conatus

plural conatuses

1. An effort, an endeavour, a striving.
   1. Such a striving effort that is a life force.

      1 more example

      Creationists commonly doctor the Second Law of Thermodynamics to claim that biological evolution, an increase in order over time, is physically impossible. The part of the law they omit is “in a closed system.” Organisms are open systems: they capture energy from the sun, food, or ocean vents to carve out temporary pockets of order in their bodies and nests while they dump heat and waste into the environment, increasing disorder in the world as a whole. Organisms’ use of energy to maintain their integrity against the press of entropy is a modern explanation of the principle of conatus (effort or striving), which Spinoza defined as “the endeavor to persist and flourish in one’s own being,” and which was a foundation of several Enlightenment-era theories of life and mind.

      2018, Steven Pinker, “Chapter 2: Entro, Evo, Info”, in Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, Penguin, →ISBN

2. A force or impulse.

   [E]ach part so moved does by that motion exert a conatus of protruding and displacing all the adjacent Particles.

   1665, Robert Hooke, Micrographia

   Synonyms: nisus