Why Atomism Failed

Leclerc On the Physical as Matter

If you are new to this series, let me catch you up. As part of my research into elements for a doctoral dissertation, I am reading two books by Ivor Leclerc, The Nature of Physical Existence (1972) and The Philosophy of Nature (1986). Leclerc (1915–1999) was born in South Africa and earned a PhD from King's College London in 1949. He held academic positions at the University of Glasgow and the University of Bonn before joining Emory University in the United States, where he taught for 21 years. Leclerc was noted for his work on Alfred North Whitehead's metaphysics and process philosophy. My interest is in how both men, but mostly Leclerc, understood the philosophy of nature in their time.

This is the third in a series of posts examining his thesis that the philosophy of nature was abandoned and needs to be revisited, particularly the idea of “atoms.” I have not formally numbered these posts because I am not sure if they will be a succession. Also, as background, my dissertation at St. Patrick’s Pontifical University in Ireland deals with the question of whether atoms are truly elements, building on a previous thesis in the affirmative.

But I may have been wrong. I honestly have more questions than answers at this point. The history of “atomism” is, shall we say, multifaceted. I am interested in seeing if atomic theory can be recast as a hylemorphic theory in the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition. With that being said, why care?

Why Care About the Answer?

Leclerc’s contention, which I agree with, is that as Aristotelian natural philosophy was shunned in the seventeenth century, and as other Greek philosophies such as atomism were revisited, the entire approach to natural philosophy changed, ultimately shoving natural philosophy itself to the side to make room for atomic theory. The result is that “motion” came to be seen not as a body at work being actualized into what it is to become, but as simply locomotion, movement from one place to another. Atoms were described as indivisible particles (little parts) that move in space, and the resulting philosophical outlook of such atomism is that everything physical, including living things and us humans, is just a collection of atoms doing their thing. There is no need for a natural philosophy under this world view.

While I am studying Leclerc, I am also studying ancient atomism, so let me just add here for comparison that Democritus and his teacher Leucippus are considered the founders of atomism. They held strict determinist views in that even the human soul is also composed of atoms moving by necessity. This view has radical implications for how we view the universe and our place in it. We have no significance. We have no purpose, no free will, no control over our destiny or choices. So, it is a very important idea to examine.

As I’ve said before, I am also interested in this question because it affected me personally as a chemist, much more than I realized. It’s hard to have healthy relationships when you view your neighbor, spouse, or child as a collection of atoms with no free will. It’s hard to make sense of love. Rethinking nature as full of substance in a hylemorphic (matter-form) framework has been difficult for me, so I imagine it will be difficult for the rest of our society during this technologically wonderful, albeit heavily dependent on atomism, scientific age in which we live. And with that being said, let’s get into matter.

The Physical as Matter?

Chapter 3 of The Philosophy of Nature (linked above) deals with “the physical as matter.” Leclerc has already made the case (see my previous posts) that what changed in the seventeenth century was how that which “physically exists” is viewed. He calls these “physical existents.” Instead of substances (i.e., bodies) being the physical existents, which in Aristotelian terms are top-down situations where form actualizes matter into a composite being, the matter being disposed to the form, matter itself came to be viewed as itself a physical existent. This is significant because in the Aristotelian view, matter is “prime matter,” pure potentiality and not a physical existent. For Aristotle as well as for Aquinas, pure matter does not and cannot exist. All matter that exists is formed matter.

But in an atomistic view, the indivisible particles are the matter. There is no form in their view, only determinism and necessity of locomotion, hence it is a bottom-up view. (I get the impression scholars frown on such simplistic terms as top-down and bottom-up, but for me they are apt.) These matter-particles are not only indivisible but unchanging and infinite such that multiple worlds exist.

In the Aristotelian view, to ask about nature means to inquire into the being of substances. What is it? But for atomism, we only inquire into locomotion. This is why modern science focuses on dynamics and kinetics. Natural science is considered the only natural philosophy needed, and there is no room for inquiry into the being of substances.

Atomism is a mechanical world view. As atomic theory gave way to quantum theory, the world view became mathematical. Leclerc says with this transformation, even mathematics and space became considered physical existents, but I will not address that any further in this post. I want to explore the consequences of viewing matter as a physical existent in atomism. Here’s Leclerc:

Let me illustrate this in seventeenth-century thought. The answer of the seventeenth century to this question of the physical existent—the answer which determined the entire subsequent development of the science of physics (i.e., of nature), and also of many others, down into this century-this answer was that the physical existent is matter. (1986, p. 36)

Vulnerabilities of the Atomist Argument

The reason I simultaneously study ancient Greek philosophy while reading Leclerc is that what happened in the seventeenth century parallels in a lot of ways the idealistic battle between the atomists of old and Aristotle (among others). It’s ground already covered! Also, let me add that the reason we are focusing on seventeenth century is because this is the time when the Scientific Revolution is usually said to have occurred. The atomism of that time is vulnerable to the same arguments that Aristotle posed regarding continuous quantities and infinite divisibility. These objections are said to render the concept of an atomic body a contradiction (1986, p. 37). The problem for a non- or newbie-Aristotelian like me is that I do not understand Aristotle’s arguments here. So, let’s deal with that.

