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1. Term Developed in the 17th century, “spiritualism” (from Lat. spiritus, and representing Gk. nous or pneuma) became in the 18th and 19th centuries a master term for philosophical systems that made mind or spirit their supreme principle. Mind or spirit, however, is a complex phenomenon and covers a broad spectrum, and we cannot give any comprehensive or precise and positive meaning to the term “spiritualism.” Counterpositions are materialism and positivism. If one uses the term in philosophy, it must be differentiated from an understanding of spiritualism stemmin…

1. Term “Rationalism” and its cognates in European languages derived in the 17th century from Lat. ratio, “reckoning,” also “reason,” “plan,” or “theory”; also “the faculty that calculates and plans.” In religion the term designates standpoints based on reason that are critical of beliefs and practices relying on authority and revelation. More broadly, rationalism is any philosophical position affirming the ability of thinking, apart from sensory experience, to discover fundamental truths about the world or re…

1. Term The term “organism” (from Gk. organon and Lat. organum, “instrument, sensory organ”), in common use since the 18th century, denotes an integrated, self-reproducing whole that in view of its inner teleology is more than the sum of its parts, even though the process of self-realization is possible only through the functions of the parts. In the biological and philosophical sense (Nature; Philosophy of Nature), “organism” has the basic sense of the structure of a living creature with all its individ…