Mechanism and vitalism. A history of the controversy

De Klerk’s 1979 article in Acta Biotheoretica is a history of the mechanism-vitalism controversy in biology and is the peer-reviewed reference used in this case for the displacement of the vitalist framework on which Hufeland’s macrobiotics depended. The bibliographic metadata were copied from the deterministic Crossref record (DOI 10.1007/BF00054676; author family name De Klerk; container Acta Biotheoretica; volume 28, issue 1, pages 1-10; year 1979). The vital force (Lebenskraft) that Hufeland posited as the determinant of the term of life belongs to the vitalist side of this controversy; the historical resolution in mainstream biology favoured mechanistic and physico-chemical explanation, which is the basis for classifying the vital-force claim in this case as refuted (see also the Encyclopaedia Britannica ‘Vitalism’ entry, the separate source for the plain statement that vitalism lost standing as the physical and chemical nature of vital phenomena was demonstrated).