Matter is one of the most important philosophical concepts. This concept is fundamental in the teaching of materialism, as well as in its particular concepts - epistemology and ontology. This concept is quite common in various fields of knowledge - such as cultural studies, sociology, cognitive sciences.
Primary teachings
The concept of matter as a philosophical category was first conceived back in ancient Greece. This concept comes from the Latin materia - "substance". It is believed that the first philosophers who stood at the origins of materialism were Democritus, Lucretius Carus, and also Epicurus. One of the main properties of materialism has always been respect for the capabilities of the human mind, as well as for the natural sciences and technical achievements.
Historically, the soul has always been opposed to substance. The concept of matter was used by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. The substance was opposed to them by the idea of ​​the spiritual. Recognized the existence of matter and Aristotle. Later such concepts as material and ideal arose. At the first stage of development of this concept, matter was identified with one or another force of nature. Thales believed that water was its primary source; Heraclitus attributed this function to fire. Democritus was of the opinion that matter is formed by atoms. This stage in philosophical science received a special name - the elemental materialism of the ancients.
The stage of mechanistic materialism
This stage is called mechanistic, or metaphysical. The next stage was characteristic of modern thinkers. In the XII-XIII centuries, mathematics began to develop intensively, which contributed to the study of natural phenomena, as well as strengthening the position of materialism. In modern European philosophy, substance was endowed with a number of properties that were well studied by researchers of that era - mass, length, indivisibility. It was believed that the direct carriers of these properties were atoms, corpuscles, primary elements. In this era, the construction of a mechanistic picture of the world is being completed. The basic concept of this time is movement. The whole world was understood as the totality of a huge number of atoms that moved in the space-time continuum. As a source of this movement, thinkers assumed a certain primary impetus, which, in their opinion, was outside the visible world. From here came the name - metaphysical materialism.
Third stage
This stage is called the dialectic. It completely divided the scientific and philosophical approaches to substance. From the huge variety of all its attributes, such a property as objectivity, in other words, independence from human perception, was singled out. It should be noted that this property in dialectical materialism not only relates to natural phenomena, but is also applicable to processes occurring in society.
Three basic concepts
So, the understanding of matter as a philosophical category is briefly described in the following three main approaches that existed at different times:
- Substantial. Matter can only be determined through things. This idea was widely implemented by ancient Greek philosophers.
- Attributive. Matter is determined through its properties: through its primary qualities (size, weight), as well as through secondary characteristics (taste, smell).
- Dialectical materialistic. The concept of substance is determined through its relationship with human consciousness. This approach, which arose at the end of the 19th century along with a scientific breakthrough, was able to remove the contradictions between scientific and philosophical knowledge.
Features of understanding the idea of ​​substance
Matter as a fundamental philosophical category is the highest abstraction, because this concept is generated by pure thought. However, this concept cannot be called absurd - it is, first of all, a scientific one. However, researchers caution that attempts to find a substance or matter are futile. If a person wants to do this, a similar situation can be compared with the desire to find instead of pears, cherries or apples the fruit itself; instead of cats and dogs, find a mammal, etc.
Modern understanding of matter
The concept of matter, which is accepted today, reflects the most general properties of an infinite number of different things and phenomena that are perceived by a person in a sensual way. A substance cannot exist outside the objects of the real world and the processes that occur with them. That is why an important task is to fix the properties that would distinguish this category from others.
There is one of the most popular definitions of this concept, but not everyone knows who the author is in reality. “Matter is a philosophical category for designating objective reality. It is given to a person through sensations and can be copied and displayed by him, while existing independently of a person’s perception, ”this phrase belongs to V. I. Lenin and was first mentioned in his work under the title“ Materialism and Empirio-Criticism ”. These words continued the ideas that were already outlined by Holbach, and were also developed by other philosophers - for example, N. G. Chernyshevsky, as well as G. V. Plekhanov.
In other words, matter as a philosophical category is a concept introduced to denote objective reality - the world that exists regardless of the characteristics of human perception. There are many definitions of this concept. But the most generally accepted can be distinguished: matter is an objective reality that exists independently of perception, but can be displayed by human perception.
