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101-536: The vitalist theory attracted numerous followers in Europe and the United States and was popular into the 19th century. Practitioners were often known as magnetizers rather than mesmerists . It had an important influence in medicine for about 75 years from its beginnings in 1779, and continued to have some influence for another 50 years. Hundreds of books were written on the subject between 1766 and 1925, but it

202-402: A pejorative epithet . Ernst Mayr (1904–2005) wrote: It would be ahistorical to ridicule vitalists. When one reads the writings of one of the leading vitalists like Driesch one is forced to agree with him that many of the basic problems of biology simply cannot be solved by a philosophy as that of Descartes, in which the organism is simply considered a machine... The logic of the critique of

303-548: A pseudoscience since the mid-20th century. Vitalism has a long history in medical philosophies: many traditional healing practices posited that disease results from some imbalance in vital forces. The notion that bodily functions are due to a vitalistic principle existing in all living creatures has roots going back at least to ancient Egypt . In Greek philosophy , the Milesian school proposed natural explanations deduced from materialism and mechanism . However, by

404-421: A " laying on of hands ". Reported effects included various feelings: intense heat, trembling, trances , and seizures . Many practitioners took a scientific approach, such as Joseph Philippe François Deleuze (1753–1835), a French physician, anatomist, gynecologist, and physicist. One of his pupils was Théodore Léger (1799–1853), who wrote that the label "mesmerism" was "most improper". Noting that, by 1846,

505-477: A "sensitive" woman; the fourth produced convulsions, but she calmly swallowed the mesmerized contents of a fifth, believing it to be plain water. The commissioners concluded that "the fluid without imagination is powerless, whereas imagination without the fluid can produce the effects of the fluid." Vitalism has a long history in medical philosophies: many traditional healing practices posited that disease results from some imbalance in vital forces. One example of

606-418: A billion and there is yet to be any evidence that living organisms emit a unique field. Vitalistic thinking has been identified in the naive biological theories of children: "Recent experimental results show that a majority of preschoolers tend to choose vitalistic explanations as most plausible. Vitalism, together with other forms of intermediate causality, constitute unique causal devices for naive biology as

707-473: A clairvoyant himself, claimed that it is easy for a clairvoyant to confuse their own emotional and spiritual being with the objective spiritual world. The earliest record of somnambulist clairvoyance is credited to the Marquis de Puységur , a follower of Franz Mesmer , who in 1784 was treating a local dull-witted peasant named Victor Race. During treatment, Race reportedly went into a trance and underwent

808-419: A core domain of thought." Clairvoyance Clairvoyance ( / k l ɛər ˈ v ɔɪ . ə n s / ; from French clair  'clear' and voyance  'vision') is the claimed ability to acquire information that would be considered impossible to get through scientifically proven sensations, thus classified as extrasensory perception , or "sixth sense". Any person who

909-524: A field is sometimes explained as electromagnetic, though some advocates also make confused appeals to quantum physics. Joanne Stefanatos states that "The principles of energy medicine originate in quantum physics." Stenger offers several explanations as to why this line of reasoning may be misplaced. He explains that energy exists in discrete packets called quanta. Energy fields are composed of their component parts and so only exist when quanta are present. Therefore, energy fields are not holistic, but are rather

1010-527: A higher power rather than to the person performing it. A number of Christian saints were said to be able to see or know things that were far removed from their immediate sensory perception as a kind of gift from God, including Charbel Makhlouf , Padre Pio and Anne Catherine Emmerich in Catholicism and Gabriel Urgebadze , Paisios Eznepidis and John Maximovitch in Orthodoxy . Jesus Christ in

1111-592: A majority vote in 1826 in The Royal Academy of Medicine in Paris, studied the effects and clinical potentials of the mesmeric procedure, without trying to establish the physical nature of any magnetic fluidum. The report says: what we have seen in the course of our experiments bears no sort of resemblance to what the Report of 1784 relates with regard to the magnetizers of that period. We neither admit nor reject

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1212-435: A mechanical explanation violates this central experience". The work of Haldane was an influence on organicism . Haldane stated that a purely mechanist interpretation could not account for the characteristics of life. Haldane wrote a number of books in which he attempted to show the invalidity of both vitalism and mechanist approaches to science. Haldane explained: We must find a different theoretical basis of biology, based on

1313-515: A medical practice, mesmerism created a venue for spiritual healing. Some animal magnetists advertised their practices by stressing the "spiritual rather than physical benefits to be gained from animal magnetism" and were able to gather a good clientele from among the spiritually inspired population. Mesmerism has been used in parts of the world as an attempt to treat illness in humans, as well as disease in domestic, farm, circus, and zoo animals. Authors Johann Peter Lange and Allan Kardec wrote that