In his Physics, Book VI, Part 1, Aristotle argues that no continuum is composed of indivisible parts. (I like to read Aquinas’s commentary.)

Alas! We need to go back further. Why is Aristotle concerned with indivisibility? He is concerned because his predecessors, namely the atomists Leucippus and Democritus, held that atoms are indivisible. The word atomos means just that, “uncuttable.” For them, atoms are unbreakable building blocks of matter, the smallest units, that move in a void. Everything is atoms and void. The atoms are being; the void is non-being. And why did they posit such a description of the universe? Because the pre-Socratic philosophers were interested in providing a more rational depiction of the cosmos in response to the traditions of their predecessors steeped in myth, such as Homer’s epics and Hesiod’s Theogony. Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, among others, began to search for the underlying substance or principle in nature that explains its stability as well as change. This was the first real inquiry into elements. The search for the fundamental components of the universe spans the history of humanity.

The pre-Socratic philosophers had to contend with how to explain stability and change. Empedocles was the first to posit the four classical elements, earth, water, air, and fire, which Aristotle adopted. However, Aristotle did not adopt the atomist view because he concludes that such a view is illogical.

In his works, Aristotle sees nature as a continuum, a continuous whole, and therefore, he sees no possibility for either atoms or the void. His argument against atomism also derives from his definitions of consecutive, contiguous, and continuous. Aristotle begins Physics Book VI with a summary of the definitions he gives in Book V:

Now, if the terms “continuous,” “in contact,” and “consecutive” are understood as defined above—things being continuous if their extremities are one, in contact if their extremities are together, and consecutive if there is nothing of their own kind intermediate between them—nothing that is continuous can be composed of indivisibles.

For instance, a line cannot be composed of points, the line being continuous and the point indivisible. (Physics, Book VI, Part 1)

Consecutive things come in order but do not have to touch, and this can refer to position or time. Houses on a street are numbered consecutively, but there can be things between them, such as a bicycle or trees. Dentist appointments can come in order, but the dentist could go to lunch between two appointments.

In contact things are consecutive and touch with nothing in between. Beads on a necklace are in contact, as would be a series of back-to-back appointments with no breaks in between. These are also called contiguous, such as we say about the contiguous states of the United States that are touching, a distinction that excludes Alaska and Hawaii. To be in contact, the extremities must touch.

Continuous things are both consecutive and contiguous, but they have a further distinction in that the extremities not only touch but merge the two things into one. Aristotle gives the examples of lines, time, and motion. Three lines added together form one line. He likewise thought time and motion are continuous, made of extremes that merge into one. Thus, in this view, Aristotle also deduced that such continuous things can be divided infinitely. There is no ‘smallest piece’ of a line, time, or motion. We may speak of a nanosecond or nanometer, but we can still speak of fractions of those quantities. He said that a line cannot be made up of points because points have no spatial extension, and, thus, no extremities of any points exist to be joined to form a continuity. It would be like trying to add 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 and get 1. It's impossible regardless of how many zeros you add.

For Democritus, however, the atom is the physical existent. It has spatial extension and moves in a void. Democritus, who lived before Aristotle but was a younger contemporary of Socrates and one of the last pre-Socratics, was trying to answer his own questions about how things can change in nature yet remain stable. For Democritus, following Leucippus, atoms are in contact (but not continuous) to make up the universe. Thus, atomism, which holds that atoms are the smallest pieces of matter, is impossible for Aristotle because it denies the seamless flow of continuity in nature.

I think I will have a lot to say about this later. In chemistry, we do not think of atoms as being in contact but more as merging into one compound when they bond, so I would like to revisit Aristotle’s objections to atomism.

Also, one tiny but cool tangent, you might be wondering about points and particles. Indeed, Galileo much later proposed atoms as atomi non quanti (atoms without extension) and rejected corporeal atomism in favor of mathematical atomism, and we see the same idea around today when theoretical physicists speak of “point particles” that lack extension. So much for the background; now let’s return to Leclerc.

