Atomism was the Ancient Roman's favourite philosopher. Except Catone il
Censore, the Ancient Roman loved all things Greek, and atomism was viewed as
the philosophical (thus Greek or Hellenic) thing _par excellence_. Atomism
was enriched in Ancient Roman literature by Lucrezio, in his "The Nature of
Things": everything is composed of atoms --. His 'atom' is not Einstein's
'atom', but something 'deeper'. And since Geary was talking about this,
Lucrezio has a convoluted (but true!) theory about how emotions reduce to the
clash of atoms!
The Greek idea was that the a-tom was indivisible. But this, which for
years was found to be analytically true, proved to be oxymoronic!
In a message dated 8/4/2015 2:13:29 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
"COMPOSE"? In what sense? The view that an atom is composed of sub-atomic
particles contains a vagueness: is an atom constituted merely by its
sub-atomic particles, or there is more to it? What is the relationship between
sub-atomic particles and atoms in terms of each determining the other's
existence as entities? Is an atom is the compositional structure for
sub-atomic
particles or are sub-atomic particles the compositional structure for
atoms? How would we test between these possibilities? And isn't there a third
and even fourth possibility: that neither "COMPOSE" the other in any
explanatory sense, and that the compositional status of both is to be
explained by
something else. And what has all this to do with the sense of language? Is
the sense of language "atomistic" or "sub-atomistic" in any meaningful
sense? W[itters], after he had repudiated "logical atomism", wrote: "My aim
is:
to take you from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent
nonsense."
Apparently, most nonsense comes from theoretical physicists, if you believe
this! Baker and Hacker wrote a book on Language, Sense and Nonsense, but
I'm not sure they were into subatomic quantum physics!
I once, motivated by a remark by H. P. G. against D. Davidson's "Scientific
Realism", did some research as to what physicists find 'ultimate'
particles, and they are constantly arguing pro and against postulating this or
that
subatomic 'particle'. My favourite is Eddington who couldn't decide
between a wave and a particle and coined wavicle:
"We can scarcely describe such an entity as a wave or as a particle;
perhaps as a compromise we had better call it a `wavicle`".
Occam would be amused!
I'm not surprised that Witters refuted his early logical atomism. J. O.
Urmson had a field day on that in his "Philosophical Analysis Between the Two
Wars" (Witters fought in the first -- so-called Great War -- but lost).
Witters loved to refute his former self. And while he speaks of 'patent
nonsense', he should have taken notice of his once friend F. P. Ramsey when he
described Witters's type of nonsense as 'unserious'!
Cheers,
Speranza
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