Thinking Matter was first published in 1984. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. This book, a reevaluation of a major issue in modern philosophy, explores the controversy that grew out of John Locke's suggestion, in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), that God could give to matter the power of thought. The concept of "thinking matter," as Locke's notion came to be described, offered a threat to those who held orthodox beliefs, especially to their views on the nature and immortality of the soul. In Thinking Matter,John Yolton traces this controversy from theologian Ralph Cudworth's 1678 manifesto, The True Intellectual System of the Universe: Wherein, All the Reason and Philosophy of Atheism is Confuted; and Its Impossibility Demonstrated — an attack on ancient versions of naturalism—down to the philosophical and scientific studies of Joseph Priestley in the late eighteenth century.

This major new publication is the most comprehensive reference source ever on eighteenth-century authors writing in the English language about philosophical ideas and issues. Featuring authors taken from 1689 through to the middle of the nineteenth century, the period beginning with John Locke and ending with Dugald Stewart, the word 'philosophical' is used in a wide, eighteenth-century sense. Thus the Dictionary includes epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, education, politics, rhetoric, science, medicine, biology, geology, chemistry and theology, and many of the authors may more usually be called divines, scientists, doctors, mathematicians, or even poets. In addition to short biographies of the writers, there are detailed expositions and analyses of their doctrines and ideas, bibliographies of their writings and suggestions for further reading. There are also mini-entries on extremely obscure figures and appendices listing anonymous tracts. All the major eighteenth-century philosophers are featured, but the most valuable feature of the Dictionary is its representation of a huge range of less well-known writers. In many cases the Dictionary offers the first scholarly treatment of the life and work of certain writers. This book will be an indispensable reference work for scholars working on almost any aspect of eighteenth-century studies.

Vols. 1-23 (1888-1910) include "Jahresberichte über sämtliche Erscheinungen auf dem Gebiete der Geschichte der Philosophie"; v. 24-41 include section "Die neuesten Erscheinungen auf dem Gebiete der Geschichte der Philosophie" (varies slightly)