<metaphysics> vitalism was a reaction against the currents of materialism and mechanistic determinism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The vitalists posited that human beings are not purely physical but contain some kind of spiritual component or "vital essence". In practice, since the vitalists could not deny the progress of materialist science, they advocated a kind of dualism of matter and life.
Based on [The Ism Book]
Edited by Giovanni Benzi
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