Vitalism is one of those concepts that I flirt with, fearfully. All my scientific education screams to protest, because vitalistic ideas have plagued chemistry and biology. "Nobody will ever synthesize an organic compound from inorganic components!" was once believed, until Wöhler got urea from ammonium cyanate. The motivating idea was vitalism, the notion that some unique life force from living things was needed to make organic compounds. Wöhler refuted the idea by making the piss molecule from scratch. (Urea is the chief solute in urine.)
People still feel like there's something just a bit special about living things, some force or essence, that can perhaps be contained or manipulated. The raw-food fad has a whiff of vitalism about it, a desire to eat something that's still fresh and alive. (It's tough to think of a raw apple slice as "alive" but the cells aren't dead yet.) And I sort of feel it too! It's adjacent to many spiritual notions I already kinda accept, like the concept of ki or St. Thomas Aquinas's intangible "substance" of things. But I guess it'll always be outside the realm of the empirical, maybe.
It's occurred to me that there's a curious analogue to vitalism in how certain people approach media, books or movies or art or whatnot, as infused with some mystical energy of the Author's Intent which the audience ought reverently to soak up. Thus it's evil to criticize or analyze (or gasp "deconstruct") works of art or entertainment. That's destructive to the work somehow, killing its spirit. It's like nobody will ever be able to enjoy Roald Dahl again if you dare to inform readers about his antisemitism.
~Chara of Pnictogen