hylozoism.

The doctrine that life belongs to all matter, not only to organisms ordinarily considered living.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• ancient hylozoism
• a form of hylozoism
• advocate hylozoism

On the page

The settlers' hylozoism forbade them from treating the planet's stone as lifeless.

The lecturer distinguished hylozoism from theories specifically concerned with consciousness.

Usage notes

Primary category: sci-fi literary / speculative. Lexical Type: Word. Forms: Usually uncountable; no ordinary plural in this sense. Commonness: rare (editorial estimate; not a corpus frequency statistic). Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1; numbered fields keep each relevant meaning separate. Research distinction: Direct dictionary extraction: doctrine that all matter has life; associated with early Greek philosophers. Distinguish life from mentality. Individual usefulness checked for a distinct speculative-writing function. Original definitions and examples; hypothetical theories and fictional applications are not presented as established findings. No inherent mood or intensity is assigned. Writing functions: intrinsically living matter, philosophical world-building.