page_title: Alternatives to evolution by natural selection
section_title: Vitalism
hierarchical_section_title: Alternatives to evolution by natural selection / Alternative explanations of change / Vitalism
caption_attribution_description: Depicted person&#58; &#32;Louis Pasteur
context_page_description: Alternatives to evolution by natural selection, also described as non-Darwinian mechanisms of evolution, have been proposed by scholars investigating biology since classical times to explain signs of evolution and the relatedness of different groups of living things.
  The alternatives in question do not deny that evolutionary changes over time are the origin of the diversity of life, nor deny that the organisms alive today share a common ancestor from the distant past; rather, they propose alternative mechanisms of evolutionary change over time, arguing against mutations acted on by natural selection as the most important driver of evolutionary change.
  This distinguishes them from certain other kinds of arguments that deny that large scale evolution of any sort has taken place, as in some forms of creationism, which do not propose alternative mechanisms of evolutionary change but instead deny that evolutionary change has taken place at all.
context_section_description: Vitalism holds that living organisms differ from other things in containing something non-physical, such as a fluid or vital spirit, that makes them live. The theory dates to ancient Egypt.
  Since Early Modern times, vitalism stood in contrast to the mechanistic explanation of biological systems started by Descartes. Nineteenth century chemists  set out to disprove the claim that forming organic compounds required vitalist influence. In 1828, Friedrich Wöhler showed that urea could be made entirely from inorganic chemicals. Louis Pasteur believed that fermentation required whole organisms, which he supposed carried out chemical reactions found only in living things. The embryologist Hans Driesch, experimenting on sea urchin eggs, showed that separating the first two cells led to two complete but small blastulas, seemingly showing that cell division did not divide the egg into sub-mechanisms, but created more cells each with the vital capability to form a new organism. Vitalism faded out with the demonstration of more satisfactory mechanistic explanations of each of the functions of a living cell or organism. By 1931, biologists had "almost unanimously abandoned vitalism as an acknowledged belief."
caption: Louis Pasteur believed that only living things could carry out fermentation. Painting by Albert Edelfelt, 1885
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