The extremely successful _Standard Model of Particle Physics_ allows one to define the so-called _Elementary Particles_. From another point of view, how can we think of them? What kind of a status can be attributed to Elementary Particles and their associated quantised fields? Beyond the unprecedented efficiency and reach of quantum field theories, the current paper attempts at understanding the nature of what these theories describe, the enigmatic reality of the quantum world.

The doctrine of the salvation of souls is obviously central to our Christian faith. Yet one of the challenges of communicating this truth is that many people have ontological commitments that don’t even allow for the existence of souls. Therefore, a philosophical understanding of physical reality which is compatible with a Christian understanding of the human person is especially important if we are to preach the Gospel effectively in the modern age. Like many Christian philosophers, I believe that St. Thomas (...) Aquinas provides us with such a philosophical understanding of physical reality. Nevertheless, we need to be careful in how we map Aquinas’s philosophical concepts onto physical phenomena. It is with this concern in mind that I will argue that elementary particles are not substances. (shrink)

In 1931 eminent chemist Fritz Paneth maintained that the modern notion of “element” is closely related to (and as “metaphysical” as) the concept of element used by the ancients (e.g., Aristotle). On that basis, the element chlorine (properly so-called) is not the elementary substance dichlorine, but rather chlorine as it is in carbon tetrachloride. The fact that pure chemicals are called “substances” in English (and closely related words are so used in other European languages) derives from philosophical compromises (...) made by grammarians in the late Roman Empire (particularly Priscian [fl. ~520 CE]). When the main features of the constitution of isotopes became clear in the first half of the twentieth century, the formal (IUPAC) definition of a “chemical element” was changed. The features that are “essential” to being an element had previously been “transcendental” (“beyond the sphere of consciousness”) but, by the mid-twentieth century the defining characteristics of elements, as such, had come to be understood in detail. This amounts to a shift in a “horizon of invisibility” brought about by progress in chemistry and related sciences. Similarly, chemical insight is relevant to currently-open philosophical problems, such as the status of “the bundle theory” of the coherence of properties in concrete individuals. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the basic meaning of ousia in Plato’s philosophical use of the term. “Basic” is not intended as “the strongest”, let alone “exclusive”, insofar as the semantics of ousia encompasses a variety of philosophical meanings. On the contrary, the basic meaning is proposed to be the elementary semantic component of ousia, which is present in the background of Plato’s quasi‑technical use of the term and marks the difference from its ordinary meaning. In (...) view of this, a “genetic” aspect is firstly considered, that is, the connection with the Socratic question “What is X?”. Thereafter, a brief mention to Plato’s conception of language and its relation to reality is made, focusing on the notion of eponymy. This because Plato’s coinage of the philosophical semantics of ousia gives this term the role of an eponym, in the sense that its prominent value is the reference to the Forms, but this does not exclude that it may refer to other types of entities. In the last two sections of the paper, a number of passages from Plato’s works are examined to show that the basic meaning of ousia ultimately is “determined existence”, inasmuch as it designates any thing existing with its own peculiar feature. For ousiai can be empirical things as well as Forms, which implies that the meaning of Plato’s ousia should not be understood in the light of an substance/accident relation. (shrink)

The main scientific problems of chemical bonding were solved half a century ago, but adequate philosophical understanding of chemical combination is yet to be achieved. Chemists routinely use important terms ("element," "atom," "molecule," "substance") with more than one meaning. This can lead to misunderstandings. Eliminativists claim that what seems to be a baseball breaking a window is merely the action of "atoms, acting in concert." They argue that statues, baseballs, and similar macroscopic things "do not exist." When macroscopic objects (...) like baseballs move, exceedingly large numbers (1025) of microscopic components coordinate their activities. Understanding how this happens requires attention to the interactions that link parts into larger units. Eliminativists say that everything that truly exists has causal relationships in addition to those of its components—"nonredundant causality." This paper holds that if a number of entities interact in such a way that the effect of that collection on test objects is different than it would have been in the absence of the interaction, then identification of that collection as a single composite agent is warranted, for purposes to which that difference is relevant. Ordinary "chemical substances" (both elementary materials such as dihydrogen and compounds such as water) fulfill this version of the requirement of nonredundant causality. Other sorts of chemical coherences, including chemical dissipative structures (e.g., flames), also fulfill that criterion. All these types of coherences qualify as "substances" (as that term is used in philosophy) even though they are not all "chemical substances.". (shrink)

We are mastering engineering behaviour on a molecular level. A growing number of researches investigating the relationship between microbiota, human brain and behaviour examine the impacts of manipulating specific microbial colonies in human hosts. To enable discussing and understanding communicational phenomena that occur in scales not visible to the naked eye, we propose the term Molmedia – a metaphorical reference to the concept of mole, denoting here not exclusively the quantitative amount of substance but the information exchange processes (taking (...) the substances as messages) that are going on at elementary entities level such as atomic, subatomic and molecular, within a given system that can be a living organism. We take media (plural of medium) as an intervening agency, means or instrument. Interacting emitters and receivers in this system are the microbiota and the organism actual cells. Within this self-organizing structure, the ongoing informational processes produce, as an emergence, the self and behavioral patterns that can be appreciated, manipulated and cannibalized. The art and science installation Transplanting the Self: Microbiome Anthropophagy is presented as an explorative exercise of the concept and related possibilities in science concerning gut–brain communication and the use of neuroregenerative nutrition in treatments for neurologic conditions. (shrink)

