By Alan Chalmers
Drawing at the result of his personal scholarly study in addition to that of others the writer deals, for the 1st time, a entire and documented heritage of theories of the atom from Democritus to the 20 th century. this isn't background for its personal sake. via significantly reflecting at the a number of models of atomic theories of the prior the writer is ready to grapple with the query of what units clinical wisdom except other forms of data, philosophical wisdom particularly. He thereby engages traditionally with matters about the nature and standing of medical wisdom that have been handled in a extra summary manner in his what's This factor referred to as Science?, a publication that has been a typical textual content in philosophy of technological know-how for 3 many years and that's on hand in nineteen languages. Speculations in regards to the basic constitution of subject from Democritus to the seventeenth-century mechanical philosophers and past are construed as categorically particular from atomic theories amenable to experimental research and help and as contributing little to the latter from a old standpoint. The thesis will galvanize historians and philosophers of technology alike and may require a revision of a number average perspectives within the historical past of technological know-how and philosophy. The publication is essential analyzing for college students and students in historical past and Philosophy of technology and may be instructive for and supply a problem to philosophers, historians and scientists extra in general.
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Extra info for The Scientist’s Atom and the Philosopher’s Stone: How Science Succeeded and Philosophy Failed to Gain Knowledge of Atoms
Sample text
Since the paradoxes arise as a result of infinite division they can be resolved if the path to infinite division can be blocked. If some, if not all, of space, time, motion and matter are not continuous, that is, if they are not infinitely divisible in the way they are presumed to be in the construction of the paradoxes, then perhaps the paradoxes can be avoided. Those who considered such a response frequently used the word atom (␣oo) to refer to indivisible magnitudes setting a limit to division.
9 Aristotle responds to Zeno’s paradoxes of motion by insisting that continuous magnitudes such as lines, although potentially divisible at an infinity of points, are not made up of points and cannot be actually divided at an infinity of points. He further assumes that a line is not divided by continuous motion along it, since the motion, like the space and time it involves, is infinitely divisible. Segments of motion, however small, can be paired off with the times taken for that motion and the distances covered by it.
Other problems emerge in the context of infinite series. Every number has its square. 4 is the square of 2, 9 is the square of 3 and so on. What is more, every perfect square has a square root. So each perfect square can be paired with the number that is its square root, and, conversely, each number can be paired with its square. It would seem to follow from this that there are the same number of square roots as there are numbers. But this clashes with the seemingly obvious fact that the perfect squares are a subset of the sequence of natural numbers.
