I feel like one should use a different term than vitalism to describe the unpredictability, since Henri Bergson cane up with vitalism based on the idea that physics can make short-term predictions about the positions of things but that by understanding higher powers one can also learn to predict what kinds of life will emerge etc..
Like let’s say you have a big pile of grain. A simple physical calculation can tell you that this pile will stay attached to the ground (gravity) and a more complex one can tell you that it will remain ~static for a while. But you can’t use Newtonian mechanics, relativity, or quantum mechanics to predict the fact that it will likely grow moldy or get eaten by mice, even though that will also happen.
I feel like one should use a different term than vitalism to describe the unpredictability, since Henri Bergson cane up with vitalism based on the idea that physics can make short-term predictions about the positions of things but that by understanding higher powers one can also learn to predict what kinds of life will emerge etc..
Like let’s say you have a big pile of grain. A simple physical calculation can tell you that this pile will stay attached to the ground (gravity) and a more complex one can tell you that it will remain ~static for a while. But you can’t use Newtonian mechanics, relativity, or quantum mechanics to predict the fact that it will likely grow moldy or get eaten by mice, even though that will also happen.