Some point at Charles Darwin (1809 -1882), when it is about a materialist interpretation of Homo Sapiens, but the champion of the material man is perhaps La Mettrie (1709 - 1751).
Julien Offray de La Mettrie was a French physician and philosopher, and one of the earliest of the French materialists of the Enlightenment. He is best known for his 1747 work "L'homme machine" (Man a Machine).
Devouring a large quantity of pâté de faisan aux truffes at a party of the French ambassador in Berlin was the cause of a gastric illness with high fevers and ultimately his death. His opponents might point at it by claiming that this is the result of seeking hedonistic pleasure.
La Mettrie had pretty strong ideas for his time. He argued that humans were just complex animals. A great deal of controversy emerged due to his belief that from animals to man there is no abrupt transition.
He later built on that idea: he claimed that humans and animals were composed of organized matter. He believed that humans and animals were only different in regards to the complexity that matter was organized.
The idea that essentially no real difference between humans and animals existed was based on his findings that sensory feelings were present in animals and plants.
While he did recognize that only humans spoke a language, he thought that animals were capable of learning a language. There he was a bit over-enthusiastic.
In the last half-century, much effort has been put trying to answer that question by teaching animals, primarily apes, a basic language. There have been some limited successes, with animals
using signs to obtain things in which they were interested, for instance. But no animal has yet acquired the linguistic capability that children have already in their third year of life.
Nevertheless, La Mettrie believed that man worked like a machine due to mental thoughts depending on bodily actions. He then argued that the organization of matter at a high and complex level resulted in human thought.
That La Mettrie chose to flee to Berlin is historically remarkable. He was accepted by the court of Frederik the Great. Immanuel Kant was born in 1724. When La Mettrie died, he was a student at the Albertina University in Koningsbergen and would become the founder of German idealism.
The nineteenth century is a paradox in the history of ‘ materialism. On the one hand, there were many fruits of the triumph of materialism, namely the liberation of investigation into the nature of the world from the shackles of religious dogma and argument from authority. The onward march of scientific knowledge was evident.
The dark side of this progress was the hard life of the poor in the industrialized nations and the hard life of the people of the countries colonized by the European powers.
The consequences of these social trends have proven to be long-lasting and dangerous. The high ideals of the Enlightenment got lost somewhere along the way.
The whole European scene in philosophy was dominated by idealist thinkers. Stemming from Kant’s magisterial "Critique of Pure Reason", the main figures of nineteenth-century European continental philosophy, such as Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Schopenhauer, are all hostile to materialism.
So, next week we'll learn how materialism survived in the nineteenth century, or should we ask "Did it survive?" To answer that question you see a graph behind me: Ngram Viewer graph.
The Google Ngram Viewer displays user-selected words or phrases (ngrams) in a graph that shows how those phrases have occurred in a corpus. Google Ngram Viewer's corpus is made up of the scanned books available in Google Books.
Thank you all again for your attention. The floor is yours........
Main Sources:
MacMillan The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd edition
TABLE OF CONTENT -----------------------------------------------------------------
1 - 100 Philosophers 9 May 2009 Start of
2 - 25+ Women Philosophers 10 May 2009 this blog
3 - 25 Adventures in Thinking 10 May 2009
4 - Modern Theories of Ethics 29 Oct 2009
5 - The Ideal State 24 Febr 2010 / 234
6 - The Mystery of the Brain 3 Sept 2010 / 266
7 - The Utopia of the Free Market 16 Febr 2012 / 383
8. - The Aftermath of Neo-liberalism 5 Sept 2012 / 413
9. - The Art Not to Be an Egoist 6 Nov 2012 / 426
10 - Non-Western Philosophy 29 May 2013 / 477
11 - Why Science is Right 2 Sept 2014 / 534
12 - A Philosopher looks at Atheism 1 Jan 2015 / 557
13 - EVIL, a philosophical investigation 17 Apr 2015 / 580
14 - Existentialism and Free Will 2 Sept 2015 / 586
15 - Spinoza 2 Sept 2016 / 615
16 - The Meaning of Life 13 Febr 2017 / 637
17 - In Search of my Self 6 Sept 2017 / 670
18 - The 20th Century Revisited 3 Apr 2018 / 706
19 - The Pessimist 11 Jan 2020 / 819
20 - The Optimist 9 Febr 2020 / 824
21 - Awakening from a Neoliberal Dream 8 Oct 2020 / 872
22 - A World Full of Patterns 1 Apr 2021 / 912
23 - The Concept of Freedom 8 Jan 2022 / 965
[13:15] herman Bergson: Do you understand the graph?
[13:15] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): what do the different colors mean?