Psychology has a long past, yet its real history is short. For thousands of years it has existed and has been growing older; but in the earlier part of this period it cannot boast of any continuous progress toward a riper and richer development. In the fourth century before our era that giant thinker, Aristotle, built it up into an edifice comparing very favorably with any other science of that time. But this edifice stood without undergoing any noteworthy changes or (...) extensions, well into the eighteenth or even the nineteenth century. Only in recent times do we find an advance, at first slow but later increasing in rapidity, in the development of psychology. The general causes which checked the progress of this science and thus made it fall behind the others can readily be stated:— "The boundaries of the Soul you cannot find, though you pace off all its streets, so deep a foundation has it," runs a sentence of Heraclitus, and it hits the truth more fully than its author could ever have expected. The structures and functions of our mental life present the greatest difficulties to scientific investigation, greater even than those presented by the phenomena, in many respects{4} similar, of the bodily life of the higher organisms. These structures and processes change so unceasingly, are so fleeting, so enormously complex, and dependent on so many factors hidden yet undoubtedly influential, that it is difficult even to seize upon them and describe their true substance, still more difficult to gain an insight into their causal connections and to understand their significance. We are just now beginning to recognize the full force of these difficulties. (shrink)

In 1931 eminent chemist Fritz Paneth maintained that the modern notion of “element” is closely related to (and as “metaphysical” as) the concept of element used by the ancients (e.g., Aristotle). On that basis, the element chlorine (properly so-called) is not the elementary substance dichlorine, but rather chlorine as it is in carbon tetrachloride. The fact that pure chemicals are called “substances” in English (and closely related words are so used in other European languages) derives from philosophical compromises (...) made by grammarians in the late Roman Empire (particularly Priscian [fl. ~520 CE]). When the main features of the constitution of isotopes became clear in the first half of the twentieth century, the formal (IUPAC) definition of a “chemical element” was changed. The features that are “essential” to being an element had previously been “transcendental” (“beyond the sphere of consciousness”) but, by the mid-twentieth century the defining characteristics of elements, as such, had come to be understood in detail. This amounts to a shift in a “horizon of invisibility” brought about by progress in chemistry and related sciences. Similarly, chemical insight is relevant to currently-open philosophical problems, such as the status of “the bundle theory” of the coherence of properties in concrete individuals. (shrink)

In the history of philosophy, the problem of the simple and the complex, as it pertains to the universe, presents itself as the problem of the substance of the world, from which the concrete diversity of things comes into being. Two fundamental conceptions are to be seen in investigation of this latter problem in the history of materialism and natural science. The first of them, which essentially presupposes a dialectical understanding of development, regards the world as one, for all (...) the variety of its naturally developing matter. The second, which in its completed form comprises the line of development of mechanical materialism, recognizes only a coming together and separation of permanent principles on which the universe is based. (shrink)

This article intends to argue that Zizek’s dialectics is far from a vulgar progressive sublation of all reality in Concept but a systematic acknowledgement of its radical impossibility. Firstly, the fundamental point of Zizek’s dialectics is not the notion of the sublation of all immediate-material reality but a “sublation of sublation”. The conclusive of moment of a dialectical circle is the immanent act of abrogation or releasing. Then, through the elementary triad structure of the Hegelian notion of reflection, the (...) ultimate secret of Zizek’s dialectical process consists in a “determinate reflection” or a necessary redoubling reflection. The two quintessential examples of this redoubling reflection are the paradoxical monarch and God’s reincarnation. Once his dialectic movement is elaborated, the esoteric definition of subject and subjectivity, as well as the mysterious Hegelian thesis “Substance as Subject” will become rather straightforward. (shrink)

Atomism is the programme explaining all changes in terms of invariant units. The development of physics during the 20th century may be treated as a spectacular triumph of atomism. However, paradoxically, changes and conceptual difficulties brought about by quantum mechanics lead to the conclusion that the ontological model provided by classical atomism has become inadequate. Atoms (and elementary particles) are not atomos—indivisible, perfectly solid, unchangeable, ungenerated and indestructible (eternal), and the void is not simply an empty space. According to (...) quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, there is no unchanging substance at all. If we want to understand contemporary notions of matter and develop an ontological model of the world, consistent with contemporary natural sciences, we should probably go beyond the conceptual framework of atomic philosophy. (shrink)

In On my own opinions, Galen claims to agree with Aristotle that the soul is the form of the body. But should we take this statement at face value? After all, Galen says that the substance of the soul is a bodily mixture, and that the soul is the form of the body in the sense that it is the principle of mixing of the elementary qualities (i.e., hot, cold, wet, and dry). As is well known, Aristotle explicitly (...) rejects this sort of materialist account of the soul. In De Anima, he tells us that the soul cannot be a harmonia of bodily elements, understood either as the proportion according to which the elements are mixed, or as the mixtures themselves (I.4, 407b32-408a2). In this chapter, I argue that Galen rejects a substantive version of hylomorphism, in favor of a view according to which the soul’s substance is nothing other than a bodily mixture. Galen’s position contains a veiled objection to some central Aristotelian views and reveals a general suspicion regarding the Aristotelian notion of form as a genuine metaphysical and explanatory category. (shrink)

