Animism, from Latin anima, "breath" or "soul", belief in spiritual beings. Among biologists and psychologists, animism refers to the view that the human mind is a nonmaterial entity that nevertheless interacts with the body via the brain and nervous system. As a philosophical theory, animism, usually called panpsychism, is the doctrine that all objects in the world have an inner or psychological being. The 18th-century German physician and chemist Georg Ernst Stahl coined the word …
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showed last 75 words of 453 total
…if these things had life, feeling, and a will of their own, but did not make a distinction between the body of an object and a soul that could enter or leave it. Marett called this view "animatism" or "preanimism," and he claimed that animism had to arise out of animatism, which may even continue to exist alongside more highly developed animistic beliefs. Related to animism are ancestor worship and some forms of nature worship.