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Full Idea
Russell and Wittgenstein sought to reduce everything to singular facts or states of affairs, and Armstrong and Keith Campbell have more recently advocated ontologies of tropes or elementary states of affairs.
Clarification
'Tropes' are single bare instances of properties
Gist of Idea
Modern trope theory tries, like logical atomism, to reduce things to elementary states
Source
report of Bertrand Russell (The Philosophy of Logical Atomism [1918]) by Brian Ellis - The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism Ch.3 n 11
Book Ref
Ellis,Brian: 'The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism' [Acumen 2002], p.58
A Reaction
A very interesting historical link. Logical atomism strikes me as a key landmark in the history of philosophy, and not an eccentric cul-de-sac. It is always worth trying to get your ontology down to minimal small units, to see what happens.
| 5465 | Modern trope theory tries, like logical atomism, to reduce things to elementary states [Russell, by Ellis] |
| 15809 | A state of affairs pertains to a thing if it implies that it has some property [Chisholm] |
| 15828 | I propose that events and propositions are two types of states of affairs [Chisholm] |
| 15829 | The mark of a state of affairs is that it is capable of being accepted [Chisholm] |
| 18374 | Truthmaking needs states of affairs, to unite particulars with tropes or universals. [Armstrong] |
| 15267 | Events are changes in states of affairs (which consist of structured particulars, with powers and relations) [Harré/Madden] |
| 15543 | How do things combine to make states of affairs? Constituents can repeat, and fail to combine [Lewis] |
| 15009 | We must distinguish 'concrete' from 'abstract' and necessary states of affairs. [Sider] |