(3) Living organisms cannot be machines because machines do not suffer.
The first objection encouraged a long series of experiments on the in vitro synthesis of organic compounds, and was clamorously falsified in 1828, when Friedrich Woehler obtained the synthesis of urea in the laboratory. It is interesting to notice that Woehler himself was a convinced vitalist, and wrote with dismay that he was wittnessing “the great tragedy of science, the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact” (this shows that the first vitalists – quite differently from their later followers – fully accepted the principle of experimental falsification).

Figure 1-1 The “Writer”, built in the middle of the 18th century by the Swiss inventor Pierre Jacquet-Droz, is a beautiful automaton sitting at a writing desk that dips his pen into the inkwell, shakes off the eccess ink, and writes Descartes’ famous motto “Cogito ergo sum”. The automaton is still fully operational and survives in a Neuchâtel museum.