Idealism in its philosophical sense, is the view that mind and spiritual values are fundamental in the world as a whole. Idealism came to be used as a philosophical term in Germany during the eighteenth century. This type of philosophy opposed the Empirisistic views of such philosopher"s as David Hume, by stating that there are no such things as structural simples, atomisms or external relationships. Idealists argued that the world and our reality is a complex network of smaller parts interconnected to form the whole or totality. As such, for the idealist philosopher Art and Biology were emphasized as structural comparative models of the world for their philosophy. For example, a painting, being a work of art, as seen by the idealist point of view, is a complex structure composed of smaller parts where the whole wouldn"t be what it is if not for the individual parts. The same for biology, where an organism, such as a human being, wouldn"t be a whole or totality without the smaller microscopic singles that form the whole, that we perceive as a human. Thus for what Hume had referred to as simple structures standing in external relations to other external objects, the idealists would argue. They would point out that all objects and people are internally related in view of a larger, broader reality. They are prepared to argue that even if an object may not appear to be related to another or one which may not seem significant to the human eye, does indeed in the scheme of things affect us. The idealists also maintain that all substance is complex, rather then simple in the whole of reality, and our reality is actually a system of relationships, where external relations don"t exist and all relations are part of a network or whole. .

             The idealists disagree and argue on various points with empiricist and rationalist philosophers. On one such issue, is the idea of truth.