
English physiologist Charles Sherrington's 1940 Man On His Nature, in which he rips though all the defunct notion about "mind", e.g. the cellular level, and "life", e.g. at the virus level, in the modern era of energy based atomic-molecular physical chemistry. [1]

English physiologist Charles Sherrington's 1940 Man On His Nature, in which he rips though all the defunct notion about "mind", e.g. the cellular level, and "life", e.g. at the virus level, in the modern era of energy based atomic-molecular physical chemistry. [1]

In famous publications, Man on His Nature is the 1937-38 Gifford Lectures turned 1940 book, revised second 1950 edition, given by English physiologist Charles Sherrington, at the University of Edinburgh, on the nature of mind and life and its absurdities-arising paradoxical relationship to matter and energy, when viewed from the chemistry and physics perspective; the lecture builds heavily the writings of the little-known sixteenth-century physician Jean Fernel, particularly his 1548 On the Hidden Causes of Things, a dialogue on the inconsistencies of the Aristotelian model of nature, in respect innate heat, as the source of life, and the assumed modern-day colloquial conceptions of life and death. The so-called Sherrington-Fernel philosophy combined leads directly into the defunct theory of life position.

The following is a Cambridge University Press abstract: [1]

“Based on the Gifford Lectures of 1937-38 in Edinburgh, Nobel Prize winner Charles Sherrington's 1940 study addresses the nature of the mind and its relationship to life and matter. The book centres on the writings of the little-known sixteenth-century physician Jean Fernel. After setting out Fernel's views on the nature of man, Sherrington proceeds to develop his own thoughts, drawing upon a wide variety of philosophical theories. Using Fernel as a historical case study, the book demonstrates how any scientific outlook is always part of its age, and shows how views on the eternal enigmas of mankind, mind and life have changed radically over time. Sherrington's book is important in the history of ideas for its assessment of the value of advances in natural science as a framework for the development of natural theology.”

Quotes
The following are a few of the noted lecture-turned-book quotes, of which there are many:

“Science desires to rid itself of ‘anthropisms’ as unnecessary.”

References
1. Sherrington, Charles. (1938). Man on His Nature (abs). Cambridge University Press, 1950.