Materialism controversy

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The materialism controversy (German: Materialismusstreit) was a debate in the mid-19th century regarding the implications for current worldviews of the natural sciences. In the 1840s, a new type of materialism was developed, influenced by the methodological advancements in biology and the decline of idealistic philosophy. This form of materialism aimed to explain humans in scientific terms. The controversy revolved around whether the findings of natural sciences were compatible with the concepts of an immaterial soul, a personal God and free will. Additionally, the debate focused on the epistemological requirements of a materialist/mechanist worldview.^[1]

In his "Physiologische Briefe" from 1846, the zoologist Carl Vogt explained that "thoughts have roughly the same relationship to the brain as bile has to the liver or urine to the kidneys."^[2] In 1854, the physiologist Rudolf Wagner criticised Vogt's polemical commitment to materialism in a speech to the Göttingen Naturalists' Assembly. Wagner argued that Christian faith and natural history were two largely independent spheres. The natural sciences could therefore contribute nothing to the questions of the existence of God, the immaterial soul or free will.

One must not always let it go when this frivolous rabble wants to cheat the nation of the most precious goods inherited from our fathers and shamelessly blows the stinking breath from the fermenting contents of its bowels towards the people and wants to make them believe that it is a vain perfume (Free translation).^[3]

Wagner's attacks provoked equally sharp reactions from Vogt. The materialist point of view was also defended in the following years by the physiologist Jakob Moleschott and the doctor Ludwig Büchner, a brother of the well-known writer Georg Büchner. The materialists presented themselves as champions against philosophical, religious, and political reactionism. They set very different emphases^[4] but could count on broad support among the bourgeoisie. The promise of a scientific worldview became a defining element of the cultural conflicts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.