Dictionary

hylozoism en · NOUN

Etymology

From hylo- (“wood, matter”) + Ancient Greek ζωή (zōḗ, “life”) + -ism.

Meanings

1. (countable, uncountable) The belief that all physical matter is alive in some sense.
   • Hylozoism... makes all Body, as such, and therefore every smallest Atom of it, to have Life Essentially belonging to it. 1678, Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe..., page 105:
   • But we can answer authoritatively that to Cleanthes and Chrysippus, if not to Zeno, there was no real difference between matter and its cause, which is always a corporeal current, and therefore matter, although the finest and subtlest matter. In fact they have reached the final result of unveiled hylozoism, from which the distinction of the active and passive principles is discerned to be a merely formal concession to Aristotle, a legacy from his dualistic doctrine. 1887, Robert Drew Hicks, Stoics, 9th edition, volume XXII, Encyclopaedia Britannica, page 563:
2. (countable, uncountable) Synonym of materialism, the belief that all life derives entirely from physical matter.
   • […] is it not melancholy to hear a man like Steffens somniloquise in such a mystifying cant of Hylozoism, of Pickism, a hodge-podge of the grossest materialism, and the most fantastic yet maudlin moonery? a. 1834, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Marginalia:

Forms

Relateds

pantheism · hylozoistically · hylozoist · panvitalism · hylozoistic · pandeism · animism · hyle and Category:English terms prefixed with hylo- · panpsychism · hylozoical · hylozoic

Synonyms

materialism · panbiotism (belief that all physical matter is alive)

Translations (8)

ro hilozoism (belief that all physical matter is alive) · el υλοζωία (belief that all physical matter is alive) · fi hylotsoismi (belief that all physical matter is alive) · el υλοζωισμός (belief that all physical matter is alive) · ru гилозои́зм (belief that all physical matter is alive) · fr hylozoïsme (belief that all physical matter is alive) · de Hylozoismus (belief that all physical matter is alive) · cmn 萬物有生命論 /万物有生命论 (belief that all physical matter is alive)