Re: [asa] Leibnitz' objection to atomism

There is a sense in which we could always say there are no
electrons or there is no God because our conceptions of all
of these are inadequate and will always remain so.
Hence, the extension of our connotations is empty.
In this sense, reality approaches some form of idealism,
in which reality is ideas.
I am reminded of Hilary Putnam's comment regarding any form
of metaphysical realism, wherein we could know no such
reality since we are only familiar with our ideas.

On the other hand, we must all find this position, not only
disturbing, but somehow fundamentally wrong. Nonetheless,
it opens up the Pandora's box of asking who discovered the
electron, or whether it was ever discovered.

Somehow ontology must precede comprehension. The particular
and unfamiliar must come first, or at least be first. This
must be true whether we speak of God or electrons. That He is
precedes in importance and knowledge our conceptions and
understanding.

Such a notion may run up against any Heideggerian notion of
a world, wherein we dwell in and are only in the familiar,
what is already there. And yet he argues for a place where
the individual (in angst and dread) finds something of himself
that is outside the already existent and familiar. In this
sense the particular, the truly individual and unique is empty
and terrifying (consider for example Sartre's nausea).
Nonetheless, it is a place where "we" can be. Indeed, it is
likely close to the terrifying place that Kierkegaard approaches
in the absurd: a God beyond our reason and ken, no more, destroying
reason and sense.

Such is "reality," a reality that we cannot hold or conceive, but only
stand in silent awe and fear in, chaos. A world perhaps not much
different from that which Bohr believed confronted us in the world
of quantums. Still a world that, nonetheless, we do not deny because
we cannot hold.

Your suggestion that ultimate "matter" is energy solves fewer problems
for me than it presents. I cannot conceive of an unsubstantial
energy. In another era we would have called this immaterial and not
been embarrassed about it. In any case, we are told that there is a
quantum of energy, and equally inconceivable entity, as a quantum of
matter.

Finally, your suggestion that certain mathematical limits might be
finite although prima facie infinite or undefined does not help,
since in such cases I can understand why the limit is finite in
some instances and infinite in others. We can even produce pictures
to understand it.

No, the great mystery to me is that we can believe anything is true,
and we do, and are persuaded that we do. The mystery lies naked in
the particular, not in the universal, despite the gallons of ink
spent on the latter.

bill

On Tue, 7 Jul 2009 00:46:32 -0500, mrb22667@kansas.net wrote:
> Quoting Bill Powers <wjp@swcp.com>:
>
>
>> One last question. It has often been argued that X cannot exist because
> its
>> very existence is incoherent. Such arguments are employed against God's
>> existence from the problem of evil or omnipotence. The presumption is
> that
>> anything logically contradictory is not possible. We must either
> conclude,
>> we
>> are told, that X does not exist or that our conceptions of X are
> seriously
>> flawed.
>>
>> If our notions of atoms are incoherent, does that mean they don't exist?
>>
>> bill
>>
>
> It could well mean that the thing we imagine or visualize as our model for
> the
> atom does not exist. I recently discovered a children's book about Mars
> that
> had been written in the fifties. One could say that "technically" the
> Mars
> described in the book didn't exist since their conception didn't yet have
> information such as actual pictures and data from the surface. Yet even
> now,
> the Mars we imagine is still not the "real" Mars though we would hope it
> is
> quite a bit closer.
>
> Bohr's solar system atom may have been closer to the truth than the "plum
> pudding" model that preceded it, but it is probably not as close as the
> quantum
> model now taught. And our visualization of protons may now have to
> include the
> two up-quarks and one down-quark. Who knows how a quark may be visualized
> if we
> could really examine one. Maybe your particle X isn't matter, but is just
> pure
> energy? That would be one solution to the otherwise proposed infinite
> regression.
>
> B.T.W. in mathematics, infinity times zero is one of those
> context-sensitive
> quantities that in general is undefined, but in certain problems can have
> finite
> and computable answers. So an infinite number of infinitesimals could
> give you
> zero, or infinity, or and answer like 2.6 depending on which got smaller
> or
> bigger faster.
>
> --Merv
>
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Received on Tue Jul 7 09:01:25 2009