Materialism
Beginnings
"It is to Aristotle that we owe the first explicit articulation of a concept of "matter," that is an underlying substratum to which reference must be made in explaining physical change. Aristotle criticized the Ionian physicists, his predecessors two centuries earlier, because of the supposedly exclusive reliance on a common underlying "stuff" (water, air, fire) in explaining change in Nature. Such a stuff would retain its own identity throughout all change; substantial change, would, therefore, be excluded and the apparently fundamental differences between different kinds (*different species of animals, for instance) would be reduced to mere differences in arrangement of the fundamental "stuff." Aristotle rejected this "materialist" doctrine. But he did not believe the Ionians to be materialists. He notes that Thales thought all things to be "full of gods" and to be in some sense "ensouled.' Similar views are attributed to the other major figures in the early Ionian tradition. Though these men made the first known attempt to explain physical changes in a systematic way, they did not question the traditional explanatory roles of the gods and of a soul" (p. 280).

Materialism began with Aristotle (384-322 BCE), "a century later, the founders of atomism, Leucippus and Democritus, came much closer to a clear-cut materialist doctrine" (p. 280).

Epicurus (341-270 BCE) took an important step. "The gods are situated in the intervals between the innumerable universes; they too must be composed of atoms, and they live in a state of bliss undisturbed by the affairs of mortals. Lucretius (99-55 BCE) popularized the teachings of Epicurus in the Roman world through his great poem, De rerum natura, which was the most complete expression of materialist doctrine in ancient times. The gods here seem to be dismissed entirely; insofar as there is a deity it is nature itself. Lucretius views the state religion of Rome as a primarily political institution and sees no reason for any exception to the atomist claim that all there is, is atoms and void" (p. 280).

Cf. Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus