In terminology, animal life, along with vegetable life, was one of the two distinctions of forms of "life" in the 19th century.
Overview
In 1735, Carl Linnaeus, in his System of Nature (Systema Naturae), introduced binomial nomenclature classification (Linnaean classification) of species scheme, dividing the world into: mineral, plant, and animal; implicitly a non-living matter (minerals or mineral life) and living matter (plant life and animal life) divide, as it has been passed down to us. Linnaeus, however, seems to have had, in his mind, a bit of a "gradual panbioism" conception; in his own words, Linnaeus divided nature into the following three kingdom conceptualizations: [1]
“Stones grow; plants grow and live; animals grow, live, and feel.”
This quote seems to have been passed on over the next century, verbatim, with little reflection, until about the mid-19th century, when people started questioning the “stones grow” assertion (see also: rock vs human):
“How do stones, or mineral substances, grow? Not as plants, shrubs, or trees. Whenever they grow at all, it is by accretion. It is as if a new layer or coating were added to, or plastered on, to them. They grow, in general, very slowly.”
— William Alcott (1859) (Ѻ)
“Objections: Stones do not grow, but increase in size by accretion. Feeling may be said to exist in the lower classes of both plants and animals, provided that contractility be accepted as a property of sensitive tissue. If it be surmised that pain is a result of feeling (i.e. sensation), it may be attributed to Oethalium with equal propriety as to Ameba. Were every act of fissuration, evisceration or amputation accompanied with pain, it becomes difficult to understand why self-mutilation should be so frequently imposed for the preservation of both individual life and that of the species. It is probable that at such times an organism feels no more pain than is experienced by the contractile contents of an ovum undergoing segmentation.”
— Harrison Allen (1869) (Ѻ)
Hereafter, talk began to shift into what chemists can do with minerals and the types of minerals chemists can make.
References
1. (a) Linnaeus, Carolus. (1751). Philosophia Botanica (translator: Frans A. Statleu) (§:Introduction, 1-4). Publisher.
(b) Anderson, Margaret J. (2009). Carl Linnaeus: Father of Classification (pgs. 52-53). Enslow Publishers.
