Blackwell Reference Online

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“It is not the consciousness of men [and women] that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness” ( Marx & Engels 1986 : 182). Materialism is the philosophy that explains the nature of reality and the world – physical, social, cultural, etc. – in terms of matter. It asserts that reality and the universe are first and foremost material; they exist outside of human thought and ideas and are independent of the human mind. The human intellect can come to know the world of matter through experience and sense perception and can interact and shape the material world; but the world of material existence is primary. Philosophical materialism stands in opposition to the philosophy of idealism that states that ideas, thought, and mind are the essential nature of all reality and the world of matter is a reflection of mind, thought, and ideas. Materialism, the philosophical outlook of science, has been an important philosophy in eras of scientific development in ancient times as early as the fourth century bce among Greek philosophers (e.g., Epicurus and even Aristotle), and in modern times in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Isaac Newton's scientific study of nature and the emerging social science of the Enlightenment Philosophes . The economic, political, social, and intellectual ferment of the 1700s and 1800s gave ... log in or subscribe to read full text