4 ms·

Atoms are an abstraction, just like the higher level abstractions you mention. They happen to be a very good/stable abstraction over the time/energy scales rele

Atoms are an abstraction, just like the higher level abstractions you mention. They happen to be a very good/stable abstraction over the time/energy scales relevant to day-to-day life, but they too are made of pieces that can disintegrate, recombine, etc. It's a mistake to assume that anything that can be analyzed in terms of smaller pieces is less real than the pieces. Neither is real, or both are.

barrkel 10y ago
Sure; I'm using atoms to refer to physical reality rather than abstractions people are applying to the top; atoms more in the indivisible sense, than what you think of in the physics lexicon. I think your dichotomy is false. Human simplifications of the world are "real" in so far as they correspond with what they model (or else we'll get into a debate about what "real" means). The higher up in the abstraction stack you go, the bigger things (generally) you can model, but the details vary more. This may be more "real", or less "real", depending on what you're trying to model and how well the conceptual framework fits; e.g. you won't get far with modelling fluid as Newtonian marbles. The point being that it's not a binary proposition, the models are all approximations, and any "cause" you find is only with respect to a story people have made up about the way the world works.
- jaddood 10y ago
  It all depends on your ability to model things. In the case where that ability is perfect (which may not exist,) all the "macroscopic" elements of reality you recognize are as true as their "microscopic" elements. That is, if your model of a fluid is perfectly correct in respect to individual atoms, then proving something about atoms automatically proves it to a fluid. If you prove that atoms exist then fluids exist (if your model is perfect.) This problem is already tackled by science. In physics, models are known to be limited and target only a simplification of reality, and they become greatly wrong in special cases and thus unacceptable. For example, modelling a ball thrown in the air neglecting air resistance may be "correct" enough when it is a lead ball, but will become apparantly unacceptably "incorrect" when applied to a ping pong ball.
- monktastic1 10y ago
  But even "physical reality" is hard to pin down. Plenty of evidence from QM suggests that we should not think of (any) physical properties as objectively real. Trying to pin reasons on them seems troublesome as well.

barrkel 10y ago

Sure; I'm using atoms to refer to physical reality rather than abstractions people are applying to the top; atoms more in the indivisible sense, than what you think of in the physics lexicon. I think your dichotomy is false. Human simplifications of the world are "real" in so far as they correspond with what they model (or else we'll get into a debate about what "real" means). The higher up in the abstraction stack you go, the bigger things (generally) you can model, but the details vary more. This may be more "real", or less "real", depending on what you're trying to model and how well the conceptual framework fits; e.g. you won't get far with modelling fluid as Newtonian marbles. The point being that it's not a binary proposition, the models are all approximations, and any "cause" you find is only with respect to a story people have made up about the way the world works.

jaddood 10y ago
It all depends on your ability to model things. In the case where that ability is perfect (which may not exist,) all the "macroscopic" elements of reality you recognize are as true as their "microscopic" elements. That is, if your model of a fluid is perfectly correct in respect to individual atoms, then proving something about atoms automatically proves it to a fluid. If you prove that atoms exist then fluids exist (if your model is perfect.) This problem is already tackled by science. In physics, models are known to be limited and target only a simplification of reality, and they become greatly wrong in special cases and thus unacceptable. For example, modelling a ball thrown in the air neglecting air resistance may be "correct" enough when it is a lead ball, but will become apparantly unacceptably "incorrect" when applied to a ping pong ball.
monktastic1 10y ago
But even "physical reality" is hard to pin down. Plenty of evidence from QM suggests that we should not think of (any) physical properties as objectively real. Trying to pin reasons on them seems troublesome as well.