Mind over matter is a phrase popularized during the 1960s and 1970s that was originally used in reference to paranormal phenomena, especially psychokinesis

Psychokinesis

The term psychokinesis , also referred to as telekinesis with respect to strictly describing movement of matter, sometimes abbreviated PK and TK respectively, is a term...

. However, it has also been used in reference to mind-centric spiritual

Spirituality

Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...

 and philosophic

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

 doctrines such as responsibility assumption

Responsibility assumption

Responsibility assumption is a doctrine in the personal growth field holding that each individual has substantial or total responsibility for the events and circumstances that befall them in their life...

. It is the belief that the mind is more powerful than the body. Specifically, mind over matter refers to controlling pain that one may or may not be experiencing, such as holding one's hand under extremely hot water and feeling no pain. Also, "self-help" personalities such as Tony Robbins

Tony Robbins

Anthony "Tony" Robbins is an American self-help author and motivational speaker. He became well known through his infomercials and self-help books, Unlimited Power: The New Science Of Personal Achievement and Awaken The Giant Within...

 claim that, through the power of concentration and "positive thinking", people can walk on hot coals without getting burned. This claim is made despite the fact that there are solid, scientific explanations for firewalking. The phrase is present in the 2000s as well, usually used as slogan by hackers and hacker sites.

A scientific study (http://psiphen.colorado.edu/Pubs/ModdelSSE07.pdf), referenced in the May 2009 edition of Wired and performed by Professor Garret Moddel of the University of Colorado at Boulder, performed an experiment that supports the concept of 'mind over matter': in 2007, Professor Moddel aimed a beam of light at a glass slide and asked his test-subjects to mentally increase the amount of reflected light. With a baseline of 8 percent, the subjects were able to successfully increase the reflection of the beam by .05 percent, and showed a similar success when asked to mentally decrease the amount of reflected light. Started in 2007, the Dutch artist Iebele Abel used scientific methods to create artworks and music related to mind-matter correspondence.

"Mind over matter" was also Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...

's idea that rural peasants could be "proletarianized" so they could lead the revolution

Chinese Civil War

The Chinese Civil War was a civil war fought between the Kuomintang , the governing party of the Republic of China, and the Communist Party of China , for the control of China which eventually led to China's division into two Chinas, Republic of China and People's Republic of...

 and China could move from feudalism

Feudalism

Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for ordering society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.Although derived from the...

 to socialism

Socialism

Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

. It departs from Leninism in that the revolutionaries are peasants, instead of the urban proletariat.

Origin

The exact phrase "mind over matter" first appeared in 1863 in The Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of Man by Sir Charles Lyell (1797–1875) and refers to the increasing status and evolutionary growth of the minds of animals and man throughout Earth history.

Another related saying was coined almost a millennium earlier (19 B.C.) "the mind moves matter" by the poet Virgil

Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...

 in his work Aeneid

Aeneid

The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...

, book 6, line 727. The latter saying in Latin, mens agitat molem, is the official motto of the University of Warwick

University of Warwick

The University of Warwick is a public research university located in Coventry, United Kingdom...

, Eindhoven University of Technology

Eindhoven University of Technology

The ' is a university of technology located in Eindhoven, Netherlands. The motto of the university is: Mens agitat molem . The university was the second of its kind in the Netherlands, only Delft University of Technology existed previously. Until mid-1980 it was known as the...

 in The Netherlands and Newcastle University Union Society in the UK (amongst others).