Affiliation:
1. Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin
Abstract
Prime matter plays an indispensable role in Aristotle’s philosophy, enabling him to avoid the pitfalls of both naïve Platonism and nominalism. Prime matter is best thought of as a kind of infinitely divisible and atomless bare particularity, grounding the distinctness of distinct members of the same species. Such bare particularity is needed in symmetrical situations, like a world consisting of indistinguishable Max Black spheres. Bare particularity is especially important in modern physics, given the homogeneity and isotropy of space. With the importance of fields in classical, relativistic, and quantum physics, we have good reason to prefer something like Aristotle’s continuous, infinitely divisible matter over indivisible particles. Mass and energy in relativistic physics also points in the direction of prime matter as the enduring substrate of these quantities. Recent work on Aristotelian interpretations of quantum mechanics, further underscores the contemporary relevance of prime matter.
Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Reference53 articles.
1. Significance of Electromagnetic Potentials in the Quantum Theory
2. Aharonov, Yakir, Sanu Popescu, and Daniel Rohrlich (2016) ‘On conservation laws in quantum mechanics,’ arXiv:1609.05041 [quant-ph].
3. Interpreting the many worlds interpretation
4. Identity Through Time
Cited by
1 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献