Editing Materialism (section)

==History==
{{See also|History of naturalism}}

===Early history===

====Before Common Era====

[[File:Pinacoteca Querini Stampalia - Leucippus - Luca Giordano.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Leucippus]] (4th century BC), father of [[atomism]] and teacher of [[Democritus]]. Painting by [[Luca Giordano]], circa 1653.]]
Materialism developed, possibly independently, in several geographically separated regions of [[Eurasia]] during what [[Karl Jaspers]] termed the [[Axial Age]] ({{Circa}}&nbsp;800–200&nbsp;BC).

In [[ancient Indian philosophy]], materialism developed around 600&nbsp;BC with the works of [[Ajita Kesakambali]], [[Payasi]], [[Kanada (philosopher)|Kanada]] and the proponents of the [[Cārvāka]] school of philosophy. Kanada became one of the early proponents of [[atomism]]. The [[Nyaya]]–[[Vaisesika]] school (c.&nbsp;600–100&nbsp;BC) developed one of the earliest forms of atomism (although their proofs of God and their positing that consciousness was not material precludes labelling them as materialists). [[Buddhist atomism]] and the [[Jainism|Jaina]] school continued the atomic tradition.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Berryman |first1=Sylvia |title=Ancient Atomism |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atomism-ancient/ |website=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |access-date=5 June 2024 |date=2022}}</ref>

[[Ancient Greek philosophy|Ancient Greek]] [[atomists]] like [[Leucippus]], [[Democritus]] and [[Epicurus]] prefigure later materialists. The Latin poem ''[[De Rerum Natura]]'' by [[Lucretius]] (99&nbsp;–&nbsp;c.&nbsp;55&nbsp;BC) reflects the [[mechanism (philosophy)|mechanistic]] philosophy of Democritus and Epicurus. According to this view, all that exists is matter and void, and all phenomena result from different motions and conglomerations of base material particles called ''atoms'' (literally "indivisibles"). ''De Rerum Natura'' provides mechanistic explanations for phenomena such as erosion, evaporation, wind, and sound. Famous principles like "nothing can touch body but body" first appeared in Lucretius's work. Democritus and Epicurus did not espouse a monist ontology, instead espousing the ontological separation of matter and space (i.e. that space is "another kind" of being).{{Citation needed|date=June 2019}}

====Early Common Era====
[[Wang Chong]] (27&nbsp;– c.&nbsp;100&nbsp;AD) was a Chinese thinker of the early [[Common Era]] said to be a materialist.<ref>{{Google books |id=tAeFipOVx4MC |page=228 |title=The Cambridge Companion to Atheism (2006)}}</ref> Later Indian materialist [[Jayaraashi Bhatta]] (6th century) in his work ''Tattvopaplavasimha'' (''The Upsetting of All Principles'') refuted the [[Nyāya Sūtras|Nyāya Sūtra]] [[epistemology]]. The materialistic [[Cārvāka]] philosophy appears to have died out some time after 1400; when [[Madhavacharya of Sringeri|Madhavacharya]] compiled ''Sarva-darśana-samgraha'' (''A Digest of All Philosophies'') in the 14th century, he had no Cārvāka (or Lokāyata) text to quote from or refer to.<ref>[http://www.carvaka4india.com/2011/12/history-of-indian-materialism.html ''History of Indian Materialism''], Ramakrishna Bhattacharya</ref>

In early 12th-century [[al-Andalus]], [[Early Islamic philosophy|Arabian philosopher]] [[Ibn Tufail]] ({{a.k.a.}}&nbsp;Abubacer) discussed materialism in his [[philosophical novel]], ''[[Hayy ibn Yaqdhan]]'' (''Philosophus Autodidactus''), while vaguely foreshadowing [[historical materialism]].<ref name="Urvoy">Urvoy, Dominique. 1996. "The Rationality of Everyday Life: The Andalusian Tradition? (Aropos of Hayy's First Experiences)." pp. 38–46 in ''The World of Ibn Tufayl: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān'', edited by [[Lawrence Conrad|L. I. Conrad]]. [[Brill Publishers]], {{ISBN|90-04-09300-1}}.</ref>

====Modern philosophy<!--'Anthropological materialism' and 'German materialism' redirect here-->====

