The modern fear of matter: reflections on the protestantism of victorian science

Materiality is a quality of relationship rather than a thing in itself (Ding an sich). These relations vary. An inquiry into late Victorian attitudes towards materialism shows that modern science inherited a certain fear of matter from Protestantism, which identifies a number of these relationships as being at least latently religious. It allows us to specify how culturally and historically particular our understanding of matter, materiality and materialism are.