Hylozoism

hylozoism

View that all matter is alive, either in itself or by participation in the operation of a world soul or some similar principle. Hylozoism is logically distinct both from early forms of animism, which personify nature, and from panpsychism, which attributes some form of consciousness or sensation to all matter. The word was coined in the 17th century by Ralph Cudworth, who with Henry More (1614–1687) spoke of “plastic nature,” an unconscious, incorporeal substance that controls and organizes matter and thus produces natural events as a divine instrument of change.

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Hylozoism 

the philosophical doctrine that all matter is animated. The term was introduced in the 17th century.

Hylozoism dates from the very beginning of philosophy and occurs in the Ionian school of natural philosophers— Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. Heraclitus, Emped-ocles, and the stoics were close to hylozoism, and elements of it were included in Aristotle’s teachings. During the Renaissance, it appeared again in the teachings of the Italian natural philosophers B. Telesio and G. Bruno, Paracelsus, and others. Spinoza studied thought as a quality present in all of nature, as an attribute of matter. After him several French materialists, such as Diderot, Robinet, and Des-champs, acknowledged the general animation of matter. E. Haeckel defended a point of view similar to hylozoism.

According to hylozoism, life and hence sensitivity are present in all things in nature, in all forms of matter. Opposed to this philosophy is dialectical materialism, which considers sensation a property of only highly developed organic matter.