Alliance for Mystical Pragmatics

Alliance for Mystical Pragmatics

Harmonizing Evolutionary Convergence

Glossary Menus

vitality

Meanings of vitality include ‘the capacity to live, grow, or develop’ in plants, for instance, and ‘exuberant mental vigour’ in humans. These are energies that cannot be explained in terms of the laws of physics, for they ultimately arise through the power of Life, emerging directly from the Divine Origin of the Universe.

Henri Bergson called this vital impulse élan vital in L’Évolution créatrice, in an early attempt to refute a mechanistic view of Life. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature the 1927 “in recognition of his rich and vitalizing ideas and the brilliant skill with which they have been presented”.

Yet scientists claim to have refuted vitalism, which Wikipedia calls ‘pseudoscience’, constrained by obsolete worldviews and mindsets, which distort our understanding of what it truly means to be human.

See also: 

Etymology

Middle English vitality ‘vital force’, from Old French, from Latin vītālis ‘of or belonging to life’, from vīta ‘life’, related to vīvere ‘to live’, from PIE base *gʷei- ‘to live’.

Common ancestor(s):