MATERIALISM

in philosophy, the view that all facts (including facts about the human mind and will and the course of human history) are causally dependent upon physical processes, or even reducible to them. The word Materialism has been used in modern times to refer to a family of metaphysical theories (i.e., theories on the nature of reality) that can best be defined by saying that a theory tends to be called Materialism if it is felt sufficiently to resemble a paradigmatic theory that will here be called mechanical Materialism. This article covers the various types of Materialism and the ways by which they are distinguished and traces the history of Materialism from the Greeks and Romans to modern and contemporary Materialisms.