ID The Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.

Welcome to ID the Future.

I'm your host, Andrew McDermott.

Well, today my guest is writer and teacher Daniel Witt to discuss the topic of his recent article at

EvolutionNews.org. Is vitalism making a comeback? The term vitalism refers to the

idea that living things possess a vital force, some fundamental element that generally does

not exist in non-life. It's a very old idea that dates back at least to ancient Egypt and ancient Greek thought.

As a Darwinian paradigm took hold of the natural sciences in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,

vitalism fell out of favor.

But as Daniel reports, a willingness to flirt with vitalism seems to be growing in certain

scientific circles.

Daniel, welcome to ID the Future.

Thanks.

Happy to be here.

Well, readers at EvolutionNews.org, our flagship news and commentary site may be familiar

with your name and your articles there. But this is your first visit to

ID the future. Can you share with listeners just a little bit about you and what got you interested

in intelligent design and the debate over evolution? Yeah, so before I even knew about

intelligent design and the debate about evolution, I was always just fascinated by living things, plants, animals, whatever, fungi.

I was from a little town in West Texas called Lubbock and there's basically nothing alive there.

Just dust. That's a slight exaggeration. But, you know, maybe that's the source of the fascination.

Like if you don't have something around you, it becomes more exciting.

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