Democritus: atomic theory

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democritus#Atomic_hypothesis

The theory of Democritus and Leucippus held that everything is composed of "atoms", which are physically, but not geometrically, indivisible; that between atoms lies empty space; that atoms are indestructible; have always been, and always will be, in motion; that there are an infinite number of atoms, and kinds of atoms, which differ in shape, and size. Of the mass of atoms, Democritus said "The more any indivisible exceeds, the heavier it is." But his exact position on weight of atoms is disputed.[1]

Democritus, along with Leucippus and Epicurus, proposed the earliest views on the shapes and connectivity of atoms. They reasoned that the solidness of the material corresponded to the shape of the atoms involved. Thus, iron atoms are solid and strong with hooks that lock them into a solid; water atoms are smooth and slippery; salt atoms, because of their taste, are sharp and pointed; and air atoms are light and whirling, pervading all other materials.[28] Democritus was the main proponent of this view. Using analogies from our sense experiences, he gave a picture or an image of an atom that distinguished them from each other by their shape, their size, and the arrangement of their parts. Moreover, connections were explained by material links in which single atoms were supplied with attachments: some with hooks and eyes others with balls and sockets.[29] 

The Democritean atom is an inert solid (merely excluding other bodies from its volume) that interacts with other atoms mechanically. In contrast, modern, quantum-mechanical atoms interact via electric and magnetic force fields and are far from inert.

Lucretius, describing atomism in his De rerum natura gives very clear and compelling empirical arguments for the original atomist theory. He observes that any material is subject to irreversible decay. Through time, even hard rocks are slowly worn down by drops of water. Things have the tendency to get mixed up: mix water with soil and you get mud, that will usually not un-mix by itself. Wood decays. However, we see in nature and technology that there are mechanisms to recreate 'pure' materials like water, air, metals. The seed of an oak will grow out into an oak tree, made of similar wood as historical oak trees, the wood of which has already decayed.

The conclusion is that many properties of materials must derive from something inside, that will itself never decay, something that stores for eternity the same inherent, indivisible properties. The basic question is: why has everything in the world not yet decayed, and how can exactly the same materials, plants, animals be recreated again and again? One obvious solution to explain how indivisible properties can be conveyed in a way not easily visible to human senses, is to hypothesize the existence of 'atoms'. These classical 'atoms' are nearer to our modern concept of 'molecule' than to the atoms of modern science. The other big point of classical atomism is that there must be a lot of open space between these 'atoms': the void. Lucretius gives reasonable arguments that the void is absolutely necessary to explain how gasses and fluids can change shape, flow, while metals can be molded, without changing the basic material properties.

The atomistic void hypothesis was a response to the paradoxes of Parmenides and Zeno, the founders of metaphysical logic, who put forth difficult to answer arguments in favor of the idea that there can be no movement. They held that any movement would require a void—which is nothing—but a nothing cannot exist. The Parmenidean position was "You say there 'is' a void; therefore the void is not nothing; therefore there is not the void."

The atomists agreed that motion required a void, but simply ignored the argument of Parmenides on the grounds that motion was an observable fact. Therefore, they asserted, there must be a void.

[…]

Epicurean Atomism

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atomism-ancient/#7

[…]

Democritus' atomism was revived in the early Hellenistic period, and an atomist school founded in Athens about 306, by Epicurus (341–270 BCE). The Epicureans formed more of a closed community than other schools, and promoted a philosophy of a simple, pleasant life lived with friends. The community included women, and some of its members raised children. The works of the founder were revered and some of them were memorized, a practice that may have discouraged philosophical innovation by later members of the school.

Epicurus seems to have learned of atomist doctrine through Democritus' follower Nausiphanes. Because Epicurus made some significant changes in atomist theory, it is often thought that his reformulation of the physical theory is an attempt to respond to Aristotle's criticisms of Democritus. Even more significant, however, is the increasing centrality of ethical concerns to Epicurus' atomism, and the importance of the view that belief in an atomist physical theory helps us live better lives.

Epicurus takes to heart a problem Democritus himself recognized (see 2. above), which is that atomist theory threatens to undermine itself if it removes any trust we can place in the evidence of the senses, by claiming that colors, etc. are unreal. He notoriously said that ‘all perception is true,’ apparently distinguishing between the causal processes which impact our senses, all of which originate with the films of atoms sloughed off by objects, and the judgments we make on the basis of them, which may be false. Reasoning to truths about things that are not apparent—like the existence of atoms—depends on the evidence of the senses, which is always true in that it consists of impacts from actually existing films. For particular phenomena, like meteorological events, Epicurus endorses the existence of multiple valid explanations, acknowledging that we may have no evidence for preferring one explanation over another.