1414-407: A more general programme describing special reactions that only occur in living organisms. These are irreducibly vital phenomena." Rejecting the claims of Berzelius, Liebig , Traube and others that fermentation resulted from chemical agents or catalysts within cells, Pasteur concluded that fermentation was a "vital action". Hans Driesch (1867–1941) interpreted his experiments as showing that life

1515-470: A parcel of insignificant words; but exercise my profession according to the rules of reason and nature; Is it not natural to die, then if a dozen or two of my patients have died under my hands, is not that natural? ... Although the doctor's obsession with the use of animal magnetism, not merely to cure but to force his ward to fall in love with him, made for a humorous storyline, Inchbald's light-hearted play commented on what society perceived as threats posed by

1616-491: A pernicious metaphysical doctrine." For many scientists, "vitalist" theories were unsatisfactory "holding positions" on the pathway to mechanistic understanding. In 1967, Francis Crick , the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA , stated "And so to those of you who may be vitalists I would make this prophecy: what everyone believed yesterday, and you believe today, only cranks will believe tomorrow." While many vitalistic theories have in fact been falsified, notably Mesmerism,

1717-581: A personality change, becoming fluent and articulate, and giving diagnosis and prescription for his own disease as well as those of others. Clairvoyance was a reported ability of some mediums during the spiritualist period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and psychics of many descriptions have claimed clairvoyant ability up to the present day. Early researchers of clairvoyance included William Gregory , Gustav Pagenstecher, and Rudolf Tischner . Clairvoyance experiments were reported in 1884 by Charles Richet . Playing cards were enclosed in envelopes and

1818-449: A playing card ESP experiment. Cox concluded: "There is no evidence of extrasensory perception either in the 'average man' or of the group investigated or in any particular individual of that group. The discrepancy between these results and those obtained by Rhine is due either to uncontrollable factors in experimental procedure or to the difference in the subjects." Four other psychological departments failed to replicate Rhine's results. It

1919-435: A pseudo-scientific status. On the other hand, new developments in physics, biology, psychology, and cross-disciplinary fields such as cognitive science, artificial life, and the study of non-linear dynamical systems have focused strongly on the high level 'collective behaviour' of complex systems, which is often said to be truly emergent, and the term is increasingly used to characterize such systems. A popular vitalist theory of

2020-431: A quack "answers" the question of "Why does opium cause sleep?" with "Because of its dormitive virtue (i.e., soporific power)." Thomas Henry Huxley compared vitalism to stating that water is the way it is because of its "aquosity". His grandson Julian Huxley in 1926 compared "vital force" or élan vital to explaining a railroad locomotive's operation by its élan locomotif ("locomotive force"). Another criticism

2121-495: A regulative force must exist within living matter to maintain its functions. Berzelius contended that compounds could be distinguished by whether they required any organisms in their synthesis ( organic compounds ) or whether they did not ( inorganic compounds ). Vitalist chemists predicted that organic materials could not be synthesized from inorganic components, but Friedrich Wöhler synthesised urea from inorganic components in 1828. However, contemporary accounts do not support

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2222-536: A series of 35 studies, they could not do so, so they investigated the original experiments' procedure. Marks and Kammann discovered that the notes given to the judges in Targ and Puthoff's experiments contained clues as to which order they were carried out, such as referring to yesterday's two targets, or the date of the session at the top of the page. They concluded that these clues explained the experiment's high hit rates. Marks achieved 100% accuracy without visiting any of

2323-425: A series of letters published by editor John Pearson in 1790, animal magnetism can cause a wide range of effects ranging from vomiting to what is termed the "crisis". The purpose of the treatment (inducing the "crisis") was to shock the body into convulsion in order to remove obstructions in the humoral system that were causing sicknesses. Furthermore, this anonymous supporter of the animal magnetism theory purported that

2424-830: A similar notion in Africa is the Yoruba concept of ase . In the European tradition founded by Hippocrates , these vital forces were associated with the four temperaments and humours . Multiple Asian traditions posited an imbalance or blocking of qi or prana . Amongst unterritorialized traditions such as religions and arts, forms of vitalism continue to exist as philosophical positions or as memorial tenets. Complementary and alternative medicine therapies include energy therapies , associated with vitalism, especially biofield therapies such as therapeutic touch , Reiki , external qi , chakra healing and SHEN therapy. In these therapies,

2525-513: A sound state of health. ... Neither does it act upon all sick persons. ... we may conclude with certainty that this state exists, when it gives rise to the development of new faculties, which have been designated by the names of clairvoyance ; intuition ; internal prevision ; or when it produces great changes in the physical economy, such as insensibility ; a sudden and considerable increase of strength; and when these effects cannot be referred to any other cause. ... We can not only act upon

