Heidegger

In a message dated 01/10/2006 michael at sandwich-de-sign.co.uk
writes: MichaelE on Jud’s
fundament, recently:

DR. ELDRED:
Your fundamental critique of the “fundamental foundations” consists of
asserting incessantly that “abstractions do not exist”, only nitty-gritty
arrangements of atoms and molecules do exist. Some critique!

MICHAELP:
Just a quick point, Michael: asserting the existence of “nitty-gritty
arrangements of atoms and molecules” is asserting ‘arrangements’ and not
just what is so arranged; because the materialist asserts that every thing
that exists exists as and only as atoms, molecules and (pen?)ultimately
sub-atomic bits and bobs, he may fail to notice that such “causal objects”
are not just (’made of’) heaps of atoms et al, but are very much
arrangements and configurations of atoms et al, and that atoms et al are
themselves extraordinarily stable arrangements of their consistent particles
and such {which is why, in part, scientists will assign the label of
existence or reality to such things as atoms — stable configurations don’t
change}.

JUD EVANS:

ON NITTY-GRITTY ARRANGEMENTS.

Actually I find the concept of *arrangement* and MichaelP’s contribution
very interesting and helpful in that it has stimulated me to revisit the
basic foundations of a mereology which I developed some years back but have
neglected of late in favour of a concentration on determinism, for what
MichaelP refers to goes to the very heart of *nature* or *the existential
imperative* and the question of change, and the configuration or dispersion
of causal objects, either into patterns which we perceive as orderly or
disorderly, or even chaotic.

For me, *arrangements* [sometimes referred to as: *the spatial property of
the way in which an object or objects are placed or situated,) do not exist
in themselves, and I believe that only that which is *arranged* actually
exists. I doubt if you will be at all surprised at this E. D. response?

[SNIP]

Thanks Jud. I’m especially pleased that my snippet has enabled you to return
to your self, pausing to reflect on what has not passed… your mereology.
But, in a way, for me the point I was making was not so much to do with the
part/whole relationship as described by science (for example) as the
business of configuration (in that, for instance, the only real difference
between a hydrogen atom and a helium atom is the configuration of sub-atomic
entities, since they are both made up from precisely the same entities; and
that, for another example, the notion of atom {as a whole} begins to
dissolve in the configuration of the far more common hydrogen molecule
{which is said to consist in two atoms of hydrogen} in which the outermost
{only, in the case of hydrogen} shell of {2} electrons is shared in some way
between the atoms, thus weakening the very notion of atom-in-itself…).

I look forward to your tackling the meat of my pie in part two.

regards

michaelP

Posted on Wednesday, October 4th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
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