It may be that Epicurus was less troubled by any such epistemological uncertainties because of his emphasis on the value of atomist theory for teaching us how to live the untroubled and tranquil life. Denying any divine sanction for morality, and holding that the experience of pleasure and pain are the source of all value, Epicurus thought we can learn from atomist philosophy that pursuing natural and necessary pleasures—rather than the misleading desires inculcated by society—will make pleasure readily attainable. At the same time, we will avoid the pains brought on by pursuing unnatural and unnecessary pleasures. Understanding, on the basis of the atomist theory, that our fears of the gods and of death are groundless will free us from our chief mental pains.

Epicurus made significant changes to atomist physical theory, and some of these have been traced to Aristotle's criticisms of Democritus. It seems that Democritus did not properly distinguish between the thesis of the physical uncuttability of atoms and that of their conceptual indivisibility: this raises a problem about how atoms can have parts, as evidenced by their variations in shape or their ability to compose a magnitude, touching one another in a series on different sides. Epicurus distinguished the two, holding that uncuttable atoms did have conceptually distinct parts, but that there was a lowest limit to these.

Epicurus' view of the motion of atoms also differs from Democritus'. Rather than talking of a motion towards the center of a given cosmos, possibly created by the cosmic vortex, Epicurus grants to atoms an innate tendency to downward motion through the infinite cosmos. The downward direction is simply the original direction of atomic fall . This may be in response to Aristotelian criticisms that Democritus does not show why atomic motion exists, merely saying that it is eternal and that it is perpetuated by collisions. Moreover, although this is not attested in the surviving writings of Epicurus, authoritative later sources attribute to him the idea that it belongs to the nature of atoms occasionally to exhibit a slight, otherwise uncaused swerve from their downward path. This is thought to explain why atoms have from infinite time entered into collisions instead of falling in parallel paths: it is also said, by Lucretius, to enter into the account of action and responsibility. 

[…]

Clinamen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinamen

Clinamen (pronounced /klaɪˈneɪmɛn/, plural clinamina, derived from clīnāre, to incline) is the Latin name Lucretius gave to the unpredictable swerve of atoms, in order to defend the atomistic doctrine of Epicurus.

According to Lucretius, the unpredictable swerve occurs "at no fixed place or time":

When atoms move straight down through the void by their own weight, they deflect a bit in space at a quite uncertain time and in uncertain places, just enough that you could say that their motion has changed. But if they were not in the habit of swerving, they would all fall straight down through the depths of the void, like drops of rain, and no collision would occur, nor would any blow be produced among the atoms. In that case, nature would never have produced anything.[1]

This indeterminacy, according to Lucretius, provides the "free will which living things throughout the world have."[2]

Modern usage

The OED continues to define clinamen as an inclination or a bias.

In Finnegans Wake, Joyce alludes to the term on the very first words of his work: riverrun, past Eve and Adams, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth, Castle and Environs. If "Eve and Adam's" refers to "even atoms" in the Epicurean sense, the word swerve has a special meaning.

In Difference and Repetition, Gilles Deleuze employs the term in his description of multiplicities, pointing to the observation at the heart of the theory of clinamen that "it is indeed essential that atoms be related to other atoms."[3] Though atoms affected by clinamen engage each other in a relationship of reciprocal supposition, Deleuze rejects this version of multiplicity, both because the atoms are too independent, and because the multiplicity is "spatio-temporal" rather than internal.

Simone de Beauvoir,[4] Jacques Lacan,[5] Harold Bloom,[6] Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, Alain Badiou[7] as well as Michel Serres[8] have made extensive use of the idea of the clinamen, albeit with very different readings.

