of emergentism are used. That sounds more like it. Weight needs to be properly taken into account here.


 * This article is related to the philosophy of science and the scientific method. Pasteur and other scientists used some vitalistic ideas, and since then their fields have rejected vitalism. Treatments in psychology, alternative medicine etc that use vitalism ideas, are considered pseudoscientific. The term vitalism is generally avoided. The majority science view finds is pseudoscientific or fringe.  It gets attention, and Kirshner and Michison used the term in inverted commas to gain attention. They said they used it in a lighthearted way.  They are actually talking about empirical molecular biochemistry and hoping that the new millenium will bring about more understainding of all the reduced parts within the whole. They are talking about reductionist science, or at least the compatible parts therein.  That is their conclusion.  Vitalism is not something that the majority of biochemists believe in. They generally avoid the term. Emergentism is something different in that case. So again, definitions are important, weighting is important, and all views can be presented according to NPOV policy in good proportion. KrishnaVindaloo 02:28, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Vitalism Highjacked!!!
I think it's funny that people who don't believe in vitalism are taking over this page. And it's pretty sad that those who really do believe in it have to check in daily to make sure the page is properly represented and accurate. People will be coming to this page to learn about vitalism, the concept, the philosophy. Now they have to wade through some skeptic pov. It's gotten out of hand. --RealDefender 03:36, 28 September 2006 (UTC)


 * RealDefender. This is a subject for the philosophy of science, the development of science, and metaphysical considerations of belief and fact systems. This is not a subject for new age religion or postmodern thinking dressed up as science.  Aristotle, Pasteur, Hubbard, David Icke etc are all fine to mention here. But weight and balance should be towards the majority scientific view.  Rather than writing testimonials from various ill-informed great thinkers, we need to hear the viewpoints of the majority of the field. What do physics, biology, psychology, engineering etc fields consider about vitalism?  Vitalist aspects of emergentism are basically new age postmodern ideas about creating something out of nothing, and reality meaning whatever you like.  There are no meteorologists wafting butterfly wings around in order to stop global warming or abort El Ninho.  Science focuses on mechanism. Ethical medical practices insist on mechanism of action. Emergentism has failed to provide evidence. That is the reality of the situation.  The fringe has its place, and NPOV policy dictates exactly how we treat it. KrishnaVindaloo 03:57, 28 September 2006 (UTC)


 * When did el Niño become Portuguese?
 * KV, stop using NPOV arguments, you've little idea of the meaning of NPOV. And none of your crap about civility and NPA -- you are a POV warrior, and that's a simple fact.  You may see yourself as a skeptic, but you are not -- skeptics question things to find the truth, they do not simply dismiss everything out of hand as you do.  How would I know?  My skepticism has been commented on more times than I can remember.  However, I at least am willing to listen to most arguments -- you are not.  Personally, I think vitalism is highly questionable, and is more of a philosophy than a science (in fact, it may very well be pseudoscience), AND YET I am not afraid of it having a decent article, not a hatchet job by some crazed editor who thinks he owns the copyright on wisdom.  &#0149;Jim 62 sch&#0149;  21:15, 28 September 2006 (UTC)


 * RealDefender, there's nothing particularly funny about sceptics editing the article. I'm sorry, but you're mistaken if you think the page in any sense "belongs" to believers in Vitalism. It doesn't belong to skeptics either, but is supposed to give a balanced, NPOV, encyclopedic perspective on the concept. A perspective that does justice to arguments both for and against Vitalism. Please note in this context that "justice" doesn't mean giving "equal weight" to both perspectives. Belief in Vitalism is a minority viewpoint, while criticism of Vitalism is mainstream; therefore, balancing the article equally between the two would mean giving undue weight to the "belief" side. Please see our central policy WP:NPOV for more on this. The text isn't supposed to be in any way argumentative, i. e. it mustn't make arguments, but present the arguments on both sides in a neutral way. "Assert facts about opinions but do not assert opinions themselves."  As Jeffire seems to imply above, a claim like "the limits of reductionism have become apparent in recent years" is indeed not allowable, precisely because it does make an argumentt/claim.  Incidentally, may I ask why you are editing from a new account? It's rather hard to believe you're a brand new user. Bishonen | talk 18:58, 29 September 2006 (UTC).

Vitalist notions in alternative medicine
I am pretty much new to this article and was invited here to here to put my two-cents in. I just read through the article and I think the editors here are all to be commended. For the most part, this seems to be a very informative, well-written article. The section that seemed to stick out the most to me in terms of poor craftsmanship of languange and inadequate information and general confused point is: Vitalist notions in alternative medicine. I hope I am not stepping on anyone's toes, I am just unsure what point is trying to be made here. I see one skeptic's (Williams) view of vitalistism presented sort of disjointly and then Hahnemann's theories of vitalism and homeopathy's movement away from those theories. I guess this section just leaves me confused. I'm not sure if it needs to be flushed out and written better or if it should just get removed.

Anyhow, like I said, I'm new here so I'll just sit back and watch for a while until I get a handle on where you all are at here. Levine2112 05:13, 28 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks Levine2112. Its interesting to hear another chiropractic supporter's view on the article. KrishnaVindaloo 05:18, 28 September 2006 (UTC)


 * You're welcome! Hey, do you guys think there should be a section in here that descibes the popular belief that certain food, especially raw organics, carry with them a certain "vitality"? In that, the closer to the raw, living state you eat something, the more of that food's "vitality" is imparted to you. Essentially, this usage of vital forces boils (or "not boiled", as it were) down to ingesting living enzymes, cells, and good flora (bacteria) which aids in digestion and theoretically is better for you by increasing your body's vitality. Thus the theory is it is better to eat living tissue then dead tissue; living cells over dead cells; living enzymes of dead ones; et cetera. Would this be apropos to the "vitalism" article? Levine2112 06:00, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Here's some research on that... this is just what a quick search provided, but I am sure there is more out there.
 * Fibromyalgia syndrome improved using a mostly raw vegetarian diet
 * Food and nutrient intake of Hallelujah vegetarians
 * Raw food in pets leads to their increased vitality
 * Does this all just fall unter the umbrella of naturopathy?
 * Levine2112 06:08, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Goodbye
Yes, I think RealDefender is absolutely on the money. I also think that Jeffire is absolutely right when he says the article has suffered from to-ing and fro-ing. I suggest that the article cannot be rebuilt from the present state, but should either revert to the version before I was involved, or the version at the point I left. What KV has essentially done is to vandalise an article in order to use it to expound a POV. My basic premise is you don't start with an opinion and try to fit the text around it, but start from the sources (the V RS) and follow where they lead, reporting the sources.