There are many good reasons for seeing Aristotelian hylemorphism and atomism as diametrically opposed theories of matter. Aristotle himself had forcefully combatted the physical model of Leucippus and Democritus, whose ontology consisted of indivisible material bodies moving in an immaterial void, presenting his own model as an alternative. This alternative excluded both indivisibles and the void and postulated instead a plenist world made up of substances all of which were infinitely divisible continua composed of universal matter and specific substantial forms. (...) Unlike elementary atoms, Aristotle’s elementary substances could transmute into one another: water, when evaporating, was said to turn into air. (shrink)

Quantum information is discussed as the universal substance of the world. It is interpreted as that generalization of classical information, which includes both finite and transfinite ordinal numbers. On the other hand, any wave function and thus any state of any quantum system is just one value of quantum information. Information and its generalization as quantum information are considered as quantities of elementary choices. Their units are correspondingly a bit and a qubit. The course of time is what (...) generates choices by itself, thus quantum information and any item in the world in final analysis. The course of time generates necessarily choices so: The future is absolutely unorderable in principle while the past is always well-ordered and thus unchangeable. The present as the mediation between them needs the well-ordered theorem equivalent to the axiom of choice. The latter guarantees the choice even among the elements of an infinite set, which is the case of quantum information. The concrete and abstract objects share information as their common base, which is quantum as to the formers and classical as to the latter. The general quantities of matter in physics, mass and energy can be considered as particular cases of quantum information. The link between choice and abstraction in set theory allows of “Hume’s principle” to be interpreted in terms of quantum mechanics as equivalence of “many” and “much” underlying quantum information. Quantum information as the universal substance of the world calls for the unity of physics and mathematics rather than that of the concrete and abstract objects and thus for a form of quantum neo-Pythagoreanism in final analysis. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 62, Issue 1, pp 69 - 89 Galen’s physiology—his theory of elements, mixtures and the emergence of natural capacities—compels him to conceive of each part of the soul as a peculiar mixture of elementary qualities in the material substance of the organ in which it is located. The reason why Galen, nevertheless, refrains from making a dogmatic assertion about the substance of the soul, or of human nature in general, is the acknowledged failure to (...) account for two goal-directed activities—the formation of bodily organs and human intelligence—in terms of elementary qualities and their mixtures. (shrink)

"Causa sui" is the second volume of a trilogy (first: "Potentia of poverty", it. 2006, english: Brill, 2023, "Capital Machine. Genesis and structure of exploitation", it. 2022): it analyses the parabola of Capital as fake causa sui, that is a mechanism that steals our own capacity of producing our life. It counterposes to Capital the true causa sui, that is our force of producing life which cannot be neither extracted nor appropriated, because it is the elementary matter that constitutes (...) us. This element resists exploitation and constitutes the seed of a possible revolution not only in labour but in all relations of power. (shrink)

Studies the central topics of Wittgenstein's philosophy prior to and within the first parts of the Tractatus, covering such subjects as objects, substance, states of affairs, elementary propositions, pictures, and thoughts. He concludes that analysis is reduction to what is basic not in experience but in reference, and argues that the Tractatus is concerned not with problems of knowledge but with problems of sense.

Sixteenth century pharmacology was still very much under the influence of a distinction going back to ancient medicine: the distinction between effects of medicaments that were taken to be explainable by the elementary qualities, their mutual modification in mixture, and the combination of these modified elementary qualities on the one hand, and the effects of medicaments that were taken not to be explicable in this manner.1 Galen coined the expression that a medicament of the latter kind possesses the (...) capacity of acting "by its whole substance,"2 and the question of how actions of the whole substance could be explicated gave rise to heated controversies in early modern pharmacology. Did Galen just... (shrink)

MATERIALISTS claim that in principle mentality could be accounted for entirely by properties of matter. They must, of course, clarify, as far as possible, the precise scope of the concept "properties of matter." According to materialists there exists only one type of "substance" in the universe, namely matter. Sophisticated experimental and theoretical analyses have led contemporary physicists to interpret known material entities as being composed of two classes of elementary particles, namely quarks and leptons and constituents of interaction (...) fields that mediate interactions between some or all of the elementary particles and which comprise photons, gluons, intermediate bosons and gravitons. For instance, protons and neutrons are composed--by hypothesis--of quarks, while electrons are probably the most familiar leptons. Whether any analyzed and postulated elementary particles and constituents of interaction fields are "ultimate" components of matter can never be known. It remains always possible that more basic subcomponents of known components will be discovered. This has happened repeatedly throughout the history of physics. Hence, what physicists understand by the "physical properties" of the basic components of matter must always remain expressed in terms of usually intricate hypothetico-deductive theories which are tentative and fallible. Contemporary relativistic quantum mechanics of elementary particles and of interaction fields provide typical examples of such hypothetico-deductive theories relating to present known basic components of matter. (shrink)

