The three men: Emil Du Bois-Reymond, Hermann Helmholtz, and Ernst Brucke, of the so-called Helmholtz school, behind the 1842 Reymond-Brucke oath, namely of vow of allegiance to the view that only physicochemical forces, in opposition to any and all “life force” (or vitalism) theories, operate in organisms. |
“[We pledge] to put in power this truth: no other forces than the common physical chemical ones are active within the organism. In those cases which cannot at the time be explained by these forces one has either to find a specific way or form of their action by means of physical mathematical method, or to assume new forces equal in dignity to the chemical-physical forces inherent in matter, reducible to the force of attraction and repulsion.”
“Although no one objected to scientific materialism in the physical sciences, the closer that one came to psychology, the greater the general opposition seemed to be, mainly on religious and ethical grounds.”