Paul Needham

This second edition of Macroscopic Metaphysics develops a theory of the modal features of quantities of matter based on their states and possible processes transforming these states and is extended to accommodate modalities introduced in an earlier chapter dealing with individuals. The theory of spatial regions is amplified with the introduction of notions of size and shape in terms of congruence relations based on greater than relations between regions and angles. A major theme of the first edition of the book was the primacy of processes and continuants with the latter divided into quantities of matter and individuals, biological organisms being the prime exemplars of the latter. A recent challenge to this view posed by processual biology, which would reduce biological organisms to processes, is met by marshalling the underlying metaphysics of chemical processes developed in earlier chapters in an extended critique. Apart from the three new chapters dealing with these matters, there are new sections and supplements to the text. The new material strengthens the original project of bringing together traditional metaphysical issues concerning the nature of matter and the philosophy of science, and chemistry in particular.

Chemistry deals with substances and their transformations. School chemistry provides a picture of this in terms of small balls called atoms and ball-and-stick structures called molecules which, despite its crudity, has been taken to justifiably reflect a reductionist conception of macroscopic concepts like the chemical substances and chemical reactions. But with the recent interest in chemistry within the philosophy of science, an extensive and determined criticism has developed of the idea that the macroscopic world has been, or is likely to be, reduced to microscopic theory. From this perspective, it is of interest to see macroscopic ontology treated autonomously. I try to take a first few steps towards spelling this out. It involves recognising entities falling into two broad categories: continuants-things which can have different properties at different times — and processes — things whose temporal parts may have different features, but which themselves stand in contrast to continuants in this respect. The character of each and their interrelations depends on their mereological structure of parts, the exploration of which is one of the prime purposes of the paper.

The following four chapters take up the features of quantities of matter that distinguish them from individuals by their mereological structure. This structure is reflected in the character of certain predicates expressing the property of being a particular kind of substance, say water, and exhibiting one or more phases, such as being liquid and being gas. Such predicates seem to ascribe an amorphous character to their subjects, which authors have tried to more precisely capture in terms of a distributive and a cumulative condition, formulated in terms of the mereological part relation and sum operation, respectively. These conditions are presented in this chapter and generalised to apply to relational predicates. This generalisation is obviously needed for relational predicates like “is the same substance as” and “is warmer than”. But substance and phase predicates, by contrast with the monadic predicates “is a time” and “is a spatial region”, are also taken to be relational, standing between a quantity and a time. The relational interpretation follows the chemist’s understanding of the permanence of matter throughout chemical change, which has been standard at least since the time of Lavoisier. Aristotle and the Stoics can be reasonably interpreted, it seems, to have thought that the distributive condition holds of substance and phase predicates, as discussed in Chap. 5. Whether the conditions can be upheld from a modern perspective is discussed in Chap. 7.Substance and phase predicates fall under the linguistic category of mass predicates in accordance with grammatical criteria for their use with articles in singular inflexion and qualification as much/little rather than many/few. This category is more extensive and includes terms whose normal translations into some foreign languages don’t comply with the grammatical criteria for mass predicates whilst lacking terms whose normal translations into some foreign languages do comply with the grammatical criteria. But whilst linguistically-inspired characterisations of mass predicates in general don’t necessarily say anything about the nature of substances and phases, Quine presents a general reason for rejecting the distributive condition on all mass predicates which he specifically illustrates with substance predicates based on his understanding of what science tells us about the atomic nature of matter. Quine’s case is discussed in Chap. 4, but as we will see in Chap. 7, it isn’t the last word on the import of the microscopic view of matter presented by modern science for the distributive condition. Taking advantage of what has been said about the occupies relation in Chap. 2, versions of the general distributive and cumulative conditions restricted to spatial parts are formulated. This raises the issue of cooccupancy, and some of what has been about this and the very little argument against the feasibility of the idea is reviewed in the final section of this chapter.

