For whom is the lecture intended?

Welcome to Physiology 100. I’m Doctor Ann Roberts. I assume everyone here is a sophomore, since this is the Nursing Department second-year physiology course. If you are first-year nursing students, please see me after class about transferring into introductory course. Okay, I’d like to begin my first lecture by introducing two important terms, vitalism versus mechanism. How many of you have heard of these terms? Oh, I see some of you have. Well, vitalism and mechanism are two completely opposite approaches to human physiology. According to the vitalist, the laws of physics and chemistry alone can not explain the processes of life. To the vitalist, there is a so-called vital force, and this vital force is totally separate from that of energy. As you may have guessed, vitalism is a kind of philosophical approach. Mechanism, on the other hand, is the view that all life phenomena, no matter how complex, can be explained according to chemical and physical laws. Since we can support mechanism through scientific experimentation, the modern scientist tends to be a mechanist. But vitalism is not totally dismissed, especially in fields such as brain physiology, where terms such as human consciousness haven’t been defined yet in physiochemical terms. I recently read an interesting article dealt with this very question. Is the mind separate from brain, or is the mind only the chemical and physiological workings of the brain? I’d like to continue with this next time, so that we can speak in more detail. I have some copies of that article, and I want you to take it with you and read it for next week.