So that's my advice, revert to add in the missing (failed link), and see where you want to go then. My advice on controversial articles from a starting point is that any changes that are disputable (ie introduction of disputed facts or opinions) should be agreed on the Talk page before they are implemented, not placed first and then argued about. That revert and link fix will be my last changes here. If they are sustained or not ill not be my concern; I think that every source in this article is one that I supplied, and I don't believe that this revert removes any other sourced facts. It has removed a reference that might be incorporated, I suggest that the source is read carefully for context, and that you ask whether the information given is opinion or fact, make sure it's identified, and consider whether, if it is an opinion, is it notable, and is it uncontroversial. My advice, you don't have to follow it.

This is my last post on these pages or on any article or article Talk pages. I've left a statement on my user page (and a short test for skeptics)Gleng


 * So long Gleng. Thank you for all you've taught us.  Hopefully, it will return itself to you 7 fold. --Dematt 17:54, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Gleng's work
Gleng has put a lot of work into the history of vitalism on this page. I would like to see it mostly preserved as it is all verified with reliable sources. Let's try not to alter it too much, though adding to it is what he would expect. Hopefully, the end result will be an educational experience for all who stop by here. Do we all agree, or am I barking up a dead tree:) --Dematt 17:54, 28 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Agree - Those of us who are still engaged should rally and protect his work. It's a real loss, but I understand that he might have better thing to work on. It must be really deflating to have your work questioned and rejected my a minority position. Those of us in cam professions are probably used to it by now... Either way, the article is much better. Thanks to gleng. I already put a barnstar on his page. peace~ Travisthurston 20:19, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

-->Please take the time to read this: A short test for skeptics and scientists

Thanks Gleng, like others, I will miss you and your high quality edits and always professional demeanor. All the best, Steth 21:10, 28 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Ditto. &#0149;Jim 62 sch&#0149;  21:17, 28 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry guys, but consensus does not trump NPOV policy. Wikipedia does not allow OR . Exceptional claims require exceptional evidence according to the reliable source stipulations . Those were not presented.  There is undue weight all over Gleng's edits. It doesn't matter if all your sources come from pubmed, if they are irrelevant or if they blow the article out of all proportion, then they fail NPOV policy. Gleng has repeatedly removed verifiable, reliable and NPOV compliant edits from the article (eg Williams, Emmeche, and others). This stifles majority views and boosts fringe views. I understand you may be disappointed, but please remain civil. There are improvements to make to the article. Thank you. KrishnaVindaloo 02:44, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm. KY, if you lied to us in the past, how do we know you are not lying to us now? Steth 04:03, 29 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Steth, civility must be maintained. We all know you have personally attacked me by calling me a pathalogical liar. You refuse to find the information that proves I am truthful. If you look up Christianson, you will find that it is a peer reviewed paper and says chiropractic is used to treat homosexuality. This is due to the vitalism concept being used. Ford is cited as support for reparative therapy being PS. One way we can sort this out once and for all is to post the fact here, on the PS article, and on the chiropractic article, so that other editors can look it up and verify that I am telling the truth, you are continualy personally attacking me, and chiropractic is used pseudoscientifically in many instances. Here is the citation, you look it up. It states clearly that chiropractic is used for reparative therapy (treating homosexuality). A Re-emergence of Reparative Therapy. By: Christianson, Alice. Contemporary Sexuality, Oct2005, Vol. 39 Issue 10, p8-17, 10p; (AN 18639497). That is a pseudoscientific application of chiropractic, which has only minor sci support for the treatment of some back conditions. No messing around with google searches. Academic premier database has Contemporary Sexuality listed as a peer reviewed journal publication, and the sub-title reads "a peer reviewed publication for contemporary sexuality readers". It mentions Ford, (The Pseudoscience of Reparative Therapy). It fits exactly with NPOV policy on reliability and verifiability. KrishnaVindaloo 05:07, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I thought I was being civil. I just don't have to believe you since your fabrications have been documented and exposed in the Pseudoscience - Proof of Krishna Vindaloo's lying to the WP community article. It is a verifiable reference. Since we don't have to assume good faith from you anymore according to WP policy, I just can't be sure you are telling us the truth now. It's not about homosexuality, reparative therapy, vitalism or chiropractic. It is about you lying to us. Is that so difficult to understand?

So go ahead, post away, see if that helps your credibility index. Steth 12:08, 29 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I reverted to the Glengs last version. I feel we can build from here without distorting the good parts that we already have.  KV I understand that you need to present your POV, and I welcome it. Please do so while preserving the integrity of the other well referenced, NPOV, information. --Dematt 12:49, 29 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry Dematt. A lot of what Gleng left was quite bogus. Most of his thesis is fringe, and a lot of his assertions in the article are unsatisfactory as regards verifiability, reliability, and weight. You may have a lot of work to do, though I believe most of it will be in vein. Also, please stop deleting verifiable and reliable facts. KrishnaVindaloo 03:12, 30 September 2006 (UTC)


 * May I recommend the deletion of the section I deleted before, namely the "limitations of reductionism becoming apparent" stuff. At the very least, it should be worded as opinions, rather than fact as it is now. Additionally, the comparison of vitalism with Chaos theory should either be taken out or worded as opinion, since the two subject are very much distinct. Jefffire 15:08, 29 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Sure Jefffire. There are other unsupported aspects that need consensing or cutting also. KrishnaVindaloo 03:06, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Jefffire lets put it here and work on it
This is the whole vitalism in science section:
 * Whether particular vitalistic concepts are "scientific" or not is a subjective judgement, one largely passed by the winners of a debate after the debate has been resolved: many "vitalistic" theories now abandoned were considered as mainstream scientific theories in their time. The replacement of vitalistic theories can thus be seen as having been a progressive refinement of scientific understanding, as the underlying mechanisms of complex phenomena are revealed.

This is the section that you wanted out or reworded. Can we try rewording first. What would you change?
 * However the limits to reductionism have become apparent in recent years, most strikingly in the Mathematics of Chaos Theory, and from the work of Benoit Mandelbrot. These ideas are best known in the metaphor of the "butterfly effect", first recognised by a meteorologist, Edward Norton Lorenz, who noted that his deterministic differential equations model of climate systems was unexpectedly sensitive to initial conditions. This finding was expressed famously (and variously) as implying that the flap of a butterfly's wings in a jungle in South America was enough to "cause" a hurricane on the other side of the world. This insight, that complex non-linear systems can produce inherently unpredictable behavior, seemed to set limits on the ability to "explain" complex behavior by any deterministic description, by setting limits on their "predictability". Subsequently, the work of Stephan Wolfram, Stuart Kaufmann and others explored how chaos can be "harnessed", by exploring how organised behaviors can arise in a structured way from complex systems, giving rise to the modern concepts of emergent behavior and self-organisation.

--Dematt 15:28, 29 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Firstly I think we should excise the issue of holism vs. reductionism as far as possible from the issue. These are two valid approaches which shouldn't be confused with the Mechanistic vs. Vitalistic debate. There are similarities, and those similarities should be mentioned, but it needs to be clear that these are quite distinct concepts. I think we could quite happily move that text to Holism, after a slight rewording for neutrality.


