Materialists

Thinking back on humanity s 2000 years of lead pollution, Patterson often asked himself, What led us to poison the Earth s biosphere with lead He suggested that the brains of those involved in materialistic and utilitarian engineering might be different from those involved in aesthetic and scientific endeavors. Patterson s brain theory embarrassed many of his colleagues who regarded it as off the wall stuff. ... 

Rudolf Virchow (1821- 1902) proceeded to replace tissues with cells as the dominant materialist monads of life and disease. According to his cell doctrine, all cells, and hence all life, came from cells No developed tissue can be traced back either to any large or small simple element, unless it be to a cell (quoted from Libby, 1922, p. 267). (The phrase, Omnis cellula e cellula , however, frequently attributed to Virchow, seems to have been first used as an epigraph by Francois Raspail (1794-1878) (Harris, 1999, P- 33)). 

The fundamental difference between ancient and modern science is not at all in the field of theory. Sir William Thomson was just as metaphysical as Pythagoras or Raymond Lully, and Lucretius quite as materialistic as Ernst Haeckel or Buchner. 

Blavatsky s main polemical purpose in Isis Unveiled was to undermine the materialist nature of Darwinian evolution and to build a spiritual system based upon an evolutionary theory revamped to include the life force and spiritual goals. She defined the terms of her argument by articulating an emana-tionist perspective against an orthodox evolutionist interpretation ... 

There is an alternative to the notions of materialistic physicists, which may have more appeal for theosophists, and which should eventually prove reconcilable with the physicist s point of view. It is that the atoms seen by occultists are Archetypes. Can it be that they arose from thoughts in the Logoic Mind, densified in stages down to the etheric level, so that they are more fundamental than the chemical atoms we know in the dense physical world This notion would accord with the Story of Creation as told in theosophical literature, (ioo)... 

More forcefully, it might also be suggested that even these enforced choices reflect no real freedom for these practitioners. As some critical materialist philosophers suggest instead, the intentions, plans, and concepts of the future these individuals hold-which are all prerequisite to making choices-might be seen as consequences of social processes rather than as causes. That is, what people want might in and of itself be a product of who they are and the role they play in the society and economy. 

Once we reach the end of this history, once gold has become the socially acceptable and convenient way of expressing values as the money-form (perhaps as a steganography, to use the Romance literary term), it is possible to suppress the other variables of the equation, or better, to speak of only one commodity in relation to gold. Marx writes that the price or money-form of commodities is, like their form of value generally, a form quite distinct from their palpable bodily form it is, therefore, a purely ideal or mental form (95). For our purposes, the fact that gold both takes on the form of money (as a [male] ideal) and yet retains its bodily form (female) makes it quite peculiar among objects, with implications for a materialist... 

The world is a living being To the Hermeticists, all of the world, including rocks and streams, is alive and possesses a soul. The physical world was believed to be made of four physical elements earth, air, fire, and water. The elements would scatter, however, and the entire world would fall apart if they were not held together by the mysterious fifth element, the world soul, or Anima Mundi. This is in contrast with the modern scientific, materialist philosophy, which views the world as composed of nonliving matter. 

The spiritual quest had been part of alchemy since ancient times. After Paracelsus it became more and more the primary objective of alchemy. These alchemists wanted to separate themselves from those who were interested in alchemy only as a means to wealth. Solely materialistic alchemists were called puffers because of their impatient use of the bellows to keep the fire hot and speed up the process. 

Also typically omitted in interpretive studies of our particular artist have been detailed analyses of, for instance, the crucial historical role played by both the Esoteric Tradition and scientific, (materialist) innovation within the French Symbolist milieu of Duchamp s youth. Without solid groundings in such broader cultural problematics, the esoteric interpretations applied to Duchamp have admittedly lacked a credible foundation in historical and documentable fact, and so have typically been rejected out of hand. Hopefully, this investigation will help fill these significant historiographic lacunae. 

He causes one to realize the futility of trying to possess that which does not belong to the material world. For the moment, one wants to possess and grasp at it [meaning the illusions of the materialist world]— at that moment it eludes one and, like smoke, it vanishes into thin air Our relationship to the Outer and the Inner World is thus proved. Our relationship can [either] be addressed to the Outer World and its natural [and deceptive] phenomena—or to the Inner World, the world of the Spirit, or [of] the finer vibrations.. . ... 

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