References

^ Lucretius, ii. 216-224. Translation from Brad Inwood, L. P. Gerson, (1994), The Epicurus Reader, page 66. Hackett

^ Lucretius, ii. 251

^ Gilles Deleuze, Paul Patton, (1994), Difference and repetition, page 184

^ in "The Ethics of Ambiguity" (1948), trans. Bernard Frechtman; Publisher: Citadel Press, ISBN 0-8065-0160-X

^ in "The four fundamental concepts of psycho-analysis" (1973), Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. (April 17, 1998), ISBN 0-393-31775-7

^ in "The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry" (1973), Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 2 edition (April 10, 1997) ISBN 0-19-511221-0

^ in "Theory of the Subject" (1982), trans. Bruno Bosteels; (New York: Continuum, 2009): ISBN 978-0-8264-9673-7 (hardcover)

^ Hanjo Berressem in Abbas, N. (2005), Mapping Michel Serres, page 53 University of Michigan Press

Žižek at Toronto City Hall

http://ca.artinfo.com/news/story/830398/nuit-blanches-aha-moment-slavoj-zizeks-end-of-the-world

by Benjamin Bruneau, ARTINFO Canada

An island of enraptured silence floated amidst the sea of noise, crowds, and Scotiabank Nuit Blanche revelry at Toronto City Hall, Saturday night, as the Council Chambers played host to international superstar theorist Slavoj Žižek.

Nominally part of curators Janine Marchessault and Michael Prokopow’s "Museum for the End of the World," Žižek and co-presenters Arthur Kroker and Brenda Longfellow spoke about technology, biology, politics, and capital, as the world as we know it surely pushes towards some kind of termination.

Žižek was in absolute top form, rhapsodizing at length -- nearly two-and-a-half hours -- to a rapturous, mostly young audience, which nearly rioted when city officials tried to oust members from the aisles and stairways. Bemusedly, Žižek admonished their squeaky-wheel tactics: “If I were you, I’d have agreed and said, ‘Yes, it’s terrible, people shouldn’t make themselves a fire hazard’. And then I’d have stayed put.”

His wide-ranging talk moved from prohibited activities to ethnic cleansing, the cynicism of authority, Facebook and the invasion of the public by the private, internet hard-core pornography, and Casablanca, all in his trademark blend of candor, pop culture, and critical theory.

In keeping with the apocalyptic thematic, he concluded that we are entering a new epoch in humanity, and that, “effectively, the very basic dimension of what it is to be human is changing. In this sense, it’s the end of the world as we know it.” Not one to give-in to despair -- but not one to be overly optimistic, either -- Zizek said that the new human is “radically open to possibility,” but that “if we let things change the way they are, automatically, we are approaching a new, perverse, permissively authoritarian society, which will be authoritarian but in a new way.”

Slavoj Žižek at The Creative Time Summit

http://www.versobooks.com/events/520-slavoj-zizek-at-the-creative-time-summit?utm_source=Master+List&utm_campaign=5e5b9299ab-October2012Newsletter&utm_medium=email

October 12, 2012

NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts

Creative Time has commissioned and presented ambitious public art projects with thousands of artists throughout New York City, across the country, around the world—and now even in outer space.

Slavoj Žižek, author of Less than Nothing and the upcoming The Year of Dreaming Dangerously, will be one of the keynote speakers at the fourth annual Creative Time Summit at NYU’s Skirball Center in New York City on October 12-13. Curated by Nato Thomspson, since 2009 the Creative Time Summit has brought international artists, curators, critics, scholars, and activists to discuss art and its transformative effect on politics. 

Creative Time Summit 2012: Confronting Inequality will focus on global economic inequity and boasts presenters including Mike Daisey, Jeff Chang, Suzanne Lacy,Josh MacPhee, Hito Steyerl and Rebel Díaz. 

Romney’s Sick Joke

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/04/romneys-sick-joke/

Paul Krugman

OK, so Obama did a terrible job in the debate, and Romney did well. But in the end, this isn’t or shouldn’t be about theater criticism, it should be about substance. And the fact is that everything Obama said was basically true, while much of what Romney said was either outright false or so misleading as to be the moral equivalent of a lie.

Above all, there’s this:

MR. ROMNEY: Let — well, actually — actually it’s — it’s — it’s a lengthy description, but number one, pre-existing conditions are covered under my plan.

No, they aren’t. Romney’s advisers have conceded as much in the past; last night they did it again.

I guess you could say that Romney’s claim wasn’t exactly a lie, since some people with preexisting conditions would retain coverage. But as I said, it’s the moral equivalent of a lie; if you think he promised something real, you’re the butt of a sick joke.

And we’re talking about a lot of people left out in the cold — 89 million, to be precise.

Furthermore, all of this should be taken in the context of Romney’s plan not just to repeal Obamacare but to drastically cut Medicaid.

So enough with the theater criticism; Romney needs to be held accountable for dishonesty on a huge scale.

the last hour of the film is the best part