Section 45 (last updated 2.14.2021)
The atom as void is “The void of non void” (Alan watts 14:02:45) nothing as the something – the void of voidness means the dismissing of void.
Notes- pre-Socratic philosophy
Ancient atomism
( see wormhole consciousness)
It is easy to merely say that Aristotle rejects atomism, but Aristotle’s instigation of atomism is much more intricate because he aims to understand the merit of the theory in grasping ontological principles. Atomism is incomplete in explaining the nature of fundamental principles, but that is not the same to say that they did not recognize the principles themselves. For example, we say that Anaximenes is not wrong in recognizing air as element but is wrong in explaining it as the ultimate substance of the universe.
The ontological difficulty is to synthesize the principles in their proper place after they have been analytically separated such that their relation exhibits the same absolute unanimity prior to their study. Atomism catalogues nature into fundamental abstractions without explaining how these form the same ultimate conception. The term sub-stance in one sense means “sub” for underneath, and “stance” as the holding or supporting (Alan watts YouTube Nature of god).
Atomism realize substance as the underlayment of nature but the way they understood this is akin to what most people understand as one thing supporting another thing, that is, like the ground supports your feet. (add Berkeley matter as ground) But in seeing substance as simply the bedrock where change occurs, they divorced it from being involved in causing the changes. The reason is that the notion of causation itself bears the same misunderstanding as substance, that the cause and the effect are seen separate in terms of one bringing the other, i.e, the cause is not the effect because the effect is the result of the cause, e.g., how can my hand be the same as the ball that is being thrown by it? The material answer is that they are both made from the same thing, both are atoms structures. (Alan watts causation) Substance therefore loses the fact that it is an active force for change, but how it is this active agent, atomism does not adequately explain as they reduce the notion to a restricted meaning.
Aristotle describes the principles of the atomist theory as such:
Leucippus and his associate Democritus declare the full and the empty [void] to be the elements, calling the former “what-is” (to on) and the other “what-is- not” (to mē on). Of these, the one, “what-is,” is full and solid, the other, “what- is-not,” is empty [void] and rare. (This is why they say that what-is is no more than what-is-not, because the void is no less than body is.) These are the mate-rial causes of existing things. (Aristotle, Metaphysics 1.4 985b4–19 = DK 67A6)
According to Aristotle, the material causes refer to the name for whatever meets a certain function, namely that from which the object is constituted to the efficiency of the rational form. The logical relations of Being and Nothing are the efficient causation of the atom and the void as physical principles. Atomism however argues for the opposite, stating that concepts like Being and Nothing are terms taken after the conception of materials. But this obscures the function of the material as something secondary rendering an explanation of causation inept. What does it mean for abstract principles to be the efficient causes of materials?
According to the Ancient Greeks the word atomos means “uncuttable,” “unsplittable”, and the atom is associated with the principle of indivisibility. It is however argued that “what-is is no more than what-is-not” because the void also explicates indivisibility. The void is known for the Ancient Greeks as kenon meaning “empty”, animates the substratum of “nothing”, and is the being of “what-is-not,” is not antithetical to the atom because “the void is no less than body is.” The atom and void do not differ in their material because they both explain what it means for object to be “full,” “solid,” and “compact”. (Mckirahan 306) Aristotle’s says:
(4) They also use as evidence what happens with ash: it takes no less water to fill a jar that contains ashes than it does to fill the same jar when it is empty. (Aristotle, Physics 4.6 213a27–b22 = DK 67A19)
The atom and void differ in form, which does not make them separate entities because something differing in form is not the same to say that there is a difference in material. Differing in material means that the same activity is separate into varying entities. But the material causes do not explain why the activity separates into varying bodies, but only that it does. Differing in form comprise the same physical body to exhibit in that material differing activates. They are opposing components of the same object consisting it to be activated in inverse determinations.
The form of the atom is “hing,” precisely for the reason that its functional nature is to remain what-is, that is, the fixation on some activity. The void is so-called “empty” because it is the activity of being what-is-not, never remains some particular thing. Whether the activity is “full” or “compact” as in the case of the atom, or “empty” and “rare” as for the void, both are the same matter with inverse functions.
Atoms not perceptible
Fundamental to the atomic theory is the fact that all atoms are made of the same paraphernalia, but the so-called “stuff” that atoms are made of involves no perceptible qualities. The atom is not in the first case hard or soft, hot or cold, wet or dry, which are properties of macroscopic perceptible compounds of atoms and depend on the atomic structure of the compounds rather than the nature of the atom as component. How is the atom being a component constitute the compound to be perceptible?
And what is the atom made of? The substance of atom? For they say shape, size etc. but then all these are differing qualities, what is their substance that makes them the stuff tht atoms are made of? This section shows how atomism fails to show how we can derive perceptible qualities from imperceptible basis. It’s because they did not have mind as the basis for the formation of what comes to be perceptible but that they took the way things thing relate external from perception, abstracted these external relation, concave convex etc. and explained that these are the fundamental elation that gives rise to perceptual qualities,
They have all kinds of forms and shapes and differences in size. Out of these as elements he gen- erates and forms visible and perceptible bodies. <These substances> are at odds with one another and move in the void because of their dissimilarity and the other differences I have mentioned, and as they move they strike against one another and become entangled in a way that makes them be in contact and close to one another but does not make any thing out of them that is truly one, for it is quite foolish <to think> that two or more things could ever come to be one. The grounds he gives for why the substances stay together up to a point are that the bodies fit together and hold each other fast. For some of them are rough, some are hooked, others concave and others convex, while yet others have innumerable other differences. So he thinks that they cling to each other and stay together until some stronger necessity comes along from the environment and shakes them and scatters them apart. He describes the generation and its contrary, separation, not only for animals but also for plants, kosmoi, and altogether for all perceptible bodies. (Aristotle, On Democritus, quoted by Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle’s On the Heavens 295.1–22 = DK 68A37)
(explain here whitehead time, discernable vs indiscernible)
Since the atom exhibits the activity of hing and is therefore definite and discerned (whitehead time), the atomism where able to associate the activity with being physically minute. They had more difficulty with categorizing the physical attributes of void, because they associated it with infinity which is indefinite. This poised especial difficulties for trying to understand which of the two processes is the determining one, and because they say the void as the what-is-not, they presupposed that it is the passive process determined by the atom…
For while they made the universe one, immovable, ungenerated, and limited, and did not even permit the investigation of what-is-not, he posited the atoms as infinite and ever-moving elements, with an infinite number of shapes on the grounds that they are no more like this than like that and because he observed that coming to be and change are unceasing among the things that are. (Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics 28.4–26 = DK 67A8, 68A38)
The Atom exhibits the form of a relation as a component, but the component as the basis of substratum is eternal without perceptible qualities.
Plato and Democritus supposed that only the intelligible things are true (or, “real”); Democritus <held this view> because there is by nature no perceptible substrate, since the atoms, which combine to form all things, have a nature deprived of every perceptible quality. (Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians 8.6 = DK 68A59)
The ultimate nature of atom and void is intelligible not perceptible.
perceptual nature of atom is a compound, a result of its relation.
There is infinite number of atoms is derived from the fact that there is infinite number of shapes. The shapes are relations, and numbers assign these forms into abstractions:
Since the bodies differ in shape, and the shapes are infinite, they declare the simple bodies to be infinite too. But they did not determine further what is the shape of each of the elements, beyond assigning a spherical shape to fire. They distinguished air and water and the others by largeness and smallness. (Aristotle, On the Heavens 3.4 303a11–15 = DK 67A15)
(308) This again prompts perhaps the most essential question in the science of ontology; How can something with no quality bear qualities?
The Atomists had to suppose that atoms have no perceptible qualities, so as to account for the range of changes in quality at the macroscopic level. For example, iron, which is gray, becomes red when heated. If it were composed of gray atoms this change would be hard to explain. But if color depends on atomic structure and movement, we may suppose that heat alters the structure and movement of the atoms in the iron. In one sense, the idea that the atom is primarily quality-less can be taken as the standard that picks out the nature of things with qualities such as compounds. However, it still remains unclear as to how this quality-less standard is integral in the very generation of qualities.
The subjective conception of the phenomena and the universal in that conception are so entwined that trying to understand them as separate categories is by the very nature of the attempt fallacious.