[[File:Lucretius pointing to the casus.jpg|thumb|upright|Atomists proposed that the universe consists of atoms moving in space. ''[[De rerum natura|Of the Nature of Things]]'' by [[Lucretius]], 1682.]]
In France, [[Pierre Gassendi]] (1592–1665)<ref>[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/gassendi/ Pierre Gassendi (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)]</ref> represented the materialist tradition in opposition to the attempts of [[René Descartes]] (1596–1650) to provide the [[natural sciences]] with dualist foundations. There followed the materialist and [[atheism|atheist]] ''abbé'' [[Jean Meslier]] (1664–1729), along with the [[French materialism|French materialists]]: [[Julien Offray de La Mettrie]] (1709–1751), [[Denis Diderot]] (1713–1784), [[Étienne Bonnot de Condillac]] (1714–1780), [[Claude Adrien Helvétius]] (1715–1771), German-French [[Baron d'Holbach]] (1723–1789), and other French [[The Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] thinkers.<ref name="Mahan Friedrich 2003 p. 588">{{cite book | last1=Mahan | first1=A. | last2=Friedrich | first2=R. | title=A Critical History of Philosophy | publisher=Salem Publishing Solutions | year=2003 | isbn=978-1-59160-363-4 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MfxPkYVpLqoC&pg=PA588 | access-date=2024-04-07 | pages=587–589}}</ref>

In England, materialism was developed in the philosophies of [[Francis Bacon]] (1561–1626), [[Thomas Hobbes]] (1588–1679),<ref name=SEP>[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes/ Thomas Hobbes (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)],</ref> and [[John Locke]] (1632–1704).<ref name="Henry 2012 p. 24">{{cite book | last=Henry | first=John F. | title=The Making of Neoclassical Economics (Routledge Revivals) | publisher=Taylor & Francis | year=2012 | isbn=978-1-136-81053-4 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GkCRxNmxfFYC&pg=PA24 | access-date=2024-04-07 | pages=23–25}}</ref> [[Scottish Enlightenment]] philosopher [[David Hume]] (1711–1776) became one of the most important materialist philosophers in the 18th century.<ref name="Brown Ladyman 2019 p.">{{cite book | last1=Brown | first1=Robin | last2=Ladyman | first2=James | title=Materialism: A Historical and Philosophical Inquiry | publisher=Taylor & Francis | year=2019 | isbn=978-0-429-53537-6 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6QqWDwAAQBAJ | access-date=2024-04-07}}</ref>  [[John "Walking" Stewart]] (1747–1822) believed matter has a [[moral]] dimension, which had a major impact on the philosophical poetry of [[William Wordsworth]] (1770–1850).

In [[late modern philosophy]], German atheist [[anthropologist]] [[Ludwig Feuerbach]] signaled a new turn in materialism in his 1841 book ''[[The Essence of Christianity]]'', which presented a [[Humanism|humanist]] account of religion as the outward projection of man's inward nature. Feuerbach introduced '''anthropological materialism''',<!--boldface per WP:R#PLA--> a version of materialism that views materialist anthropology as the [[universal science]].<ref>[[Axel Honneth]], [[Hans Joas]], ''Social Action and Human Nature'', Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 18.</ref>

Feuerbach's variety of materialism heavily influenced [[Karl Marx]],<ref>Nicholas Churchich, ''Marxism and Alienation'', Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1990, p. 57: "Although Marx has rejected Feuerbach's abstract materialism," Lenin says that Feuerbach's views "are consistently materialist," implying that Feuerbach's conception of causality is entirely in line with dialectical materialism."</ref> who in the late 19th century elaborated the concept of [[historical materialism]]—the basis for what Marx and [[Friedrich Engels]] outlined as ''[[scientific socialism]]'':

{{Blockquote|text=The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view, the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in men's better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch.|author=Friedrich Engels|source=''Socialism: Scientific and Utopian'' (1880)}}

Through his ''[[Dialectics of Nature]]'' (1883), Engels later developed a "materialist dialectic" [[philosophy of nature]], a worldview that [[Georgi Plekhanov]], the father of Russian [[Marxism]], called ''[[dialectical materialism]]''.<ref>see Plekhanov, Georgi: 1891. "For the Sixtieth Anniversary of Hegel's Death;" 1893. ''Essays on the History of Materialism''; and 1895. ''[[The Development of the Monist View of History]]''.</ref> In early 20th-century [[Russian philosophy]], [[Vladimir Lenin]] further developed dialectical materialism in his 1909 book ''[[Materialism and Empirio-criticism]]'', which connects his opponents' political conceptions to their anti-materialist philosophies.