2626-609: A subject under hypnosis attempted to identify them. The subject was reported to have been successful in a series of 133 trials but the results dropped to chance level when performed before a group of scientists in Cambridge. J. M. Peirce and E. C. Pickering reported a similar experiment in which they tested 36 subjects over 23,384 trials. They did not find above chance scores. Ivor Lloyd Tuckett (1911) and Joseph McCabe (1920) analyzed early cases of clairvoyance and concluded they were best explained by coincidence or fraud. In 1919,

2727-402: A system of discrete parts that must obey 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

2828-413: A valid and reliable test of clairvoyance has resulted in thousands of experiments. One controlled procedure has invited 'senders' to telepathically transmit one of four visual images to 'receivers' deprived of sensation in a nearby chamber (Bem & Honorton, 1994). The result? A reported 32 percent accurate response rate, surpassing the chance rate of 25 percent. But follow-up studies have (depending on who

2929-441: A vital principle, that element is often referred to as the "vital spark", "energy", " élan vital " (coined by vitalist Henri Bergson ), "vital force", or " vis vitalis ", which some equate with the soul . In the 18th and 19th centuries, vitalism was discussed among biologists , between those who felt that the known mechanics of physics would eventually explain the difference between life and non-life and vitalists who argued that

3030-604: Is not morally forbidden , provided it does not tend toward an illicit end or toward anything depraved. ( The Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office : 28 July 1847.) The French Revolution catalyzed existing internal political friction in Britain in the 1790s; a few political radicals used animal magnetism as more than just a moral threat but also a political threat. Among many lectures warning society against government oppression, Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote: William Pitt,

3131-442: Is a great range of theories and practices collectively denoted mesmerism , research has clearly identified that there are substantial and significant differences between "mesmerism" and "hypnotism" however they may be defined. A 1791 London publication explains Mesmer's theory of the vital fluid: Modern philosophy has admitted a plenum or universal principle of fluid matter, which occupies all space; and that as all bodies moving in

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3232-471: Is claimed to have such ability is said to be a clairvoyant ( / k l ɛər ˈ v ɔɪ . ə n t / ) ( ' one who sees clearly ' ). Claims for the existence of paranormal and psychic abilities such as clairvoyance have not been supported by scientific evidence. Parapsychology explores this possibility, but the existence of the paranormal is not accepted by the scientific community . The scientific community widely considers parapsychology, including

3333-635: Is generally regarded by the scientific community as a pseudoscience . In 1988, the US National Research Council concluded "The committee finds no scientific justification from research conducted over a period of 130 years, for the existence of parapsychological phenomena." Skeptics say that if clairvoyance were a reality, it would have become abundantly clear. They also contend that those who believe in paranormal phenomena do so for merely psychological reasons. According to David G. Myers ( Psychology, 8th ed.): The search for

3434-436: Is no longer practiced today except as a form of alternative medicine in some places. The terms "magnetizer" and "mesmerizer" have been applied to people who study and practice animal magnetism. These terms have been distinguished from "mesmerist" and "magnetist", which are regarded as denoting those who study animal magnetism without being practitioners; and from "hypnotist", someone who practises hypnosis . The etymology of

3535-409: Is not run by physicochemical laws. His main argument was that when one cuts up an embryo after its first division or two, each part grows into a complete adult. Driesch's reputation as an experimental biologist deteriorated as a result of his vitalistic theories, which scientists have seen since his time as pseudoscience. Vitalism is a superseded scientific hypothesis, and the term is sometimes used as

3636-492: Is not the inventor of the practical part of the science, since we can trace the practice of it through the most remote ages; and in that respect, the part which he introduced has been completely abandoned. He proposed for it a theory which is now [viz., 1846] exploded, and which, on account of his errors, has been fatal to our progress. He never spoke of the phenomena which have rehabilitated our cause among scientific men; and since nothing remains to be attributed to Mesmer, either in

3737-447: Is one of the ideas that form the basis for many pseudoscientific health systems that claim that illnesses are caused by a disturbance or imbalance of the body's vital force." "Vitalists claim to be scientific, but in fact they reject the scientific method with its basic postulates of cause and effect and of provability. They often regard subjective experience to be more valid than objective material reality." Victor Stenger states that

3838-643: Is permanently altered by chemical transformations (such as cooking). As worded by Charles Birch and John B. Cobb , "the claims of the vitalists came to the fore again" in the 18th century: " Georg Ernst Stahl 's followers were active as were others, such as the physician genius Francis Xavier Bichat of the Hotel Dieu." However, "Bichat moved from the tendency typical of the French vitalistic tradition to progressively free himself from metaphysics in order to combine with hypotheses and theories which accorded to