 * As for what remains, I personally think it's a little brief. A concise and neutral comparison of modern "emergent" systems with old fashioned Vitalism may actualy be appropriate, but the differences would also need to be addressed, since they are still essentially Mechanistic (in the philosophical sense) and so not actually Vitalistic as the word is usually defined. Jefffire 15:44, 29 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Sure Jefffire. The subject is confusing, so proper definitions, and good distinguishing features also need to be present. The holism stuff could be linked to the appropriate articles instead of explaining it here, unless of course if there is something about it that clarifies the vitalism concept. KrishnaVindaloo 03:08, 30 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I have no problem with seperating the holism from reductionism, but would like to see a mention of holism here on the vitalism page. Are you suggesting we drop holism or just the comparison with reductionism. --Dematt 16:13, 29 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Okay, Jefffire, I read through your suggestion and think you're right. We can make it work.  I moved the short vitalism/emergent conclusion, to the short reductionist statement here.  I then took the remaining section that you were not happy with and put it in holism in science. --Dematt 20:05, 29 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Cleaning it up
 * Although scientific understanding of the biochemical processes which distinguish living from non-living matter has become increasingly sophisticated, so has the realization that these fundamental processes are incredibly complicated; no complete, reductionist theory has yet been proposed which coordinates all of the actions which occur in a single cell (let alone a higher organism).  Thus, the historical, "vitalist" concepts that often "stood for" things that we did not yet fully understand in reductionist terms are now recognised in the concepts associated with emergent behavior.  This is particularly true in psychology, where the program for replacing vitalistic concepts with lower level descriptions is seen as limited in its ability to explain observable behavior.
 * Does this work for you? --Dematt 20:18, 29 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Hello Dematt. I took another look through the article. Indeed you have basically reinstated a lot of Gleng's OR and overinterpretation of fringe views. It really seems you have a lot of work to do to clean up the shambles. If you don't do it, others will. Thank you. KrishnaVindaloo 10:14, 30 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Does that mean it works for you? --Dematt 18:18, 1 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Overinterpretation of fringe views, shambles. How much more clearly do I need to spell it out? The argumentative line (in single cells (let alone a higher organism) is inappropriate.  Biochemistry has made absolutely massive improvements since the proposal to place vitalism as a key driving force of science.  Historical vitalistic concept basically says that it is a thing of the past, and now there is a new improved vitalism. Thats a ridiculously transparent POV statement.  In psychology, there are professors arguing that emergentism is pseudoscientific. They say it is too close to vitalism and will destroy the chance of psychology advancing as a science. So, no it really doesn't work, unless of course we change policies to turn Wikipedia into a kind of pro-new age advocacy lobby. KrishnaVindaloo 06:19, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

RFC
I made an application for RfC. . Its an RfC on Steth specifically, but it involves other editors, to be fair. Feel free to comment. KrishnaVindaloo 03:35, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

citation verification
"it is not easy to distinguish objectively between vitalism and contemporary scientific theories of complex systems, as explicitly recognized in a review entitled Molecular 'vitalism' published in Cell" <-- please provide the exact quote from this article that explicitly says it is not easy to distinguish objectively between vitalism and a contemporary scientific theory. --JWSchmidt 13:27, 30 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi JWSchmidt. Sorry, no such line, quote, or similar quote exists in that paper. Its just one WP editor's interpretation of the paper. The paper is about our understanding of biochemistry being improved by genome research and speculative discussion on complex metabolic pathways, and a last wistful look at the vitalism of the early 20th century. It uses vitalism in inverted commas, and states explicitly that "In a light-hearted, millennial vein we might call research into this kind of integrated cell and organismal physiology “molecular vitalism.”KrishnaVindaloo 02:24, 1 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I doubt that the authors of Molecular “Vitalism” have any great sympathy for the idea that there might be something beyond chemistry required to account for the behavior of living systems. Care needs to be taken in suggesting that there are contemporary scientific theories that are hard to distinguish from vitalism. I agree that if you include fringe scientific theories and adopt an unconventional definition of vitalism then you do make it difficult to distinguish between vitalism and some fringe theories of complex systems. However, I do not think that is a point made by the cited article. The article by Kirschner, Gerhart and Mitchison does make the point that if we really want to understand the "vital" nature of living things then we have to move beyond simplistic approaches that rely too heavily on genomics. They are calling for renewed efforts to discover and understand molecular processes that provide living systems with self-organization. They note that our intuitions (that are often based on conventional macroscopic machines) can mislead us when we study living systems where events at the level of individual molecules are important. As I interpret the article, this does not indicate any sympathy for vitalism beyond their acknowledgement of the fact that our ignorance of molecular processes in living systems has always been the source of a tendency towards doubt about the power of mechanism to account fully for the behavior of living things. --JWSchmidt 17:05, 1 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Sure JWSchmidt. Vitalism, as the majority know it, is not what the article is promoting. Its just a catchy article for saying "hey, lets be optimistic about science in the new millenium". We can untangle complicated stuff. KrishnaVindaloo 06:21, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

citation required
This claim was in the section above the table of contents: "In the Western tradition, these vital forces were identified as the humours". This idea is not discussed in the remaining sections of the article. --JWSchmidt 13:38, 30 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, humours is only one term. In the West there are and have been many, e.g. Awen (Druidry), energies, odic force, and so on. I believe it could be placed as a collection of others. I seem to remember such a list existing on the qi or similar article. KrishnaVindaloo 02:26, 1 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Maybe it would be more diplomatic to say something like, "Within the Western tradition, vitalists have sometimes identified vital force(s) with one or several of the humours". Here is one source that discusses some of the complexity of how people thought about blood and vital force: Early Blood Chemistry in Britain and France. Noel G. Coley says that blood, "was generally thought to possess special vital properties". Coley goes on to discuss early work that eventually revealed chemical processes involved in blood function. --JWSchmidt 16:44, 1 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Sure, JWSchmidt. I will have a look for more info on that also. Looks like your line will work pretty well. KrishnaVindaloo 06:22, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Removed POV pushing again
Hi all. There had been no improvements to the POV pushing OR lines that were placed in the article, so I removed or placed them in more appropriate areas of the article. If anyone finds any other similar OR lines, please feel free to delete or re-arrange. KrishnaVindaloo 07:49, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Unfinished business
Here I’m placing extracts from relevant discussions on Talk pages (mine and JWS). I’m clearing my User page now as I’m leaving WP


 * "the issue is whether emergence (emergent behaviours) are vitalism without the mysticism. Vitalism, as used by the great vitalists (Pasteur, Driesch, Reid, Freud, Jung etc) disavowed the mystic connotations but used the terms as metaphors for things we did not understand in reductionist terms; they generally weren't denying the existence of a physico chemical basis of phenomena, only asserting that there was then no such explanantion."


 * "In the case of the modern ideas about "emergence", there are two camps who prefer to use the word in two different ways. One way of using the term "emergence" just emphasizes that fact that we have a hard time predicting the behavior of certain complex systems and that "higher order" phenomena can emerge unpredictably from such systems. Other people suggest that if we cannot give a detailed mechanistic account of an emergent phenomenon then maybe the phenomenon cannot have a mechanistic basis. Some people who adopt the later position start with a state of ignorance about mechanism and magnify it into support for their belief that a mechanism does not exist."


