Friedrich Karl Christian Ludwig Büchner
Ludwig Büchner was one of the most famous 19th century proponents of scientific materialism. He is the brother of playwriter Georg Büchner and the uncle of Ernst Büchner of the eponymous Flask. From 1842 to 1848, he studied Natural Sciences, Philosophy and Medicine in the University of Giessen. He continued his studies in the universities of Strasbourg, Würzburg and Vienna.
Ludwing Büchner started describing his materialistic philosophy with the publication Force and Matter in 1855. The controversy that book created forced him to resign the post he had secured in the University of Tübingen in 1852. He wrote several other treatises until the year he died. He is considered the progenitor of the freethinkers' movement in Germany and the father of atheistic evangelism.
Sources
Kraft und Stoff: Empirisch-naturphilosophische Studien (Force and Matter: Empiricophilosophical Studies), 1855
Natur und Geist, (Nature and Soul), 1857
Physiologische Bilder, 1861-1875
Aus Natur und Wissenschaft (From Nature and Science), vol. I-II, 1862-1884
Herr Lassale und die Arbieter, 1863
Sechs Vorlesungen under die Darwin'sche Theorie von der Verwandlung der Arten und die erste Entstehung der Organismenwelt, 1868
Die Stellung des Menschen in der Natur, in Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft, 1869
Der Fortschritt in Natur und Geschichte im Lichte der Darwinschen Theorie (Progress in Nature and History in the Light of the Darwinian Theory), 1884
Der neue Hamlet, 1885
Fremdes und eignes aus dem geistigen leben der gegenwart, 1890
Das kunftige Leben und die moderne Wissenschaft 1889
Tatsachen und Theorien aus dem naturwissenschaftlichen Leben der Gegenwart (Facts and Theories from the Scientific Life of Present), 1887
Fremdes und Eigenes aus dem geistligen Leben der Gegenwart (Extraneous and Self from the Spiritual Life of Present), 1890
Darwinismus und Socialismus, 1894
Meine Begegnung mit Ferdinand Lassalle 1894
Am Sterbelager Der Jahrhunderts, 1898
Im Dienste der Wahrheit (In the Service of Truth), 1899
Selected bibliography
Fredrick Gregory, Scientific Materialism in Nineteenth Century Germany, Springer, 1977