The atomist looked at nature by way of appearance and saw that there are infinite opposites ways of perceiving the same thing:
Democritus and Leucippus base their account of alteration and coming to be on them: coming to be and perishing by means of separation and combination, alteration by means of arrange-ment and position. Since they held that the truth is in the appearance, and appearances are opposite and infinite, they made the shapes infinite,6 so that by reason of changes of the composite, the same thing seems opposite to different people, and it shifts position when a small additional amount is mixed in, and it appears completely different when a single thing shifts position. For tragedy and comedy come to be out of the same letters. (Aristotle, On Generation and Corruption 1.1 315b6–15 = DK 67A97)
In this way they grasped that change is fundamental in determining the perceptual qualities of appearances. They examined deeper into the notion of change and found that change is the kind of activity determining the appearance of objects. They classified at least three type of changes:
They declare that the differences <among these> are the causes of the rest. Moreover, they say that the differences are three: shape, arrangement, and position. For they say that what-is differs only in “rhythm,” “touching,” and “turning”—and of these “rhythm” is shape, “touching” is arrangement, and “turning” is position. (Aristotle, Metaphysics 1.4 985b4–19 = DK 67A6)
The objects of appearances are constantly changing and as such are engaged in movements and relations with each other. The atomist agree that the kind of relation determines the perceptual qualities, and so the way objects appear depends on the nature of change. However, when it comes to identifying the kind of fundamental relations of change that determines appearances, the atomist come across problems:
For positing the atoms as matter for the things that are, they generate the rest by means of their differences. These are three: rhythm, turning, and touching, that is, shape, position, and arrangement. For by nature like is moved by like, and things of the same kind move toward one another, and each of the shapes produces a different condition when arranged in a different combination. Thus, since the principles are infinite, they reasonably promised to account for all attributes and substances—how and through what cause anything comes to be. This is why they say that only those who make the elements infinite account for everything reasonably. They say that the number of the shapes among the atoms is infinite on the grounds that they are no more like this than like that. For they themselves assign this as a cause of the infiniteness. (Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics 28.4–26 = DK 67A8, 68A38)
How is the fact that the atom fundamentally having no perceptible qualities consistent with the notion that the atom as principle of relations constitute physical qualities?
The atomist seems to suggest the logically consistent claim that activates do not possess perceptible qualities, and an atom is an activity, and only when the activity forms a compound, that compound becomes perceptual. But the activity itself remains with no particular quality because if it has any, it would be some specific compound. In order for something to remain activity it has to possess no specific quality while at the same time produce qualities.
but they saw the activity coming after the result, the activity is result of the unit.
Size as well as shape govern the sorts of compounds in which an atom can be found (16.9).
Indivisibility explains how process is activity that is physical.
(maybe add here determinacy vs necessity)
Infinity indivisibility
Leucippus held that the atoms are very small, indeed “invisible because of the minuteness of their size”. Democritus believes that atoms could in principle be any size and yet he, like Leucippus, also believes they are all too small to be seen. The idea that there are atoms of all possible sizes, “all kinds of . . . differences in size” [16.3], leads to the interpretation that some atoms are in fact massive. For example, Democritus believes there can be an atom the size of a kosmos (16.21). How ca n the atom be in principle the largest and is yet too small to be seen?
The size of the atom is complex issue because it is fundamentally informed by the concept of infinity.
Democritus believes that the nature of the eternal things is small substances (ousiai7) infinite in number. As a place for these he hypothesizes something else, infinite in size, and he calls their place by the names “the void,” “noth- ing” (ouden) and “the unlimited” [or, “infinite”] and he calls each of the sub- stances “hing” (den) and “the compact” and “what-is.” He holds that the substances are so small that they escape our senses.
The atoms’ indivisible nature is question of debate.
Those who abandoned division to infinity on the grounds that we cannot divide to infinity and as a result cannot guarantee that the division can- not end declared that bodies are composed of indivisible things and are divided into indivisibles. Except that Leucippus and Democritus hold that the cause of the primary bodies’ indivisibility is not only their inability to be affected but also their minute size and lack of parts. (Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics 925.10–15 = DK 67A13)
The atoms are indivisible because they cannot be affected, and therefore they have no parts. It is in this way that atoms are infinitesimal because size is determined by something being divided into parts with differing magnitudes. But this consideration begs the question because we cannot know that atoms have no parts unless we already know that they are indivisible. The following question reconciles the paradox between the indivisible having no parts, and by “parts” that into which a thing can be divided: how are bodies composed of indivisible things and are divided into indivisibles?
Zeno had shown (The Argu- ment from Large and Small, see above pages 178–79) that unacceptable conse- quences follow on the assumption that a finite-sized object is infinitely divisible. Complete the division and either the resulting least parts have no size or they have some positive size. But either way, the parts cannot be reassembled to form the original object. If they have no size, when put together they result in some- thing with no size. If they have a positive size, no matter how small, when an infinite number of them are put together, the result is something of infinite, not finite size. The Atomists avoided this argument.12
Aristotle says that “some gave in to [Zeno’s arguments] by positing atomic mag- nitudes” (Aristotle, Physics 1.3 187a1–3 = DK 29A22). If Aristotle is referring to the fifth-century Atomists, he may mean that they gave in in the sense that they admitted the logical force of the arguments and avoided them by denying the hypothesis on which they depend—that what-is is infinitely divisible. (309-310)
To understand how bodies are infinitely divisible, it is first important to apprehend how bodies are ultimately composed of indivisibles. In other words, infinite divisibility is itself an indivisible relation. Indivisible means immutable and logically necessary. What it means for something to be indivisible points to the essential form of things. In other words, indivisibility is the form of divisibility, the former the activity the latter the physical result. The indivisible is that into which a thing can be divided. The atoms indivisibility however corroborates why we fail to perceive them directly. The Atomists did not prove that there are atoms. They assume the existence of atoms in the absence of a conclusive reason not to do so. But by hypothesizing atoms, they show that physically indivisible bodies are possible. (310-311)
always some indivisible unit that could be used to compare any two quantities in nature.
A body can be everywhere divisible even if not actually divided every- where.
16.12 For there is a difficulty in supposing that there is a body, a magnitude, that is everywhere divisible and that this [the complete division] is possible. For what will there be that escapes the division? . . . Now since such a body is everywhere divisible, let it be divided. What, then, will be left? A magni- tude? But that cannot be. For there will be something that has not been divided, whereas we supposed that it was everywhere divisible. But if there is no body or magnitude left and yet the division will take place, either <the original body> will consist of points and its components will be without magnitude, or it will be nothing at all so that even if it were to come to be out of nothing and be composed of nothing, the whole thing would then be nothing but an appearance. Likewise, if it is composed of points it will not be a quantity. For when they were in contact and there was a single magnitude and they coincided, they made the whole thing no larger. For when it is divided into two or more, the whole is no smaller or larger than before. And so even if all the points are put together they will not make any magnitude. . . . These problems result from supposing that any body what- ever of any size is everywhere divisible. . . . And so, since magnitudes cannot be composed of contacts or points, it is necessary for there to be indivisible bodies and magnitudes. (Aristotle, On Generation and Corruption 1.2 316a13–b16 = DK 68A48b)
“Everywhere divisible” is different from indivisible, “infinitely divisible.”
The latter is the nature of the atom which is the determination of the many, whereas the former is the void which is the determination of the one. (add here mathematics that 1 following 0 is in every number) everywhere divisible is that it takes its self, the indivisible nature, and stimulates it into many differences, which are divisible on the ground that they are distinguished from each other, there is the possibility for them to be separated.
Dividing a mag- nitude one meter long in half and then dividing one of these halves in half, and so on, is an infinite division which leaves pieces of positive size: one piece half a meter long, one piece a quarter of a meter long, and so on. Dividing the magni- tude everywhere—for example, by dividing it into two pieces half a meter long and then dividing both of these pieces into halves and continuing to subdivide each of the products of the previous division—leaves pieces of no positive size. But even though being everywhere divisible is a stronger condition than being infinitely divisible, it rather than infinite divisibility is the antithesis of atom- ism and hence a view the Atomists need to reject. Thus, 16.12’s argument is appropriate. If the argument succeeds there is good reason to adopt some kind of atomic theory. However, the argument rests on the assumption not just that a magnitude is everywhere divisible but that division can be carried out in such a way that the magnitude is actually divided at every place, which is quite a differ- ent claim and one which proponents of the former need not accept. (310-311)
A body can be everywhere divisible even if not actually divided every- where. But by positing atoms (even without proving that they exist), they avoided the Scylla and Charybdis of Zeno’s Argument from Large and Small. This is sufficient to show that physically indivisible bodies are possible, though not enough to escape all of Zeno’s arguments. For physical indivisibility of atoms does not guarantee that they are also geometrically indivisible.14 Atoms have sizes and shapes, and shapes involve spatial extension. A spherical atom may be a very small sphere, but in thought even if not with a knife we can. And once we can do this much, others of Zeno’s paradoxes take hold—the Dichotomy and the Achilles (see above pages 181–85). We cannot traverse an atom because we would first have to cross half15 of it, then half the remainder, and so forth.
Atomism is challenged but the problem of indivisibility being everywhere divisible, their problem was in the context of thought and not only the way divided objects appear to sensation, like cutting something with a knife. In thought, we can distinguish one part of something indivisible from another part, like distinguish one part of the sphere from the other. What they did not realize was the thought doing the distinction is itself an indivisible substance, that given the context of dividing an idea, is everywhere divisible.
Like Melissus’s “one,” each atom is uncreated and imperishable, therefore eternal. It is continuous and indivisible. It is unchanging in quality; in fact like Melissus’s “one,” it has no qualities.
