Vitalism

<h3 >Vitalism</h3>

The word "organic" is historical, dating back to the 1st century.[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed" title="Wikipedia:Citation needed" >citation needed</a>] For many centuries, Western <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy" title="Alchemy" >alchemists</a> believed in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalism" title="Vitalism" >vitalism</a>. This is the theory that certain compounds could be synthesized only from their <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empedocles" title="Empedocles" >classical elements</a> — Earth, Water, Air, and Fire — by action of a "life-force" (vis vitalis) possessed only by organisms. Vitalism taught that these "organic" compounds were fundamentally different from the "inorganic" compounds that could be obtained from the elements by chemical manipulation.

Vitalism survived for a while even after the rise of modern atomic theory and the replacement of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle#The_five_elements" title="Aristotle" >Aristotelian elements</a> by those we know today. It first came under question in 1824, when <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_W%C3%B6hler" title="Friedrich Wöhler" >Friedrich Wöhler</a> synthesized <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxalic_acid" title="Oxalic acid" >oxalic acid</a>, a compound known to occur only in living organisms, from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanogen" title="Cyanogen" >cyanogen</a>.[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed" title="Wikipedia:Citation needed" >citation needed</a>] A more decisive experiment was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%B6hler_synthesis" title="Wöhler synthesis" >Wöhler's 1828 synthesis</a> of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urea" title="Urea" >urea</a> from the inorganic <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_(chemistry)" title="Salt (chemistry)" >salts</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_cyanate" title="Potassium cyanate" >potassium cyanate</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_sulfate" title="Ammonium sulfate" >ammonium sulfate</a>. Urea had long been considered to be an "organic" compound, as it was known to occur only in the urine of living organisms. Wöhler's experiments were followed by many others, where increasingly complex "organic" substances were produced from "inorganic" ones without the involvement of any living organism.[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed" title="Wikipedia:Citation needed" >citation needed</a>]