MATERIALISM

• Ideology that states everything which exists in this world is either composed of matter or depends/relies on matter for its existence.

• Has been compared to idealism; holds that ideas are real and emphasize upon the important of the mind and soul.

• Materialists believe:
  

1. Only things that are real are those which we can perceive through our senses
2. All events in the universe can be explained by scientific law

• Materialism is the denial of the existence of a God who directs the universe and of the immortality of the individual soul
  

• In metaphysics, the doctrine that all of reality is essentially of the nature of matter.
  
• In the philosophy of mind, one form of materialism, sometimes called central-state materialism, asserts that states of the mind are identical to states of the human brain.
  
• Certain periods in history, usually those associated with scientific advance, are marked by strong materialistic tendencies.
  
• The doctrine was formulated as early as the 4th century B.C. by Democritus, in whose system of atomism all phenomena are explained by atoms and their motions in space.
  
• Other early Greek teachings, such as that of Epicurus and Stoicism, also conceived reality as material in its nature.
  
• The theory was later renewed in the 17th century by Pierre Gassendi and Thomas Hobbes, who believed that the sphere of consciousness essentially belongs to the corporeal world, or the senses.