The concept of infinity in relation to size is very complex. Infinity is the process of size. The atomists attempt to show how size results from infinity is arguably unsuccessful, but for good reasons:
Leucippus and Democritus have accounted for all things very systematically and in a single theory, taking the natural starting point as their own. For some of the early philosophers held that what-is is necessarily one and immovable. For the void is not, and motion is impossible without a separate void, nor can there be many things without something to keep them apart. . . . But Leucippus thought he had arguments which assert what is generally granted to perception, not abolishing coming to be, perishing, motion, or plurality. Agreeing on these matters with the phenomena and agreeing with those who support the one [that is, the Eleatics] that there could be no motion without void, he asserts that void is what-is-not and that nothing of what-is is not, since what strictly is is completely full. But this kind of thing is not one thing but things that are infinite in number and invisible because of the minuteness of their size. These move in the void (for there is void), and they produce coming to be by combining and perishing by coming apart, and they act and are acted upon wherever they happen to come into contact (for in this way they are not one), and they generate <compounds> by becoming combined and entangled. A plurality could not come to be from what is in reality one, nor one from what is really many, but this is impossible. (Aristotle, On Generation and Corruption 1.8 324b35–325a36 = DK 67A7)
Why can there be no motion without void? That if void is what-is-not, the atom is the nothing of what-is-not, which means that it is only what-is, the “nothing of what-is is not”. This brings the problem of; in what sense is the atom what-is because it cannot just be one thing because if the atom is not nothing, why would it just be one thing? It must be “things that are infinite in number” because if the atom is what the void is not, then it being one thing would just mean that it is the same as what the void is, nothing, because being nothing is one thing as it is nothing else otherwise it is what-is, and so the atom must be many different things so as to be the nothing of what-is-not, it must be constantly something else, everything, so that it is not the nothing which is one thing.
(maybe put here the 0 is the one that is in every different number)
(make picture of black sphere inside the head of man, then animals, then solar system, then whole universe, to show how the nothing is the one in every many things. We are in the void, not like ash in a jar, but that what we perceive as external reality of sensation is held by void) (fish net images)
The relationship between atom and void present certain difficulties. Motion in this context bears the fundamental meaning of generation. What it means for atom to be in motion informs what it means for something to come into being. The motion of the Atoms presupposes void, but the void “is what-is-not”. If the atom is what-is and the void is what-is-not, how can what-is come to be from what-is-not? Moreover, if it is true that what-is is true because of what-is-not, why is what-is “not one thing but things that are infinite”? The atomist “declare that their nature is but one, as if each one were a separate piece of gold. (Aristotle, On the Heavens 1.7 275b32–276a1 = DK 67A19)
“hing” contrasts with “nothing” as “nothing” minus the negative not.” This translation reflects the Greek, in which ouden (“nothing”) minus ou (“not”) gives den. (307)
The atom is the first positive determination of void. The atom makes the relation into a component. Whereas the void is the negation changing that component into something else.
Nothing is also being means that nothing is material
Concerning the relationship between the activity and the physical result, the atomist argues that because the activity requires substrate, and that constitutes physical result, the material cause is the governing substance of the formal activity because the activity must initiate from some result. This is the logical inverse of the fact that the form of the activity governs the material substrate. This inconsistency does however bring with it something that is logically invariable. Atomism contributes something unique to the idea that the activity is quality-less while yet producing quality.
(the atomist do not do this, fix, they recognize it is something but fail to attach to the void physical nature, go below to atomic motion)
They insinuate that the quality-less nature of the atom as the fundamental activity of compounds still possess physical form. That something without any quality is still somehow physical. The principle of nothing is inherently physical because it is still a substrate for the relation being quality-less.
The atoms are impassive, incapable of being affected or acted upon.
These men [Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus] said that the principles are infinite in multitude, and they believed them to be atoms and indivisible and incapable of being affected because they are compact and have no share of void. (For they claimed that division occurs where there is void in bodies.) (Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle’s On the Heavens 242.18–21 = DK 67A14)
“on account of their hardness the atoms are not acted upon and do not change” (16.33). Since they are quality-less, they cannot change in quality. Nor can they change in quantity by becoming either more or fewer (which would involve generation or perishing) or by growing or shrinking.
The only sort of change of atom is in its spatial properties (size and shape), which is prevented by the absence of internal void (so that it cannot bend or break).
The unique statement that the atoms are also incapable of acting (16.33) must be understood in this context: they cannot cause changes in other atoms.
The contrary claim that “they act and are acted upon whenever they happen to be in contact” (16.5) will refer to their behavior not as individual atoms but as components of compounds. The compound however being the relation, is itself also taken as something individual as opposed to what? Another individual relation, in what sense can relations be separated, as their separation would be a non-relatedness, void, being itself a relation of those related?
The implication of all this is that the atom in itself is nothing but somehow is the material basis for all changes. And the atom as it relates to the void, is the first physical change. Even though the atomist explicitly claim that atoms interact in the void, it is not all that clear whether the atom and void are even separate physical forces, but might perhaps be the form of change itself. If the atom is what-is, what it is, is the same as void, which is what-is-not, then the atom and void are abstractions of the very same relation that constitute what is meant by matter, or that the contradiction between the atom and void as what-is against what-is-not, is the very relation of physicality as principle enduring change. In other words, the passing from what-is to what-is-not, and what-is-not to what-is, is the eternal activity that constitute what we mean by matter.
The first atom is the void; the void is the first atom.
(add this to the point becomes the line and line the circle- the point being nowhere, extends itself into everywhere, the line, which is the relation, the series of all possibilities of the point, connects back into itself as that possibility of all possibilities, the circle is the connection of all possibilities into one possibility, encompassing the initial reality, nothing, the point, is the area of the circle, the circle is the process of the point. Being in two different places at the same time is the wave, and because it is still somewhere at the same time, it is connected to itself, the wave connects to form the sphere.)
(What is behind your eyes, the perceiver is the point encapsulated by the world, back to the perceiver. Find image where the perceiver is on one point of the circle and the circle is the world. The baby in the womb is prototype of the universal form of reality, except in the universal form, the womb is the mind)
We will later explain why the fundamental relation is spherical, the form of atom is spherical.
The same relation that the atom and void constitute as principle of matter is infinity and indivisibility. (look below) understanding the connection between infinity and indivisibility will help us understand how the atom and void are the same relation that constitute the principle of matter.
Void
The Atomists held the existence of the void on the grounds of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (16.3, 16.4 and 16.519).
16.13 There is no more reason for the “hing” to be than the nothing. (Democritus, DK 68B156)
The atomists argue that “motion is impossible without a separate void, nor can there be many things without something to keep them apart” (16.5). The void enables the atoms to move and it also maintains the identity of the atom. Leucippus and Democritus held that, the void separates atoms, “division occurs where there is void in bodies”, otherwise there would only be a single infinitely large indivisible mass of matter. The question becomes whether the void has an active or passive nature in enabling and maintaining the motion of atoms.
Aristotle presents four reasons for believing in the void, all of which are inconclusive.20
16.14 By “void” people mean an interval in which there is no perceptible body. Since they believe that everything that is is body, they say that void is that in which there is nothing at all. . . . So it is necessary to prove21 . . . that there is no interval different from bodies . . . which breaks up the totality of body so that it is not continuous, as Democritus, Leucippus, and many other natural philosophers say, or that there is anything outside the totality of body, supposing that it is continuous. . . . They say that (1) there would be no change in place (that is, motion and growth), since it does not seem that there would be motion unless there were void, since what is full can- not admit anything else. . . . (2) Some things are seen to contract and be compressed; for example, they say that the jars hold the wine along with the wineskins, since the compressed body contracts into the empty places which are in it. Further (3) all believe that growth takes place through void, since the nourishment is a body and two bodies cannot coincide. (Aristotle, Physics 4.6 213a27–b22 = DK 67A19)
Democritus calls the void “nothing”, and for him, the existence of nothing is very important condition to the fact that everything that-is is body because “both [what-is and what-is-not] are equally causes of things that come to be” (16.4). Void is important for the becoming of body because A) the totality of the body can be broken into intervals, and B) that there is anything outside the totality of the body so that it can be continuous.
Void is different from air, whose corporeal nature is mentioned by the early Anaximenes. Void is also not the same as space. The atomists fail to do a good job in distinguishing the nature of void from objects. It is not clear whether void is more fundamental. For example, if space and air are objects, do they presuppose void for their motion? In one sense the atomists suggest that atoms and void both occupy space and have locations. The atoms move through the void and they are both in space and neither is to be confused with the space. This does not explain how natural elements like space, air etc. are composed of atoms? The importance of distinguishing the void from objects is that the void is the classification of nothing.
This brings up the problem declared by Parmenides that “nothing is not” (11.6 line 2); if there is nothing in between atoms, how can atoms be separate? The atomist argue that nothing is the gap between atoms—a region devoid of matter. The term “nothing” denotes gap because a gap is nothing material. The fact that void is nothing material does not on its own account for why atoms move.
Parmenides argues that what-is-not cannot be known or declared (11.2 lines 7–8), and he forbids the inquiry of what-is-not (11.2 lines 5–6). Parmenides argument implies that “nothing” cannot be one of the physical principles and therefore nothing cannot exists just as much as “hing.”
Parmenides argues that there cannot be both being and not-being, but either one or the other:
“Not at all more in any respect . . . or at all inferior” (11.8 lines 23–24) “it is right for what-is to be not incomplete; for it is not lacking; otherwise, what-is would be in want of everything” (11.8 lines 32–33); “For it is right for it to be not in any way greater or any lesser than in another” (11.8 lines 44–45); “nor is there any way in which what-is would be in one way more than what-is and in another way less” (11.8 lines 47–48).
