Hans Adolf Eduard Driesch

German biologist (1867–1941)

Born in Bad Kreuznach, in southwest Germany, Driesch held professorships at Heidelberg, Cologne, and Leipzig, and was visiting professor to China and America. A student of zoology at Freiburg, Jena, and Munich, he was for some years on the staff of the Naples Zoological Station.

Driesch carried out pioneering work in experimental embryology. He separated the two cells formed by the first division of a sea-urchin embryo and observed that each developed into a complete larva, thus demonstrating the capacity of the cell to form identical copies on division. He was also the first to demonstrate the phenomenon of embryonic induction, whereby the position of and interaction between cells within the embryo determine their subsequent differentiation.

Driesch is perhaps best known for his concept of entelechy – a vitalistic philosophy that postulates the origin of life to lie in some unknown vital force separate from biochemical and physiological influences. This also led him to investigate psychic research and parapsychology.

The German biologist and philosopher Hans Adolf Eduard Driesch (1867-1941) was a leading representative of vitalism in the 20th century.

Hans Driesch was born at Bad Kreuznach on Oct. 28, 1867, into a prosperous middle-class family. After studying zoology at the University of Freiburg, he spent some semesters at Munich and then finished his degree at Jena in 1889 under the direction of Ernst Haeckel. Haeckel had apparently established mechanism as the dominant theory in biology and zoology, and Driesch's early work was a series of experimental efforts to confirm this theory. Contrary to his expectations, the experiments seemed to cast doubt on the hypothesis that living beings can be understood on purely mechanist principles.

From 1891 to 1900 Driesch worked at the Marine Biological Station in Naples, continuing his experiments and groping for a theoretical formulation of his results. At this point in his career, he began to read the classical modern philosophers, looking for an adequate philosophical theory of the organism. At the end of a long series of publications in which he explored tentative hypotheses and halfway theories, he finally presented an account of the life processes in genuinely teleological and dynamic terms in the book The Localization of Morphogenetic Processes (1894).

Thereafter Driesch's interests shifted from experimental work to conceptual analysis. He sought to explain the relationship between the concepts of life and the concepts of matter. In 1908 he published his Gifford Lectures, The Science and Philosophy of the Organism, the first full-length presentation of his ideas. At this point Driesch determined to take up a career in academic philosophy and became a lecturer at Heidelberg. Before a decade had elapsed, he had published a complete system of philosophy in three volumes, of which the most basic is his Theory of Order (1912).

In 1919 Driesch took a chair of systematic philosophy at Cologne and 2 years later accepted a similar post at Leipzig. In later years he was a visiting professor in China, the United States, and South America. After Hitler's assumption of power, Driesch was forced out of his position. He became interested in parapsychology and published on such phenomena as telepathy, clairvoyance, and telekinesis. Driesch was married to Margarete Relfferschneidt, and the couple had two children. He died on April 17, 1941.

Further Reading

In spite of his unusually large output of books and articles, Driesch's work has evoked little response. Ruth Moore, The Coil of Life: The Story of the Great Discoveries in the Life Sciences (1961), includes a biographical chapter on Driesch. His theories are discussed in Joseph Needham, Order and Life (1936); Rainer Schubert-Soldern, Mechanism and Vitalism: Philosophical Aspects of Biology, edited by Philip G. Fothergill (trans. 1962); and Jane M. Oppenheimer, Essays in the History of Embryology and Biology (1967). A classic critique of vitalism is Moritz Schlick, Philosophy of Nature (trans. 1949).

(1867-1941)

Embryologist, professor of philosophy at the University of Leipzig, pioneer in many domains of science, and one of the most influential psychical investigators in Germany. Driesch was born in Bad Kreuznach, Germany, October 28, 1867, and had a distinguished academic and scientific career.

In his Philosophie des Organischen (1905) he expresses the opinion that behind psychic phenomena there may be a truth; and in his Wirklichkeitslehre (1917) he states, referring to the work of the Society for Psychical Research, that anyone who declares these things impossible has given up the right to be listened to by serious people.

