The English Civil War revived vitalist philosophy as an alternative to mechanism
Evidence
During the upheaval of the English Civil War and its aftermath in the 1640s and 1650s, the ideas of Paracelsus and Van Helmont were revived in the radical doctrines of the dissenting sects. The breakdown of censorship permitted the translation and circulation of Paracelsian and Helmontian texts. Prior to the Civil War, the religious and political dimensions of mysticism, magic, vitalism, and pantheism had not been emphasized in England, but in the 1640s and 1650s Paracelsian challenges to authority, orthodoxy, and rationalism were held up as an alternative to both the Aristotelian philosophy taught in the universities and the new mechanical philosophy being discussed at Oxford. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 526
Categorization
- XREF: Shows the organic-versus-mechanistic contest was waged in lived political conflict, i.e. the polyad’s colonialism/revolution thread rather than merely abstract cosmology. — connects to: Vitalists collapsed Cartesian mind-matter dualism into a monistic union — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 932; Animist vitalism functioned as an ethic restraining exploitation of nature — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 158; Vitalism is a shared orientation, not an exclusively African or Western one — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 1029 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Vitalists collapsed Cartesian mind-matter dualism into a monistic union
#expands(0.78) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 932 - Animist vitalism functioned as an ethic restraining exploitation of nature
#exemplifies(0.75) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 158 - Vitalism’s monistic worldview inherently restrains the exploitation of nature
#corroborates(0.75) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 933 - Vitalism is a shared orientation, not an exclusively African or Western one
#expands(0.72) — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 1029 - The doctrine of Vital Force unites Western Being and African Life
#qualifies(0.72) — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 198