Materialism is a
system of philosophical thought that explains the nature of the
world as entirely dependent on matter. As a rational cultural
movement it has had intermittant success in influencing the course
of human social development starting as early as the 4th century
BC, when the Greek Democritus set out his system
of atomism in which all phenomena are explained by
sub-visual particles and their motions in otherwise empty
space. Epicurus and the Stoics also conceived of reality as
material in its nature. For the next millennium or so
Christianity ensured the dominance of transcendental thought about
matter and its divine origins, and European materialism did not
emerge as a strong social force again until the 17th century when
Thomas Hobbes took the position that consciousness essentially
belongs to the physiological world of the senses. The
culminating expression of materialism came in 18th century France
with the 'Systeme de la nature' of Baron
d'Holbach.
Throughout history,
materialism has always gained ground at times of scientific advance
and this is particularly evident in Victorian Britain when
prominent scientists clashed repeatedly with religious orthodoxy. A
good example of this conflict is John Tyndall's confrontation with
the religious establishment who he regarded as promoting anti-
intellectual and anti-scientific tenets. The public
clash came in 1874 when he gave the Presidential Address to the
British Association for the Advancement of Science in Belfast.
Tyndall was a self- educated physicist who climbed to the top of
the European scientific establishment and was a member of a Royal
Society pressure group promoting the adoption of a national
scientific education system, a group which included Thomas Henry
Huxley and Michael Faraday. His Belfast lecture was denounced
from the pulpits and pamphlets attacking its content continued to
appear for years afterwards.
As a European
polymath, among his friends Tyndall numbered Louis Pasteur,
Thomas Carlyle and Alfred Tennyson. The latter was deeply disturbed
by the difficulties he had in making a personal adjustment to a
universe in which the great designer-God of his childhood was being
replaced by a 'force of nature' with no interest in the ultimate
fate of humanity. His poems reflect this dilemma. They
include exquisite descriptions of natural history alongside others
expressing despair at the inhumanity of man who is part of a
process of evolution that is blind to humanity's greatest
intellectual achievements. His lifelong efforts to provide a
personal religion for reconciling science and religion did not
produce any novel philosophy, but his poems remain timeless
expressions of the utterences of 'thinking man' who wants
desperately to fit into a greater scheme of things.