He mainly meant mental phenomena, but he included physical phenomena as well after his sittings with Willi Schneider in 1922. In his report he saw no reason to deny the objectivity and the genuineness of the phenomena and in a lecture before the London University in 1924 he declared that "the actuality of psychical phenomena is doubted today only by the incorrigible dogmatist."

In the second edition of his Ordnungslehre (1926) a special part is devoted to parapsychology and parapsychophysics. In Grundprobleme der Psychologie, published in the same year, the problems also receive elaborate discussion. In answer to a questionnaire sent out by Oreste Parfumi, published in Luce e Ombra(1926), he states: 1. The mediumistic phenomena are not effects of simple hallucination; 2. It appears to me that they depend exclusively upon the organism of the medium; 3. The spirit theory does not seem to me proven; but spiritism, were it proven, would be a scientific theory. In acknowledgment of Driesch's contribution to psychical research the Society for Psychical Research elected him to the presidential chair for 1926-27, the first German so honored.

Driesch lectured widely on philosophy at universities throughout the world and associated with such pioneers of psychical research as Gustave Geley, Eugene Osty, Baron von Schrenck-Notzing, Sir Oliver Lodge, and Walter Franklin Prince. He also sat with such famous mediums as Willi and Rudi Schneider, "Margery" (Mina Crandon), and Gladys Osborne Leonard.

Driesch retired from his position as lecturer at the University of Leipzig in 1933 under pressure from the Nazis following his support of Jewish scientists. Thereafter he devoted time to his writings, which include a translation into German of J. B. Rhine's book New Frontiers of the Mind (1938). He died April 16, 1941, at Leipzig.

Sources:

Berger, Arthur S., and Joyce Berger. The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research. New York: Paragon House, 1991.

Driesch, Hans A. E. Alltagraetsel des Seelenlebens Psychical Re-search (Everyday Enigmas of the Mind). N.p., 1938.

——. The Crisis in Psychology. N.p., 1925.

——. Leib und Seele. (Body and Mind). N.p., 1916.

——. Parapsychologie, die Wissenschaft von den "occulten" Erscheingen (Parapsychology, Science of "Occult" Phenomena). N.p., 1932.

Pleasants, Helene, ed. Biographical Dictionary of Parapsychology. New York: Helix Press, 1964.

Sudre, R. "The Ideas of Hans Driesch." Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 20 (1926).

(1867–1941). German developmental biologist, and a vitalist, born in Bad Kreuznach, Prussia. Educated at Frieburg and Munich, he received his doctorate in Jena in 1889 under Ernst Haeckel. Driesch travelled extensively in Europe and the Far East, working at the International Zoological Station in Naples between 1891 and 1900. During this time he performed a renowned series of experiments on sea urchin embryos that conclusively demonstrated that the fate of a cell is not determined in the early developmental stages. In 1896, he became the first to demonstrate embryonic induction. After serving as the Gifford lecturer at Aberdeen in 1907–8, Driesch was appointed professor of philosophy at Heidelberg (1911–20), and subsequently at Cologne and Leipzig.

Driesch's early interest in biology was gradually overshadowed by his involvement in philosophy. The discovery, in sea urchins, that a portion of an early embryo could develop into a complete, though smaller than normal, organism contradicted then-current mechanistic theories and led Driesch to develop a theory of vitalism that life is directed by a unique principle and cannot be explained solely in terms of chemical and physical processes. His main work on the subject of vitalism is The History and Theory of Vitalism (1905). Driesch came to believe that living activities, especially development, were controlled by an indefinable vital principle, which he called entelechy.

Driesch's pacifism and philosophical beliefs made him anathema to the Nazi regime. He was forced to retire in 1933. He died in Leipzig on 16 April 1941.

Key publications include The Science and Philosophy of the Organism (1908) compiled from the Gifford lectures at Aberdeen in 1907, Theory of Order (1912), Logic as a Task (1913), and Theory of Reality (1917).

(Published 2004)

— Richard L. Gregory

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