Since as far back as Empedocles, people have been thinking about matter within a reductionistic materialist frame of mind. The reductionist thinks of the macroscopic world as the result of what goes on at the microscopic or submicroscopic level, and not vice versa (which is Aristotle's position). Empedocles,[1] Anaxagoras, and Democritus all taught that particles alone constitute real being, and of course they did so because they were not able to refute Parmenides,[2] who argued that being is unchangeable. To reconcile the evident fact of change with Parmenides, they taught that the "whole" comes to be and passes away, but the particles of matter (which alone truly exist) do not come to be and pass away (particles of matter are identified with "being"). But what they ended up doing was reconciling a bad metaphysics with the evident fact of change, and so they too ended up with a false philosophy (reductionistic materialism), which I will attempt to show.

So within the reductionist mindset, things are simply "wholes" that result from the interaction and commingling of particles, just as a machine is the result of the interaction of its parts. Accordingly, the whole does not have anything that cannot be explained by an appeal to its parts. A machine, remember, is an artifact. It is not one being. It does not exist in-itself. The machine is a whole made up of different parts, many of which are different substances (ie, metal, glass, wood, etc.). Now let's take the example of a painting, a self-portrait of Vincent Van Gogh. The painting of Van Gogh is not a unified substance, as Van Gogh is (or as we tend to think he is). There are no interior bonds between the molecules of the painted surface as there are between the parts of his living body. The picture as picture has nothing within itself. It owes whatever reality it owns as a picture to forces acting on it from the outside, arranging or moving the parts into their proper position.[3] In other words, the picture derives its unity from what is extrinsic to it. In fact, the parts are really outside the picture. The artist creates the impression of reality, and he depends on those who will see the painting to cooperate with him, using their insights into what a man is in order to appreciate the painting that the art has provided. Without an idea of man derived beforehand from nature, we could never get such an idea from the self-portrait of Van Gogh. The painting could never portray alone what it means to see, feel, taste, touch, think, will, etc. Without an idea of life, the Sunflowers would remain a dead patch on dead canvas, unassociated with any meaningful thing beyond itself, as would Vincent in his self-portrait. And so the full unity of the picture comes to art from the logical order, as opposed to the mere mechanical union of contiguous parts on canvas. The principle of unity and being comes to the painting from the outside in regard to its production and in regard to the appreciation of the work.

This is how the reductionist conceives of everything, since he denies that things have a nature. For someone like Aristotle, iron, copper, water, salt, sugar, kerosene, are all invested with distinctive natures (something the reductionist denies). They all have something from within. As Vincent Smith writes: "Each has a certain electromagnetic character, a definite specific gravity, a melting point of its own, a fixed point of combustibility. Each acts differently. When each is exposed to light, it selects certain wavelengths of the incident radiation and reflects others."[4] The whole is one thing, that is, one unified entity that has a definite nature. It is the nature that determines it to be what it is, not the particles. The parts are parts of the substance, and so the parts have the same nature as the whole. For example, the parts of a man are human parts, sharing in the one nature. Things have an intelligible structure, that is to say, a form. It is this intelligible structure that determines the parts, not vice versa.

The physicist conceives of things according to the principle of inertia[5] (even Quantum physicists who say that Newtonian physics is no longer useful at the subatomic level). In other words, what is inert has its principle of motion outside of it. What is inert is sluggish because it is indifferent, passive, actualized completely by outside agents. If inertia rules the real world and nothing owns anything from within itself, we end up with an infinite regression in matter (for the parts do not own anything from within themselves, but are composed of smaller parts, which in turn are composed of smaller parts, etc.). If we come to something that does own something from within itself, it is either a nature or more parts. By appealing to smaller and smaller particles, we never really explain anything. But if we are to do so, we must use terms other than the ones we are trying to explain.

If things don't have something from within themselves, for example, if the tree or your cat are not invested with a distinctive nature, then the tree is not a thing in itself and the cat is not a thing in-itself, just as the artifact is not a thing in-itself (the car is not a thing in-itself. It is the sum of its parts). But Smith points out some consequences of this position in the area of motion. He argues that if a thing has a finite velocity, it cannot be moved completely from the outside. For if bodies did not put up resistances to these outer agents and did not bear a reality from within, by the same force that moves a thing it should be moved faster and faster until an infinite velocity has been attained. If there were no natures with their inner principles and if all things had their principles of motion outside them (like the painting), anything that moved would move infinitely fast. But there are no infinite velocities-if there were, they would be indeterminate and thus unknowable. He goes on to point out that granted that there is such a thing as inertia at all, it cannot be unlimited in this moving world of ours, and if it is limited, there are brakes.[6] And these brakes are natures or substances. To account for the fact of differences, there must be a manifold of these counteragents to inertia, a plurality of things moved from within. For what is merely inert cannot be differentiated; one purely inert thing could never differ from another, and if there is only inertia in the universe, there are no differences within the universe. If there are differences in inertia, then it follows that there is no pure inertia. There are principles of difference within inertia, and this is the same thing as saying -- form and matter.[7] "Since the inert as such is indeterminate and has no distinctions and since nature unfolds a plurality of differences, there must be a plurality of substances, a plurality of natures. For substance is a nature existing"[8]. A substance is not a result of an interaction of particles and molecules. A purely inert world would be actually nothing.