A more [[Metaphysical naturalism|naturalist]]-oriented materialist school of thought that developed in the mid-19th century was '''German materialism'''<!--boldface per WP:R#PLA-->, which included [[Ludwig Büchner]] (1824–1899), the Dutch-born [[Jacob Moleschott]] (1822–1893), and [[Carl Vogt]] (1817–1895),<ref>[[Owen Chadwick|Chadwick, Owen]]. 1990. ''The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century''. Cambridge University Press.

'''p. 165''': "During the 1850s German...scientists conducted a controversy known...as the materialistic controversy. It was specially associated with the names of Vogt, Moleschott and Büchner."

'''p. 173''': "Frenchmen were surprised to see Büchner and Vogt.... [T]he French were surprised at German materialism."</ref><ref>''[[The Nineteenth Century and After]]'', [https://books.google.com/books?id=8-VXAAAAIAAJ&q= Vol. 151]. 1952. p. 227: "the Continental materialism of Moleschott and Buchner<!--[sic]-->."</ref> even though they had different views on core issues such as the evolution and the origins of life.<ref>[[Andreas Daum|Andreas W. Daum]], ''Wissenschaftspopularisierung im 19. Jahrhundert: Bürgerliche Kultur, naturwissenschaftliche Bildung und die deutsche Öffentlichkeit, 1848–1914''. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1998, pp. 210, 293–99.</ref>

===Contemporary history===
{{See also|Contemporary philosophy}}

====Analytic philosophy====
{{see also|Physicalism|Scientific materialism}}
Contemporary [[analytic philosopher]]s (e.g. [[Daniel Dennett]], [[Willard Van Orman Quine]], [[Donald Davidson (philosopher)|Donald Davidson]], and [[Jerry Fodor]]) operate within a broadly physicalist or [[scientific materialist]] framework, producing rival accounts of how best to accommodate the [[mind]], including [[functionalism (philosophy of mind)|functionalism]], [[anomalous monism]], and [[identity theory of mind|identity theory]].<ref name="StandfordEM">Ramsey, William. [2003] 2019. "[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/materialism-eliminative/#SpeProFolPsy Eliminative Materialism § Specific Problems With Folk Psychology]" (rev.). ''[[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]]''.</ref>

Scientific materialism is often synonymous with, and has typically been described as, a [[reductive materialism]]. In the early 21st century, [[Paul Churchland|Paul]] and [[Patricia Churchland]]<ref>{{cite book |last1=Churchland |first1=P. S. |title=Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind/Brain |date=1986 |publisher=MIT Press |location=Cambridge, MA}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Churchland |first1=P. M. |title=Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes |journal=Journal of Philosophy |date=1981 |volume=78 |pages=67–90}}</ref> advocated a radically contrasting position (at least in regard to certain hypotheses): [[eliminative materialism]]. Eliminative materialism holds that some mental phenomena simply do not exist at all, and that talk of such phenomena reflects a spurious "[[folk psychology]]" and [[introspection illusion]]. A materialist of this variety might believe that a concept like "belief" has no basis in fact (e.g. the way folk science speaks of demon-caused illnesses).

With reductive materialism at one end of a continuum (our theories will ''reduce'' to facts) and eliminative materialism at the other (certain theories will need to be ''eliminated'' in light of new facts), [[revisionary materialism]] is somewhere in the middle.<ref name="StandfordEM" />

====Continental philosophy====
{{see also|New materialism|Speculative materialism|Transcendental materialism}}
Contemporary [[continental philosopher]] [[Gilles Deleuze]] has attempted to rework and strengthen classical materialist ideas.<ref>{{Cite book |url=http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2015/entries/deleuze/ |title=Gilles Deleuze |last1=Smith |first1=Daniel |last2=Protevi |first2=John |date=1 January 2015 |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |editor-last=Zalta |editor-first=Edward N. |edition=Winter 2015}}</ref> Contemporary theorists such as [[Manuel DeLanda]], working with this reinvigorated materialism, have come to be classified as ''new materialists''.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Dolphijn |first1=Rick |last2=Tuin |first2=Iris van der |date=1 January 2013 |title=New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies |publisher=Open Humanities Press |isbn=9781607852810 |url=http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/new-materialism/ |language=EN}}</ref> [[New materialism]] has become its own subfield, with courses on it at major universities, as well as numerous conferences, edited collections and monographs devoted to it.

