geotropic

Updated: May 10, 2025

He, too, refuses, as usual, to postulate “vital force.” Yet to speak of “the fundamental peculiarities of the living matter inherent in the organism” and to admit that plants are “irritable,” “heliotropic,” “geotropic,” &c., amounts to much the same thing as postulating vital force; that is to say, to a mere naming of the specific problem of life without explaining it.

Rudolf Otto - Naturalism And Religion