3939-571: Is that vitalists have failed to rule out mechanistic explanations. This is rather obvious in retrospect for organic chemistry and developmental biology , but the criticism goes back at least a century. In 1912, Jacques Loeb published The Mechanistic Conception of Life , in which he described experiments on how a sea urchin could have a pin for its father, as Bertrand Russell put it ( Religion and Science ). He offered this challenge: Loeb addressed vitalism more explicitly: Bechtel states that vitalism "is often viewed as unfalsifiable , and therefore

4040-399: Is the imam of vital energy". A tendency emerged amongst British magnetizers to call their clinical techniques "mesmerism"; they wanted to distance themselves from the theoretical orientation of animal magnetism that was based on the concept of "magnetic fluid". At the time, some magnetizers attempted to channel what they thought was a magnetic "fluid", and sometimes they attempted this with

4141-503: The Stanford Research Institute from the 1970s through the mid-1990s. In 1972, Harold E. Puthoff and Russell Targ initiated a series of human subject studies to determine whether participants (the viewers or percipients ) could reliably identify and accurately describe salient features of remote locations ( targets ). In the early studies, a human sender was typically present at the remote location as part of

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4242-663: The Transcendental [i.e., metaphysical ] Mesmerism of the Mesmerists … [allegedly] induced through the transmission of an occult influence from [the body of the operator to that of the subject,] Hypnotism , [by which] I mean a peculiar condition of the nervous system, into which it can be thrown by artificial contrivance … [a theoretical position that is entirely] consistent with generally admitted principles in physiological and psychological science [would] therefore [be most aptly] designated Rational Mesmerism . While there

4343-401: The pseudoscientific retention of untested and untestable theories continues to this day. Alan Sokal published an analysis of the wide acceptance among professional nurses of "scientific theories" of spiritual healing. (Pseudoscience and Postmodernism: Antagonists or Fellow-Travelers?). Use of a technique called therapeutic touch was especially reviewed by Sokal, who concluded, "nearly all

4444-461: The " subtle energy " field of a patient is manipulated by a practitioner. The subtle energy is held to exist beyond the electromagnetic energy produced by the heart and brain. Beverly Rubik describes the biofield as a "complex, dynamic, extremely weak EM field within and around the human body...." The founder of homeopathy , Samuel Hahnemann , promoted an immaterial, vitalistic view of disease: "...they are solely spirit-like (dynamic) derangements of

4545-485: The "crisis" created two effects: first, a state in which the "[individual who is] completely reduced under Magnetic influence, although he should seem to be possessed of his senses, yet he ceases to be an accountable creature", and a second "remarkable" state, which would be "conferred upon the [magnetized] subject … [namely] that of perfect and unobstructed vision … in other words, all opacity is removed, and every object becomes luminous and transparent". A patient under crisis

4646-406: The 18th century was " animal magnetism ", in the theories of Franz Mesmer (1734–1815). However, the use of the (conventional) English term animal magnetism to translate Mesmer's magnétisme animal can be misleading for three reasons: Mesmer's ideas became so influential that King Louis XVI of France appointed two commissions to investigate mesmerism ; one was led by Joseph-Ignace Guillotin ,

4747-502: The French were infiltrating England via animal magnetism. Matthews believed that "magnetic spies" would invade England and bring it under subjection by transmitting waves of animal magnetism to subdue the government and people. Such an invasion from foreign influences was perceived as a radical threat. During the Romantic period, mesmerism produced enthusiasm and inspired horror in the spiritual and religious context. Though discredited as

4848-565: The Gospels is also recorded as able to know things far removed from his immediate human perception. Some Christians today also share the same claim. In Jainism , clairvoyance is regarded as one of the five kinds of knowledge. The beings of hell and heaven ( devas ) are said to possess clairvoyance by birth. According to Jain text Sarvārthasiddhi , "this kind of knowledge has been called avadhi as it ascertains matter in downward range or knows objects within limits". Rudolf Steiner , famous as

4949-524: The Italian doctor Marcello Malpighi (1628–1694). Caspar Friedrich Wolff (1733–1794) is considered to be the father of epigenesis in embryology , that is, he marks the point when embryonic development began to be described in terms of the proliferation of cells rather than the incarnation of a preformed soul. However, this degree of empirical observation was not matched by a mechanistic philosophy: in his Theoria Generationis (1759), he tried to explain

5050-520: The Royal Society of Medicine was composed of Poissonnier, Caille , Mauduyt de la Varenne, Andry, and Antoine Laurent de Jussieu . Whilst the commission agreed that the cures claimed by Mesmer were indeed cures, it also concluded there was no evidence of the existence of his "magnetic fluid", and that its effects derived from either the imaginations of its subjects or charlatanry . A generation later, another investigating committee, appointed by

