Life (Britannica article)

Sagan, Carl. "Life." Encyclopaedia Britannica: Macropaedia. 1974.

Under the subsection "Life on Earth," briefly handles "Mechanism and vitalism," endorsing strongly the victorious mechanist position that ". . . all organisms are made of atoms and nothing else . . ." and can be explained in detail and "solely by physics and chemistry" (894-95). See in this Category of the Wiki, R. Descartes; T. Hobbes; D. Hofstadter; J. R. Munson and R. C. York; D. S. Robinson; J. C. J. Smart; B. de Spinoza; S. E. Toulmin; R. A. Watson; R. S. Westfall. Note well that CS was important in the late 20th c. for gently spreading a materialist and "mechanist" interpretation of nature and the human condition, with such views in his Cosmos TV shows updated and repeated in the 21st c. by Neil deGrasse Tyson.