Matter, physical stuff, in contemporary intellectual circles, gets a bad rap. Matter is often described as “mere matter” or as “dead material”. However, philosopher James Croft argues this is deeply mistaken. Matter is not mere or dead. It is self-organizing, able to produce life, and makes up the wonders of the world around you. This new picture of matter, Croft argues, has profound consequences for our feelings of disenchantment in the modern world and for the so-called hard problem of consciousness.

The misenchantment of matter

In a studio sits a wizard—or, perhaps, a hobbit. This is poet Malcolm Guite: one part Bilbo Baggins, one part Radagast the Brown. With his white hair, big beard, and sparkling eyes, he emanates warm wisdom. Wearing a red waistcoat and a jacket of brown tweed, he’d look right at home in Bag End. His voice has a pleasing rasp, giving it depth and texture. He leans forward, elbows on the table, clasps his hands as if in prayer, and begins:

We speak in England of a “quiet revival”...I think there’s a deep yearning for mystery and enchantment. There has to be more than just…the mere concatenation of dead material rattling about in the cosmos…That doesn’t satisfy you for long.

“The mere concatenation of dead material rattling about in the cosmos.” This is what I call the misenchantment of matter: a description of matter that strips it of its activity, powers, and relations. Each word helps cast the spell:

• Matter is "mere", diminished, nothing but. Significance, gone.
• Matter exists in "concatenations", an often negative word, like a random series of unfortunate events. Organization, gone.
• Matter is "dead", lacking in vitality and energy. Activity, gone.
• Matter is "rattling about", not doing anything interesting or important. Agency, gone.

Even the word “cosmos,” in this context, feels disappointing, a universal junk drawer filled with scattered odds and ends.

Matter is often described this way by those who object to scientific materialism. Jordan Peterson likes to call matter “dead.” Psychiatrist and philosopher Iain McGilchrist likes to call it “lumpen”—indeed, he once provided an almost exact parallel to Guite’s description above, speaking of “random lumps of senseless matter bumping into one another.”

This deflationary approach to matter has a long history. In 1693, theologian Richard Bentley wrote a letter to Isaac Newton saying “‘Tis unconceivable, that inanimate brute matter should (without a divine impression) operate upon & affect other matter without mutual contact”. The thought is instantly recognizable.

Matter gets a bad rap. That matters.

A spreading hex

Back in the studio, Guite continues: he speaks of “bleak reductive materialism” and its inability to offer “purpose, beauty and meaning.” He worries that such views “are telling you that you have no real personhood, no real soul, that you’re just the unwinding of an enzyme.”

So, the misenchantment of matter spreads: it becomes not just a description of the stuff of the cosmos, but an indictment of nonreligious life. Because materialists see matter as dead, lumpen, mere concatenations, it is implied, they cannot make sense of beauty, purpose, person, soul: “you’re just the unwinding of an enzyme.”

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Somewhere, you are reading this text. On a phone, a tablet, a computer screen. Wherever you are, you are surrounded by matter. I am calling you to a quiet revival—a materialist one.

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