MATTER AND LIGHT The New Physics By LOUIS DE BROGLIE. Originally published in 1937. TRANSLATORS NOTE: THE Author has in certain places modified the original French text for the English translation, for the sake of greater cohesion, and has also revised some passages, in order to bring them into accord with the results of later research. Occasional Translators Notes are shown in square brackets. The chapter on The Undulatory Aspects of the Electron has the special historical interest of having been (...) delivered as a Lecture on the occasion of the Authors receipt of the Nobel Award, while that on Wave Mechanics and its Interpretations was given as an Address at the Glasgow meeting of the British Association in 1928. I am indebted to Dr. J. E. Turner, of the University of Liver pool, for assistance with the translation and the proofs, and to Dr. C. Strachan, of the same University, I am indebted for valuable assistance in dealing with the equations and the more technical passages, as well as for reading the proofs. W. H. J. PREFACE: THE amiable insistence of my friend Andr George has induced me to collect in the present Volume a number of Studies on con temporary Physics written from both the general and the more metaphysical point of view. Each of these Studies forms an inde pendent whole, and can be read by itself. A slight degree of repeti tion which the reader is asked to overlook has been the inevi table result for on more than one occasion I have been compelled to duplicate a summary of the great fundamental stages of con temporary Physics, such as the classification of simple substances, the investigation of the photo-electric effect and the origin of the Theory of Light Quanta and of Wave Mechanics the subjects are somewhat technical, and I cannot well assume that they are common knowledge. But though the same subject is outlined in several of these Studies, I have tried to take up a different point of view in each, and have endeavoured to throw light on different aspects of the essential problems of Quantum Physics in order to facilitate a grasp of their importance. On comparing the different chapters the reader will observe that, while overlapping, they also complement one another and he will feel the fascination and greatness inherent in the vast structure of modern Physics. And while admiring the vast number and the extreme delicacy of experimental facts which laboratory physicists have succeeded in revealing, and the strange and brilliant concepts devised by theorists to explain them, he will appreciate to what a degree the methods and ideas of physicists have grown in subtlety during recent years, and how great has been the progress from the somewhat ingenuous Realism and the over-simplified Mechanics of earlier thinkers. The more deeply we descend into the minutest structures of Matter, the more clearly we see that the concepts evolved by the mind in the course of everyday experience especially those of Time and Space must fail us in an endeavour to describe the new worlds which we are entering. One feels tempted to say that the outlines of our concepts must undergo a progressive blurring, in order that they may retain some semblance of relevance to the realities of the subatomic scales. Time and Space, in other words, are too loose a dress for the elementary entities individuality becomes attenuated in the mysterious pro cesses of interaction, and even Determinism, the darling of an older generation of physicists, is forced to yield... (shrink)

Since the early nineteenth century a membrane or wall has been central to the cell’s identity as the elementary unit of life. Yet the literally and metaphorically marginal status of the cell membrane made it the site of clashes over the definition of life and the proper way to study it. In this article I show how the modern cell membrane was conceived of by analogy to the first “artificial cell,” invented in 1864 by the chemist Moritz Traube (1826–1894), (...) and reimagined by the plant physiologist Wilhelm Pfeffer (1845–1920) as a precision osmometer. Pfeffer’s artificial cell osmometer became the conceptual and empirical basis for the law of dilute solutions in physical chemistry, but his use of an artificial analogue to theorize the existence of the plasma membrane as distinct from the cell wall prompted debate over whether biology ought to be more closely unified with the physical sciences, or whether it must remain independent as the science of life. By examining how the histories of plant physiology and physical chemistry intertwined through the artificial cell, I argue that modern biology relocated vitality from protoplasmic living matter to nonliving chemical substances—or, in broader cultural terms, that the disenchantment of life was accompanied by the (re)enchantment of ordinary matter. (shrink)

Since the revolution in philosophic method that began about a century ago, the focus of philosophic attention has been on language as used both in daily conversation and in specialized institutional activities such as science, law, and the arts. But language is an extremely complex and varied means of communication, and the study of it has been increasingly incorporated into such empirical disciplines as linguistics, psycho linguistics, and cognitive psychology. It is becoming less clear what aspects of language remain as (...) proper subjects of philosophical study, what are to be "kicked upstairs" (J. L. Austin's phrase) to the sciences. This work is a study of those logical features of language that remain central to philosophy after completion of kicking up. It conducts this study by describing similarities and differences between signs at differing levels, starting with natural events as primitive signs in the environments of their interpreters, and proceeding to pre linguistic signaling systems, elementary forms of language, and finally to the forms of specialized discourse used within social institutions. The investiga tion of comparative features requires isolating basic mental capacities that are present in the most primitive forms of organisms capable of sign interpretation. The problem then becomes one of tracing the emergence from these capacities of such categories as substance, attribute or quality, and quantity that we apply to natural languages. The study of sign levels is thus the construction of a genealogy of logical categories marking the develop ment of natural languages. (shrink)

