Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

identical. The fundamental particles make up atoms, the atoms combine into molecules, and still we must presume a sameness. Aren’t all water molecules or all salt molecules identical? So we seem justified in calling them ‘things’ and not ‘somethings’. ‘Somethings’ implies some kind of uniqueness. But if we go on adding molecule to molecule, do we not just create things that could, in theory, be replicated exactly, just by putting together the same set of basic elements? In fact, if the universe is infinite, are we not in a position of being able to replicate any arrangement of matter? So nothing could make a claim to uniqueness. In which case, the cut-off point of what is just a thing and what qualifies as a ‘something’ just seems arbitrary, or at least, based solely on how difficult it would be to replicate something in actuality, rather than just in theory.

But, wait up! Let’s go back to what was said about the qualities of an object. All qualities are relationships of some sort. And we can quickly conclude that every object must have a unique set of relationships. Every object is in fact a ‘something’ rather than a thing.

Physics certainly accepts the reality of everything being known only through relation. But physics — and science more generally — finds this situation intolerable. Scientists long for some ‘real’ thing that will ground reality and keep it from being merely about the qualities of the things we perceive. As observed above, they long for what they call a ‘substrate’ — something that exists in its own right and can be shown to exist. In fact, we would be best to call it an ‘ultimate substrate’. It would not be

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