Materialism

Materialism

Introduction

In a broad sense, materialism is the concept which regards the basic physical things as important and vital. Materialism endorses that nothing other than physical objects or beings matter in the world or its affairs. In respect to the common concepts of materialism other than specific scientific notions of materialism, materialistic tendencies or being materialistic is a type of thinking of the people. This thinking makes the individual think in a way which regards the physical environment having the most value while placing no value on abstract things or concepts.

While the constructs of materialism and its concepts pervade the thoughts of humans, we cannot exclude scientists from it. At one point in the history of science, philosophy and religion materialistic thinking have ruled and still does in certain aspects of human explanations.

Among the most influential areas of modern philosophy is the “Scientific materialism”. This notion conceptualized in the fifties. Since then, it has been on rapid development on varying levels (Dubrovskii, 1998). Materialism is a concept that diverges off the reality and asserts that the eventual nature of existence of everything is purely physical. Looking over the concept of idealism might help to understand the idea of materialism. On the other end of continuum lies the phenomenon of idealism. It claims that the critical nature of every reality is purely spiritual. Contrary to materialism, idealism presumes that what materialists call “matter” can either be an illusion or it is something that must originate from spirit (Quincey, 2011).

Theorists supporting materialism are currently having a hard time proving their concepts and all the explanations of human behavior and constructs in a material sense. The thinkers of science who advocate the materialistic view are more rightly called as the materialists who incorporate sciences, not the scientific materialists. Science cannot be fully explained in a ...