The Animal Economy as Object and Program in Montpellier Vitalism

Abstract

ArgumentOur aim in this paper is to show the importance of the notion oféconomie animale in Montpellier vitalism as a hybrid concept which brings together the structural and functional dimensions of the living body -dimensions which hitherto had primarily been studied according to a mechanistic model, or were discussed within the framework of Stahlian animism. The celebrated image of the bee-swarm expresses this structural-functional understanding of living bodies quite well: "One sees them press against each other, mutually supporting each other, forming a kind of whole, in which each living part, in its own way, by means of the correspondence and directions of its motions, enables this kind of life to be sustained in the body" (Ménuret 1765c, Enc. XI, 319a). What is important here is that every component part is always a living part, i.e., every structural unit is always functional. Interestingly, while the twin notions of "animal economy" and organisation are presented as improvements over a mechanistic perspective, they are nonetheless compatible with an expanded sense of mechanism, and by extension, with materialism as reflected notably in the writings of Ménuret and Bordeu. We thus propose both a revision and reconstruction of the historical status of the "animal economy," and a reflection on its conceptual status.

Vitalism and the Resistance to Experimentation on Life in the Eighteenth Century

“…This closely parallels the way few, if any of these physicians ever invoke a "vital force" in support of their critiques of iatromechanism (which are also, symmetrically, critiques of the un-naturalism of Stahlian animism; Rey 2000, Wolfe andTerada 2008). Less Romantic-sounding than the "torture of Nature," the vitalists are concerned with how a certain type of 'analytic method', a method of decomposition, kills the animal, not so much as a moral problem but as a problem for the investigator.…”

“…Namely, Fouquet is much more strongly opposed to a lot of this, as we shall see, and Bordeu is much more indifferent. Ménuret, who is very much 'materialism-friendly' overall (Wolfe and Terada 2008), here seems to waver. On the one hand, corpses should be handed over to anatomists before they get to the priests.…”

“…They criticize mechanism and are reticent about vivisection without appealing to the sacrosanct status of some special 'vital force' distinct from the rest of the material universe, which, as we saw above, makes their view that much closer to Diderot's 'vital materialism'. If they insist on the uniqueness of living beings, it is rather in the form of a 'weak vitalism', or what I have described elsewhere as 'functional' rather than 'substantival' vitalism (Wolfe and Terada 2008;Wolfe 2011). This hostility to intervention, which is roughly synonymous with mechanism in their eyes, is never as categorical as, say, Kant's notorious assertion that there will "never be a Newton of a blade of grass,"…”

The science of high dilutions in historical context

“…28 The Newtonian roots of the French version of vitalism (the Montpellier school), on the other hand, have been discussed by Wolfe & Terada. 29 It may be concluded that as early as 1810, Hahnemann was already considering very seriously the idea that it was a power, a force, something 'spirit-like', dynamic, the active element in remedies, since they acted on the vital powers ("borrows a kind of life from the powers of response"), and that the homeopathic process of dilution and agitation somehow elicited this change in the properties of matter.…”

Vitalist strategies in contemporary Western herbal medicine

“…If the soul could not be held responsible, and knowledge of physiology could not account for such processes, then there had to be something else. Vital forces, whether postulated as heuristics or actual entities, entered the arena alongside the soul and the material body in the 18th century . However, as physiological knowledge advanced, the concept of vitalism became increasingly redundant.…”