The history of Western philosophy has generated powerful and influential theories about the nature of the world and humankind’s place in it. Since the ancient Greeks, the compelling search for the fundamentals of all existence has led some to espouse philosophical idealism (a belief in unchanging conceptual universals), while others have held to an equally immutable (irreducible) physical materialism. For centuries the tension between these views of the world has stimulated intense philosophical inquiry. Today the debate remains as lively as every.
Materialism: An Affirmative History and Definition
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