(add this to the subjective idealism, Socrates knows that he knows nothing)
The atomists argue that what-is-not is on par with what-is in respect of being. Void and atoms both exist fully, but the fullness of void is “empty”. Now Melissus argues that “Nor is any of it empty. For what is empty is nothing, and of course what is nothing cannot be” (15.9 section 7). The Atomists preserve the premise that what is empty is nothing, but they also maintain the idea that what is nothing (the void) is. In other words, and against Parmenides line of reasoning, the atomists declare “what- is-not is.” Parmenides takes the condition “it is right either fully to be or not” (11.8 line11) and argues that nothing” could not be: it cannot be thought or spoken of (11.2 lines 7–8). It is quite obvious that void can be spoken and thought of. “Nothing” is thought of in terms of the “negative”. Void is the negation of body; it is “empty” as opposed to “full”.
The tangibility of the void remains a big issue for Atomism.
The atomist had a hard time understanding how the void characterizes the negation because like Parmenides and Melissus, they took as their starting point what-is, and the what-is-not is reactionary to that.
The “what-is-not” plays an important role in the atomic theory because the presence of void is needed to account for the qualities of compounds, the ways atoms are separated and arranged. Although the void is necessary for the structuring of the compound, Atomism can only describe the compound in terms of the structures exhibited by the atoms. For the Atomists, the void can only be knowable and describable by contrast with, and in relation to the atoms. In this way they took the function of void as passive to atoms, such that the void is seen as only the substrate, the canvas where the artwork is revealed, that we only see the outline of some dark color against white canvas, this is an abstraction of the void. This provides an incomplete understanding of the function of void in the very being of atoms.
The only feature the void possess of its own is infinite extension. It has no shape or size of its own and no spatial extension. The atoms are quality-less but they possess the spatial properties induced by void, arrangement and position (maybe add quote of arrangement and position here)
It can be characterized in terms of its rules of occupying space, making possible the motions of atoms, etc. But the Atomists tend to describe it negatively
(add below in motion) They thought that because the negative is what is missing from the positive, the positive determines the negative, in that, whenever there is some positive, the negative follows as the missing of that. When we see the structuring of the compound, we assume that structure and the void between the atoms is seen as simply the place where the atoms are not. This however misses how the negative determines the positive, which is the negative is the negation of how the positive came to be, such that in the very fundamental place, we have to explain how the positive came to be and cannot take its nature for granted, because if there is simply a positive that is negated by that fact that it must come to be that which is positive.
The negative is itself positive because it is that which is not, so whenever it becomes a positive, it is always negated by what it is not, its potentiality. The positive is enteral only insofar as it will always come to be positive by the first negation that what-is-not is on its own what-is. Atomism has not yet developed the concept of dialectics in relation to the concepts of being and non-being, whereas Aristotle’s actuality and potentiality are the first logical principles of dialectic.
The negative is for Aristotle the potential place, such that, even if there is nothing positive, the negation to that is positive, that there should be.
Atomic motion
Atoms move and meet with other atoms of the same kind or of different kind. Atoms collide and either result in repulsion where they rebound away from each other or they attract each other and come together to form compounds. Aristotle points out that this account of motion is deficient because it assumes the external movements of atoms without explaining the cause of such relations.
This is why Leucippus and Democritus, who say that the primary bodies are always moving in the void (that is, the infinite) must specify what motion they have and what is their natural motion. (Aristotle, On the Heavens 3.2 300b8–11 = DK 67A16)
The motion involved in the generation of things is essential for explaining the kind of movements thing will bear in relation to other things.
Concerning the origin and manner of motion in existing things, these men too, like the rest, lazily neglected to give an account. (Aristotle, Metaphysics 1.4 985b19–20 = DK 67A6) (continuation of 16.1)
The atomists argue that because atoms and void are eternally in motion, there is no initial cause of the beginning of motion, since motion has always existed. This however does not satisfy Aristotle’s condition for a conclusive explanation of motion:
16.17 For they say that there is always motion. But why it is and what motion it is, they do not state, nor do they give the cause of its being of one sort rather than another. (Aristotle, Metaphysics 12.6 1071b33–35 = DK 67A18)
The fact that motion is eternal does not account for why some particular kind of things come into being. By stating that motion is simply always there, they avoid the fundamentally difficult ontological question of becoming. The atomists instead argue that an atoms motion is determined by its most recent history of contact with other atoms. There is no original motion, but at any moment their motion is determined by their immediately previous history. For example, if the atoms are in motion, they will never stop moving unless acted on from the future, and unless they have been acted on from the past, they have always been moving.
Leucippus and Democritus said that their primary bodies, the atoms, are always moving in the infinite void by compulsion. (Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle’s On the Heavens 583.18–20 = DK 67A16)
The atomists use the fact that compulsion is the causal motion of atoms to exclude any original motion of that compulsion. They say that atoms are the causes of motion for each other, but whether there is the kind of motion that determines the atoms to be the causes of each other, they simply foil that concern.
Democritus, saying that the atoms are by nature motionless, declares that they move “by a blow.” (Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics 42.10–11 = DK 68A47)
This fails to give an account of what Aristotle calls “compelled” as opposed to “natural” motion.
These men [Leucippus and Democritus] say that the atoms move by hitting and striking against each other, but they do not specify the source of their natural motion. For the motion of striking each other is compelled and not natural, and compelled motion is posterior to natural motion. (Alexander, Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics 36.21–25 = DK 67A6)
Atomism argues that the motion of atoms is only compelled, but compelled in what sense? Becomes the question of natural motion because even if they say that atoms move as the result of striking one another, and there is no first collision, that still requires an explanation into the reason for the collisions. They argue that atoms do not have natural motion because they do not have an inherent tendency either to be at rest or to move in any particular direction or toward any particular location. Does this alone exclude the possibility for the inherent nature of the atom to be devoid of some particular tendency but still involve the inherent motion that produces particular tendencies?
The atomist assume that the atom possesses at least the form whereby they strike each other, without explaining the basis of this form, why do atoms strike each other? The atoms striking each other cannot be explained by the physical structure of the atoms because the very formation of the physical structure must be explained by the activity that gave rise to it.
(compelled is external relation, natural internal. they answer out of necessity but not purpose, the question becomes why is necessity necessary, find where you talk about this, they take the definition of the word to not require a qualification of it, this is problem with natural science generally)
Necessity
Atomism entails nature to a rigid determinism because motion is reduced to the mechanical interaction of atoms in the void. Leucippus asserts the following statement concerning causality.
16.28 No thing happens at random but all things as a result of a reason and by necessity. (Leucippus, DK 67B2)
It is important to understand this statement in the context of the atomic ontology. For the atomists “No thing happens at random” does not mean that all things happen for a purpose, and “all things as a result of a reason” does not mean that the universe is governed by conscious intelligence. The atomist for example would oppose something like Heraclitus’s rational logos. In the atomic theory there is no place for rational design. The key term in the above fragment is what they mean by the notion of “necessity”. In this sense necessity is blind as opposed to conscious or unconscious plan and purpose. According to Leucippus, the movements and relations of atoms in the void happens due to necessity, given the nature of atoms and void and their positions and motions, things cannot happen otherwise.
Pay special attention to the use of the word “given” because the nature of atom and void is proposed without explanation of how they come to be for the conception of them. atomism gives an ironic reason for the proposition that nothing happens by chance or at random. The reason why everything takes place is not because there is a governing mind but rather because every phenomenon has an explanation. The question becomes; what is producing the explanation if not some governing mind? And is the mind that produces the explanation of the phenomena not intimately related to the conception of it?
Democritus elaborates Leucippus stating that “the knocking against <each other> and the [collisions] and “blow” of matter” (Aëtius 1.26.2 = DK 68A66) cause all perceptible events discounting chance and purpose as valid explanations of anything that happens.
Democritus leaves aside purpose but refers all things which nature employs to necessity. (Aristotle, Generation of Animals 5.8 789b2–4 = DK 68A66)
Democritus argues against chance in the following way:
. 16.31 <Democritus> seemed to employ chance in his cosmogony, but in his detailed discussions he declares that chance is the cause of nothing, and he refers to other causes. (Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics 330.14–17 = DK 68A68)
Democritus argues that the idea of chance is an appearance created from events that are beyond perception and so cannot be humanly predictable. Democritus assumes that there is nothing prior to the interactions of the atoms so that chance and purpose are not correct causes for anything that happens. The collisions of atoms appear to result from chance because there is no purpose prior to their interactions.
For example, the motions of the great number of atoms needed to form a cosmic vortex (kosmos) is so vast a number of them is beyond our ability to discover. Atomism takes the result of the interactions of the atoms, the kosmos, to be unrelated to the purpose of their interactions in the first place, because of the fact that the interactions of atoms needed to forms kosmos is greater beyond the human ability to apprehend it.
Democritus takes the fact that there is no chance due to the collisions of atoms to exclude any purpose for their interaction because if he omits purpose he must dispense with the idea of chance that might render the fact that atoms collide arbitrary.
There is something right about the idea of necessity as the way things are that cannot be otherwise, but not in the manner the atomist describes it.
