

27. Natural Reality / A. Physics / 1. Matter / i. Modern matter

[modern views on basic solid stuff]

26 ideas
Mass is central to matter [Hart,WD on Newton]
I take 'matter' to be a body, excluding its extension in space and its shape [Locke]
Secondary matter is active and complete; primary matter is passive and incomplete [Leibniz]
Not all of matter is animated, any more than a pond full of living fish is animated [Leibniz]
Every particle of matter contains organic bodies [Leibniz]
Bare or primary matter is passive; it is clothed or secondary matter which contains action [Leibniz]
Leibniz struggled to reconcile bodies with a reality of purely soul-like entities [Jolley on Leibniz]
No one can explain how matter affects mind, so matter is redundant in philosophy [Berkeley]
We have no good concept of solidity or matter, because accounts of them are all circular [Hume]
Attraction or repulsion are not imparted to matter, but actually constitute it [Priestley]
Mendeleev saw three principles in nature: matter, force and spirit (where the latter seems to be essence) [Mendeleev]
Matter is the limit of appearances as distance from the object diminishes [Russell]
Matter requires a division into time-corpuscles as well as space-corpuscles [Russell]
Matter is a logical construction [Russell]
Radiation interference needs waves, but radiation photoelectric effect needs particles [Heisenberg]
An atom's stability after collisions needs explaining (which Newton's mechanics can't do) [Heisenberg]
Position is complementary to velocity or momentum, so the whole system is indeterminate [Heisenberg]
It was formerly assumed that electromagnetic waves could not be a reality in themselves [Heisenberg]
The concept of a field gradually replaced the substances in explaining relations between charges [Einstein/Infeld]
'Gunk' is an individual possessing no parts that are atoms [Chihara]
In physics, matter is an emergent phenomenon, not part of fundamental ontology [Ladyman/Ross]
That the universe must be 'made of' something is just obsolete physics [Ladyman/Ross]
If all elements are multiples of one (of hydrogen), that suggests once again that matter is unified [Scerri]
The stability of nuclei can be estimated through their binding energy [Scerri]
In the 17th C matter became body, and was then studied by science [Pasnau]
84.5 percent of the universe is made of dark matter [New Sci.]