5151-569: The circulatory, lymphatic, respiratory, digestive, endocrine, nervous, and sensory systems in a wide variety of animals but explains that the presence of a soul makes each organism an indivisible whole. He claimed that the behaviour of light and sound waves showed that living organisms possessed a life-energy for which physical laws could never fully account. Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) after his famous rebuttal of spontaneous generation , performed several experiments that he felt supported vitalism. According to Bechtel, Pasteur "fitted fermentation into

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5252-410: The common belief that vitalism died when Wöhler made urea. This Wöhler Myth , as historian Peter Ramberg called it, originated from a popular history of chemistry published in 1931, which, "ignoring all pretense of historical accuracy, 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

5353-443: The constituents. This may be because the properties of the constituents are not fully understood, or because the interactions between the individual constituents are important for the behavior of the system. Whether emergence should be grouped with traditional vitalist concepts is a matter of semantic controversy. According to Emmeche et al. (1997): On the one hand, many scientists and philosophers regard emergence as having only

5454-700: The ease and possibility for everyone to acquire the skills to perform its techniques. Popularization of animal magnetism was denounced and ridiculed by newspaper journals and theatre during the Romantic Era. Many deemed animal magnetism to be nothing more than a theatrical falsity or quackery. In a 1790 publication, an editor presented a series of letters written by an avid supporter of animal magnetism and included his own thoughts in an appendix stating: "No fanatics ever divulged notions more wild and extravagant; no impudent empiric ever retailed promises more preposterous, or histories of cures more devoid of reality, than

5555-464: The efforts which the bodies make towards each other produce animal electricity, which in fact is no more than the effect produced between two bodies, one of which has more motion than the other; a phenomenon serving to prove that the body which has most motion communicates it to the other, until the medium of motion becomes an equilibrium between the two bodies, and then this equality of motion produces animal electricity. According to an anonymous writer of

5656-498: The emergence of the organism by the actions of a vis essentialis (an organizing, formative force). Carl Reichenbach (1788–1869) later developed the theory of Odic force , a form of life-energy that permeates living things. In the 17th century, modern science responded to Newton 's action at a distance and the mechanism of Cartesian dualism with vitalist theories: that whereas the chemical transformations undergone by non-living substances are reversible, so-called "organic" matter

5757-539: The existence of the fluid, because we have not verified the fact ; we do not speak of the baquet ... nor of the assemblage of a great number of people together, who were magnetized in the presence of a crowd of witnesses; because all our experiments were made in the most complete stillness ... and always upon a single person at a time. We do not speak of ... the crisis . Among the conclusions were: Magnetism has taken effect upon persons of different sexes and ages. ... In general, magnetism does not act upon persons in

5858-497: The experiment protocol. A three-step process was used. First, target conditions to be experienced by the senders were randomly selected. Second, in the viewing step, participants were asked to verbally express or sketch their impressions of the remote scene. Third, in these descriptions were matched by separate judges, as closely as possible, with the intended targets. The term remote viewing was coined to describe this overall process. The first paper by Puthoff and Targ on remote viewing

5959-489: The experiments conducted by Puthoff and Targ, only the repeated failure of the investigators to remove sensory cues." In 1982, Robert G. Jahn , then Dean of the School of Engineering at Princeton University, wrote a comprehensive review of psychic phenomena from an engineering perspective. His paper included numerous references to remote viewing studies at the time. Statistical flaws in his work have been proposed by others in

6060-585: The experiments were carried out in the Psychological Laboratory at the University College London . A total of over 12,000 guesses were recorded but Garrett failed to produce above chance level. Soal wrote: "In the case of Mrs. Eileen Garrett we fail to find the slightest confirmation of Dr. J. B. Rhine's remarkable claims relating to her alleged powers of extra-sensory perception. Not only did she fail when I took charge of

6161-451: The experiments, but she failed equally when four other carefully trained experimenters took my place." Remote viewing , also known as remote sensing, remote perception, telesthesia and travelling clairvoyance, is the alleged paranormal ability to perceive a remote or hidden target without support of the senses. A well-known recent study of remote viewing is the US government-funded project at

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6262-583: The great political Animal Magnetist, ... has most foully worked on the diseased fancy of Englishmen ... thrown the nation into a feverish slumber, and is now bringing it to a crisis which may convulse mortality! Major politicians and people in power were accused by radicals of practising animal magnetism on the general population. In his article "Under the Influence: Mesmerism in England", Roy Porter notes that James Tilly Matthews suggested that

6363-677: The magician P. T. Selbit staged a séance at his flat in Bloomsbury . The spiritualist Arthur Conan Doyle attended and declared the clairvoyance manifestations genuine. A significant development in clairvoyance research came when J. B. Rhine , a parapsychologist at Duke University , introduced a standard methodology, with a standard statistical approach to analyzing data, as part of his research into extrasensory perception . A number of psychological departments attempted and failed to repeat Rhine's experiments. At Princeton University , W. S. Cox (1936) produced 25,064 trials with 132 subjects in