 * "....the Sokal article....it is not the best source for dealing with vitalism; it only uses the term in a footnote. It was the first source I found to support an unsourced statement in the vitalism article. --JWSchmidt 22:05, 30 September 2006 (UTC)”


 * “(subsequent note by Gleng to JWS; The Sokal footnote uses as its authority Mayr, writing in 1982 before the (renewed) growth of interest in emergent behaviours; in later years his views on vitalism were rather different I think, as reflected in the quote.)”

The first sentence predates my involvement, and I didn't question it seeing it as uncontroversial. Maybe the editorial, Nat Biotechnol. 2004 Oct;22(10):1191 would do? The psychology reference related back to what had previously said in the article, and the relevant citation was. This citation displays the controversy but actually presents an anti vitalist view (..the box to the article declares that it represents a POV opposite to others presented at the meeting; perhaps this reference should be flagged with the note that its views were a minority view.) On emergence etc, again the sentence refers back to things that existed/exist in the article.”
 * “Re: 3 requested citations (note to JWS)


 * “The four humours go back to Alcmaeon of Croton and Empodecles. Lamarck is probably also worth mention.” (Alcmaeon of Croton, Empodecles, Lamarck and Aristotle are all among the "1000 top scientists").


 * On sources: I questioned elsewhere

a) whether a Penn state sophomore writing for an in-house undergraduate journal is a notable source of opinion

b) whether a popular book entitled “Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience, from Alien abductions to Zone Therapy” is an appropriate source of fact anywhere in WP. (see for a review of it from a skeptical perspective; note the last sentence of that review in particular).

The editorial in Nature Biotechnology begins with a quote from Sydney Brenner "In one way, you could say all the genetic and molecular biological work of the last 60 years could be considered a long interlude...We have come full circle—back to the problems left behind unsolved. How does a wounded organism regenerate exactly the same structure it had before? How does the egg form the organism? In the next 25 years, we are going to have to teach biologists another language...I don't know what it's called yet; nobody knows..."

and goes on to say

''Delivered over 30 years ago, Brenner's cautionary words resound even more forcefully today. Although we may now have a term, 'systems biology,' for his 'language' (the focus of this issue), the central problem remains: how to transform molecular knowledge into an understanding of complex phenomena in cells, tissues, organs and organisms? In the intervening decades, we have become spectacularly successful at creating inventories of genes, proteins and metabolites, but remained spectacularly average at pinpointing key points for medical intervention in disease pathways or determining which recombinant gene(s) to add to generate a complex trait. There is no clear connection between molecular description and such 'systems' phenomena.''

Gleng 09:17, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Cause and effect of Driesch
I'm just wondering how justified it is to essentialy claim that Driesch's decline in reputation was a direct result of being a vitalist. The cite is of the opinion that it is, but I'm not sure if it could be considered entirely authoritive on this exact topic, as it doesn't seem to have much to reference that statement. I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just worried about our certainty given the previous wording. If it could be substantiated from anouther source that would be grand. In the meantime I've reworded it so that the switch to vitalism and decline in reputation are juxtaposed, but not exclicately linked. Jefffire 16:42, 5 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Good point Jefffire. I'll see if I can come up with something more substantial on Driesch. I think your adjustments are for the better. KrishnaVindaloo 07:59, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Opinions of
I doubt Dennett repeated the word "some" in the quote of his about elan vital. Some some typo, most likely. Accordingly, I just deleted the duplicate. In general about the section, though: Since the opinions here are all negative, shouldn't the section be called something more appropriate, like "Critics of...."? --Christofurio 14:10, 6 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks Christofurio. Good suggestion. I think Fyslee made a reasonable alteration to the opinions section. KrishnaVindaloo 10:18, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Relation to emergentism
I like that title for that section. Thanks, KV. --Dematt 01:44, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Criticism section
There was a jumbled mess of thrust and parry in the criticism section obviously argued by a vitalism proponent against the criticism. The main thrust is that where vitalism has been able to be subject to tests and has been tested it is falsified, but nonetheless, there exist supporters of vitalism which retain belief in these aspects despite falsification in a fashion that is essentially a pseudoscientific rejection of falsifiability. This makes those features of vitalism essentially "unfalsifiable" in that the supporters keep moving the testability bar in order to maintain their belief (a hallmark of pseudoscience). --ScienceApologist 19:00, 1 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Good points. This type of stubborn retention of scientifically discarded beliefs is at the heart of the the true believer syndrome. -- Fyslee 06:06, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, thanks SA. I also removed a lot of Glengs old OR from the relation to emergentism section. Emergentism is associated with vitalism, but only in that some researchers say that emergentism sometimes goes the way of vitalism in that it works against the scientific method and objective measures, and moves towards postmodern new age belief systems. KrishnaVindaloo 16:49, 23 November 2006 (UTC)


 * And this was well referenced. Not sure why it shouldn't be in the article.  The discussion is certainly relevant to vitalism.  Maybe just some copy edits, but otherwise okay. --Dematt 04:21, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Dematt. Check out the OR you just committed. There is no reliable mention of vitalism in the sources you presented. It is just your reiteration of Gleng's OR. You also deleted the actual explanation for how the vitalism term was being used (in a lighthearted manner). If you are going to argue your point, you will most likely need to argue black is white, and the toothfairy will take all my teeth if I sleep with my head under the pillow. KrishnaVindaloo 05:12, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Versions of Vitalism table
This table isn't perfect yet, but let's work on it. I've been working on it for awhile. It's a recreation of something I found here. It was probably made by Dr. William Jarvis (now retired), who is - along with Stephen Barrett - one of the world's leading experts on quackery and health fraud. We can adapt and add to this table, using wording that is easily wikilinked. It will be a great addition to the article.

Some headings need centering, and I'm not sure if the other contents should be centered or left-aligned. -- Fyslee 20:00, 26 November 2006 (UTC)


 * 1) Are you married to the idea of "alleged" in the header column?
 * 2) I am concerned that the list is an oversimplification that does not allow for NPOV again.
 * --Dematt 02:44, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * If another word can serve the same purpose, then propose it. We can't state as fact something that is only believed, but not proven, to be true. Such lists are always oversimplifications. That is their strength. They quickly list up all the highlights and if necessary they can be discussed in detail, although if the list is properly worded and wikilinked, it shouldn't be necessary to do very much of that. People can just hop over to the relevant article if they want to learn more about it. The list can be introduced with a paragraph explaining its limitations. I can imagine that it is also possible to add refs to items in the list. It might be better if it is formatted with left align to allow for more text in each box. -- Fyslee 05:44, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Nothing can be proven. Consider that it is you who can't state as fact something you don't believe to be true. This is a major symptom of what is preventing you from acheiving NPOV.