Leibniz and Whitehead on Relation

Okay, I should have said back to what Leclerc said about Whitehead (1861–1947) who recognized the contribution of his predecessor, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716). In the seventeenth century when atomism re-emerged, Leclerc says Leibniz strongly criticized the idea that matter is the physical existent, showing as Aristotle did that such a conception of nature is untenable (1986, p. 39). He argued that extension is not an attribute we assign to any physical existent, but that extension is a relation between a plurality of physical existents. Whitehead’s role was to recognize the significance of Leibniz’s argument in the next century, so let’s examine Leibniz’s position.

Leibniz opted for the term “extensive connection” instead of extension (1986, p. 40). By the term, he meant that we do not consider any single thing in isolation.

The only way, he held, that motion can be coherently explained is by finding the source of motion in the nature of the physical existent. We have to recognize with Aristotle, Leibniz argued, that the physical existent must be in-act, and that this entails an inner process of actualization of potentiality. Motion can then consistently be understood as derivative from the acting of the physical existent. On this basis, too, the concept of “force,” which Leibniz agreed with Newton is requisite in the science of physics, can be philosophically understood. (1986, p. 40)

We look in nature for the source of motion. Like Aristotle said, the substance (that physically exist) is continually being actualized according to its potency, becoming what it is meant to be. It is continuous. These are, of course, Aristotelian terms of hylemorphism and they bring formal, final, and efficient causality back into union with material causality. Atomism excludes all causality but the material. Think of motion here as development. An acorn becomes an oak in a continuous way. We do not divide each time segment or physical characteristic into parts but see its growth as a continuum in relation to the rest of its environment. The acorn is moving from something to something else.

Note that Leibniz also tied natural motion to Newtonian force. One criticism of Newton is that he did not account for the source of force, so it seems Leibniz tries to do so by at least returning the idea of force to something inherent in nature instead of external to natural bodies.

Leibniz also asserted from there that such relation (from something to something in environment) implies an order (1986, p, 42). For there to be order, there must be relation. Because bodies are made of many components in relation, they are composites. They have parts that function as a whole. This is very much in line with Aristotle and Aquinas’s idea about the blending of mixed bodies, which I have explained as very close to chemical bonding. (See my series, “Are the Elements Still Elements?”) What got me excited here is that Leibniz provides a more modern refutation of atomism on the basis of Aristotelian natural philosophy. I plan to return to this idea later in my work.

So as not to forget Whitehead, Leclerc also quotes him at the end of Chapter 3 of The Philosophy of Nature, and it is a stunning insight. Because, he says, we should not be assigning attributes scientifically to single particles (because matter is not a physical existent), the “laws of motion” that modern chemistry and physics textbooks describe are, to quote Whitehead, “mainly the statistical averages resulting from confused aggregates” (1986, p. 43; Whitehead*). I love this insight.

This is a big deal! It means that modern science is limited in how close its methods can approximate laws of nature, including motion, because the science views the world as made up of isolated bits of matter, when—stay with me here because I know this firsthand from my own work as a chemist—in reality IT’S NOT LIKE THAT AT ALL. Sorry. I got excited.

The disconnect between what a high school or college textbook teaches and what it’s really like to practice chemistry has bothered me for a long time. Sure, a high school textbook teaches that atoms are little bits of matter bumbling around waiting to be connected like LEGOs in a box, but in practice chemists do not think that way. We think more like cooks in a kitchen. We do not assemble; we formulate, bond, dissociate, and make something new with ingredients. What Whitehead is saying is that if everyone thought of cooking as assembling a salad, we’d only have a confused understanding of what it means to bake a cake.

Chemical bonding is more like Aristotle’s mixing. The elements are subsumed by the substance. For example, sucrose (table sugar) is not really C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁; it is the molecule, the substance, that results when those elements blend/bond. This is not just philosophical but also experimental. The entire basis for bonding in chemistry is quantum theory which describes electrons as ‘gluing’ nuclei together due to energy differences and stability. The substance is determined by the form, which is aimed at the purpose. Modern chemistry is not really atomistic so much as it is about the end, the purpose, and the cause.

So, there it is.

No one today thinks of matter as just atoms that are indivisible. Atomism has failed. Matter is not the same thing as atoms. Matter is not a mathematical construct of point particles. It is something primary that is formed, much more like Aristotle thought of it so long ago. We need to figure out how to re-cast modern science in an authentic natural philosophy, and I would say more accurately to cast it within Thomistic philosophy because, for reasons I must save for later, Aquinas improved on a lot of Aristotle’s thought. Come to think of it, science itself is a continuum. We all form a united succession of building knowledge.

Hopefully, I’ll do my little part. I could say so much more because I am starting to see how this trajectory fits together, but I need to stop for now.

Until next time…

*Here’s the book with Whitehead’s quote. A. N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; New York: Macmillan, 1926).