---
title: "Materialism controversy"
chunk: 2/6
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism_controversy"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:39:45.902602+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

The materialism controversy was sparked in part by the writings of physiologist Carl Vogt, beginning in 1847. His commitment to materialism was shaped by the scientific and political reform movements of the time, as well as his own personal and political development. Vogt was born in Giessen in 1817, into a family with both scientific and revolutionary traditions. His father, Philipp Friedrich Wilhelm Vogt, was a professor of medicine who moved to Bern in 1834 after facing political persecution. On his mother’s side, political activism was also a strong influence: Louise Follen’s three brothers—Adolf, Karl, and Paul Follen—were all involved in nationalist and democratic causes and eventually went into exile.
In 1817 Adolf Follen drafted a proposal for a future German constitution and was later arrested for his political activities. He avoided a 10-year prison sentence by fleeing to Switzerland. Karl Follen was suspected of encouraging the assassination of conservative writer August von Kotzebue and escaped to the United States, where he became a professor at Harvard University. The youngest brother, Paul Follen, helped found the Gießener Auswanderungsgesellschaft in 1833, which aimed to establish a German republic in the U.S. Though the plan failed, Paul settled in Missouri as a farmer.
Carl Vogt began studying medicine at the University of Giessen in 1833, but soon switched to chemistry under the influence of Justus Liebig, a pioneer of organic chemistry. Liebig’s experimental approach, which rejected the traditional divide between living and non-living matter, helped lay the groundwork for Vogt’s later materialist views. In 1835, however, Vogt had to leave Giessen after helping a politically persecuted student escape. He fled to Switzerland and completed his medical degree in 1839.

In the early 1840s, Vogt became active in both scientific and political reform circles, though he had not yet fully adopted a materialist worldview. His ideological shift took place during a three-year stay in Paris, where he came into contact with anarchist thinkers like Mikhail Bakunin and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. These interactions significantly influenced his political ideas. Starting in 1845, Vogt published the Physiological Letters (Physiologische Briefe), which aimed to make physiology more accessible to the public. Inspired by Liebig’s Chemical Letters, the early volumes were written in clear, popular language. While the first letters avoided strong ideological claims, the 1846 letter on the nervous system marked a turning point. In it, Vogt argued that consciousness, will, and thought originate solely in the brain, a direct challenge to spiritual or dualist explanations of the mind.
At this stage, however, Vogt prioritized political activism over theory. In 1847, he was appointed professor of zoology in Giessen with the help of Liebig and Alexander von Humboldt. But shortly afterward, the Revolutions of 1848 broke out across Europe. When the uprising reached Giessen, Vogt led the local militia and was elected to represent Hesse-Darmstadt in the Frankfurt Parliament (1848–1849), a democratic assembly aiming to unify Germany. After the Prussian King Frederick William IV refused the crown offered by the parliament and conservative forces regained control, Vogt joined the remaining 158 deputies in Stuttgart to form the so-called rump parliament. This assembly was short-lived, and on 18 June 1849, troops from Württemberg forcibly shut it down. Vogt fled once again to Switzerland and took refuge at his family home.
With his political career in ruins and his academic post lost, Vogt returned to scientific work. His research from this point onward took on a more openly ideological tone, as he began to interpret biological processes through the lens of materialist philosophy.

== Progression of the debate ==

=== Materialism controversy until 1854 ===
In 1850, Vogt travelled to Nice to continue his zoological research, as his academic prospects in Germany remained uncertain. A year later, he published a book on animal societies, which combined zoological observations with a sharp political critique of the German state. In the book, Vogt argued in favor of anarchism, claiming that all forms of government and law were signs that humanity had not yet returned to its natural state. Vogt’s argument for anarchism was rooted in his biological and materialist worldview. He believed that humans, like animals, are entirely material beings and part of the natural world. Therefore, biology not only supported materialism but also challenged existing social and political structures.
Despite—or because of—its controversial content, the book attracted public attention in Germany. In 1852, Vogt published Bilder aus dem Thierleben (Images from Animal Life), which further developed his materialist views and strongly criticized German academic circles. He argued that any biologist who thinks clearly must recognize the truth of materialism, especially given the evidence from animal experiments. From this, he concluded that if mental functions depend on brain functions, then the soul cannot exist independently of the body or survive after death. Furthermore, if the brain operates according to natural laws, then so must the soul—leaving no room for free will:

Thus the door would be opened to simple materialism – man, as well as the animal, would be only a machine, his thinking the result of a certain organisation – free will therefore abolished? ... Truly, that is so. It really is so.
Vogt argued that those who rejected these conclusions misunderstood the implications of physiological science. His criticism was partly aimed at Rudolf Wagner, an anatomist and physiologist from Göttingen, who had attacked Vogt in an 1851 article in the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung. Wagner accused Vogt of replacing God with “blind, unconscious necessity". Wagner also proposed that a child’s soul was composed of equal parts from the mother’s and father’s souls. Vogt responded sarcastically, pointing out that such an idea contradicted the theological principle of the soul’s indivisibility and was scientifically implausible. Instead, he argued, character traits—like physical features—are inherited from parents through the brain, and therefore the idea of a "composite soul" could be explained in purely materialist terms.

=== Göttingen Naturalists' Meeting ===