There is also something right about the idea that chance is an appearance stemming from a limited understanding of the world, but not because there is no purpose. Moreover, what is rightly understood by chance does not exclude purpose but actually explains its motion.
Atomism takes the fact that our inability to discover the formation of kosmos as proof for the argument that our mind is somehow independent from nature concluding that the universe is mindless, and there is no basis for a rational explanation of cause.
(add here confusing the method with the fact, atomism presupposes the nature of void and atom, and the external relations of compounds as already “given”, this is their method, and from this conclude that this necessity is blind as opposed to conscious. But the conclusion that necessity in nature is blind seems to follow from the method that presupposes things to be given, hence blind to any explanation of cause and coming to being.)
Chance
But there is something interesting about the claim “that chance is the cause of nothing”. If we take this assertion literally in the argument that nothing is that which is no-thing and this state is physical, then a proper understanding of chance can explain the function of the void.
If chance is result from the limitation of perception, then it exists as being the limit of it. If consciousness in the universal form produces the world to confirm its truth, that is still knowledge. Knowledge is not to gain something you did not already possess. But that knowing something again, or to keep knowing something, are all forms of knowledge. The atomist adopt the concept of chance as a non-rational principle because it stems from place of ignorance, lack of knowing. But if the state of nature is governed by necessity even in the rigid determinism sense, the world exhibits order as the rational principle.
We cannot merely ignore the concept of chance on the ground that it indicates lack of knowledge because how do we know that it is the principle of not knowing, if we in the first place know this? To claim that chance is not knowing is knowledge of what it is. It seems from the logical structure that to claim a lack of knowing originates from the predicate of knowing, it becomes therefore a question of knowing something correctly. The difficult is therefore to grasp the concept of chance correctly in its rational role in the order. It is advisable to begin with the presupposition that chance involves a rational function in the order of nature.
In the first instance chance as a noun has the meaning of possibility and the opportunity of something happening. As a verb chance means random or accidental. (In language noun is predicate of verb?)
The void is the physical manifestation potentiality
It is only from the particular that something is defined as other than its inverse self. But as that particular thing in the void is mere part in the whole expressing it. Chance is the void beyond the particular, not “outside” as that meaning has an antithetical meaning but is rather where the particular is and is not. This means that in the void the particular exists as what it is and as what it is not, this constitutes the divide between one thing being one way and an other another way. What I am not is simply someone else who is not me, otherwise we would be the same.
The logic underpinning the concept of chance explains why there is variety in the world and not simply one thing. When we say that an atom is and is-not at the same time, this claim no longer becomes difficult to grasp if by what is-not we mean something other, that it potentially is. What I am not is someone else, both of us contain aspects that are the potential of the other. What it is not does not exclude what it is, but rather is the variant of what is as something else for its self.
In the Void chance as probability, possibilities of happenings. We think this is random because the same principle bears inverse properties at the same time and we take this contradiction as to mean random. But the possibilities in the void are all actual objects and they are all governed by the logical determinacy that gave rise to them.
The void is implicit chance in the atom for it to possibly become something other.
According to Aristotle, natural motion is prior to compelled motion because it explains the cause of the form. Natural motion deals with the generation of the object capable of compelled motion. The motion natural to the thing is the form denoting the activity of some concept. The earth moves towards the center because that is the actualization of the abstract principle of what it means to move towards the center.
Aristotle calls the relation of the abstract and the object “natural” because there is no rigidity, but a simple harmony, between the principle and the manifestation. What it means for something to be natural is for the material manifestation to follow invariably from the abstract form. (See Aris- totle, On the Heavens 1.8.) The postulation of the void is abstract because in itself it cannot be directly perceived. However, the void in relation to the atom causes them to be conceived. To what extent is the void the cause of the atoms remains ambiguous in the atomic theory.
They say that motion occurs because of the void. For they too say that nature24 undergoes motion in respect of place. (Aristotle, Physics 8.9 265b24–25 = DK 68A58)
Atomism contend the void as a necessary condition for motion, but they do not say that it is the cause in the sense of being the source of the motion. (317) This complicates to what degree is original motion related to the compelled? And in what sense is void a cause of motion? Understanding this relationship indicates the special role of the void in the nature of the atom because the fundamental role of the void in the atom is especially important in elucidating the elementary concept of weight. A correct understanding of weight leads directly into the way natural motion constitutes the original source of the compelled movements.
Those <who call the primary bodies> solid can rather say that the larger ones are heavier. But since compounds do not appear to behave in this way, but we see many that are smaller in bulk but heavier, as bronze is heavier than wood, some think and say that the cause is different—that the void enclosed within makes the bodies light and sometimes makes larger things lighter, since they contain more void […] But those who make these distinctions must add not only that something contains more void if it is lighter but also that it contains less solid. (Aristotle, On the Heavens 4.2 309a1–14 = DK 68A60)
The last fragment of the passage is especially important in describing the relationship between void and atom in constitution of weight. The void is not the mere lack of atom such that the more void found in the atom the lighter the atom is, but rather the way we come to understand the weight of the atom is by noticing the lack of weight in the void. In the latter case the void understood as the negative is not that it is the lack of atom, where the atom is not, but rather it acts as the negation of the atom, it adds or deducts the weight of the atom such that determining its weight.
Weight is important in considering motion. But atomists found that whether the atom possesses weight is a complicated issue because atoms may have weight and yet not have it, is one of their primary properties. This is because the same uniform stuff that the atoms are made of is only apparent because of the void. The uniform material that atoms consists of is the same as void because the void constitutes the atom to both have and not have weight. In other words, the void is the context where the weight of the atom is not yet determined. This unmediated activity is the same uniform “stuff” that atoms are made of.
Weight can be understood in different ways,
the word translated “weight” is the noun derived from the adjec- tive that means “heavy,” and although “weight” has for us a technical definition (mass multiplied by gravitational acceleration)
(add here mass is focus) The atom possess mass in the sense of being in this state of indeterminacy. c) as a tendency to move in certain ways under certain conditions, differently in differ- ent conditions, with no universal tendency to move in any particular direction (this corresponds roughly to our concept of mass).
Yet the void as undetermined state of the atom is really (a) the tendency to move or otherwise be affected by a certain force (for example, gravity).
Now of course this takes on a form and is therefore (a) the tendency to move in a certain direction (for Aristotle, this direc-tion is toward the center of the kosmos, for Epicurus, it is downward), (319)
What it means for a state to be indeterminate simply means that it contains the capacity for certain motions.
The void outlines the material of the atom. The form of the atom is conceived because of the void. The form includes the size and shape of the atom determining how much matter the atom contains, which will in turn determine weight (16.26). Mass (no tendency to move) is determined by the motion of the form.
The Atomists hold that an atom’s motion is determined solely by its previous collision with other atoms. But this elaboration of compelled motion alone makes no appeal to any immaterial force like gravity, which is explained as natural motion because it induces universal form to atomic motion.
Democritus and, later, Epicurus said that all the atoms have the same nature and possess weight, but since some are heavier, when these sink down the lighter ones are squeezed out and move upward, and in this way they say that some things appear light and others heavy. (Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle’s On the Heavens 569.5–9 = DK 68A61)
Atomism does provide some mechanistic basis for the laws of attraction and repulsion like heavier bodies sink and lighter bodies rise. Moreover, like atoms move toward like and heavier atoms toward the center in a cosmogonic vortex. Democritus does however make a unique claim about the motion of indivisibles.
Democritus says that each of the indivisibles is heavier according as its quantity is greater. (Aristotle, On Generation and Corruption 1.8 326a9–10 = DK 68A60)
Does this suggest something equivalent to our modern usage of the singularity? That the black hole is the heaviest object in the cosmos?
Void as the abstract principle of the atom, atom as the manifestation of the void. These just means that they are both the same thing, the potentiality of an idea.
Aristotle identifies void as the place of the atoms (not as space) and his conception of place makes this a plausible interpretation.23 23. Aristotle declares that proponents of the existence of void conceive of it as “place in which there is no body” (Physics 4.7 213b33 [not in DK]). Since Aristotle defines the place of something as “the innermost motionless boundary of what contains it” (Physics 4.4 212a20–21 [not in DK]), or, less precisely, as “what contains the thing whose place it is, and is no part of that thing” (Physics 4.4 210b34–211a1 [not in DK]), he takes void to be in some sense a potential container of body. Note that on this view the place of an object is not a location in space, but another object which contains it (as an egg carton is the place of an egg).
Natural motion explains the atom as the innate place for motion, which for Aristotle that place is motionless, whereas in compelled the motion is something different than the atom. The atom as context not object. whereas in compelled motion, the atom is object not context.
(add here, Alan watts, the distinction between to conceive and to be conceived. To conceive beginnings from a source that is itself nothing, even if situated in something, perceiving the conceived, being the objects of the conceiver. Other people are objects to my conception, and I am an object to other people’s conception, but what is conceiving this is never the object but nothing only that which observer. concave vs convex as self-stimulating conception)
In this way Atomism maintains the atom as an empty abstraction, and the atom is used as a rule to avoid the deeper question of substance and to only talk about the external activates of sensation. The notion of determination is stripped away from the explanation of the atom and instead the atom is reduced to a vulgar determinism excluding any talk of atoms themselves being a kind of motion. Aristotle figures out that the true nature of the atom is related to a proper explanation of motion, in other words, an atom must be explained as the context for the determination of motion and not that which partakes in some presupposed motion.
