Spontaneous Materialism

“the unwitting, unformed, philosophically unconscious conviction . . . regarding the objective reality of the external world” (V. I. Lenin, Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 18, p. 367). The concept of spontaneous materialism characterizes the position of natural scientists unfamiliar with philosophy when they deal with fundamental philosophical problems, primarily epistemological, that arise in specialized scientific research. In essence, spontaneous materialism signifies the organic use in scientific research of several important ideas of philosophical materialism, such as the atomistic hypothesis and the concept of evolution in organic nature. However, it does not go beyond a belief that the external world is independent of our sensations and a certitude that the evidence of our sense organs is correct and does not constitute a conscious philosophical materialist position.