Aristotelian ideas are presented in a favorable light in Duhem's historical works surveying the history of the notion of chemical combination (1902) and the development of mechanics (1903). The importance Duhem was later to ascribe to Aristotelian ideas as reflected in the weight he attached to medieval science is well known. But the Aristotelian influence on his own mature philosophical perspective, and more particularly on his concern for logical coherence and the development of his ontological views, is not generally acknowledged. (...) There are, however, clear pointers in this direction in these two earlier books on the history of science, which are unashamedly written in such a way as to project the author's own view of what is important in the relevant areas. Thermodynamics was the pinnacle of Duhemian science, and its interpretation requires the reinstatement, in Duhem's view, of Aristotelian conceptions which have been unfashionable since the rise of certain ideas with the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. The present paper is not primarily an exposition of these Aristotelian views of Duhem's, but an attempt to pursue the interpretation of a macroscopic, thermodynamical perspective on chemical substances from an elementary viewpoint in the spirit of Duhem (1902), sometimes being more definite than Duhem seems to be, and occasionally taking issue with him on certain points. Some of his leading ideas will determine the general approach, but views and problems will also be taken from modern textbooks in an attempt to lay down the general lines along which an explicit ontology--in Quine's sense--of macroscopic theory might be developed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:248 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY be taken from a philosophical point of view. Since it is not certain whether the author of the Prolegomena was or was not a Christian (p. xlix), "god" should not be capitalized, and the translation of T&~ia 5~l~ttovo'f~l~taTa as "God's creation" at IV. 15. 6 is actually misleading. Moreover, for no apparent reason, 0~oX07tz6gis translated as "metaphysical" in the first four chapters, but as "theological" (...) thereafter. Inaccuracies are very few indeed. "Ungrateful" is peculiar for o~5~5t• at I. 2. 25, and so is "adapted state" for ~to~tTe[a~ ~no~ae0g at I. 5.35; X. 26. 38, 40, and 44; at II. 10. 11, there is no need to translate o~Te&0t~6)g bu~yovxctL as "they do not aim at accurate expression," and on p. 32, line 1, "as yet" is not in the Greek of the Prolegomena, although it should have been, if the Anonymous had quoted correctly from Plato, Phaedrus 229 E. But this is trifling criticism of a work which leaves nothing to be desired in any other respect, and which displays the same high qualities of scholarship which we have come to expect of the author on the basis of his earlier achievements. MARTIN OSTWALI) Swarthmore College The Fountain of Life (Fons Vitae). By Solomon ibn Gabirol (Avicebron). Specially abridged edition, translated from the Latin by Harry E. Wedeck, with an Introduction by Theodore E. James. (New York: Philosophical Library, 1962. Unpaged introduction, 133 pp. $4.75.) The romance of the nineteenth-century discovery, by Salomon Munk, that "Avicebron's" Fons Vitae, a major source of neoplatonic thought in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, was actually the work of the eleventhcentury Hispano-Jewish poet, Solomon ibn Gabirol, and has often been retold. It is, indeed, a remarkable story. Perhaps its most noteworthy feature is that it reveals how closely alike Muslim, Jewish, and Christian philosophers were; by implication, then, it indicates that theological considerations were of less importance in medieval philosophy than is suggested by most historical accounts. Although the story of The Fountain of Lqe has now become an oft-told tale, the work itself has never been available in English dress. The present edition remedies this situation in part. It presents Tract III of the original text, a section dealing with the existence of simple spiritual substances. Harry Wedeck's translation is lucid and readable. Theodore E. James's introduction is useful for the beginning student but too elementary to be of much use to a more advanced reader. It is good that there is now this much to recommend to our students; we may hope that the day will come when BOOK REVIEWS 249 larger sections of the work will be translated-preferably not from the Latin, but from the Arabic original. JOSEPHL. B~u Columbia University Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle. By St. Thomas Aquinas. Trans. by John P. Rowan. (Chicago, Illinois: Henry Regnery Company, 1961. Pp. xxiii + 955.2 vols., boxed, $25.00.) Generally speaking, the two Summae of St. Thomas, long available in English translation, contain all that is most personal and most profound in his philosophical thought. Nonetheless, it is quite impossible to get a fully adequate conception of St. Thomas' place in the history of western thought from a consideration of his theological writings alone. Hence, by translating St. Thomas' Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle into English, Professor J. P. Rowan has provided the non-Latin reading student of the history of philosophy an invaluable service. For it is in his r61e as Aristotelian commentator that we see St. Thomas creating for the Schoolmen a version of Aristotle which served to render the Stagirite's thought into terms which became fundamental to the philosophical defense of Christianity. Further, by keeping in mind the fully-developed notions of St. Thomas on the existence of God and the nature of being as these are given us to understand in the Summae, the reader becomes better enabled, by a critical reading of Thomas' Commentary, to grasp the sense in which the Saint's theological writings are said by his enthusiasts to represent a "completing" and "perfecting" of... (shrink)

The object of this study is to find a coherent theoretical approach to three problems which appear to interrelate in complex ways: (1) What is the ontological status of consciousness? (2) How can there be 'un conscious,' 'prereflective' or 'self-alienated' consciousness? And (3) Is there a 'self' or 'ego' formed by means of the interrelation of more elementary states of consciousness? The motivation for combining such a diversity of difficult questions is that we often learn more by looking at (...) interrelations of problems than we could by viewing them only in isola tion. The three questions posed here have emerged as especially prob lematic in the context of twentieth century philosophy. 1. The question of the ontological status of consciousness The question 'What is consciousness?' is one of the most perplexing in philosophy-so perplexing that many have been motivated to proceed as though consciousness did not exist. If William James was speaking rhetorically when he said "Consciousness does not exist," 1 many behaviorists of the recent past were not. 2 James meant only to imply that consciousness is not an independently existing soul-substance, along side physical substances. He did not mean that we do not really 'have' consciousness, and he did not provide final resolution for the problem of the causal interrelations between consciousness and the physical realm (e. g. , our bodies). Many recent philosophers and psychologists, however, try to proceed as though these problems did not exist. (shrink)