[[Jane Bennett (political theorist)|Jane Bennett]]'s 2010 book ''Vibrant Matter'' has been particularly instrumental in bringing theories of monist ontology and [[vitalism]] back into a critical theoretical fold dominated by [[poststructuralist]] theories of language and discourse.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OcUcmAEACAAJ |title=Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things |last=Bennett |first=Jane |date=4 January 2010 |publisher=Duke University Press |isbn=9780822346333 |language=en}}</ref> Scholars such as [[Mel Y. Chen]] and Zakiyyah Iman Jackson have critiqued this body of new materialist literature for neglecting to consider the materiality of race and gender in particular.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.academia.edu/6169668|title=Animal: New Directions in the Theorization of Race and Posthumanism|website=www.academia.edu|access-date=2016-05-08}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y793tgAACAAJ |title=Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect |last=Chen |first=Mel Y. |date=10 July 2012 |publisher=Duke University Press |isbn=9780822352549 |language=en}}</ref>

Métis scholar [[Zoe Todd]], as well as [[Mohawk people|Mohawk]] (Bear Clan, Six Nations) and [[Anishinaabe]] scholar Vanessa Watts,<ref>{{cite web|title=Dr. Vanessa Watts|url=http://miri.mcmaster.ca/team/dr-vanessa-watts/|date=2018-12-12|website=McMaster Indigenous Research Institute|language=en-US|access-date=2020-05-09}}</ref> query the colonial orientation of the race for a "new" materialism.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Todd|first=Zoe|date=2016|title=An Indigenous Feminist's Take On The Ontological Turn: 'Ontology' Is Just Another Word For Colonialism|journal=Journal of Historical Sociology|language=en|volume=29|issue=1|pages=4–22|doi=10.1111/johs.12124|issn=1467-6443}}</ref> Watts in particular describes the tendency to regard matter as a subject of feminist or philosophical care as a tendency too invested in the reanimation of a [[Eurocentrism|Eurocentric]] tradition of inquiry at the expense of an Indigenous ethic of responsibility.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Watts|first=Vanessa|date=2013-05-04|title=Indigenous Place-Thought and Agency Amongst Humans and Non Humans (First Woman and Sky Woman Go On a European World Tour!)|url=https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/19145|journal=Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society|language=en|volume=2|issue=1|issn=1929-8692}}</ref> Other scholars, such as Helene Vosters, echo their concerns and have questioned whether there is anything particularly "new" about "new materialism", as Indigenous and other [[Animism|animist]] ontologies have attested to what might be called the "vibrancy of matter" for centuries.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MEJvBAAAQBAJ |title=Performing Objects and Theatrical Things |last1=Schweitzer |first1=M. |last2=Zerdy |first2=J. |date=14 August 2014 |publisher=Springer |isbn=9781137402455 |language=en}}</ref> Others, such as [[Thomas Nail]], have critiqued "vitalist" versions of new materialism for depoliticizing "flat ontology" and being ahistorical.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Being and motion|last=Nail, Thomas|isbn=978-0-19-090890-4|location=New York, NY|pages=11–54|oclc=1040086073|date = 10 December 2018}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Gamble|first1=Christopher N.|last2=Hanan|first2=Joshua S.|last3=Nail|first3=Thomas|date=2019-11-02|journal=[[Angelaki]]|volume=24|issue=6|pages=111–134|doi=10.1080/0969725x.2019.1684704|issn=0969-725X|title=What is New Materialism?|s2cid=214428135}}</ref>

[[Quentin Meillassoux]] proposed ''speculative materialism'', a [[post-Kantian]] return to [[David Hume]] also based on materialist ideas.<ref>[[Quentin Meillassoux|Meillassoux, Quentin]]. 2008. ''After Finitude''. Bloomsbury, p. 90.</ref>