 * Alleged violates NPOV for it is a loaded word. I am quite certain that this article already makes it abundantly clear that we are dealing in theory. The point is made. If we decide to include this table, the right column should just be labelled: Life Force. No alleged and certainly no "condescending" quotation marks. That is NPOV.


 * As for the chart itself, I think it is very deceptive. It claims to be a chart of Vitalistic Healing Systems... but included are things that aren't healing systems at all. "Ancient Greece"? "Ancient Egypt"? "Primitive medicine"? "Wicca"? These things would have to go (as I think their only purpose are to negatively group the healing systems with older thinking (dead religions and failed civilizations). While "vitalism" certainly may have roots in ancient thinking, if this chart is going to approach the threshold of Wikcepability, it should only list Modern vitalistic healing systems (that are actual healing systems - not religions or cultures) in a very NPOV fashion. Levine2112 05:59, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Levine2112. Are you trying to solve a problem, or are you just trying to boot the table? I will make some really easy adjustments. KrishnaVindaloo 11:08, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Just trying to point out a NPOV problem with the table. Judging by your solution, I see my point was understood. Thanks! Levine2112 17:57, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Ahhh! You beat me to it! Good changes that avoid problems. Another thing that might make the table more useful would be to place the various sources in chronological order (approximately). This way the table becomes a historical study of the subject. The current order places sources in an arbitrary order coincidentally determined by their alphabetical order, which removes the usefulness of looking at any historical relationships or other historical placements of subjects. That kind of information is useful. Some ideas are very old, while others are of newer date. Some are indebted to each other and others aren't. This article should cover the whole subject from past to present, not just current usage, and the table should do it as well. -- Fyslee 14:54, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * It could work. However, if we include things from the beginning of time, how do we put a name to the life force concepts of Plato and his dualism and Descartes and his Cartesian dualism, etc. etc..? I have a feeling we would all learn something, but would we would have to be careful about creating OR while doing so? It could be interesting. --Dematt 16:34, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Let's just do the best we can. The table, just like articles, is never finished. Needless to say the word "vitalism" doesn't need to be used in order for a concept to be included. Many other words are still talking about the same basic idea. What do you think of the idea of a chronological order? Does that make sense to you? -- Fyslee 16:42, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I like chronological. --Dematt 16:53, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Versions of Vitalism table (chronological)
I have copied it here for us to work on, and just begun to do a bit. -- Fyslee 16:46, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes its probably more meaningful that way. KrishnaVindaloo 17:18, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Much better. Now it isn't only about healing. So perhaps it may not be appropriate in that section of the article, but rather a more general section. Levine2112 17:38, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Good point. Vitalism isn't just about healing, but has been an element in many things throughout history. Here are some more topics of relevance. Some of them could be added to the table:


 * New Age
 * List of New Age topics
 * Spiritualism
 * Buddhism
 * Shamanism
 * Sufism
 * Neo-Paganism
 * Template: Beliefs about the nature of the divine (below) -- Fyslee 18:09, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Good. But I don't think that these are all religious either. Some of these don't suppose a belief in the divine, just in a force beyond mechanics. We should add Psychology's "Psychic Energy" and Biochemistry's "Vital Force" to this list. And, I'm not sure what the developmental biology term is... but there exists a vitalistic conscept there as well. Also, I think we need to make it clear that this is chronological. Perhaps adding a date column may suffice or a brief explanation. Levine2112 18:44, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Indeed. Vitalism is often a pantheistic concept, IOW no personal "god", just a force. The new title (can be improved) attempts to convey the chronological nature of the table. A date column is a good idea, since some items can be dated approximately, and some exactly. -- Fyslee 19:05, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * So where does religion fit into this and do we draw a line? --Dematt 19:18, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * It is inseparable from the other aspects, whether they are healing or other practices. Of course many, if not most of them, are not organized "religions", but they are belief systems. If you want to draw a line, then you'd have to create two articles, with some type of bridge between them, since they are so interconnected. This article is still small enough to include much more, and could be divided into sections dealing with the primarily religious aspects, and the primarily healing aspects. My next suggestion has far reaching consequences of the positive kind. See the next section....;-) -- Fyslee 19:39, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Category:Vitalism
This article could be the main article (!!!!) for a new category -  . There are quite a few articles here that could be part of that category. This means that this article suddenly takes a very central and defining role here. A number of them are probably already listed here. -- Fyslee 19:45, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Seems like a good idea. But I think we should be very selective about what goes into this category. For instance, just because someone studied a concept related to Vitalism... say Chopra with Ayurvedic... doesn't mean that Chopra should go into the category. I wouldn't even place Ayurvedic Medicine in the category as a whole for it also includes many Mechanistic beliefs as well. Perhaps we should just limit inclusion to the vitalistic concept of a field... so for Ayurvedic, we would only include Prana in the category. Levine2112 20:23, 28 November 2006 (UTC)


 * That sounds reasonable. So, using the table as an example, it would be the things mentioned in left side that would be tagged for the category. Is that right? -- Fyslee 05:42, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I think so. Levine2112 06:16, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

The category is in place and functioning. The link is at the bottom of the article.

The next task is to make sure that all those subjects are somehow linked to this article. They nearly always contain words that can be wikilinked to this article. -- Fyslee 09:18, 30 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Cool. I added Psychic energy there as well. Levine2112 18:06, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I also adding Dualism (Philospohy of the mind) to the category. Once you get into that, then you really start to explore there mind/body dilemma which is often at the heart of vitalism. Levine2112 18:13, 30 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Good! There are enough articles here that are so closely related to Vitalism that a category seemed appropriate. Now with one click we can find them all. This article is now even more important and will get much more attention. -- Fyslee 18:13, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I have an issue with the parent categoies... but let's take that over to that category discussion page. Levine2112 18:17, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Versions of Vitalism table (chronological and term first)
If we put the name first, it may be easier to keep in chronological order. Okay? --Dematt 02:38, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I put some dates preliminary dates in to see what it would look like. --Dematt 02:59, 28 November 2006 (UTC)


 * What about the four humours of ancient Greece? I believe this was Hippocrates vitalistic concept of health. Levine2112 20:29, 28 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Also what about quickening in the medical sense? This is a term many obstetricians use to describe the vital spark at life's inception. Levine2112 02:33, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Humours maybe, quickening is just when the baby or uterus starts to twitch. Now according to WP, some think this is when the "spark" of life begins.  Those "some" people would be adding a vitalistic and probably religious connotation to it. --Dematt 02:51, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


 * What about Psychology's "Psychic Energy" and Biochemistry's "Vital Force"? Levine2112 02:59, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


 * They are certainly non-materialistic. But I don't know if this stuff is considered vitalistic.  See if you can find a source that states something to that effect. --Dematt 03:27, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Found this --Dematt 03:32, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Take a look here: Quickening (medical). The four humours might qualify. -- Fyslee 05:51, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


 * You know we're going to find that everything has it's roots in vitalism because until the 18th century wasn't it heresy to believe otherwise? --Dematt 16:25, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes indeed! There's something to it. In earlier times there were many more phenomena that were unexplained, and they often got some sort of supernatural (prescientific) explanation, whether it was God or something else. With increased knowledge many of those things have gotten a natural explanation. Those who followed along were keeping up with the developing sciences, and those who didn't became believers in religions and/or pseudosciences:


 * A prescientific phenomena can follow at least one of three paths leading to extremely different conclusions:


 * It can be scientifically validated and accepted, becoming a part of scientifically accepted fact. In medicine, such phenomena often start as traditional medicine, or "alternative" medicine, and end up becoming evidence based medicine (EBM).
 * It can be disproven and rejected after much experimentation shows negative results. Such phenomena are relegated to the history books as historic artifacts.
 * It can, in spite of a lack of scientific validation - and even in spite of clear rejection - be preserved and believed, thus becoming a current pseudoscientific phenomena. In medicine, such phenomena are often labeled quackery by the medical community and skeptics.


