Materialism

Some of the earliest theories of life were materialist, holding that all that exists is matter, and that all life is merely a complex form or arrangement of matter. Empedocles (430 B.C.) argued that every thing in the universe is made up of a combination of four eternal 'elements' or 'roots of all': earth, water, air, and fire. All change is explained by the arrangement and rearrangement of these four elements. The various forms of life are caused by an appropriate mixture of elements. For example, growth in plants is explained by the natural downward movement of earth and the natural upward movement of fire.[6]




Democritus (460 B.C.), the disciple of Leucippus, thought that the essential characteristic of life is having a soul (psychê). In common with other ancient writers, he used the term to mean the principle of living things that causes them to function as a living thing. He thought the soul was composed of fire atoms, because of the apparent connection between life and heat, and because fire moves.[7] He also suggested that humans originally lived like animals, gradually developing communities to help one another, originating language, and developing crafts and agriculture.[8]



In the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, mechanistic ideas were revived by philosophers like Descartes