One can use mathematics not as an instrument or measure, or a replacement for God, but as a poetic articulation, or perhaps as a stammered experimental approach to cultural dynamics. I choose to start with the simplest symbolic substances that respect the lifeworld’s continuous dynamism, temporality, boundless morphogenesis, superposability, continuity, density and value, and yet are independent of measure, metric, counting, finitude, formal logic, syntax, grammar, digitality and computability – in short, free of the formal structures that would put a (...) cage over all of the lifeworld. I call these substances topological media. This article introduces elementary topological concepts with which we can articulate material and cultural change using notions of proximity, limit, and change, without recourse to number or metric. The motivation is that topology furnishes us with concepts well-adapted for poietically articulating the world as stuff, rather than objects with an a priori schema. With care, it may provide a fruitful approach to morphogenesis and cultural dynamics that is neither reductive nor anthropocentric. I will not pretend any systematic application of the scaffolding concepts introduced in this article. Instead, I would see what fellow students of cultural dynamics and cosmopolitics make of these concepts in their own work. (shrink)

This article aims at sketching a philosophical theory of sound based on the perspective of sound designers: unique agents blurring the boundaries between engineering, music, acoustics and sound-based art. After having introduced the general framing in Section 1, focusing on a short history of the theory and practice of sound design, in Section 2 we propose a reading of sound as monad. We derive such intuition from the technology of digital sampling of audio signals, based on the decomposition of complex (...) sound waves in a number of elementary sinusoidal waves. Thus, in Section 3, we attempt at grounding the resulting “sound-atom” on Leibniz’s notion of monad, intended both as a “simple substance without parts” and as a “nucleus of forces in statu possibilitatis.” The insight is resumed and further discussed in Section 4, where we draw our conclusions by demonstrating the fitness of such framing with regards to the standpoint of sound design, while accounting for the work of sound artists Carsten Nicolai and Ryoji Ikeda. (shrink)

The former part of this paper attempted to show— 1. That in Anaxagoras' scheme of physics the following substances were elements: The animal substances ; The vegetable substances ; The so-called Opposites ; and 2. That there is no evidence that Anaxagoras asserted any substances to be homoeomerous, and that, even if he had done so, the word ‘homoeomerous’ does not bear the meanings often attached to it by those theories which assume he made the assertion. The meaning of is, (...) μοιομερς is, not ‘simple in substance,’ i.e. ‘elementary,’ but ‘simple in formation.’. (shrink)

Global stewardship explores the perspective of caring for the entire globe—all its peoples and life. The interconnectedness of the basic elementary systems—air and water, which are both necessary for terrestrial and aquatic life—is acknowledged. The concomitant threats of their toxification from immoderate employments of substances and techniques justify the need for global respect and cooperation as well as effective world economic systems as the means to sustain this life.

Quantum information is discussed as the universal substance of the world. It is interpreted as that generalization of classical information, which includes both finite and transfinite ordinal numbers. On the other hand, any wave function and thus any state of any quantum system is just one value of quantum information. Information and its generalization as quantum information are considered as quantities of elementary choices. Their units are correspondingly a bit and a qubit. The course of time is what (...) generates choices by itself, thus quantum information and any item in the world in final analysis. The course of time generates necessarily choices so: The future is absolutely unorderable in principle while the past is always well-ordered and thus unchangeable. The present as the mediation between them needs the well-ordered theorem equivalent to the axiom of choice. The latter guarantees the choice even among the elements of an infinite set, which is the case of quantum information. The concrete and abstract objects share information as their common base, which is quantum as to the formers and classical as to the latters. The general quantities of matter in physics, mass and energy can be considered as particular cases of quantum information. The link between choice and abstraction in set theory allows of “Hume’s principle” to be interpreted in terms of quantum mechanics as equivalence of “many” and “much” underlying quantum information. Quantum information as the universal substance of the world calls for the unity of physics and mathematics rather than that of the concrete and abstract objects and thus for a form of quantum neo-Pythagoreanism in final analysis. (shrink)

In Western discourse the dominant theme of the natural theory of knowledge but understanding of the subject is largely independent of the external world . Chinese traditional theory of knowledge can be called the theory of knowledge relationship, because they concerned the theme of relationships. This applies not only to negate the concept of an entity's overall theory of knowledge, but also for many advocates in understanding the subject and make a strict distinction between the object to understand the modern (...) theory. In this regard, traditional Chinese and Western knowledge to make a comparative analysis of the theory may be regarded as a solution to the nature of human understanding and perception of reality useful way certain fundamental questions. The complementary relation between reality and comprehension, between the given and recognition, as manifested in the context of elaborating fundamental epistemological paradigms, obliges us to address a humor of additional problems in connection with specific aspects of traditional organization and disciplinary functions, the semantic structures of texts, and, above all, their implicit axinlogical systems. The subject of the naturalistic epistemologies that prevailed in Western discourses was the external world , which was to a great extent independent from the subject of comprehension. Traditional Chinese theories of knowledge can be called relational epistemologies, because the subjects they refer to are relations. This applies not only to radical holistic epistemologies, which denied the notion of substance, but also to a number of contemporary theories which advocate a strict division between the subject and object of comprehension: In this respect, a comparative analysis of traditional Chinese and Western epistemological theories might, despite the general problematic of such cultural comparisons, prove to be a useful tool for resolving certain elementary questions about the nature of human comprehension and recognition of reality. (shrink)