6464-474: The magnetized person, but even place him in a complete state of somnambulism , and bring him out of it without his knowledge, out of his sight, at a certain distance, and with doors intervening. ... The greater number of the somnambulists whom we have seen, were completely insensible ... we might pinch their skin, so as to leave a mark, prick them with pins under the nails, &c. without producing any pain, without even their perceiving it. Finally, we saw one who

6565-412: The miracle happened'". Between 1833 and 1844, Johannes Peter Müller wrote a book on physiology called Handbuch der Physiologie , which became the leading textbook in the field for much of the nineteenth century. The book showed Müller's commitments to vitalism; he questioned why organic matter differs from inorganic, then proceeded to chemical analyses of the blood and lymph. He describes in detail

6666-403: The observation that all the phenomena concerned tend towards being so coordinated that they express what is normal for an adult organism. By 1931, biologists had "almost unanimously abandoned vitalism as an acknowledged belief." Contemporary science and engineering sometimes describe emergent processes , in which the properties of a system cannot be fully described in terms of the properties of

6767-488: The other, led by Benjamin Franklin , included Bailly and Lavoisier . 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 a 'wrong' one. At Lavoisier's house, four normal cups of water were held before

6868-416: The parapsychological community and the general scientific community. According to scientific research, clairvoyance is generally explained as the result of confirmation bias , expectancy bias , fraud, hallucination , self- delusion , sensory leakage , subjective validation , wishful thinking or failures to appreciate the base rate of chance occurrences and not as a paranormal power. Parapsychology

6969-603: The perceived effects of animal magnetism have been claimed to operate. The study of animal magnetism spurred the creation of the Societies of Harmony in France, where members paid to join and learn the practice of magnetism. Doctor John Bell was a member of the Philosophical Harmonic Society of Paris, and was certified by the society to lecture and teach on animal magnetism in England. The existence of

7070-595: The practice and theory, or the discoveries that constitute our science, why should it be called mesmerism? In 1784 two French Royal Commissions appointed by Louis XVI studied Mesmer's magnetic fluid theory to try to establish it by scientific evidence. The commission of the Academy of Sciences included Majault, Benjamin Franklin , Jean Sylvain Bailly , Jean-Baptiste Le Roy , Sallin, Jean Darcet , de Borey, Joseph-Ignace Guillotin , and Antoine Lavoisier . The Commission of

7171-414: The practice involve close personal contact via the waving of hands over the body, but people were concerned that the animal magnetists could hypnotize women and direct them at will. Having removed all misconceptions, foretelling of the future, explicit or implicit invocation of the devil, the use of animal magnetism is indeed merely an act of making use of physical media that are otherwise licit and hence it

7272-433: The practice. De Mainanduc brought animal magnetism to England in 1787 and promulgated it into the social arena. In 1785, he had published proposals to the ladies of Britain to establish a "hygean society" or society of health, by which they would pay to join and enjoy his treatments. As both popularity and skepticism increased, many became convinced that animal magnetism could lead to sexual exploitation of women. Not only did

7373-440: The presence of a "formative drive" ( Bildungstrieb ) in living matter. But he pointed out that this name, like names applied to every other kind of vital power, of itself, explains nothing: it serves merely to designate a peculiar power formed by the combination of the mechanical principle with that which is susceptible of modification. Jöns Jakob Berzelius , one of the early 19th century founders of modern chemistry , argued that

7474-431: The processes of life could not be reduced to a mechanistic process. Vitalist biologists such as Johannes Reinke proposed testable hypotheses meant to show inadequacies with mechanistic explanations, but their experiments failed to provide support for vitalism. Biologists now consider vitalism in this sense to have been refuted by empirical evidence , and hence regard it either as a superseded scientific theory , or as

7575-571: The pseudoscientific systems to be examined in this essay are based philosophically on vitalism" and added that "Mainstream science has rejected vitalism since at least the 1930s, for a plethora of good reasons that have only become stronger with time." Joseph C. Keating, Jr. discusses vitalism's past and present roles in chiropractic and calls vitalism "a form of bio-theology ." He further explains that: Keating views vitalism as incompatible with scientific thinking: Keating also mentions Skinner's viewpoint: According to Williams, "[t]oday, vitalism

7676-524: The range of normal perception. Throughout history, there have been numerous places and times in which people have claimed themselves, or others, to be clairvoyant. In several religions, stories of certain individuals being able to see things far removed from their immediate sensory perception are commonplace, especially within pagan religions where oracles were used. Prophecy often involved some degree of clairvoyance, especially when future events were predicted. This ability has sometimes been attributed to

