In 1747 the physician Julien Offray de La Mettrie publishes L'Homme Machine, Man a Machine, arguing that the soul is a function of the organized body and that thought differs from matter in arrangement, not in kind. The book, printed at Leiden and burned in Paris, is philosophical naturalism's first scandal and its founding provocation.
Tagged: Naturalism
The Event
- Date
- 1747 (exact)
- Era
- The Enlightenment System; Standard periodization of naturalist history
- Location
- Leiden; today Leiden, Netherlands
- Traditions
- Naturalism
- Streams
- Naturalism
- Key figures
- Julien Offray de La Mettrie
- Key texts
- L'Homme Machine
Primary Sources
- La Mettrie, Julien Offray de. L'Homme Machine. Leiden, 1747.
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-1401; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-30.
Related on This Site
History Event
Büchner's Force and Matter
1855
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
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.