2. Historical forms of the development of materialist philosophy: There are three main forms. ancient naive materialism and modern metaphysical materialism are also called mechanical materialism and modern dialectical materialism.
(1) ancient naive materialism is a kind of original spontaneous materialism, thinking that the origin of the world is one or several original substances, such as water, fire and gas, which is the origin of all things in the universe. The atomism of democritus, an ancient Greek philosopher, is the highest achievement of ancient naive materialism. He believes that everything is made up of tiny and indivisible atoms. Naive materialism adheres to the correct viewpoint of material first and consciousness second, and combines it with naive dialectics, but due to the limitation of historical conditions.
(2) Modern metaphysical materialism: namely, British and French materialism in17th century and18th century, which is based on contemporary social development and natural science, has a certain scientific basis (mechanical mechanics) and argumentation, and has made outstanding contributions to opposing the existing political system, idealism and religious theology, and promoting social development and natural science development. At the same time, there are obvious limitations and defects of the times: first, mechanism explains everything from the perspective of mechanical mechanics. For example, think that atoms or electrons are the origin of the world, and the characteristics of atoms and electrons are the characteristics of things. The movement of all matter is the movement of atoms or electrons, and it is a mechanical movement driven by external forces. It even thinks that "man is a machine"; The second is metaphysics, that is, understanding and explaining the world and things with an isolated, static and one-sided view, rather than understanding the world and things as a historical development process; Third, it is incomplete, and it is impossible to implement the materialist view of nature in the social field. The fundamental weakness is that we don't understand the importance of practice and stick to the idealistic historical view. In the final analysis, this materialist can't see the great role of human practice and has no scientific view of practice.
(3) Modern dialectical materialism, that is, Marxist philosophy, has achieved a high degree of unity between materialism and dialectics, materialist dialectical view of nature and materialist dialectical view of history on the basis of scientific practice, and is a truly scientific, complete, thorough and practical materialist philosophy.