Substance components
What does matter as a philosophical category mean? First of all, this concept refers to animate and inanimate nature - including man in conjunction with his consciousness. Almost from the very beginning of the time when classical mechanics arose, and up to the formation of the present picture of the world, this concept is fundamental. The concept of matter is one of the most important elements in such scientific areas as biology, sociology, physiology of processes of higher nervous activity of a person.
Thus, matter as the main philosophical category consists of the following components:
- Inanimate nature.
- Live nature.
- Human society.
Attitude towards consciousness
Matter as a philosophical category is primary in relation to consciousness, since it is an objective reality. No reason is needed for it to exist; on the contrary, it was required in order for consciousness to arise. Spinoza called her the cause of herself. In this case, the matter was not defined by the philosopher as a supersensible reality - it is directly given to people in sensations (which can also be perceived using special devices, such as a microscope).
This makes matter and the attributes of matter accessible to cognition. As a philosophical category, substance is most often denoted by a single term. But as for the concept of “consciousness”, sometimes such terms as “spirit” or “thinking” are also used, and this question also gets a different formulation - the ratio of “spirit and matter”, or “thinking and matter”. However, it should be noted that the idea of ​​thinking is completely not identical to the concept of consciousness. Indeed, in addition to the rational processing of information, the consciousness of each individual also includes the sensory - this also includes emotions and experiences.
Matter as a philosophical category: properties of matter
The following basic attributes of a substance are described in science:
- Traffic. This is one of the fundamental characteristics of this concept. At the same time, several types of movement are distinguished - mechanical, physical, chemical, biological, as well as social.
- Self-organization. Philosophers have long noticed that matter has a distinctive property - the ability to self-organize. In other words, she can reproduce and improve herself without any involvement of external forces. The science of the peculiarities of self-organization of material systems is called synergetics.
- Location in time and space. Under this, time is understood as one of the possible forms of the existence of matter, which expresses the duration of the life of objects, as well as the sequence of those changes that occur with them in a continuous process of development. Space in philosophy is understood as one of the forms of existence of matter, with the help of which its extent, structure, and the relationship of individual elements within a separate object and between different objects are characterized.
- Reflection is one of the most universal properties of matter, which consists in the fact that objects of the material world are capable of reproducing those signs that are characteristic of objects and material systems interacting with them. Reflection is of three types - physical, chemical and mechanical.
Matter is a philosophical category for designating objective reality, which from the point of view of the dialectical approach has the following properties:
- Objectivity.
- Cognizability.
- Structurality.
- Substantiality.
Features of the opposition of matter and spirit
The contradictory relations of objective reality and human consciousness manifest themselves in different ways:
- In epistemological images (those theoretical constructs that are in the mind and reflect one or another problem of the material world) there is not a gram of materiality. Human knowledge is completely abstracted both from reality itself and from the neurodynamic codes in its nervous system.
- Thanks to its creative function, consciousness is also able to create new ideas and concepts that do not exist in the material world, but which may receive such a status in the future.
Substantial and epistemological aspects of understanding matter
From the point of view of ontology, matter is a substance. Benedict Spinoza emphasized that this term means that which exists by itself and does not require the presentation of any other thing from which it could be formed. In the aspect of substantiality, matter is the root cause of its own changes. Philosophers emphasize that it is impossible to tear apart from each other neither the cognitive (epistemological), nor the substantial (material) aspects of understanding the concept of the material. These components are inextricable and complement each other.
The idea of ​​matter in methodology
Matter is a philosophical category for designating objective reality, which is also of high importance in methodology, because materialism is essential in concrete scientific research. The importance of this concept in methodology is due, firstly, to the relevance of old questions about how to understand the phenomena of the objective world, to relate existing theories to practice. Also, the study of particular forms of being of matter raises a large number of problems of a philosophical nature - for example, the discontinuity and continuity of being, as well as the exhaustibility (or inexhaustibility) of knowledge.