Compounds
The idea that atoms are little units separated by void is tricky notion because what it means for atoms to be contact is not by touching but for the spatial extension of atoms to be perfectly aligned. But what exactly is being aligned? This alignment is really continuity of the idea.
Atomism misconstrues the philosophical notions of activity and relation because what they understand by these terms limits them to the meaning of external relations excluding internal relations. All activates, even at the fundamental level, are external relations for atomism because they take the nature of a relation to involve two externally distinct entitles whose formations are already presupposed prior to any activity, and in this way these entities compel each other’s motion. Activity understood as internal relation does not presuppose in the onset the preexisting formation of the entity without explain what activity in the first instance constitutes its form. In the internal relation there is no entity that gives rise to some activity but that the activity that generates the entity must be itself the entity. The relation is internal because it is self-originated and takes the origination of itself as the entity. This is difficult because the feeling of what it means for something to be physical is entirely challenged.
Heavy is relative to a feeling, in order for one thing to be heavier it must be relative to it, nothing in itself is heavy or light, but potentially both given the concept of weight. Weight is a concept, and therefore not having any structure as an object, it is an activity that has itself as form.
Atomism does not answer the important relationship between the physical nature of atom and its rational conception because the very existence of the atom for the atomist relies on the fact that it is rationally deduced and not sensibly perceived. In what sense is the rational conception of objects related to their physical composition, is one question entirely absconded by atomism.
The modern question of whether the existence of any object requires an observer is one confirmed by quantum science. In quantum physics, the observer determines the physical material of some fundamental activity, (wheeler) like the eye for instance produces photons to see. If concepts such as heaviness, hardness etc. are related to something that is light and soft that feels them, like skin is soft and therefore wood is hard, can it be true that abstract notions are physically true for the mind that conceives pure concepts? If consciousness in the primary sense conceives the circle, in what sense is the circle physical in nature? The mind that is the consciousness of abstract concepts conceives them as physical, as real as the sensible that experiences heaviness as real. Quantum science deals with the theoretical dimension of nature, which is not merely a field of study for the understanding, but an actual dimension in the universe.
The concept of time is an abstraction from an activity and on its own the future striped from any activity is empty.
Thought and the external world are continuous because their divide is a differentiated of the continuity and not of substance. Meditation for example teaches that if the individual stops the process of the understanding, and connect the consciousness to the external world, and simply experience what is happening, one no longer finds a disconnect between ideas happening in the mind and events occurring outside. The reason why quantum mechanics finds mainly natural phenomena to operate quite peculiarly is because the infinitesimal is the abstract dimension of thought such that the observation of it exhibits physical nature as more theoretical.
Alan watts (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIh6VRoTDY8)
Democritus says that the primary bodies (these are the compact things) do not possess weight but move by striking against one another in the infinite, and there can be an atom the size of a kosmos. (Aëtius 1.12.6 = DK 68A47)
Calling the void “nothing” is a move to avoid Zeno’s Argu- ment from Limited and Unlimited (above pages 180–81), which would entail an infinite number of atoms in a finite area. Zeno argued “if there are many . . . between things that are there are always others, and still others between those. Therefore the things that are are unlimited” (12.5). The Atomists can respond that in between the things that are (atoms) is nothing (void), so Zeno’s regress fails to take hold.
(the singularity is the smallest point, and we are the smallest point, when we zoom in, we are actually seeing the more general nature. Connect this to the universe as self-exciting circuit, and to the measuring of the horizon, to show that, the consciousness, being the center point, cosmological principle, is the smallest point, the singularity, looks back at itself, the whole of its achievements, the culmination of all things in the universe, that which is too small to see is itself, but it is infinity large because of its actualized thought is culminated as the universe. Consciousness is the smallest point in relation, the one, in relation to everything achieved, the many, it is the biggest point, when the many, everything achieved is contained by its ability that actualized it. everything on a sphere, entering into the singularity, into the wormhole, the expansion of the universe is into the wormhole, from the achieved, the largest, to the smallest point, the consciousness of that, the present, law of mind the intensity level.)
The method and the fact
The reason why intelligible concepts describe physical properties is because the intelligible corresponds with the physical at the very fundamental level of being. Atomism does not hold this view, instead they offer the confused inverse of this. Atomist argues that because appearances are infinite, therefore the shapes are infinite. The intelligible is derived from the perceptible (that shape is only understanding of appearance, yet it is not entirely true they even held this, and this is why this theory is confusing). The method that derives the truth is contested to be indistinguishable, without qualifications, from the fact of the truth. In other words, they take the way the truth is derived, as the same, as the way the truth is. For example, this is like saying that the act of heart surgery is the same as the heart, an absurd claim to make in daily life, yet in a more complex context, this confusion is overlooked. Confusion between the method and the fact. This is like saying that because the cause is described by the effect, the effect therefore is the cause.
They atomist took the relations between objects of appearances, of which there is already some preconceived qualities, abstracted the relation itself, and stated that as the determining of compounds qualities. they took the external relations and abstracted from that internal relations, internal relations have no perceptual qualities.
Atomism is among the first materialist doctrine that inverts the ontology of reason. They take the ultimate nature of the world as a particle (part-icle), the particular, and from that, its differences, form the relations known as compound. He opposite is true for the ontology of reason because the relation is first seen as the indivisible substance and following that is the particular. For a compound is a particular, its substance is relations. The atom is not individual but is relation. When we perceive its nature as particle, we are only seeing a “part” of the relation. They say that the differences of the atom are shape, arrangement and position, which are relations, they are caused by the atom, yet what is the atom as something other than its relations?
They attempt to explain the intelligible by the perceptible, and this is why they saw that relation is property of object and now how the object is a set of relations.
. 16.8 Democritus specified two <basic properties of atoms>: size and shape; and Epicurus added weight as a third. (Aëtius 1.3.18 = DK 68A47)
the concepts are different, and in their difference, which is their relation, they are maintained as unique. And so they are what they are as their definition but only because this is continuity of contradiction.
The void is no-thing and therefore cannot contain inherent differences and in this way is called “empty” and “rare,” making it the features for concepts of the “unlimited” or “infinite.” The inherent contradiction is present between void and atom, only insofar as the lack of difference in the void, its self-identity, is the cause for the differences of the atom, the self-contradiction. There are inherent differences in the atom because the void is pure from any differences. ( the void is different from difference- add here different from difference):
to entail an infinite amount of void for them to move in (although we do not have any record of arguments that the void is infinite).
They are no more like this than like that; therefore there is an infinite multitude of shapes (16.4)—an argument which evidently depends on the Principle of Sufficient Reason, encountered previously in Anaximander and Parmenides.9
The infinite is activity and not amount. There cannot be an infinite amount, otherwise that is finite.
The atom and void are varying forms of the same substance; they are forms of thought. The void is the principle of identity, and the atom is the principle of contradiction.
Excluded middle, void is the form of atom, what maintains it, and the atom is the content. The atom is not something individual but is relation.
Atoms are building blocks too small to be seen which move in the void and combine to form compounds, some of which are large enough to be perceived.
and differing only in their spatial proper-ties—size and shape,
We are all in void, the void is in all and this is how all is in void.
these spherical images of experience show how the infinity physically constitutes particular events. It is not the same as space where all particular things can be picked out, but rather when we say that void is different than space, we mean that it is the actual experience of the particular event. Void is one with the experience as the atom is one with the object.
We may argue that these are all particular conceptions, certain images of these planets that do not show the infinity of its details, therefore only showing limited abstraction of its form. Whereas this is true, the point is however also missed, because the point is that the very consciousness itself that is able to perceive the particular form, is the very form of that particular event. And the nature of the consciousness that is able to perceive particular forms is itself not particular, it is universally no-thing, it is the one void in every atom.
The relation of the atom and void, which is altogether more fundamental than each alone, is thought and the object, not that void is thought and atom is object, but that the relation void-atom is thought-object. This is one problem of communicating this idea by language as each words assigns another word, and so intuitively our understanding assigns void with thought and atom with void for example, which is an altogether the same abstraction of picking out the object in one instance like the above plants are not limited to that image of them, but they involves landscapes, materials etc. all of which require their own conception.
The question becomes, can the complexity of the whole of nature be captured at an instance by an ultimate form of consciousness? And how would that look like, that each event is conceived in its particularity simultaneously? (whitehead time,)
(maybe title this section, Exploration of natural consciousness)
The material body of the most advanced form is the most particular point, as a species humans are the smallest organism, yet in consciousness it is most universal, the largest, as it contains the culmination of the world in recollection.
The operations of sensation are of exclusivity. Sensation bears a negativity in relation to reason because it is the principle of excluding insofar as it is the practice of not admitting things. Sensation produces the artificial exclusion of one thing for something else. Things are made exclusive from each other insofar as when I am perceiving these objects I am not perceiving other ones. As far as sensation is concerned the existence of one object necessarily excludes the existence of the other. Sensation however generally operates on the grounds whereby these distinctions can be made, yet at the same time it even excludes the grounds from which it makes the exclusions. This called fallacy of exclusion (fallacy of misconcertness?) is prominent in most empiricist like Berkeley and Hume. (Give example how Berkeley excludes geometry from sensation)
(Russel 41:35) Real space is universal, abstract concept of space; whereas the apparent space, as seen by sensation, is particular, position in space.
