Named in memory of the German physician and chemist Georg Ernst Stahl (1660–1734), who developed the phlogiston theory of combustion, which dominated chemical thought for almost a century. Contrary to the view of his friend Friedrich Hoffmann at the University of Halle, who considered living organisms as machines to be explained by the laws of mechanics, Stahl insisted that neither mechanical nor chemical laws alone were sufficient to account for the phenomenon of life. Most likely influenced by his pietism, he insisted that life required a force for which he reserved the Latin word anima, which in turn gave rise to the theory of animism (vitalism). (M 34345) _ _.