 * -- Fyslee 17:02, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Soooo.. basically,,, Everything is vitalism until the middle of the 17th or early 18th century when someone openly suggests that there is no god or "life force" and states that all things are explainable in physical/chemical terms. Who was that person and what field was that?  OR are we talking about as far back as Galileo and Copernicus. --Dematt 20:44, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Copernicus is given credit for the beginning of modern science somewhere from 1450 - 1540. So everything before that could really be considered to be vitalistic.  It then would take hundreds of years to slowly build the fields of science that we know today.  As science attempts to explain everything in terms of physical/chemical, some hold on to the idea that there is a life force.  So does science require that there be no "life force"?  Or did Copernicus still believe in a life force (he was a catholic priest). --Dematt 21:00, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I would go back thousands of years, because it's only the mysterious and unexplained phenomenon that are vulnerable to vitalistic interpretations. Even the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, etc. could explain many things in naturalistic terms, but there were things they couldn't explain, so the void was filled with metaphysical speculations, which in religious settings became firmly entrenched beliefs that were worth persecuting for, dying for, and generally forcing others to believe as one's self. Faith took precedence over fact in some cases, and had a strong tendency to squelch new knowledge (like Copernicus). -- Fyslee 22:19, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

List of vitalistic concepts (forces, energies, and such like)
The following list includes several terms from the table above, has eliminate some of them as they are to actual "things" (gods, personages, etc..), and includes a number of terms not found in the table, but found here at Wikipedia. I have deliberately eliminated words that only redirect to this article.

Feel free to add comments and more concepts. If you feel a concept doesn't belong here, then strike it out and explain why (a few words). The list also needs time periods and Origins, so some new items can be incorporated in the table above. -- Fyslee 20:54, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Animal magnetism - included above

Astral body - included

Aura (paranormal) - included

Awen - included

Biofield - included

Chi - included

Chakra - included

Dosha - included

Élan vital or Vital Force

Energy (healing or psychic or spiritual) - included

Etheric body - included

Humours (Ayurveda) - included

Innate Intelligence - included

Ki - included

Life force - included

Mana - included

Morphogenetic field

Neurotheology

Odic force

Orgone energy - included

Pneuma - included

Prana - included

Psychic energy

Qi - included

Shakti

Soul

Spirit

Subtle body

Vitalism

Yin and Yang - included

Classical Vitalism versus Mordern Vitalism
I am unsure if this warrants two separate articles with disambiguation or if there is room for this in just one article. A distinction can be drawn between the "classical vitalism" described already in this article and a "modern vitalism" that can be accommodated by conventional biomedical science. This modern vitalism is best described by the phrase vis medicatrix naturae – the healing power of nature. The truth of this proposition is indisputable. Nature, or more specifically, the body's natural healing mechanisms, is the principle mechanism by which any healing process occurs. Without these natural mechanisms (our immune system, our wound healing capacity, and countless other regulatory and corrective systems) life itself is barely possible.

In terms of chiropractic - the field which I feel most comfortable speaking about - the vitalist notion of Innate intelligence is truly this modern version of vitalism. Other than in a historical sense, I have never learned that Innate intelligence does not refers to any quasi-religious force, but rather just the body's innate ability to heal itself. This is one of the distinct qualities which defines living tissue from the dead or inorganic. This is modern vitalism... and I am sure it is not only limited to chiropractic, but in many healing disciplines including modern medicine. I think a distinction needs to be made to disambiguate between the two concepts... classical vitalism being unverifiable and modern vitalism being indisputable. I realize that this distinction is touched upon, but I think it can be made more clear. I certainly think it is unfair to place something that is entirely real under an umbrella which includes terms such as pseudoscience and obsolete scientific theories. Levine2112 02:10, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Levine2112. You will need to prove that no modern chiropractor uses classical vitalism. KrishnaVindaloo 04:19, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


 * That's not really necessary nor possible any more than it is possible to show that no MD uses vitalistic concepts in their practices. It doesn't really matter what we call all these things, the end result is that people have been trying to explain life with reductionist thinking and have always fallen back onto something that is unexplainable.  No wonder Pasteur, Freud, etc. eventually deduced that there was some other force putting it all together.  They did not have the advantages of computers and calculators and the internet to show them that just because we can't fathom the idea of how everything can be explained in materialistic terms, does not mean that it isn't so.  That is where we are.  That is what emergence is all about; that you can reduce life to the smallest of particles, but at some point these particles begin to combine in ways that we can't predict, YET!  Until then, it has been the pattern for the great thinkers to put together metaphors to explain how things can be used to advance mankind.  Medicine still uses metaphors such as vitality, homeostasis, innate.  Biology uses instinct, vital spark, etc.  We would be making a mistake to be presenting any of this as pseudoscience.  It is history that is still progressing. The purpose of threatening a field with the pseudoscience label is to keep it from settling into the easy answer of "god causes everything" attitude.  It motivates a field to find out why what they say works the way they claim it does.  As long as it is working in that direction, that is what is important.  We are all in this together.  This is our history, nobody can escape it.  There is no reason to make it derogatory. Now can we work together to make this an interesting and enlightening article that pays the proper homage to the great minds that got us to this point? --Dematt 15:09, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Why? Isn't enough to show that II isn't taught that way anymore? That classical vitalism is not part of the typical curriculum of chiropractor's education? That II isn't the metaphysical construct from which it came, but rather now just a way of describing the self-healing physiology of the body? And this goes beyond chiropractic, I am sure. Many kinds of physicians in a wide variety of fields discuss the body's propensity to heal... its vitality. Anyhow, there is classical vitalism and there is the modern vitalism. I just think we should draw a distinction here.