7777-414: The scientific criteria of physics and chemistry." John Hunter recognised "a 'living principle' in addition to mechanics." Johann Friedrich Blumenbach was influential in establishing epigenesis in the life sciences in 1781 with his publication of Über den Bildungstrieb und das Zeugungsgeschäfte . Blumenbach cut up freshwater Hydra and established that the removed parts would regenerate. He inferred

7878-479: The scientific seal of approval would be worth far more to anyone whose claims could be authenticated. To refute those who say there is no ESP, one need only produce a single person who can demonstrate a single, reproducible ESP phenomenon. So far, no such person has emerged. Randi's offer has been publicized for three decades and dozens of people have been tested, sometimes under the scrutiny of an independent panel of judges. Still, nothing. "People's desire to believe in

7979-401: The sites but by using cues. James Randi has written that controlled tests by several other researchers, eliminating several sources of cuing and extraneous evidence present in the original tests, produced negative results. Students were also able to solve Puthoff and Targ's locations from the clues inadvertently included in the transcripts. In 1980, Charles Tart claimed that a rejudging of

8080-437: The societies transformed animal magnetism into a secretive art, where its practitioners and lecturers did not reveal the techniques of the practice based on the society members that have paid for instruction, veiling the idea that it was unfair to reveal the practice to others for free. Although the heightened secrecy of the practice contributed to the skepticism about it, many supporters and practitioners of animal magnetism touted

8181-471: The source of Jesus ' miracles was animal magnetism. Others, like John Campbell Colquhoun and Mary Baker Eddy , denounced the comparison. Mary Baker Eddy went so far as to claim animal magnetism "lead[s] to moral and to physical death." In the Classical era of animal magnetism, the late 17th century to the mid-19th century, there were professional magnetizers, whose techniques were described by authors of

8282-509: The spirit-like power (the vital principle) that animates the human body." The view of disease as a dynamic disturbance of the immaterial and dynamic vital force is taught in many homeopathic colleges and constitutes a fundamental principle for many contemporary practising homeopaths. Vitalism has sometimes been criticized as begging the question by inventing a name. Molière had famously parodied this fallacy in Le Malade imaginaire , where

8383-448: The study of clairvoyance, a pseudoscience . Pertaining to the ability of clear-sightedness, clairvoyance refers to the paranormal ability to see persons and events that are distant in time or space. It can be divided into roughly three classes: precognition , the ability to perceive or predict future events, retrocognition , the ability to see past events, and remote viewing , the perception of contemporary events happening outside

8484-606: The subject himself"—in other words, that it worked purely by the power of suggestion. Hypnotism , a designation coined by the Scottish surgeon, James Braid , originates in Braid's response to an 1841 exhibition of "animal magnetism", by Charles Lafontaine , in Manchester. Writing in 1851, Braid was adamant that, in the absence of the sorts of "higher phenomena" reportedly produced by the mesmerists, and in contra-distinction to

8585-403: The term " galvanism " had been replaced by "electricity", Léger wrote that year: Mesmerism , of all the names proposed [to replace the term animal magnetism ], is decidedly the most improper; for, in the first place, no true science has ever been designated by the name of a man, whatever be the claims he could urge in his favor; and secondly, what are the claims of Mesmer for such an honor? He

8686-411: The term "bioenergetics" "is applied in biochemistry to refer to the readily measurable exchanges of energy within organisms, and between organisms and the environment, which occur by normal physical and chemical processes. This is not, however, what the new vitalists have in mind. They imagine the bioenergetic field as a holistic living force that goes beyond reductionist physics and chemistry." Such

8787-603: The time as particularly effective. Their method was to spend prolonged periods "magnetizing" their customers directly or through "mesmeric magnets". It was observed that in some conditions, certain mesmerizers were more likely to achieve the result than others, regardless of their degree of knowledge. Vitalism Vitalism is a belief that starts from the premise that "living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things." Where vitalism explicitly invokes

8888-531: The time of Lucretius , this account was supplemented, (for example, by the unpredictable clinamen of Epicurus ), and in Stoic physics , the pneuma assumed the role of logos . Galen believed the lungs draw pneuma from the air, which the blood communicates throughout the body. In Europe, medieval physics was influenced by the idea of pneuma , helping to shape later aether theories . Vitalists included English anatomist Francis Glisson (1597–1677) and

8989-550: The transcripts from one of Targ and Puthoff's experiments revealed an above-chance result. Targ and Puthoff again refused to provide copies of the transcripts, and they were not made available for study until July 1985, when it was discovered they still contained sensory cues . Marks and Christopher Scott (1986) wrote: "considering the importance for the remote viewing hypothesis of adequate cue removal, Tart's failure to perform this basic task seems beyond comprehension. As previously concluded, remote viewing has not been demonstrated in

