Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism
Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism
Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism
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90 J.J. <strong>Haldane</strong><br />
The Emergence of Life <strong>and</strong> the Origins of Reproduction<br />
Old-style vitalism, the dualistic idea that living things are composites of<br />
two substances, a quantity of inanimate matter <strong>and</strong> a motivating élan vital or<br />
life force, has little to be said for it. Indeed, from the point of view of the<br />
Aristotelian picture I favour it is quite the wrong way to think of the nature<br />
of living things. On this preferred account the difference between an inanimate<br />
object <strong>and</strong> a living thing is not that the latter is a lump of matter plus an<br />
immaterial agent resident within it; rather it is that the latter has an intrinsic<br />
functional organization in virtue of which its movements are explicable in<br />
terms of ends towards which they are directed. Notice that this is an avowedly<br />
non-reductive <strong>and</strong> teleological characterization. That is not a problem for<br />
me; rather it presents a challenge to the anti-teleologist to provide a nonteleological<br />
account of the difference between living <strong>and</strong> non-living things.<br />
Appeal to their matter alone will hardly do. First, the pure reductionist<br />
will not want to rest his account at any level that is not further reducible<br />
to physics, so an ineliminable chemical theory will be problematic. Second,<br />
bracketing this point, no merely compositional account seems adequate, since<br />
it need not be an issue of contention what non-living <strong>and</strong> living things are<br />
made of. The question is what makes one <strong>and</strong> not another alive. To deploy<br />
the Aristotelian terminology it may be agreed that inanimate A <strong>and</strong> animate<br />
B have the same kind of material cause (physical substratum); the issue is<br />
whether this is sufficient to explain their natures as kinds of things, living<br />
<strong>and</strong> non-living respectively. According to the neo-vitalist account each has<br />
a formal cause, that which makes it be the sort of thing it is, <strong>and</strong> the latter<br />
has a final cause – its organic well-being or efficient functioning – towards<br />
which it is moving.<br />
I began this contrast in terms that suggest comparing two objects sitting<br />
side by side on a table – or more realistically two specimens beneath a microscope<br />
or in some other apparatus. But any purported naturalistic account of<br />
the nature of vitality will want to serve in a historical account of the origins<br />
of life. That is because the naturalism in question is materialist <strong>and</strong> involves<br />
the familiar idea that life itself has evolved from non-living matter. Thus the<br />
difference between the living <strong>and</strong> the inanimate has first to be specified, <strong>and</strong><br />
then it has to be shown how there could be a natural transition from one kind<br />
of state to another. There will be no principled obstacle to success in the<br />
latter task if the former leaves no vitalist or teleological residue. For then one<br />
will only have to show how one spatio-temporal arrangement of microphysical<br />
particles led to another. But notice that this course involves the denial that<br />
there are any such entities as living things <strong>and</strong> that there was ever any such<br />
process as the emergence of life. In reality, the situation is no different from<br />
that obtaining before the earth <strong>and</strong> the sun were formed.