QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

The true rise of the Materialistic way of thinking took place in the 1700s, when enlightenment as
a result of new developments in science and philosophy had a powerful influence on the whole
of human culture. The tradition of enlightenment laid particular emphasis on the position taken
by natural science, which was increasingly applied to both human life and to the problems of
society. The philosophers of enlightenment were not so much systematic thinkers as quick-witted
debaters who participated enthusiastically in dealing with the problems of their time. As
Epicurus had done in his time, they attempted to free people from supernatural explanations,
superstitions, and despotic rulers with the help of natural science and philosophy. The French
philosophers of enlightenment d’Holbach, Voltaire (1694-1778) and La Mettrie (1709-1751)
stood strongly for the idea that consciousness should revert to material substance. They wanted
to explain the phenomena of the life of the soul and its laws with the same degree of precision
that Newton had achieved in explaining the material world. In the name of consistency, they
rejected the special position awarded to humans by Descartes: in the manner of animals, people
could not, in fundamental terms, be anything more than complex mechanisms. 287
The optimism which accompanied the forward march of enlightenment signified a never-beforeexperienced
confidence in human intelligence and science. It was believed that in the light of
reason, humans would be able to see things as they really were. By the beginning of the 1700s,
educated people in the west knew that the universe was a complex mechanical system composed
of material particles moving in infinite space according to a smalll number of basic principles,
such as inertia and gravity, that could be analysed using mathematics. By conceiving the material
world as an ingeniously contrived clockwork mechanism, people believed they could free
themselves from dogmatic beliefs and superstition while at the same time obtaining knowledge
about the real structure of the universe. As autonomous and self-confident subjects, humans no
longer wanted to submit to the power of either religious or secular authority. 288
Materialism also rose to a significant position in Germany in the 1800s, when following Hegel,
the most important trend in the field of philosophy became the flow of ideas from materialists
and natural scientists. Via Dialectical Materialism, Ludvig Feuerbach, Karl Marx (1818-1883)
and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) provided Hegel’s dialectic with a materialistic interpretation
286 Aspelin 1995, 174-178.
287 Trusted 1991, 113-118. Aspelin 1995, 355, 358-360.
288 Aspelin 1995, 354. In spite of his optimism concerning progress, Rousseau(1712-1778), for example, doubted
whether progress in the arts and sciences resulted in an increase in people’s virtue and happiness.
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