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AdeleneDawner comments on Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions - Less Wrong
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How is that a curiosity stopper. Either someone is satisfied with that explanation (like science), or they want to know more about elan vital. Then someone will find that the answer to what elan vital is is either mystical (and therefore bringing religion into the equation) or not known, in which case a curious person would want to find out how Elan vital functions, leading to new discoveries. Similarly now we have forces at the atomic level that we don't understand how they function, and yet quantum theory is generally accepted as truth. How is this different than Elan Vital at the time?
Please elaborate, because on its face that statement does not seem accurate. We do understand how the electromagnetic, weak, and strong forces function. There are places where quantum field theory fails, but there are plenty of places where it succeeds and makes good predictions.
In contrast, "elan vital" doesn't make any predictions. It doesn't drive curiosity because there's no way to test it and get results that we can then try to understand better.
I'm in a very nitpicky mood today:
'Elan vital' seems to predict that there won't be things that are sort-of alive, like viruses; from what I've read about it it suggests that aliveness is all-or-nothing. It may also predict that things that are dead shouldn't be able to be made to move by electrical stimulation of the nerves.
I think you're right. 'Elan vital' sounds like a falsified theory, not an unfalsifiable one.