hylozoism
English
[edit]
Etymology
[edit]From hylo- (“wood, matter”) + Ancient Greek ζωή (zōḗ, “life”) + -ism.
Noun
[edit]hylozoism (countable and uncountable, plural hylozoisms)
- The belief that all physical matter is alive in some sense.
- 1678, Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe..., p. 105:
- Hylozoism... makes all Body, as such, and therefore every smallest Atom of it, to have Life Essentially belonging to it.
- 1887, Robert Drew Hicks, "Stoics", Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed., Vol. XXII, p. 563:
- But we can answer authoritatively that to Cleanthes and Chrysippus, if not to Zeno, there was no real difference between matter and its cause, which is always a corporeal current, and therefore matter, although the finest and subtlest matter. In fact they have reached the final result of unveiled hylozoism, from which the distinction of the active and passive principles is discerned to be a merely formal concession to Aristotle, a legacy from his dualistic doctrine.
- 1678, Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe..., p. 105:
- Synonym of materialism, the belief that all life derives entirely from physical matter.
- a. 1834, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Marginalia:
- […] is it not melancholy to hear a man like Steffens somniloquise in such a mystifying cant of Hylozoism, of Pickism, a hodge-podge of the grossest materialism, and the most fantastic yet maudlin moonery?
Synonyms
[edit]- (belief that all physical matter is alive): panbiotism
Related terms
[edit]- See also hyle and Category:English terms prefixed with hylo-
Translations
[edit]belief that all physical matter is alive
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