Talk:Hylozoism

Origin of the term

Deduced from 1) Random House Webster's Dictionary, which indicates date of first use between 1670-1680. 2) This article cites Henry More and Ralph Cudworth as active during this time, and 3) Cudworth's work The True Intellectual System of the Universe which discusses hylozoism, was published in 1678. Q.E.D.. --Blainster 00:25, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

It works for me, although the OED would be better than a deduction. :-) I will see if I can get near a print OED to be sure. Geogre 10:40, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Blainster is entirely correct. As an OED beats a QED, here is what that venerable organ says about first usage in English: "'The theory that matter is endowed with life, or that life is merely a property of matter.' First use: Ralph Cudworth, The true intellectual system of the universe (1678). I. iii. §1. 105: "Hylozoism...makes all Body, as such, and therefore every smallest Atom of it, to have Life Essentially belonging to it." So, in fact, first English usage was Cudworth and in 1678. Bingo. Geogre 04:13, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Spinoza

The view of Spinoza is not correct. He held the materialist kind of hylozoism,, but did sometimes use words from the panpsychism view. (He was exciled for this materialist kind of hylozoism) JaapBO

• Hmm. See, to me it's very back and forth in Spinoza. His is the most fluid of those covered. However, if you have a clear way of explaining it, why not write it up here on the talk page, and we can discuss and include it? Geogre 14:06, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Spelling error?

There might be an error where it says "mechanicistic view of the world."Gnarlodious 03:04, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Contemporary hylozoism ??

This goes right from Enc.Brit.1911 "contemporary," Haeckel, to obscure original research of today that is wildly tangential to "hylozoism." jb (talk) 22:14, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Confusing passage

"Martin Buber, too, takes an approach that is quasi-hylozoic. By maintaining that the essence of things is identifiable and separate, although not pre-existing, he can see a soul within each thing. Henry T. Laurency, Alice Bailey and Madame Blavatsky, whom they seem to have been inspired by, all produced voluminous elaborations of hylozoic philosophy."

Who does the "whom" refer to in the above passage? Does it refer to Buber? If so, then the second sentence is structured incorrectly. If you write a name or a list of names (e.g. Laurency, Bailey, and Blavatsky) and then add a "whom" at the end, then the "whom" refers to the names just listed. Or does the "whom" refer to Laurency, Bailey, and Blavatsky? If it does, then who does the "they" refer to? Surely not the same people, right? --Phatius McBluff (talk) 17:58, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I was afraid I'd bump into this problem sooner or later since English isn't my first language. The last sentance from your quote above was edited from:

"...Madame Blavatsky, whom they followed, all produced...".

The way I see it, the original author(s) implied that Laurency and Bailey were followers of Blavatsky, which would make sense, sort of. Who do you think the original authors referred to? — MahatmaWatcher (talk) 20:06, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi. I don't think your English is the problem here. The former version of the sentence ("...Madame Blavatsky, whom they followed, all produced...") doesn't seem any clearer. Your edit to that version simply preserved the former sentence structure, which was already confusing. So we seem to need the person who wrote the original version to explain what "whom" referred to. Surely Buber didn't follow Laurency, Bailey, and Blavatsky, right? --Phatius McBluff (talk) 04:42, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

After having glanced at your user page I'm now working with the theory that you and I would give the same answer to that question. — MahatmaWatcher (talk) 19:51, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm, I checked the webpage that the citation for that claim refers to, and the webpage doesn't actually mention Blavatsky. (I searched the page for the word "Blavatsky", and nothing showed up. So either the page did mention her, but spelled her named wrong, or it didn't mention her at all.) So although I agree with you that the "whom" refers to Laurency and Bailey, I don't see how the citation supports the claim. Do you think we should add a "citation needed" tag? --Phatius McBluff (talk) 05:48, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I got 30-46 hits using googles search engine on the name "blavatsky" for that domain. — MahatmaWatcher (talk) 09:41, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. Using Google, I found the specific page that the passage uses as a source. It is actually a sub-page of a website; the original citation referred to the start page of that website. I fixed the citation and altered the text slightly to accord with the web page. --Phatius McBluff (talk) 03:37, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Hobbes

Well, this is all pretty weird stuff. But I cut The hylozoist whom Cudworth had especially in mind is Thomas Hobbes ^{[citation needed]}. because Hobbes seems an unlikely hylozoist (his biog doesn't mention it) and the closest I can find in http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cambridge-platonists/#RalCud appears to say that Cudworth thinks Hobbes is a an example of a Hylopathian atheist, which is obviously totally different. Or not, it is hard to tell William M. Connolley (talk) 16:30, 18 December 2010 (UTC)