Meta Comment: The summaries that are supposed to be used in the rerun posts is very incomplete. For several of the recent posts, I've had to write my own summaries to put in the posts. A while ago, I believe there was some sort of coordinated effort to organize all of the sequence posts with summaries of the key concepts, but that effort seems to have ceased. If you are willing to put in any time on this effort, it would be much appreciated.
Today's post, Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions was originally published on 25 August 2007. A summary:
The theory of vitalism was developed before the idea of biochemistry. It stated that the mysterious properties of living matter, compared to nonliving matter, was due to an "elan vital". This explanation acts as a curiosity-stopper, and leaves the phenomenon just as mysterious and inexplicable as it was before the answer was given. It feels like an explanation, though it fails to constrain anticipation.
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Semantic Stopsigns, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.