Argument from Disanalogy against a Bio-Mechanical View of the Human Body

...Science states that certain organs function automatically or mechanically, but occultism realizes that there is nothing mechanical about the functions of the human body. Let us take as an example a workman throwing a piece of iron among the wheels and levers of a smoothly working machine. There is a grinding crash and the machine stops. If on the other hand you figuratively throw a monkey-wrench into the human body, it will immediately begin the process of throwing it back at you. It will surround the foreign element with a coating and try to absorb it. If this is impossible, it will try to eject it through some channel appointed for that purpose. If this means fails it will in many cases accustom itself to the presence of the obstacle and keep right on working anyway. This shows unmistakably that the organic parts of man possess some inherent form of intelligence; therefore they are not machines, for no mechanical device is capable of intelligence.

Source: Manly Palmer Hall, The Occult Anatomy of Man (Los Angeles: The Philosophical Research Society, 1997), p. 28.