Definition for Materialism
From Biology Forums Dictionary
Simply put, the doctrine holding that physical bodies are the only things that exist. The history of the view admits of rather more complex articulations, however. For Democritus, for example, materialism consisted in viewing as real only what he called “atoms,” or “un-cut-ables.” Aristotle opposed it to the notion of Form, while for Berkeley, it was any view other than his Idealism, or “immaterialism.” The notion has become wedded to the Mind/Body problem in recent times, and thus to the question of Behaviorism.