Élan Vital and the Life Force

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From my very early years, I was interested in the question of, what is life? What is it really?  Not, what does it look like, or what does it do, although I was interested in those also, but what actually, in its essence, is life?
 
I (quite naturally) thought that I might find the answer by studying the science of biology.
 
I imagined that the process would be something like this:  look under a microscope at living cells, until one day, the actual thing that is life could be identified.
 
Needless to say, it doesn’t work that way.
 
I came across a quote from an established biologist who must have had the same attraction to biology that I had had at the beginning.  He said, the more I studied life, the less life I found.
 
What biology scientists have concluded is that life is not a thing; it is a process, a chemical reaction.  However complex that chemical chain reaction is, it is only that, and nothing more.
 
Somehow, I could never believe that.  It seems to me that I am something more than a chemical.
 
At some point, I came across the theory of Élan Vital, the life impetus, more commonly known as the life force.  That, I believe, is what I was looking for.

The trouble is, biologists reject the theory.  And because it is traceable back to the year 1907, and much earlier than that, in many forms, perhaps the idea needs to be updated.


 
My notion is that the life force is what sparks, guides and sustains the chemical reactions associated with life.  It is not an emergent phenomenon of physics, but is better thought of as a fundamental force, but not really a force in the sense of nuclear forces in an atom.  Life is fundamental to nature.
 
To those who decry the notion, we might argue rhetorically that the universe itself is a life force.  After all, the very structure of the universe, from the largest scale to the smallest, is precisely configured to support life.  Moreover, it supports not only primitive life forms, but indeed humanity, with its civilization, technology, science, and all the meaningful activities we associate with life. 
 
Life is closely associated with consciousness and our free will, neither of which can be traced to physics.  Indeed, the inward experience of consciousness cannot be defined adequately, and free will is forbidden by physics.
 
These three, life, consciousness and free will, are at the foundation of physical reality.  Without them, the universe could not exist.  Among those who say it could, even they ask, what would be the point?  
 
Growing evidence points to an intimate connection between those three, and physical reality.  In particular, consciousness, the inward perception of reality, cannot be defined by physical reality.  Peculiarly, consciousness perceives not only outward reality, but even itself.
 
Free will, according to physicalist reality, is impossible.  Free will violates a stated basic property of physical reality, that of cause and effect.  Free will makes us sovereign entities, capable of actions not forced by strict causation.  Also, free will is based neither in determinism nor in randomness.  It is its own thing.
 
Yet, the triad of life, of consciousness and of free will, is what give us our basic identity as human beings.  The attempt to reduce them to the status of happenstance effects of an uncaring universe fails on its face.






 

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