We have to be cautious here because the nature of the particular is not merely a product of sensation. But that the very objective nature of the world exhibits particularity. In fact sensation itself is a particularity that does nothing else but pick out the particular in the particular. Reason however picks out the particular for the universal, or also picks out the universal in the particular, in other words, the particular as universal phenomena.
General space
We cannot begin to state what different sensations we will derive from a given object under different circumstances unless we regard the object and our perception of it as both in one general space. (This is not only a physical principle but also a logical principle) Sensation begins from a relative position in space and this is why it derives particular conceptions of the object known as what is “apparent”. The relative position between objects and our sensation of them requires that there be one universal all embracing physical space. This universal space enables my particular perception of an object to be objectively confirmed by other senses. (43:46)
In the case of pure reason, the idea of exclusion is non applicable and every object is presented as substratum, landscape of qualities
The senses are deriving conceptions of different objects at the same time while the objects they are deriving remain the same for the senses (?latter entirely true).
Normally we think that the senses are governed by the brain to perceive the object. This is only partially true because there must be something in the object that corresponds to the mind’s synchronization of the senses. That is, there must be something in the object that synchronizes the senses like the mind synchronizes them. But the brain itself is another object with a limited function. However that is not the same to say that what the brain embodies is limited to the function of the organ.
There is a difficult technical question concerning form and matter; if void and atom are so indivisible so as to constitute the same reality of infinitesimal processes, why is it that there be the situation of consciousness that allows meditations between the two so as to distinguish them?
Ordinarily consciousness is seen as the function that distinguishes between thought and object, that it meditates between thinking about the object while the object is not readily accessible, or that it perceives the object directly to derive the content for its thinking. In either case the observer nature of consciousness is not limited to any of these actions exclusively. Consciousness fundamentally is the binding effect between thought and object and it is what constitutes their relation. When the object does not exists for thought, consciousness produces the thought as the object. Likewise when the object is present independently from thought, consciousness produces the necessity of the thought for the object.
(this not only happens for the senses, but for thought as substance because an object not immediately present for thought is a potential object).
(Explain how there is a void between things and that is where thought happens, and the connection between thought and object is precisely that they are separated as different substances. But their difference is their very relation such that their relation is to remain distinct so that to fulfil the function of consciousness. Consciousness stands as the meditation whereby thought becomes object and object becomes thought. )
The atomist argue that the atoms are the physical forces that directly stimulate the organs of sensations, like pieces of the puzzle fitting together. They do not however explain why this is so and therefore see the grounds by which the object connects with the mind as mechanically driven in the same way that an object would come into contact with another object. At the atomic level modern science shows us that the structure of the atom is very much similar to that of a solar system, however unlike the solar system, the atom is only theoretically stable, but is more dynamic in motion than the orbits of planets (check this vid physics documentary). The way the atom operates is much more similar to the way thought operates in the mind then the way our sensation perceives the objects before our eyes.
The atoms are what is implicit in the object that synchronizes the senses to perceive it. Unlike what the atomist traditionally argue, the atoms do not come from the object but are rather proprieties of the mind. The atoms are the extension of mind for the object of self-realization.
Parmenides (philosophy before Socrates 146)
“routes of investigation” that are the only ones to be thought of, what can be known. Parmenides argues that “Truth” is accompanied by “path of Persuasion”. Keeping in mind that truth equals persuasion for him. The one, the truth is both that “is” and that “it is not the case that “is not” (11.2). the “track entirely unable to be investigated is: the other, both that “is not” and that “is not’ is right”. For you cannot know what is not (for it cannot be accomplished) nor can you declare it.
11.3 for the same thing both can be thought of and can be, in other words “thinking and being are the same, the same thing is for thinking and being. 11.4 You cannot exclude what-is from the point of view of what-is.
11.5 where u an to begin from is where I will arrive back again.
11.6 it is right both to say and to think that it is what-is: for it is the case that it is.
But nothing is not. He argues that it is mortal and wrong thinking that what-is is thought both to be and not to be the same and not the same. (ironically his way of thinking is what he proclaims to be the “mortal”.
11.8 from what is not: for “is not” is not. To be said or thought of. (he is like Berkeley; the unknown does not exist). For if it came to be, it is not, not even if it is sometimes going to be. (argument against potentiality, for anything going to be by virtue of not being “is”, is “not”)
Parmenides denied the existence of motion, change and void. He believed all existence to be a single, all-encompassing and unchanging mass (a concept known as monism), and that change and motion were mere illusions. This conclusion, as well as the reasoning that led to it, may indeed seem baffling to the modern empirical mind, but Parmenides explicitly rejected sensory experience as the path to an understanding of the universe, and instead used purely abstract reasoning.
Firstly, he believed there is no such thing as void, equating it with non-being (i.e. “if the void is, then it is not nothing; therefore it is not the void”). This in turn meant that motion is impossible, because there is no void to move into. [12] [13] He also wrote all that is must be an indivisible unity, for if it were manifold, then there would have to be a void that could divide it (and he did not believe the void exists). Finally, he stated that the all encompassing Unity is unchanging, for the Unity already encompasses all that is and can be.
Ancient Atomism
In each atom there is a reciprocal void, which this is the observation and is equally its potential. This void is not in itself an object like space, but is rather the relation of the object to itself and to the other object, it is the thought about the object.
Add here schwoerzschild radius.
– The atomist natural philosophy regard the fundamental level of the universe composed of physical ‘atoms’, (atomos) which for the Ancients literally means ‘uncuttables’. The ontological doctrine of atomism does not provide an overview about the cause of nature. Instead they regard the effects of nature as explanatory purely by material interactions of bodies, and accounting for the perceived properties of macroscopic bodies as produced by these same atomic interactions.
(go to pg. 303 explain philosophy before Socrates atomism)
Leucippus and Democritus theorized that the two fundamental and oppositely characterized constituents of the natural world are indivisible bodies—atoms and void. The latter is described simply as nothing, or the negation of body. Atoms are by their nature intrinsically unchangeable; they can only move about in the void and combine into different clusters. Since the atoms are separated by void, they cannot fuse, but must rather bounce off one another when they collide. Because all macroscopic objects are in fact combinations of atoms, everything in the macroscopic world is subject to change, as their constituent atoms shift or move away. Thus, while the atoms themselves persist through all time, everything in the world of our experience is transitory and subject to dissolution.
The atomists do not explain the nature of void, and as such we are left to bounder about what causes atoms to collide and or change? This leads to the speculation of Parmenides. Although his attempt at explaining the void is a failed one, he raises important question about its nature that the atomist fails to raise, and even to this day, still fail to express.
–Add after explanation
The atomist do show that there is a necessary relation between atoms and void, they also show what the relation consists of, but they do not explain the actual relation. They hold untimely that atom and void is the same thing…
Void and atom are depictions of internal and external relations. External from the void are the atoms infinite in shape and position, with atoms taking on individual and particular arrangements. Internal in atoms is the void, also infinite but nothing it is what directs the atoms. The many each is one, the one is many.
Outside of my thought is the one matter taking on many forms, inside my thought are many ideas all are one form. Inside the one is the many, inside my thought is the whole world but not each individually, outside my thought is each individually but not the whole. (maybe add inscribed and circumscribed here. Inside each object is the one circle, and every object is inside the one circle. (find pic where one circle holds many things, but there are many things scattered each within the same circle)
The plant’s orbit around the sun, the motion of the solar system, is a perfect demonstration of this. That each planet has a certain motion around the sun, and it is in fact the motion, the speed and distance in relation to the sun that determines the composition of the planet, whether it is gas or rocky planet.
The asteroid belt separates the inner from the outer planet.
Even though each planet has a certain kind of motion, it is motion that encompasses all the planets around the sun. The gravity from the sun in relation to the planet just maintains their motion against each other. Each planet is physically encompassed by the circular motion and yet the motion is formed is expressed individually in each planet.
Externally there are many of ones, or that the one is many, each object takes on one individual form. Internally the one is many, the same thought transforms itself into every idea. The meditation between the one and many, void and atom, is their very relation. Outside my thought each idea takes on one form, whereas inside my thought the one form, my thinking, takes on many ideas. The matter external is where my ideas each exist individually, and internally
They confused the “indivisible” with the nature of matter instead of thought. For matter is always divisible it is just infinitely divisible, and this is what is taken to be indivisible, but the act of dividing is an activity that is indivisible.
This lead to the problem of infinite regress. This is however no problem but a feature of the infinite. Regress has the negative conation of meaning the return to a former state, which is seen as the regression towards a less development. It is often missed that the so called former state is perhaps the most advanced state and development involves the actualizing of it rather than the moving beyond it.
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-Plato (c. 427 — c. 347 B.C.E.), were he familiar with the atomism of Democritus, would have objected to its mechanistic materialism. He argued that atoms just crashing into other atoms could never produce the beauty and form of the world. In Plato’s Timaeus, (28B – 29A) the character of Timeaus insisted that the cosmos was not eternal but was created, although its creator framed it after an eternal, unchanging model.
