Materialism

[User]

I know very little about science, so please bear with me.

Is materialism discredited in today's age of sub-atomic particles that reduce the once mighty atom to an energy field? Einstein said something like that..."all is field"?

Clearly phrases like "there is only the atom and the void" are straight up false. But should materialism be given up as an out-of-date theory?

[ZouPrime]

Materialism doesn't mean "only material stuff exist" (and no energy, for example). The materialist position is that only the physical reality exist, and thus that everything can be explained by describing naturalistic processes. Modern science can definitively be classified as materialistic.

[User]

Originally posted by ZouPrime
Materialism doesn't mean "only material stuff exist" (and no energy, for example). The materialist position is that only the physical reality exist, and thus that everything can be explained by describing naturalistic processes. Modern science can definitively be classified as materialistic.

I was confused. I thought materialism was the belief that only matter exists. I thought that those who believed "that everything can be explained by describing naturalistic processes" were naturalists?

[Hugo Holbling]

These days we refer to physicalism to distinguish between modern and historical versions of materialist ideas. This link (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/) may help.