9090-423: The tribe of magnetisers". The novelist and playwright Elizabeth Inchbald wrote the farce Animal Magnetism in the late 1780s. The plot revolved around multiple love triangles and the absurdity of animal magnetism. The following passage mocks the medical prowess of those qualified only as mesmerists: Doctor: They have refused to grant me a diploma—forbid me to practice as a physician, and all because I don't know

9191-448: The vitalists was impeccable. Vitalism has become so disreputable a belief in the last fifty years that no biologist alive today would want to be classified as a vitalist. Still, the remnants of vitalist thinking can be found in the work of Alistair Hardy , Sewall Wright , and Charles Birch , who seem to believe in some sort of nonmaterial principle in organisms. Other vitalists included Johannes Reinke and Oscar Hertwig . Reinke used

9292-448: The word magnetizer comes from the French " magnétiseur " ("practicing the methods of mesmerism"), which in turn is derived from the French verb magnétiser . The term refers to an individual who has the power to manipulate the "magnetic fluid" with effects upon other people present that were regarded as analogous to magnetic effects. This sense of the term is found, for example, in the expression of Antoine Joseph Gorsas : "The magnetizer

9393-416: The word neovitalism to describe his work, claiming that it would eventually be verified through experimentation, and that it was an improvement over the other vitalistic theories. The work of Reinke influenced Carl Jung . John Scott Haldane adopted an anti-mechanist approach to biology and an idealist philosophy early on in his career. Haldane saw his work as a vindication of his belief that teleology

9494-412: The world, abound with pores, this fluid matter introduces itself through the interstices and returns backwards and forwards, flowing through one body by the currents which issue therefrom to another, as in a magnet, which produces that phenomenon which we call Animal Magnetism. This fluid consists of fire, air and spirit, and like all other fluids tends to an equilibrium, therefore it is easy to conceive how

9595-413: Was an essential concept in biology. His views became widely known with his first book Mechanism, life and personality in 1913. Haldane borrowed arguments from the vitalists to use against mechanism; however, he was not a vitalist. Haldane treated the organism as fundamental to biology: "we perceive the organism as a self-regulating entity", "every effort to analyze it into components that can be reduced to

9696-508: Was believed to be able to see through the body and find the cause of illness, either in themselves or in other patients. The Marquis of Puységur 's miraculous healing of a young man named Victor in 1784 was attributed to, and used as evidence in support of, this "crisis" treatment. The Marquis was allegedly able to hypnotize Victor and, while hypnotized, Victor was said to have been able to speak articulately and diagnose his own sickness. Jacob Melo discusses in his books some mechanisms by which

9797-413: Was insensible to one of the most painful operations in surgery, and who did not manifest the slightest emotion in her countenance, her pulse, or her respiration. ... Magnetism is as intense, and as speedily felt, at a distance of six feet as of six inches; and the phenomena developed are the same in both cases. ...Magnetism ought to be allowed a place within the circle of medical sciences... Abbé Faria

9898-478: Was one of the disciples of Franz Anton Mesmer who continued with Mesmer's work following the conclusions of the Royal Commission. In the early 19th century, Abbé Faria is said to have introduced oriental hypnosis to Paris and to have conducted experiments to prove that "no special force was necessary for the production of the mesmeric phenomena such as the trance, but that the determining cause lay within

9999-616: Was published in Nature in March 1974; in it, the team reported some degree of remote viewing success. After the publication of these findings, other attempts to replicate the experiments were carried out with remotely linked groups using computer conferencing. The psychologists David Marks and Richard Kammann attempted to replicate Targ and Puthoff's remote viewing experiments at the Stanford Research Institute. In

10100-612: Was revealed that Rhine's experiments contained methodological flaws and procedural errors. Eileen Garrett was tested by Rhine at Duke University in 1933 with Zener cards . Certain symbols were placed on the cards and sealed in an envelope, and she was asked to guess their contents. She performed poorly and later criticized the tests by claiming the cards lacked a psychic energy called "energy stimulus" and that she could not perform clairvoyance on command. The parapsychologist Samuel Soal and his colleagues tested Garrett in May 1937. Most of

10201-514: Was summarizing the results) failed to replicate the phenomenon or produced mixed results (Bem & others, 2001; Milton & Wiseman, 2002; Storm, 2000, 2003). One skeptic, magician James Randi , had a longstanding offer of U.S. $ 1 million —"to anyone who proves a genuine psychic power under proper observing conditions" (Randi, 1999). French, Australian, and Indian groups have parallel offers of up to 200,000 euros to anyone with demonstrable paranormal abilities (CFI, 2003). Large as these sums are,

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