PP256 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Atomism
Document Summary
Democritus believes philosophy is to explain the ordinary phenomena around us. Foundational claim that something can come from nothing. What-is (atoms) and what-is-not (void: what-is. Full and solid, material cause of everything. Small substances, infinite in number size and shape. A) a magnitude wrong, because then it isn"t infinitely divisible. B) nothing if nothing is left, then what was divided is nothing. C) a point - real thing that has not magnitude: p5: none of these options are possible, c: there is no infinitely divisible magnitude. These is a smallest magnitude that can"t be further divided. Atomistic reductivism: the complexity of the world is ultimately explicable in terms of atoms, their properties and the void. Epistemology: cannot gain access to the way things really are by relying on the senses. Because it involves interaction between the objects atoms and your atoms.
