Further to a previous post which touched on the subject, I have been thinking some more about the speculative materialism of Ernst Bloch. Bloch contended that there is a striving, subjective aspect in nature which drives it towards what is 'not yet' and portends the possibility of a future utopia. The influences on Bloch upon which he based these ideas include Aristotle, Avicenna, Giordano Bruno, Schelling and Hegel.
Of course, to the modern mind brought up with a materialistic scientific world view it is hard to make any sense of the notion that material reality has utopian tendencies, or indeed any purposive attributes at all. If what goes on in nature is ultimately determined by the laws of physics, how could there possibly be any room for a utopian drive to play a part in what goes on? Further, how could material reality as a whole have the propensity to strive towards anything in the first place?