RESUMEN En este artículo trato de establecer que, según el Tractatus, la posibilidad de pensar que el espacio lógico fuera vacío es equivalente a la posibilidad de pensar que el mundo no hubiera existido. Tal representación viene dada por la última línea de una tabla de verdad que es una descripción completa del espacio lógico: es la línea en la que todas las proposiciones elementales son falsas. En primer lugar, argumentaré que una proposición elemental sería falsa -más que no tener (...) un valor de verdad- si fuera evaluada con respecto a un mundo posible en el que alguno de los objetos nombrados en esa proposición no existe. A continuación, tendré que mostrar que es posible que los objetos tractarianos no hubieran existido para poder concluir que es posible pensar que los objetos tractarianos no hubieran existido. Por último, estoy obligado a ofrecer una nueva interpretación del pasaje sobre la substancia.ABSTRACT In this paper I intend to establish that, according to the Tractatus, the possibility of thinking that the logical space were empty is equivalent to the possibility of thinking that the world had not existed. Such a representation is given by the bottom line of a truth-table which is a complete description of logical space: it is the line where all elementary propositions are false. Firstly, I will argue that an elementary proposition would be false -rather than lacking a truth-value- if it were evaluated with respect to a possible world in which some named object in that proposition does not exist. Then I will have to show that it is possible that the tractarian objects had not existed in order to conclude that it is possible to think that the tractarian objects had not existed. Finally, I am bound to offer a new interpretation of the substance passage. (shrink)

The paper explicates the stages of the author’s philosophical evolution in the light of Kopnin’s ideas and heritage. Starting from Kopnin’s understanding of dialectical materialism, the author has stated that category transformations of physics has opened from conceptualization of immutability to mutability and then to interaction, evolvement and emergence. He has connected the problem of physical cognition universals with an elaboration of the specific system of tools and methods of identifying, individuating and distinguishing objects from a scientific theory domain. The (...) role of vacuum conception and the idea of existence (actual and potential, observable and nonobservable, virtual and hidden) types were analyzed. In collaboration with S.Crymski heuristic and regulative functions of categories of substance, world as a whole as well as postulates of relativity and absoluteness, and anthropic and self-development principles were singled out. Elaborating Kopnin’s view of scientific theories as a practically effective and relatively true mapping of their domains, the author in collaboration with M. Burgin have originated the unified structure-nominative reconstruction (model) of scientific theory as a knowledge system. According to it, every scientific knowledge system includes hierarchically organized and complex subsystems that partially and separately have been studied by standard, structuralist, operationalist, problem-solving, axiological and other directions of the current philosophy of science. 1) The logico-linguistic subsystem represents and normalizes by means of different, including mathematical, languages and normalizes and logical calculi the knowledge available on objects under study. 2) The model-representing subsystem comprises peculiar to the knowledge system ways of their modeling and understanding. 3) The pragmatic-procedural subsystem contains general and unique to the knowledge system operations, methods, procedures, algorithms and programs. 4) From the viewpoint of the problem-heuristic subsystem, the knowledge system is a unique way of setting and resolving questions, problems, puzzles and tasks of cognition of objects into question. It also includes various heuristics and estimations (truth, consistency, beauty, efficacy, adequacy, heuristicity etc) of components and structures of the knowledge system. 5) The subsystem of links fixes interrelations between above-mentioned components, structures and subsystems of the knowledge system. The structure-nominative reconstruction has been used in the philosophical and comparative case-studies of mathematical, physical, economic, legal, political, pedagogical, social, and sociological theories. It has enlarged the collection of knowledge structures, connected, for instance, with a multitude of theoreticity levels and with an application of numerous mathematical languages. It has deepened the comprehension of relations between the main directions of current philosophy of science. They are interpreted as dealing mainly with isolated subsystems of scientific theory. This reconstruction has disclosed a variety of undetected knowledge structures, associated also, for instance, with principles of symmetry and supersymmetry and with laws of various levels and degrees. In cooperation with the physicist Olexander Gabovich the modified structure-nominative reconstruction is in the processes of development and justification. Ideas and concepts were also in the center of Kopnin’s cognitive activity. The author has suggested and elaborated the triplet model of concepts. According to it, any scientific concept is a dependent on cognitive situation, dynamical, multifunctional state of scientist’s thinking, and available knowledge system. A concept is modeled as being consisted from three interrelated structures. 1) The concept base characterizes objects falling under a concept as well as their properties and relations. In terms of volume and content the logical modeling reveals partially only the concept base. 2) The concept representing part includes structures and means (names, statements, abstract properties, quantitative values of object properties and relations, mathematical equations and their systems, theoretical models etc.) of object representation in the appropriate knowledge system. 3) The linkage unites a structures and procedures that connect components from the abovementioned structures. The partial cases of the triplet model are logical, information, two-tired, standard, exemplar, prototype, knowledge-dependent and other concept models. It has introduced the triplet classification that comprises several hundreds of concept types. Different kinds of fuzziness are distinguished. Even the most precise and exact concepts are fuzzy in some triplet aspect. The notions of relations between real scientific concepts are essentially extended. For example, the definition and strict analysis of such relations between concepts as formalization, quantification, mathematization, generalization, fuzzification, and various kinds of identity are proposed. The concepts «PLANET» and «ELEMENTARY PARTICLE» and some of their metamorphoses were analyzed in triplet terms. The Kopnin’s methodology and epistemology of cognition was being used for creating conception of the philosophy of law as elaborating of understanding, justification, estimating and criticizing legal system. The basic information on the major directions in current Western philosophy of law (legal realism, feminism, criticism, postmodernism, economical analysis of law etc.) is firstly introduced to the Ukrainian audience. The classification of more than fifty directions in modern legal philosophy is suggested. Some results of historical, linguistic, scientometric and philosophic-legal studies of the present state of Ukrainian academic science are given. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 62, Issue 1, pp 69 - 89 Galen’s physiology—his theory of elements, mixtures and the emergence of natural capacities—compels him to conceive of each part of the soul as a peculiar mixture of elementary qualities in the material substance of the organ in which it is located. The reason why Galen, nevertheless, refrains from making a dogmatic assertion about the substance of the soul, or of human nature in general, is the acknowledged failure to (...) account for two goal-directed activities—the formation of bodily organs and human intelligence—in terms of elementary qualities and their mixtures. (shrink)

