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e other by a third, and so on. But if we ask for a cause of the whole, we are driven again to the Creator, who must Himself be uncaused. All causal explanations, therefore, must have an arbitrary beginning. That is why it is no defect in the theory of the atomists to have left the original movements of the atoms unaccounted for. -67- It must not be supposed that their reasons for their theories were wholly empirical. The atomic theory was revived in buy christian louboutin shoes modern times to explain the facts of chemistry, but these facts were not known to the Greeks. There was no very sharp distinction, in ancient times, between empirical observation and logical argument. Parmenides, it is true, treated observed facts with contempt, but Empedocles and Anaxagoras would combine much of their metaphysics with observations on water-clocks and whirling buckets. Until the Sophists, no philosopher seems to have doubted that a complete metaphysic and cosmology could be established by a combination of much reasoning and some observation. By good luck, the atomists hit on a hypothesis for which, more than two thousand years later, some evidence was found, but their belief, in their day, was none the less destitute of any solid foundation. * Like the other philosophers of his time, Leucippus was concerned to find a way of reconciling the arguments of Parmenides with the obvious fact of motion and change. As Aristotle says: 鈥 Although these opinions <a href="http://www.skechershoessale.com/mbt-kisumu-c-487.html"><strong>mbt kisumu shoes</strong></a> [those of Parmenides] appear to follow logically i christian louboutin sale uk n a dialectical discussion, yet to believe them seems next door to madness when one considers the facts. For indeed no lunatic seems to be so far out of his senses as to suppose that fire and ice are “one”: it is only between what is right and what seems right from habit that some people are mad enough to see no difference. Leucippus, however, thought he had a theory which harmonized with sense-perception buy christian louboutin and would not abolish either coming-to-be and passing-away or motion and the multiplicity of things. He made these concessions to the facts of perception: on the other hand, he conceded to the Monists that there could be no motion without a void. The result is a theory which he states as follows: “The void is a not-being, and no part of what is is a not-being; for what is in the strict sense of the term is an absolute plenum. This plenum, however, is not one; on the contrary, it is a many infinite in number and invisible owing to the minuteness of their bulk. The many move in the void (for there is a void): and by coming together they produce comingto- be, while by separating they pro- ____________________ * On the logical and mathematical grounds for the theories of the atomists, see Gaston Milhaud, Les Philosophes G茅om猫tres de discount christian louboutin la Gr猫ce, <a href="http://www.skechershoessale.com/mbt-lami-c-32.html"><strong>mbt lami shoes</strong></a> Ch. IV. ? € On Generation and Corruption, 325 a. -68- duce passing-away. Moreover, they act and suffer action whenever they chance to be in contact (for there they are not one), and they generate by being put together and becoming intertwined. From the genuinely one, on the other hand, there could never have come to be a multiplicity, nor from the genuinely many a one: that is impossible.” It will be seen that there was one point on which everybody so far was agreed, namely that there could be no motion in a plenum. In this, all alike were mistaken. There can be cyclic motion in a plenum, provided it has always existed. The idea was that a thing could only move into an empty place, and that, in a plenum, there are no empty places. It might be contended, perhaps validly, that motion could never begin in a plenum, but it cannot be val christian louboutin website idly maintained that it could not occur at all. To the Greeks, however, it seemed that one must either acquiesce in the unchanging world of Parmenides, or admit the void. Now the arguments of P louboutin replicas armenides against not-being seemed logically irrefutable against the void, and they were reinforced by the dis UK christian louboutin covery that where there seems to be nothing there is air. (This is an example of the confused mixture of logic and observation that was common.) We may put the Parmenidean position in this way: “You say there is the void; therefore the void is not nothing; therefore it is not the void.” It cannot be said that the atomists answered this argument; they merely proclaimed that they proposed to ignore it, on the ground that motion is a fact of exp christian louboutin discount erience, and therefore there must be a void, however difficult it may be to conceive. * Let us consider the subsequent history of this problem. The first and most obvious way of avoiding the logical difficulty is to distinguish between matter and space. According to this view, space is not nothing, but is of the nature of a receptacle, which may or may not have any given part filled with matter. Aristotle says ( Physics, 208 b): “The theory that the void exists involves the existence of place: for ____________________ * Bailey (op. cit. p. 75) maintains, on the contrary, that Leucippus had an answer, which was “extremely subtle.” It consisted essentially in admitting the existence of something (the void) which was not corporeal. Similarly Burnet says: “It is a curious fact that the Atomists, who are commonly regarded as the great