So when Nick Herbert says that things are not solid because they are not solid on the subatomic level, he is operating within the reductionistic habit of mind (or as Adler would say, the reductionistic fallacy[9]). The truly real is not the subatomic. The truly real is on the level of the macroscopic. Your cat is a real being. The primary mode of being is not the particle or the atom. The primary mode of being is the substance, that is, the nature existing. So solidity is very real, which is why Herbert would duck if you were to throw a brick at him. The brick and the chair are in every way real, more real than the molecules or particles within them; for they are what they are by virtue of the thing's nature. If there is a basic ambiguity at the basis of the inanimate world, as Herbert says there is, then perhaps that is be a clue that reductionism proceeds backwards, rather than forwards. In speaking of the "thinglessness" of the world, he only reveals his reductionistic habitus. A thing is not a thing because it is made up of solid little balls. A thing is an entity because it is composed of first matter and substantial form.[10] A thing has a potential principle and a formal or actual principle. A thing is actually something because it has form, that is, an intelligible structure, or a nature. A material thing is not a pure form, but a composite of first matter and substantial form. The first accident of a material thing is quantity, which extends the substance. Quantity gives us parts outside of parts. The parts are not prior to the substance. The quantity of a substance can and does change while the substance itself remains the same (remains what it is). The parts receive their order, their intelligible unity from the thing's form. Without the form, there is no intelligible unity to the parts. In fact, there would be no parts; for parts are parts of a substance, and if there are no unified substances, there are no parts of substances.

In terms of Herbert's claim that "big things being made of entities whose attributes are not there when you don't look at them, but become there when you do look at them," this is simply a self-refuting interpretation of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. For why is it that I am a thing whose existence does not depend upon someone looking at me? If my existence does depend on someone looking at me, then only at this point should I be able to look at something else and give it its existence. But does that person's existence depend upon someone looking at him?

Notes

¹"And besides these nothing else comes into being nor ceases to be; for if they were continually being destroyed, they would no longer be; and what could increase this whole, and whence could it come? And how could these things perish too, since nothing is empty of them? Nay, there are these things alone, and running through one another they become now this and now that and yet remain ever as they are." Fr. 17, 1. 14, Simplicius Phys. 158, 13. Tr. Kirk and Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers. A Critical History with a Selection of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 328.

²"One way only is left to be spoken of, that it is; and on this way are full many signs that what is is uncreated and imperishable, for it is entire, immovable and without end. It was not in the past, nor shall it be, since it is now, all at once, one, continuous; for what creation will you seek for it? How and from what origin did it grow? Nor shall I allow you to say or to think, `from that which is not'; for it is not to be said or thought that it is not. And what need would have driven it on to grow, starting from nothing, at a later time rather than an earlier? Thus it must either completely be or be not. Nor will the force of true belief allow that, beside what is, there could also arise anything from what is not; wherefore Justice loses not her fetters to allow it to come into being or perish, but holds it fast; and the decision on these matters rests here: it is or it is not. But it has surely been decided, as it must be, to leave alone the one way as unthinkable and nameless (for it is not a true way), and that the other is real and true. How could what is thereafter perish? And how could it come into being? For if it came into being, it is not, nor if it is going to be in the future. So coming into being is extinguished and perishing unimaginable."

(Fr. 8, Simplicius Phys. 145, 1.). Tr. Kirk and Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers. A Critical History with a Selection of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 273. See also Joseph Owens, A History of Ancient Western Philosophy (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1959), 64-65.

³See V. E. Smith, Philosophical Physics, 49-58, 162-69.

⁴Ibid., 189.

⁵ On the inertialism of atomism and mechanism, see ibid., 75-55. "But quantum mechanics still amounts to an atomism by regarding wholes in partitive terms. All processes are referred to smaller ones. What ahppens in the visible world is only a forest of microscopic trees, and the microscopic in turn is explainable in terms of the submicroscopic, making matter into a labyrinth where the paths become narrower for man to tread but never run out. The claim of quantum mechanics to dispense with mechanism because of the rank it assigns to wholes cannot be made good for another reason. Like the rest of empiriological physics, it is still mechanistic in viewing whatever is and whatever moves as entirely the result of outside forces." Ibid., 76.

⁶Ibid., 184.

⁷Ibid., 185.

⁸Ibid., 185.

⁹See Mortimer J. Adler, Ten Philosophical Mistakes (New York: Collier Macmillan, 1985), 185-190.

¹⁰ For a clear treatment of Aristotle's hylomorphic doctrine, see Larry Azar, Man: Computer, Ape, or Angel? (Hanover, Mass: Christopher, 1988) 33-43.

Copyright © 1998 by Douglas P. McManaman
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