Around fifteen years before the chemical substance alumina could be decomposed in the laboratory, it was identified as a compound and predicted to contain a new element called ‘aluminium’. Using this episode from early nineteenth-century chemistry as a case study for the use of analogical reasoning in science, this paper examines how chemists relied on chemical classifications for the prediction of aluminium. I argue that chemists supplemented direct evidence of chemical decomposition with analogical inferences in order to evaluate the (...) composition of substances. Since they were established on the basis of relevant similarities in chemical properties, classifications were taken to reflect so-called ‘chemical analogies’ between substances. In combination with the knowledge that analogous properties indicated similarities in composition, this enabled chemists to infer the composition of experimentally indecomposable substances by analogy. The trust in such analogical inferences, even if they could not be confirmed through experiment, was justified by pragmatic considerations. Whereas the possibility of decomposing a substance depended on the available laboratory techniques, chemical analogies were thought to last independently of internal composition. It was therefore more practical to keep well-established classes of substances together rather than separate them on the basis of experimental results that might evolve as new techniques were developed. Besides highlighting the links between analogical reasoning and classification, this paper also illustrates the importance of analogy in the evaluation of elementary nature in the early nineteenth century. (shrink)

The question of form in Peirce’s early thought constitutes the starting point of his reflection on the connection models of the parts of continua. I will show how, interpreted as reason rather than as cause, form becomes a productive event. In this productive event the form, as “condition of possibility of the relation of the elementary parts of representation” becomes a modeling dynamic which, starting from interpretation, allows initiation of the process of the passage from substance to being. (...) The problem of this passage is the problem of a continuity that cannot be thought by the classical linear model of time. (shrink)

The subject of the presented work is the analysis of situations changeability in frame of constructed logic LCG. In the suggested interpretation, substantial change ( substantial movement ), which consists of the disappearing of a certain substance a 1 and the coming into being of substance a 2 , for which a 1 is an active potentia , is understood in the following manner - the elementary fact: essence a 1 exists becomes fiction and a new fact (...) arises: essence a 2 exists , which is enabled by the previous one. In the language of our formalisation this "transition" from fact to fiction, which occurs in the case of the situation: essence a 1 exists , described as C-change . The second component of substantial movement (or rather its situational equivalent) is the occurring of a new fact: essence a 2 exists , which is possible under the condition of an earlier occurring of the fact: essence a 1 exists . We describe this aspect of movement as G-change , which is an expansion of a set of formulas by a new elementary sentence and expressions in which this sentence occurs. Within the range of the LCG calculus operators C and G obtain an interpretation wider than the one which can be determined upon the basis of the Aristotelian theory of change expressed in terms of situational ontology. Semantical and syntactical characteristics of the LCG logic gives the possibility to compare it with such known calculi of changes like sentential systems of von Wright, Clifford and Wajszczyk. (shrink)

In 1897 physicists took the first e/m measurements at electrons, the consequence was a revival of the atomistic ideas in physics. The researches in geophysics also contributed to the construction of the modern physics. Four examples are dealt with this essay. 1) In 1899 J. J. Thomson was able to carry out the first direct determination of elementary electric charge with the help of the conformity with the natural laws at the formation of fog, found by C. T. R. (...) Wilson. 2) The cloud-chamber, called after C. T. R. Wilson, was the result of various constructions of for- or cloud-chambers, in it there were shown for the first time the tracks of α- and β-particles. 3) At the exploration of the photoelectric effect of the sunlight (especially of the ultraviolet share) Elster and Geitel made essential preliminary studies for the lightquanta-hypothesis of Einstein. 4) Elster and Geitel detected radioactive substances in the atmosphere and in the soil to be the main source of the atmospheric electricity. (shrink)