humanities.philosophy.objectivism

In article @a70g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>, davids@webmaster.com says...
>
> Is the indivisibility of atoms, as integrated by the Greeks,

Is it a tenet of Objectivism that things that don't exist can be
"integrated"? There are no indivisible atoms.

> a
> property those atoms have independent of consciousness?

The *theory* of indivisible atoms exists independently of consciousness,
in that it is written down.

> Note that you
> cannot sensibly argue that they aren't even indivisible in the
> presence of consciousness, because part of what it means to be an atom
> is to be indivisible -- atom means indivisible.

Part of what it means to be a griffin is to have the body of a lion and
the wings of an eagle. But there are no griffins.

> And of course, if the Greek's atoms could really be divisible, then
> our Sun could really be smaller than the Earth. It's arguably more
> absurd to have a divisible atom than a miniscule Sun.

It is not at all absurd to have a divisible atom. The term "atom" did
not stop referring to the same things that it did before Rutherford - it
just turned out to have an unfortunate name.

OTOH, it is contradictory to have a theory with an indivisible divisible
thing. There seems to be some ambiguity here between the model and the
thing the model refers to.

--
Gordon