In 1855 the German physician Ludwig Büchner publishes Kraft und Stoff, Force and Matter: no force without matter, no matter without force, and no immortal soul. The book is scientific materialism's bestseller, translated across Europe and America, and its author is driven from his Tübingen lectureship for it.
Tagged: Naturalism
The Event
- Date
- 1855 (exact)
- Era
- The Darwinian Century; Standard periodization of naturalist history
- Location
- Frankfurt; today Frankfurt, Germany
- Traditions
- Naturalism
- Streams
- Naturalism
- Key figures
- Ludwig Büchner
- Key texts
- Kraft und Stoff
Primary Sources
- Büchner, Ludwig. Kraft und Stoff. Frankfurt am Main, 1855.
Secondary Sources
- De Caro, Mario, and David Macarthur, eds. Naturalism in Question. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.
- Gregory, Frederick. Scientific Materialism in Nineteenth Century Germany. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1977.
- Papineau, David. Philosophical Naturalism. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.
Provenance: HIST-1405; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-30.
Related on This Site
History Event
D'Holbach's System of Nature
1770
History Event
Darwin's The Descent of Man
1871
History Event
Huxley's Man's Place in Nature
1863
History Event
La Mettrie's Man a Machine
1747
History Event
Laplace's Exposition of the System of the World
1796
History Event
Mill's A System of Logic
1843
History Event
Newton's Principia Mathematica
1687
World View
Naturalism
Naturalism holds that nature is all there is: the universe of matter, energy, and natural law needs no god, soul, or purpose beyond itself.