 * In the spirit of collaboration, I offer this article which is highly critical (yet fair) of chiropractic. It dedicates a small section to describe the differences between classical and modern vitalism and why Innate Intelligence has become the latter. Enjoy!Levine2112 04:50, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Scientific status of vitalistic concepts
While there is some amazing information in this new section, I think it breaks the "no essays" policies of Wikipedia. It seems to take Carey's points about the scientific method and be applying it to information about Vitalism (and then coming to the conclusion that therefore Vitalism is pseudoscience), thus creating a WP:OR. It would be one thing if Carey was making this evaluation of Vitalism (or some other second-party source), but to me - and I may very well be wrong - it appears that the editor who made this edit is applying Carey's verifiable views to the verifiable concepts of Vitalism. Thus a WP:OR violation is created. While I would hate to delete it all, it would seem that this is warranted.

Also, I don't think using bold on the article mainspace is a good idea. Levine2112 19:35, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

New Science stuff
Megsherer, thanks for the large volume of information:) It looks like it took a lot of work and I, for one,  apprectiate your efforts.  I am concerned that there is a lot of: X is baloney and X is vitalism, therefore all vitalism is baloney.  That in itself would be considered a logical fallacy.  That is not insurmountable and we may be able to work it in.  However, the bigger problem is the use of the "guidelines for distinguishing between pseudoscience (which is a large gray area mass;) and correctly applied sciences."  For instance, no one knows how may of these guidelines a particular science has to fit in before it qualifies.  It is very subjective and is not for us to decide.  For something as pejorative as the PS label, WP cannot make judgements.  We have to rely on verifiable and reliable sources and even then should state it as opinion as we have done in the critiques section. Otherwise it is WP:OR. When using this type of format, we could create anything we wanted and that is not our job as editors, no matter what we think we know.

Anyway, since there is so much, maybe we need to work with it here. The first step is getting rid of the bold as per WP guidelines format. --Dematt 04:00, 3 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Do the guidelines really forbid all use of bold (besides the first use of the article title or subject)? I've seen it used quite a bit for formatting purposes, but would object to using it to emphasize POV issues. That type of bolding could be seen as POV pushing by an editor, while the other type is simply for formatting purposes. What guidelines or practices should we use? I have tried to work with it below, and the bolding sure worked better! -- Fyslee 10:36, 3 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, I think you were the one that taught me that;) However, I think we need to change that part of the narrative anyway.


 * Thanks for the links, it makes much more sense that way. If this author turns out to be reliable, I have no problem with the information and think it was presented well with the exception of the PS formatting.  Basically, Stenger presents a great narrative to debunk some of the more obvious so-called "bioenergy" endeavers, but he does not have to use the word pseudoscience.  I don't think we need to either.  We can use this information in the critiques section and it should be able to stand o its own.  Readers can then make up their own minds.  Anyone with half a mind will probably see for themselves.  Check out my changes on the page and see if you agree. --Dematt 23:55, 3 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Okay, my first attempt was a complete bust. When I take out the the PS headings, there is little left that has anything to do with vitalism.  Most of it has to do with bienergy and a lesson in quantum mechanics.  It's going to end up being really short, so I'll work on it below and go from there. --Dematt 00:36, 4 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Still trying. Below is what is left.  The remaining does not make much sense alone and needs to be synthesized into something that is worth keeping.  I'm not sure it's going to amount to much.  I'm going to have to be bold and take it back out of the article for now. --Dematt 01:15, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Scientific status para work area

 * This section is originally the contribution of Megscherer.


 * NB: Not all references function here because they are originally used further up in the article itself. To find them, go to the article. -- Fyslee 10:29, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Stephen Carey provides a guideline for distinguishing between pseudoscience and correctly applied sciences. Vitalism can be critically evaluated in terms of Carey's criteria as follows:

1. Pseudosciences often use flawed reasoning in an attempt to explain their theories. Examples that can be interpreted as fallacious reasoning are below.

Vitalism, or bioenergy, is often explained as being an electromagnetic(EM) field and is supported by the theory of quantum physics. Joanne Stefanatos states that "The principles of energy medicine originate in quantum physics." Victor Stenger offers several explanations as to why this line of reasoning may be misplaced. He explains that energy is recognized as matter and exists in discrete packets called quanta. The quanta of EM fields are known to be photons. Energy fields are composed of their componet parts and so only exist when quanta are present. Therefor energy fields are not holistic, but are rather a system of discreet parts that must obey by the laws of physics. This also means that energy fields are not instantaneous. These facts of quantum physics place limitations on the infinite, continuous field that is used by some theorists to describe so-called "human energy fields". Stenger continues, explaining that the effects of EM forces have been measured by physicists as accurately as one part in a billion and there is yet to be any evidence that living organisms emit a unique field.


 * I am having trouble making any sense from this as the Stenger and Stefantos sources are not showing anything online and it sounds pretty technical. Can you explain it a little more or maybe type out a little more of the article.  I am particularly concerned about the part about quantum physics being used to explain vitalism. --Dematt 03:59, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I tried to simplify the quantum physics portion. The information I got from the Stenger paper is nearly the same as his 1999 paper that is online, "the physics of complementary and alternative medicine."  Joanne Stefanatos is a holist veterinarian.  I understand removing Carey, it just helped me as an outline.  I hope the rest makes sense and can find its way back on wiki.
 * After looking at all the comments (I'm still getting used to using this) I completely understand the premise behind removing this section. I agree that it doesn't make much sense to just remove Carey.  The only paragraph I think is still resonable would be the above paragraph on quantum physics.  Thank you for pointing out my 'fallacy' Dematt:)  And thank you for your efforts to salvage some of my contribution Fyslee.  This is a supportive network.


 * Totally agree. This is a good paragraph as written.  I'll put it back in.  The rest is certainly good information, but probably needs to go into of the individual articles that they are about.  Thanks for helping make that decision, it was gicing me a headache:) --Dematt 13:19, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

However, showing that an explanation is false does not provide evidence for the validity of the second explanation. The explanations provided are necessarily encompassing and there may be an untested explanation that better describes the phenomenon. Rubik admits that most research on biofield therapies test the effectiveness of reduced anxiety and pain in patients. These qualitative experiments often do not take into account other factors, and so reduced pain may occur when biofield therapies are applied, but this is not empirical evidence for the existance of a vital force. Carey points out that many ailments go away within 90 days even when untreated.

A product called VitalForce claims to infuse other products such as salt or Kava Kava with energy patterns that are described as subtle energy. This range of energies is claimed to produce varied beneficial results that can be applied to humans, animals, or agriculture. The research portion of their website begins with a lengthy letter from a veterinarian professing the effectiveness of the VitalForce product. In one experiment test subjects (humans) are exposed to energy patterns by drinkind water infused with subtle energy and their auras are interpreted using Kirlian photography. However, "auras" may actually be the result of thermal movement of infrared rediation that all objects emit. This is known as black body radiation(Stenger 1999). Stenger also points out that Kirlian photography is the result of corona discharge that can be effected by differences in temperature and moisture levels, which may change as a person drinks water. Given the disputed nature of the aura along with the ability to manipulate Kirlian images, the Kirlian photographs are not acceptable evidence for a scientific study. Also applying Ockham's Razor, a known physical phenomenon of black body radiation would be a more plausible explanation than an undetected, unique energy field.