materialists of antiquity, were actually the first to say cheap christian louboutin shoes distinctly that a thing might be real without being a body.” -69- one would define void as place bereft of body.” This view is set forth with the utmost explicitness by Newton, who asserts the existence of absolute space, and accordingly distinguishes absolute from relative <a href="http://www.skechershoessale.com/"><strong>mbt shoe sale</strong></a> motion. In the Copernican controversy, both sides (however little they may have realized it) were committed to this view, since they thought there was a difference between saying “the heavens revolve from east to west” and saying “the earth rotates from west to east.” If all motion is relative, these two statements are merely different ways of saying the same thin christian louboutin sale g, like “John is the father of James” and “James is the son of John.” But if all motion is relative, and space is not substantial, we are left with the Parmenidean arguments against the void on our hands. Descartes, whose arguments are of just the same sort as those of early Greek philosophers, said that extension is the essence of matter, and therefore there is matter everywhere. For him, extension is an adjective, not a substantive; its substantive is matter, and without its substantive it cannot exist. Empty spa louboutin uk ######## ce, to him, is as absurd as happiness without a sentient being who is happy. Leibniz, on somewhat different grounds, also believed in the plenum, but he maintained that space is merely a system of relations. On this subject there was a famous controversy between him and Newton, the latter represented by Clarke. The controversy remained undecided until the time of Einstein, whose theory conclusively gave the victory to Leibniz. The modern physicist, while he still believes that matter is in some sense atomic, does not believe in empty space. Where there is not matter, there is still something, notably light-waves. Matter no longer has the lofty status that it acquired in philosophy through the arguments of Parmenides. It is not unchanging substance, but merely a way of grouping events. Some eve christian louboutin bridal shoes nts belong to groups that can be regarded as material things; others, such as light-waves, do not. It is the events that are the stuff of the world, and each of them is of brief duration. In this respect, modern physics is on the side of Heraclitus as against Parmenides. But it was on the side of Parmenides until Einstein and quantum theory. As regards space, the modern view is that it is christian louboutin heels neither a substance, as Newton maintained, and as Leucippus and Democritus ought to have said, nor an adjective of extended bodies, as Descartes thought, -70- but a system of relations, as Leibniz held. It is not by any means clear whether this view is compatible with the existence of the void. Perhaps, as a matter of abstract logic, it can be reconciled with the void. We might say that, between any two things, there is a certain greater or smaller distance, and that distance does not imply the existence of intermediate things. Such a point of view, however, would be impossible to utilize in modern physics. Since Einstein, distance is between events, not between things, and involves time as well as space. It is essentially a causal conception, and in modern physics there is no action at a distance. All this, however, is based upon empirical rather than logical grounds. Moreover the modern view cannot be stated except in terms of diff christian louboutin sale erential equations, and would therefore be unintelligible to the philosophers of antiquity. It would seem, accordingly, that the logical development of the views of the atomists is the Newtonian theory of absolute space, which meets the difficulty of attributing reality to notbeing. To this theory there are no logical objections. The chief objection is that absolute space is absolutely unknowable, and cannot therefore be a necessary hypothesis <a href="http://www.436100.info/view.php?id=85635"><strong>Blogs » My Trading Cafe (Powered by phpFoX)</strong></a> in an empirical science. The more practical objection is that physics can get on without it. But the world of the louboutin london atomists remains logically possible, and is more akin to the actual world than is the world of any other of the ancient philosophers. Democritus worked out his theories in considerable detail, and some of the working out is interesting. Each atom, he said, was impenetrable and indivisible because it contained no void. When you use a knife to cut an apple, the knife has to find empty places where it can penetrate; if UK christian louboutin the apple contained no void, it woul christian louboutin bridal shoes d be infinitely hard and therefore physically indivisible. Each atom is internally unchanging, and in fact a Parmenidean One. The only things that atoms do are to move and hit each other, and sometimes to combine when they happen to have shapes that are capable of interlocking. They are of all sorts of shapes; fire is composed of small spherical atoms, and so is the soul. Atoms, by collision, produce vortices, which generate bodi christian louboutin heels es and ultimately worlds. * There are many worlds, some growing, some decaying; some may have no sun or moon, some several. Every world has a beginning and an end. A world may be ____________________ * On the way in which this was supposed to happen, see Bailey, op. cit., p. 138 ff. -71- destroyed by collision with a larger world. This cosmology may be summarized in Shelley’s