Dictionaries of Philosophy offer detailed historiographies of the term matter according to epochs and trends of thought. They trace its root to the Greek ¿¿¿ (hyle), meaning wood, and to its use first by Plato and Aristotle in senses relating to different substances or that primordial and undifferentiated one (Ferrater-Mora, 1994) (Oxford-Blackburn, 2016). However, many people used terms before Plato and Aristotle-and many more afterwards. In Indo-European etymology, we find that matter comes from the root m¿ter: mother (Roberts & Pastor, 1996) (Hoad, 2003). From there, Greek and Latin soon derive meanings such as origin, womb, womb, wood, and matter. There was a time when they pointed to the same thing with connected nuances. However, philosophy seems to have forgotten the origin, the m¿termateria connection. Mother does not appear in the reference philosophy dictionaries (Oxford, Standford), There is no historiography. Therefore there is a material-conceptual history that has not been told or does not count for the foundations of how we understand the world or ourselves. In the current scientific-educational system, the mother does not appear as a philosophical or physiological category, as will be detailed here, showing its absence in terms of scientific knowledge about its changes and transformations, advancing on previous works focused on representation and visualization (Oaks, 2000; Petchesky, 1987). We will see that mothers and matter have followed a similar process of desensitization or consideration as non-agentic entities and without directionality (Bennet, 2010), a process that limits the pre-conditions even to perceive relationships and separations, the changes that shape the conditions for sharing (Rancière, 2000; Panagia, 2014) and that determine the political configuration of today's world. The m¿termateria is particularity, that which binds us to a specific time, place, traits and opportunities. To abstract comes from the Indo-European root tragh-: to pull, drag, or move (Roberts & Pastor, 1996). To drag from its material referent and environment meanings and persons, we may think (a use similar to Tsing, 2015's use of alienation). It will be argued that the absence of m¿termatter is the first necessary pillar to sustain us as spirit/soul/mind, as abstract beings: the first and necessary step is to posit ourselves as self-created beings. It is the only way to sustain the imaginary of being autonomous beings/separated from the environment, as self-contained beings without historicity that do not transform in relationships (Tsing, 2015). Conversely, their presence immediately refers us to a we co-developing with the world at every step. The current imaginary is counterfactual and increasingly far from empirical evidence. However, it nevertheless guides - and hinders - the understanding of our constitutive processes (being born, growing up), the civilizational process and human evolution. These visions are not mere ideas or straw dolls that we are overcoming by rejecting dualisms: they make us materially more separated in the process of abstraction that is increasing, as will be pointed out in the paper. This pattern emerges from considering m¿termatter from the onto-epistemic-ethical gaze of the new materialisms and more holistic visions borrowed from other cultures.

Trabajo presentado en el XIV Congreso Iberoamericano de Ciencia, Tecnología y Género, celebrado en Madrid (España) del 03 al 15 de septiembre de 2023.

Peer reviewed