Martha Rogers, the main theorist behind the Science of Unitary Human Beings, describes the human energy field as "an irreducible, indivisible, pandimensional energy field identified by pattern and manifesting characteristics that are specific to the whole and which cannot be predicted from knowledge of the parts." This holistic approach to understanding the bioenergy field does not allow for the ability to generate a hypothesis or repeat experiments if it cannot be predicted. Also any failed attempts to test the energy field could be dismissed as not encompassing the "whole" and therefore would not be falsifiable.

2. Most pseudosciences produce little explanatory theory. This can be shown for vitalism by the lack of empirical data produced through experimentation as well as the misapplied connection to quantum theory.

3. Skepticism is often viewed as a sign of narrow-mindedness. One example is given by a blog from Deepak Chopra on October 16, 2006, "It won't satisfy the skeptics at present, but despite their iron-clad objections, a strictly materialistic view of biology, evolution, and cosmology won't hold water."

4. Pseudosciences will usually show little change in their ideas over time. Within the practices of the biofield therapies Qi-Gong is thought to be as old as 18 century BC, chakra has been practiced since 8th century BC, and Reiki was introduced in the early 20th century. Therapeutic Touch incorporates aspects of each of these, and animal magnetism, which was theorized in the 18th century, is very similar to the ideas behind bioenergetic theories.

5. & 6. Two other signs that point to a pseudoscience are that they tend to not be self-correcting and can occur within the bounds of a legitimate science. The Science of Unitary Beings promotes human energy fields and is sometimes incorporated into nurse training, and although human energy fields are not quantum physics, the quantum theory is often cited to explain human energy fields. Bioenergetic research almost never appears in scientific journals and the critical review is likely to be a scientist of an opposing discipline rather than another bioenergetic theorist. The research put forth by VitalForce showed no evidence of peer review and was published by the company that produces the product.

Vitalism in the foundations of medicine
I changed the heading on this section. I think this is the link that we are missingin this article that will connect to Fyslee's table. We need to develop this section to describe how modern medicine started out all vitalistic and then the transition into scientific medicine with some of the unexplained CAMs remaining today. Then we should have most of the fields of science covered, other than maybe physics and, god forbid, ...evolution and ID?

Using the term in the definition
OK, I know it's not our fault that the dictionary we're citing uses "vital" in the definition of "vitalism," but that's really not a helpful definition. I think we can do better, and I'm willing to help improve the intro if there is support for improving it. Ante lan  talk  15:52, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

new age and science
Is it right to include the new-age's "vitalism", along with the more-scientific vitalism? some scientists belive we can't describe the life only by chemical and physical explanation, although they don't belive "spiritual" and mystical power of life.


 * Examples? Some scientists believe in New Age concepts, too, but we need to consider how various views are to be weighted. - Eldereft ~(s)talk~ 23:08, 16 May 2008 (UTC)


 * This question applies to other articles too. In my own opinion "vitalism" refers primarily to a philosophical standpoint. It is necessary to provide a clear analysis of the relations between it, certain medical and biological ideas, religious statements, the putative energies of Asian medical systems, theories of mind and so forth, together with the impact of such ideas on popular culture, from the humours to the "new age". All this is beyond the scope of any single article, I think, but primarily demands that an historically-aware and interdisciplinary consensus be attempted as to the web of relations between these various matters. It is a case of where the various aspects deserve prominence and how to link between them most meaningfully. Redheylin (talk) 17:42, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Having said that, the connections of Sheldrake and Steiner with new age and vitalism are obscure and unreferenced - I do not think they belong here. It would be reasonable to mention that some obsolete ideas live on in popular imagination, I think, that's all. I do not think it right to suggest there is anything in common between these two people. It would be reasonable to mention Sheldrake in the context of holism, organicism and various theories of mind, being new formulations of concepts, once associated with the obsolete term vitalism, still tenable in the life sciences. Redheylin (talk) 00:55, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
 * for exmple - Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Claude Bernard (i am the same user from the beginning of the discussion). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.183.115.155 (talk) 07:22, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Skepdic citation
Here's the statement I have removed;

However, opponents of vitalism argue that it is a remnant of prescientific thinking, since its core ideas are impossible to prove or disprove using scientific method.

HERE'S THE TEXT CITED: '' Vitalism, Purpose, and Superstition - A YouTube Abstract

"Vitalism—the insistence that there is some big, mysterious extra ingredient in all living things—turns out to have been not a deep insight but a failure of imagination." --Daniel Dennett

Vitalism is the metaphysical doctrine that living organisms possess a non-physical inner force or energy that gives them the property of life.

Vitalists believe that the laws of physics and chemistry alone cannot explain life functions and processes. Vitalism is opposed to mechanistic materialism and its thesis that life emerges from a complex combination of organic matter.

The vitalistic principle goes by many names: chi or qi (China) prana (India and therapeutic touch), ki (Japan); Wilhelm Reich's orgone, Mesmer's animal magnetism, Bergson's élan vital (vital force), etc. American advocates much prefer the term energy. Many kinds of alternative therapies or energy medicines are based upon a belief that health is determined by the flow of this alleged energy. For examples, see acupuncture, Ayurvedic medicine, therapeutic touch, reiki, and qigong.

Energy medicine is a placebo, leading many advocates to mistake the effects of classical conditioning, expectation of relief that leads to reduction of anxiety and stress, and beliefs about the effectiveness of the medicine as effects of mythical energy.

See also magical thinking and superstition.''

There is no mention of testability or pre-science in the cited source. The statement lacks citation and at present is editorial POV. Thanks Redheylin (talk) 18:28, 5 June 2008 (UTC)


 * That looks fair, thank you. Based on your edit summary I thought that you were disputing that the source would be adequate to the claim that critics criticize vitalism. We have plenty of sources that are more informative, so I see no particular need to move the ref. to a statement that it does actually support. - Eldereft (cont.) 19:03, 6 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Precisely - who knows, maybe the Teletubbies have committed themselves on the issue. Fact is; when I come to read the "antivitalism" lobby's contributions to these matters, I often find the referencing poor. Just today I came across a page on Magnet therapy from which somebody had industriously removed a set of papers recording pain-relief due to neurone blocking and substituted another load of inaccurate propaganda that misquotes its references. Commonly this takes place without discussion, though there is usually a good deal of destruction involved and edit warring is, unsurprisingly, commonplace.


 * I am sure you can see that, in the above case, this is unwise as well as pseudoscientific in itself, since magnet therapy is widely practised and folks might conclude that what is only analgesia is really healing, and that the wiki article is wrong. Which it is.


 * So, while I left the present misquote in place when I recently revised this page, since then I have found so very many instances of "bad science preaching good science", and been so appalled by the bad manners and ignorance of many parties involved, that I have resolved to tag and then remove every such reference I encounter. If you like, I should be happy to alert you to every such change I make. Redheylin (talk) 20:21, 6 June 2008 (UTC)