vitalism

n. The idea that there is a life force which cannot be explained in terms of physical sciences such as physics and chemistry, usually including the idea that the life force is self-determining in some way and suggesting the failure of the physical and biological sciences fully to explain life itself. The idea of libido in Freud's psychology is sometimes viewed as a form of vitalism, as is the teleological principle in Jung's writings. Vitalism is gradually being replaced in academic thought by the idea of emergent properties in which new aspects emerge that are not necessarily inferable from the parts of a complex system as it existed at a prior moment in time.