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4 ideas
| 13276 | The unmoved mover and the soul show Aristotelian form as the ultimate mereological atom [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's discussion of the unmoved mover and of the soul confirms the suspicion that form, when it is not thought of as the object represented in a definition, plays the role of the ultimate mereological atom within his system. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 6.6 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle is concerned with which things are 'divisible', and he cites these two examples as indivisible, but they may be too unusual to offer an actual theory of how Aristotle builds up wholes from atoms. He denies atoms in matter. |
| 13277 | The 'form' is the recipe for building wholes of a particular kind [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Thus in Aristotle we may think of an object's formal components as a sort of recipe for how to build wholes of that particular kind. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 7.2.5 | |
| A reaction: In the elusive business of pinning down what Aristotle means by the crucial idea of 'form', this analogy strikes me as being quite illuminating. It would fit DNA in living things, and the design of an artifact. |
| 12507 | A mass consists of its atoms, so the addition or removal of one changes its identity [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Whilst they exist united together, the mass consisting of the same atoms must be the same mass, ...but if one of those atoms be taken away, or one new one added, it is no longer the same mass, or the same body. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.03) | |
| A reaction: This is clearly a 'strict and philosophical' usage, rather than a 'loose and popular' one - indeed, so strict as to be ridiculous. Knowing what we do now of quantum activity (emission of photons etc), we would abandon 'identity' totally. |
| 12559 | Complex ideas are collections of qualities we attach to an unknown substratum [Locke] |
| Full Idea: The complex ideas that our names of the species of substances properly stand for are collections of qualities, as have been observed to co-exist in an unknown substratum which we call 'substance'. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.06.07) | |
| A reaction: Locke refers to a substratum, but this is not actually a 'bare' substratum, as he believes in real essences (see other quotations), but believes we have absolutely no chance of knowing them. |