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materialism
In philosophy, as opposed to idealism, any view asserting the ontologic primacy of matter; in psychology, any theory denying the existence of mind, see mental phenomena to be the mere outworking of purely physico-mechanical processes in the brain; in the philosophy of religion, any synthesis denying the existence of an immortal human soul. The ealiest thoroughgoing materialists were the classical Atomists (see atomism, in particular Democritus and Lucretius. The growth of modern science brought a revival of materialism, which many have argued is a prerequisite for scientific thought, particularly in the field of psychology. Other philosophers, however, have argued against this view, recognizing the arbitrariness of the materialist hypothesis.
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