MATERIALISM

Materialism is ultimately an unconvincing account of the nature of reality on three counts, two scientific, one philosophical.

1. By virtue only of scientific investigation and analysis the concept of physical objects as made of little solid lumps, infinitesimal marbles, grains or whatever has been demolished. What matter has been shown to be is difficult to put into words: points of energy, potentialities but certainly not lumpy ‘things’ as we ordinarily understand them to be.

2. Materialism in the sense of an explanation for why things take the form they have and moves and change also collapses. For, on the best available scientific analysis, every event in the universe is caused by one or more of four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong and the weak nuclear forces. But that is as far as present understanding goes. No one knows how (not to mention why) forces come to exist. No one can know that they will continue into the future, change in strength, disappear altogether. The whole of the universe from galaxies to subatomic particles rests on a mysterious foundation.

3. We do not know physical things directly but infer their existence indirectly from immediate conscious experiences. Consider the world around us at this moment: we know that we are seeing, hearing, touching. That is the basic data. It is from that we, at one remove, come to know matter.