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January 10, 2005
Contest: Make the Best Actual/Potential Parts/Simples/Gunk/Composition Road-Map
I've just finished reading The Architecture of Matter (by Tom Holden, who used to be at Syracuse, now at UC Santa Barbara), which I recommend highly. In it Holden discusses the Early Modern debates between actual and potential parts theorists and how this intersects with the further issue of whether extended objects are infinitely divisible or not (and, what the nature of minima or simples would be, if there are any). He does a great job of showing the problems of reconciling the actual parts metaphysic with the doctrine of infinite divisibility. The actual parts metaphysic was accepted by most of the Early Modern bigwigs, and seemed part-and-parcel of denying medieval scholasticism, substantial forms, and the semi-mysterious Aristotelian doctrine of 'potential parts,' where such parts are created or actualized upon sundering from the object they are parts of (existing merely 'potentially' before). This represented a shift based upon embracing the new science and its corpuscularian explanations. But, going along with the new science was the geometrization of nature, which seemed to demand infinite divisibility and hence an infinite number of parts for any extended object, regardless of size. There are a lot of (prima facie, at least) paradoxes that crop up for the actual parts-theorist who holds infinite divisibility, which I won't cover here. One overarching problem, however, was that the putative good explanations for macro-phenomenon that the actual-parter could employ by adverting to nice chunky physical corpuscles seemed to dissolve as the minima reduced themselves to extensionless points (the pre-critical Kant, and Boscovich, however, with some influence by More, do a nice job of introducing force-shell atoms or fields to answer some of these problems). Anyways, in order to help in my research, and, because I'm a geek who enjoys this kind of thing, I've been making the following chart which attempts to map the space of views in this field, which, if you're interested, you can check out here (a power point version in landscape format followed by a word version in regular format): Actual/Potential Parts Road-Map Word Version The chart is not complete. I haven't plugged in every influential or famous person who fits into all the categories. I've put in some contemporary people, although hesitantly, and where they fit in (or where I think they fit in). But, mainly, this concerns the Early Moderns. I also wanted to fit in a brief bit on motivations and problems for each node on the tree, but I couldn't fit that in on one page. (if you think I'm missing a branch, or think I should plug in some people to some of the branches, let me know. To save redundancies, however, I only plug philosophers into terminal nodes). One thing to note is that the chart was made by mapping the space of the Early Modern debate, and so doesn't really correspond to a more complete map which would deal with some additional twists and further questions of more contemporary debates about parthood, individuality, and composition. For instance, is Van Inwagen an actual or potential parts theorist? It�s not clear. My hand is not a part (since the simples in my hand-region don�t compose an object according to him), yet all the simples arranged handwise are actual, and jointly compose me with the rest of my simples. (Similar questions can arise for any sortal-essentialist non-DAUP'er who admits that some proper parts of an object are objects, such as my heart, while other putative objects are not, such as all the water in my body or the left half of my heart). Also, consider Burke or Laycock and the doctrine that there can be concrete, non-particular 'entities,' such as the gold in Africa, the bronze that makes up the left half of a statue, or the water in my glass. For them, these items are not even potential parts (i.e., individuals), since, no matter what you make them into, they�ll never be identical to any thing, even such bare things as 'fusions' or 'aggregates' (since there are no fusions whose only persistence conditions are having the parts they do, according to them. Briefly, Burke and Laycock accept, or at least used to accept, that talk about stuff is plural-quantification talk about pluralities of elements). Anyways, in order to map not only the Early Moderns but contemporary folk in the scheme of actual and potential parts we�d need to put in some more divisions on the tree, and perhaps start at the top with different questions. Perhaps the best way would be to start the tree with the question, 'are there minima?', and go from there. Any suggestions? Is there a good way to develop a framework which can contain both the Early Moderns and our contemporaries? If anyone can develop a satisfactory, full chart that can map the space of positions around actual/potential parts, the nature of minima/simples/gunk, and answers to the Special Compositions Question (see Van Inwagen's Material Beings), I'll post it here, and, to make things extra sweet, give you a whole dollar! I expect participation to be minimal, given OrangePhilosophy's posting frequency and readership these days. But, if there's lots of feedback, perhaps we can post the various documents and let commentators vote on it. At the very least maybe we can discuss what ramifications the older divisions of potential/actual parts has for contemporary discussions.
Posted by MarkSteen at January 10, 2005 5:54 PM
Comments
Hey Mark, thanks for putting up the converted file. Nice map. I don't know a great deal about contemporary debates in metaphysics, but a little about early modern metaphysics. I'd like to check out Tom's book, but it looks like I will have to wait my turn (or take out a small personal loan and buy it--oh the days when knowledge was inexpensive...) My guess is that d'Holbach had the same view Zimmerman has, viz., that there are actual parts infinitely divisible, with no minima. But maybe he thinks there are minima. Just looking at System of Nature, he says "The properties common to all matter, are, extent, divisibility, impenetrability, figure, mobility, or the property of being moved in mass". And that bit about impenetrability...I don't know. [http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/holbach/volume1.pdf page 23]
Would it be right to put all corpuscularians (a rather big group in early modern) with Galileo or young Newton? I tell you, the answer to this question should be obvious, but it's not to me.
Posted by: Chuck at January 15, 2005 9:55 AM
Scratch that last question. There is too much disagreement amongst corpuscularians to lump them all together.
Posted by: chuck at January 15, 2005 10:05 AM
I think impenetrability makes some sense. Otherwise we might just identify matter w/extension. There could be some schmatter that goes right through matter, but schmatter better resist intrusion by some other schmatter, or at least have some causal interactive salience, otherwise the putative schmatter starts to sound like creepy moving regions or some empty postulate.
btw, I do think that pretty much all the corpuscularians are in the category you mentioned.
Posted by: Mark Steen at January 15, 2005 2:40 PM
I stumbled across this looking for some references to material on potential parts, but can't see the road-map as accessing it requires a log-in. It looks interesting, is there any chance of a freely-accessible copy? Cheers.
Posted by: Rich at September 11, 2005 7:41 AM
Rich, leave me an email address and I'll send it to you. I unfortunately cannot unlock it right now.
Posted by: Mark Steen at September 12, 2005 6:20 AM