For some reason, Spinoza has had a very strong influence on German philosophy since the late 18th century. Chiefly because of Johann Von Goethe, German idealism and German philosophy hithero have strong Spinozist overtones, chiefly a pantheistic/monist view of the universe. There is another way besides pantheism and monism that Spinoza seems to have influenced German thinking. This is in the view that willing is part of the universe, that living things have an internal drive to preserve their form. This is known to some as vitalism when applied only to living things and voluntarism when applied to the world. Spinoza's conatus brought this thinking into modern philosophy, having its roots in Stoic doctrine but updated with the revolutionary law of inertia to be a distinctly physical phenomenon.
In the 18th century there was an ongoing debate about how life developed. Was it purely material causality, mechanical, or was there formal design? Does the embryo develop from a mixture of male sperm and the female egg, or is the complete animal already existent in the sperm as a tiny version of itself? The former theory was called epigenesis and the latter preformationism. Today we mostly accept epigenesis when it comes to embryology, though the development of DNA and the arguments that genes determine behavior harkens back to preformationism. The notion that there exists a small version of the fully developed organism inside male sperm seems downright ludicrous today, and also totally sexist( the meaning of "before you were formed in the womb I knew you"). But what these theories debated was the question of whether living things are different and develop differently than inorganic material things which is still important.
Vitalism became the new theory to oppose the mechanical view of living things. Instead of a prevenient design, living things have a force or a fluid unique to them. This force or material is what makes organic things grow in a certain way. Vitalism is considered debunked or as pseudoscience today, specifically the claim that organic compounds cannot be synthesized from inorganic compounds. The problem is in specifying something either supernatural or not known by natural sciences which can be proven or disproven, or relegated to philosophy, such as Henri Bergson's once popular Elan Vital. However the question of what makes life different from non-life continues to be debated.
In German, the opposing views are kraft and trieb, force and drive. A force is what an object has or imparts onto an object a state of motion or rest. Kraft is external and mechanical change, dependent on the inertia a body has. Trieb or drive is the becoming nature of something, the impetus to grow a certain way and maintain a form. With the growing influence of epigenesis by the 18th century animals were coming to be viewed as dynamic not static creatures which are defined by developmental contingency not the unfolding of a plan. The word evolution was used before the mid 19th century to describe preformationist theories, as the word evolution means "unfolding." But if animals are dynamic, what makes life different from non-life? Are living things just complicated machines able to manufacture copies of themselves?
Johann Blumenbach the 18th century biologist described life as having a bildungstrieb, a formative drive. This is a tendency to grow a certain way and maintain a certain form under resistance. He discovered this by cutting up plants and observing their ability to regenerate parts. The bildungstrieb differs from vitalism in that it is descriptive and not a special force or fluid. There's no reason to believe that organisms have something extra to make them alive, they just behave in a way which preserves their existence. As with Spinoza's conatus, the drive is the internal aspect of the same world experienced in a different way.
“In all living creatures from the human to the maggot and from the cedar up to the steed there lies a particular, inborn, effective drive active throughout life, first in order to attain their specific form, then to maintain it, and if it is destroyed, to restore it where possible.” Blumenbach
The bildungstrieb united the mechanistic explanation of biology with aspects of teleology, which Kant described as teleonomy, the apparent design we see in things. We can only understand living things by ascribing the appearance of purposeful behavior even if that isn't what is really happening. It works that way from an individual perspective because we see the finished product and not the contingencies involved. The process of selection results in what seems purposeful by a sort of disguising of history.
Much like Spinoza's conatus, drive theory is not teleological from the cosmological perspective. Species are not static and the telos is from self-preservation. Only individual things in so far as they persevere have ends, which over time in relation to environmental selection determines the nature of the species.
The notion of drive entered into German thought via Blumenbach as well by Spinoza's philosophy of conatus. Immanuel Kant, Johann von Goethe and Friedrich von Schiller adopted the bildungstrieb into their thinking.
Darwin's theory of natural selection incorporated aspects of drive thinking by giving a naturalistic explanation of the apparent design and complexity of nature through the struggle of living things against their surroundings. Evolution, "unfolding", could be used by naturalists to explain the nature of life. German poets and philosophers like Johann von Goethe presaged evolutionary thinking because of their attempt to square naturalism with a vital life force. Goethe in his work with plants revealed for him an archetype of living things, the urtypus, which things grow from, like a common ancestor from which analogous, homologous, and vestigial structures emerge in descendants. Among German intellectuals evolutionary theory was along with drive theory part of a monistic philosophy of the universe, most prominently by the German Darwin Ernst Haeckel in his The Riddle of the Universe in 1899. It was because of their predisposition to evolutionary thinking combined with the monistic and non-dualist philosophy which allowed them to incorporate natural selection into a comprehensive world view. Whereas in Anglo societies Darwin's ideas more than in Europe are still controversial, with the largest number of creationists being in the United States and a significant number in Britain. Alexis de Toqueville said Americans were Cartesians without ever having read Descartes. It is I think the static view of instinct and the separation of mind from body which makes it hard for many Americans to understand evolutionary theory and think that it portrays the universe as random and meaningless, if not for an intelligence like humans above and beyond the material world.
The notion of drive entered into German thought via Blumenbach as well by Spinoza's philosophy of conatus. Immanuel Kant, Johann von Goethe and Friedrich von Schiller adopted the bildungstrieb into their thinking.
Darwin's theory of natural selection incorporated aspects of drive thinking by giving a naturalistic explanation of the apparent design and complexity of nature through the struggle of living things against their surroundings. Evolution, "unfolding", could be used by naturalists to explain the nature of life. German poets and philosophers like Johann von Goethe presaged evolutionary thinking because of their attempt to square naturalism with a vital life force. Goethe in his work with plants revealed for him an archetype of living things, the urtypus, which things grow from, like a common ancestor from which analogous, homologous, and vestigial structures emerge in descendants. Among German intellectuals evolutionary theory was along with drive theory part of a monistic philosophy of the universe, most prominently by the German Darwin Ernst Haeckel in his The Riddle of the Universe in 1899. It was because of their predisposition to evolutionary thinking combined with the monistic and non-dualist philosophy which allowed them to incorporate natural selection into a comprehensive world view. Whereas in Anglo societies Darwin's ideas more than in Europe are still controversial, with the largest number of creationists being in the United States and a significant number in Britain. Alexis de Toqueville said Americans were Cartesians without ever having read Descartes. It is I think the static view of instinct and the separation of mind from body which makes it hard for many Americans to understand evolutionary theory and think that it portrays the universe as random and meaningless, if not for an intelligence like humans above and beyond the material world.
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