[13:15] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): they all say materialism
[13:15] herman Bergson: It seems tha Google scans book
[13:15] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): and the text is to blurred to read
[13:16] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): it's not sharp enough for me
[13:16] herman Bergson: and people search on the word MATERIALISM, or Materialism or materialism
[13:16] herman Bergson: the way the search term was typed isrepresented by those three lines
[13:17] herman Bergson: and Google analyzes how often this word occurs in their scaned books
[13:17] herman Bergson: Oh...hard to read...but the years begin at 1800
[13:18] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): aaa so over the years
[13:18] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): a peak now and then and then down again but generaly up
[13:18] Jane Fossett: but the use and meaning of terms can change over time making interpretation difficult
[13:19] herman Bergson: that first peak is 1880
[13:19] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): there is a peak at all 3 lines at a period but cant read the year
[13:19] herman Bergson: Depends Jane....
[13:19] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): the first peak
[13:19] Jane Fossett: yes, it does depend
[13:19] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): and the only one on green and yellow
[13:20] herman Bergson: If Google checked for Epicurean atomism, classic materialism it is ok
[13:20] herman Bergson: But you are right....we may hoe we are watching here ontological materialism
[13:20] Jane Fossett: yes
[13:21] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): pl
[13:21] herman Bergson: But I think we are for the other graph is about physialism
[13:21] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): ok
[13:21] herman Bergson: Not on display yet, but came with this one
[13:21] herman Bergson: physicalism
[13:22] Jane Fossett: what happened in 1880?
[13:22] herman Bergson: So if...then the graph is telling us that materialism may enjoy a growing interest
[13:22] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): I guess or?
[13:23] herman Bergson: Maybe it was the influence of August Comte who introduced positivism
[13:24] herman Bergson: an empiricist philosophical theory that holds that all genuine knowledge is either true by definition or positive—meaning a posteriori facts derived by reason and logic from sensory experience
[13:24] Jane Fossett: surprising there is no effect of WW1
[13:25] herman Bergson: The second peak is 1960 - 1980.... I was a philsophy student in the mid of those years :-)
[13:25] Jane Fossett: :-) so its your fault
[[13:25] herman Bergson: Huge decline of authority of the Church and religion
[13:26] herman Bergson: Maybe Flowerpower mentality :-)
[13:26] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): hehe
[13:26] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): maybe
[13:27] Jane Fossett: decline in authoritarian rule in religion and politics
[13:27] herman Bergson: But at least the interest in materialism is increasing steadily.
[13:27] herman Bergson: Ohh...1880....forgot to mention Marx of course, his historical materialism
[13:27] herman Bergson: THAT may be the peak
[13:28] Jane Fossett: problem was that growth of technology and science just made it easier to kill millions in war
[13:28] herman Bergson: 1848 the Communist Manifesto....etc.....
[13:29] herman Bergson: That makes me think of a funny observation Jane....
[13:29] Jane Fossett: :-)
[13:29] herman Bergson: Someone was discussing evolution and what a species kept as quality to survive and transferred to next generations
[13:30] herman Bergson: then he concluded....that can never be self-awareness and intelligence
[13:30] Jane Fossett: sex and war
[13:30] Jane Fossett: (sad to say)
[13:30] herman Bergson: for qualities you inherit from your ancestors are to preserve survival
[13:30] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): sex sad???
[13:31] Jane Fossett: compared to intellect maybe
[13:31] herman Bergson: and intelligence is exactly a quality that enables us to annihilate the whole species
[13:31] Jane Fossett: umm yes
[13:32] herman Bergson: So, intelligence is an evolutionary mistake, maybe :-))))
[13:32] Jane Fossett: that's a long discussion
[13:32] herman Bergson: There isn't a single species on earth that needs intelligence and self awarenes to survive....on the contrary actually
[13:32] Jane Fossett: :-)
[13:33] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): but how fun of a life is that then
[13:33] herman Bergson: But this is just a side track....and digressing
[13:34] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): but idk what a dog feels for ex but our office dog at work seems happy and energetic at least
[13:34] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): ㋡
[13:34] herman Bergson: anyway....our next concern is how materialism made it throught the 19th century into our time :-)
[13:34] Jane Fossett: ok!
[13:35] herman Bergson: We get the clear split between continental and anglo-american philosophy now
[13:36] herman Bergson: Something for you to ponder about this weekend ^_^
[13:37] herman Bergson: If I have stuffed your brain with enough info at the moment, I thank you for your attention
[13:37] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): oki
[13:37] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): ㋡
[13:37] herman Bergson: and keep thinking :-)
[13:37] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): well something to think about for sure
[13:37] Jane Fossett: thank you!
[13:37] herman Bergson: or ask that final question :-)
[13:37] herman Bergson: if not......
[13:37] herman Bergson: Class dismissed...
[13:38] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): Thank you Herman
[13:38] bergfrau Apfelbaum: thank you Herman and class
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