One part of that creation were the four simple bodies of fire, air, water, and earth. But Plato did not consider these corpuscles to be the most basic level of reality, for in his view they were made up of an unchanging level of reality, which was mathematical. These simple bodies were geometric solids, the faces of which were, in turn, made up of triangles. The square faces of the cube were each made up of four isosceles right-angled triangles and the triangular faces of the tetrahedron, octahedron, and icosahedron were each made up of six right-angled triangles.
He postulated the geometric structure of the simple bodies of the four elements as summarized in the adjacent table. The cube, with its flat base and stability, was assigned to earth; the tetrahedron was assigned to fire because its penetrating points and sharp edges made it mobile. The points and edges of the octahedron and icosahedron were blunter and so these less mobile bodies were assigned to air and water. Since the simple bodies could be decomposed into triangles, and the triangles reassembled into atoms of different elements, Plato’s model offered a plausible account of changes among the primary substances.[16][17]
The rejection of atoms
Edit
Sometime before 330 B.C.E. Aristotle asserted that the elements of fire, air, earth, and water were not made of atoms, but were continuous. Aristotle considered the existence of a void, which was required by atomic theories, to violate physical principles. Change took place not by the rearrangement of atoms to make new structures, but by transformation of matter from what it was in potential to a new actuality. A piece of wet clay, when acted upon by a potter, takes on its potential to be an actual drinking mug. Aristotle has often been criticized for rejecting atomism, but in ancient Greece the atomic theories of Democritus remained “pure speculations, incapable of being put to any experimental test. Granted that atomism was, in the long run, to prove far more fruitful than any qualitative theory of matter, in the short run the theory that Aristotle proposed must have seemed in some respects more promising”.[18][19]
The senses require a synchronization that fulfils a complete knowledge of the objects- The atomists accounted for perception by means of films of atoms sloughed off from their surfaces by external objects, and entering and impacting the sense organs. They tried to account for all sensible effects by means of contact, and regarded all sense perceptions as caused by the properties of the atoms making up the films acting on the atoms of animals’ sense organs. Perceptions of color are caused by the ‘turning’ or position of the atoms; tastes are caused by the texture of atoms on the tongue, e.g., bitter tastes by the tearing caused by sharp atoms; feelings of heat are ascribed to friction. Democritus was taken by Aristotle to have considered thought to be a material process involving the local rearrangement of bodies, just as much as is perception.
Try to connect the geometry with the atom.
Geometrical Simple Bodies According to Plato (Timaus)
Number of faces:
Number of
Water
Icosahedron
Number of faces: 20
Number of triangles: 120
It is difficult to imagine conceiving the object without the senses, but the senses themselves only pick out the object in a particular way, when far object is small, when close it seems big. There is a particularly general way sensation picks out the object. The relative relation of the senses to the object perceive it in a specific way. The concern is that the object still remains in essence the same even if it is perceived differently by the senses.
What would it be like to conceive the object by pure thought answers precisely to the question of what the object is in itself. Sensation is a specific way of picking out the object, and the way we generally perceive objects is in fact only the specific way of the senses. We often confuse this specific way of seeing the object brought about by the function of sensation, as the true way the object actually is. However when you look at an object like a tree, we derive the phenomenological experience of the tree as a completed and put together individuality.
The way the object is seen as a put together whole is the specific and particular way sensation perceives the object, which is most efficient way of seeing it for the then later step of picking out general details from it. The true nature of the tree is however the same as the concept of it in the mind. The way the mind conceives the tree by pure thought is as follows;
Conceiving a tree with pure thought brings about the chair as notion, the chair has certain size, shape, colour, and function. These are not attributes from something put together, but what we perceive by sensation as the whole of those, the tree, is really the result of the notion picked out as an idea. But what the tree is internally relates to the notion of it in the mind of the observer.
The mind projects its idea onto its external side, the other of itself, analogously like a hologram image projected on a fresnel lens of a school projector. The external surface of mind known as primordial matter is the quantity of mind, and in one basic sense it is space, the quality outside itself. Space is molded into the form of the idea.
When the mind looks at the object by way of sensation, it is perceiving the idea externalized from its thought.
The harmony between the quality of the idea and its quantity are so perfect that they constitute the principle of reality (explain this langan, that anything outside reality is just reality, that nothing is outside reality).
What we take to be a whole, like an object that contains the details, is in fact a particular. And the details that make it are not particulars but are themselves generals and they are whole because they are what conceives the particular.
This is logical in that the premise is the general whereas the conclusion is particular. Usually we take the conclusion as the general because it is the consequent that follows the premise. The premise is seen as a particular because it is an assertion, and an assertion is particular because it is the discrimination of one fact from other facts. The argument concerns the way the conclusion explains the premise. For example, If X is a mammal, then X is an animal. What it means for the conclusion to entail the premise however involves confusion because the way the conclusion explains the premise is by synthesizing it into a particular statement. And so the conclusion although in form, or in structure appears to be general, is in fact particular in content. Likewise whereas the premise is particular in structure is general in form. The argument therefore relates the form to the content and inversely the content to the form, and if any side of the inversion is left out, the argument becomes invalid.
The idea as externalized does not mean outside because the idea of an outside is invalid for the universal principle of reality. What is outside something that is already outside? The idea of an outside only makes sense when two things are contained by something and in that they can be outside each other but inside their relation. But outside of that universal container can only involve internal.
– Spherical hole is the form of the idea externalized.
Quality supposes its own quantization as the measure of its activity. The quantity of quality indicates a standard characteristic, then it must constitutes the standard of its production that underlies the drive for the creation beyond. The action of continuous production is quantitive in that it is analytic and so quality requires of itself in the basic sense to make itself more, or rather keep making itself. This function of quantity inversely requires from quality to maintain its integrity as refined. It maintains quantity as fine.
by looking at the totality of perceives against individual perceivers.
It is true that each individual life form will at some point die out, and therefore their perception of the world will also cease to be but the species always remains, and if a species becomes existent, which is a debatable proposition as have been shown, then its genus still remains and so on. Whereas it is absolutely true that individuals will at some point die, it is not true that the collective die out. There seems to always be the factor of the perceiver, life is indivisible from the object, and this is even true from a macroscopic view (go to langan to explain the hology- externally inside each other)
(Go to langan to find the principle that talks about this x—y)
41:07 When we judge something to be a circle or a square, we are judging that it has a real shape which is not its apparent shape but belongs to it intrinsically apart from its appearance. But this “real” shape which is what concerns science but be in a real space which is not the space as that is particular to the participants position to
Russel says (explain what he says fully) you can’t perceive a geometric shape directly like a line mistakenly assumes that shapes are like object.
However shapes, and geometry generally, deals with relations. So when can say that the sun, moon and earth form a straight line in an eclipse, but the line they form we do not see in and of itself (Russell 45:13). The line does not exists in what is perceived by the mind, but that does not mean it lacks existence in nature nor does it mean we cannot directly perceive it.
What we mean by direct conception involves problems. We may not be able to directly perceive it by way of sensation, but we are able to directly perceive abstract geometric forms by way of abstraction. For the line does not exists in the part of the mind dealing with perception. Abstract forms literally exist in nature because they are quantum. The possession of quantum properties dissolute the distinction between what we perceive as nature by sensation and what we take to be the abstract mind by our understanding. We constantly have direct knowledge of abstract forms by our faculty of reason, which for sensations they exist as real entities.
Quantum bridges the gap between what we take to be reasoning and what we perceive as the natural world. Abstract principles like geometric forms exists both in nature and in mind by virtue of being quantum. (How can you prove that in the quantum realm there are these shapes- quantum mechanics)
43:01 It is the relative relation between the objects and our body where the mind resides that determines what sensations we shall derive. Standing on one side may provide an oval shape of the object whereas standing on the other may provide more circular. The circle which we do not perceive we (find where he talks about the circle exists in real go back to min 32)
Time indicates that there is something going on, an occurrence (whitehead time)
Atmosphere = atom sphere
The earth is an atom
From a closer viewpoint, the earth is a piece of mass which has a lot of things going on. But from a further away point of view, the earth is an atom. Or rather atoms are only perceptions of objects striped bare of their quality, from the smallest distance, which is equally the furthest distance.
the perspective of an object like a planet is closer to the observer and therefore it’s details are more revealed. While the atom is a perspective lacking the most resolution, which appears to be the smallest, most distant from the observer. Distance in this sense is used as a measure to define something more fundamental, which is the quality of the conception itself in observing the object. The amount of details picked out by the conception; or in other words, How much quality does the observer extracts out from the object determines the reality of it that is exhibited outwards.
Seeing an atom is seeing the object in its least conceived manner, which is also one of the most actual fundamental states of the object independent from the external observer of it. For example, the embryo is a less differentiated and the less aesthetic state of man, the entire man in his embryo state is more closer to being a lump of mass like what would later be only one of his body parts. The man as a fully developed organic body is the potential of the embryo which is merely undeveloped, a mere lump with only the ingredients of arms, legs, hair, mind, etc., the atom is only the potential of the object we observer with its many qualities