A fundamental relation connecting matter with space and time is the occupies relation, standing between a material body, a region of space and an interval of time. Its features and related concepts are discussed in this chapter. Individuals are the material bodies considered first, and it is argued that it is unnecessary to consider the regions they occupy to be bounded by boundary entities. An account of the abutment of individuals is presented on the basis of the spatial regions described in Chap. 1 without needing to introduce boundaries as distinct entities. This is a time-dependent relation which treats times as intervals and accommodates the fact that the bodies in question might move whilst abutting, calling on an account of the occupies relation that accommodates movement. What I call an accumulation condition, formulated in mereological terms, is introduced for this purpose. Analogues of this mereological condition for other predicates are discussed in the sequel.Although a head is said to abut a torso (Smith and Varzi’s example) or the atmosphere abuts the sea (Leonardo), this doesn’t mean that the matter constituting these bodies abuts during the time at issue. Blood circulates between a body’s head and its torso, and matter (water, CO2, etc.) is exchanged between the sea and the atmosphere. This highlights the distinction between individuals (the sea, the atmosphere) and the corresponding quantities of matter of which they are constituted (seawater, air), and shows that individuals don’t in general occupy the same regions as the quantities of matter that constitute them.

Ancient theories of substance based on a continuous view of matter are taken up in this chapter. They bear some resemblance to modern, macroscopic conceptions and therefore have some interest as precursors of modern views as well as being of conceptual interest in their own right. Aristotle’s views of the matter were based on the fundamental tenet that a homogeneous quantity comprises a single substance. Combined with the thesis of the impossibility of cooccupancy (disputed by the Stoics), he was thus able to provide a criterion for a quantity comprising a single substance (i.e., being a pure sample of a substance), namely one all of whose parts are of the same substance. He distinguished four elements, characterised by properties they exhibit in isolation, which combine in one of two kinds of mixing process that he distinguished to yield other substances. It follows from his fundamental tenet that these derived substances have no parts that are elements. The elements are held to be potentially present in the sense that a suitable “decomposition” process would change the quantity into one that is partly the one element, partly another, and so on for the four elements. There are suggestions and problems associated with this account that are not developed or resolved in the extant texts, but some of the central ideas are clear enough and remain at issue in some related guise in modern chemical theory. The Stoics thought the elements are present in their compounds (blends), which might be thought to agree with the modern view. This led them to accept the possibility of cooccupancy and claim that the elements occupy the same place as one another and the blend which they form (which doesn’t entail that an element occupies the same-sized region—of the same volume—when combined as when isolated). However, they failed, as far as I can see, to address the issue of giving a characterisation of the elements that is not only applicable when in isolation. The chapter closes with a discussion of the distinction between potential parts and potential qualities in connection with Holden’s recent book on the early modern discussion of the infinite divisibility of matter.

The constitution relation is discussed in some detail in this chapter. It is a three-place relation standing between an individual, a quantity of matter and a time, allowing for the typically changing constitution of individuals over time. The fact that times are intervals is accommodated and connections with the occupies relation, in terms of which coincidence is defined, are explored. Time-dependent analogues of the mereological relations are defined as triadic relations between two individuals and a time, but there are no corresponding analogues of the mereological operations. Modal features of individuals and quantities are compared. An appendix criticising Van Inwagen’s understanding of parthood as time dependent concludes the chapter.

An ontology of continuants and occurrents to be developed in the course of the book within a framework of regions of space and intervals of time is initially outlined in this chapter. First and foremost, quantities of matter, to which the principles of classical mereology are held to apply, are distinguished from material objects, here called individuals, that change their constitutive matter over time and to which mereological principles don’t apply. The motivation for this and detailed development of the features of the constitutes relation (as distinct from mereological parthood) comes in Chaps. 2 and 3. On this understanding, certain lines of objection to classical principles of mereology are put aside. Rehearsing reasons for rejecting some other suggestions for modifying classical principles mereology serves further to illustrate how the mereological concepts are understood here. But the main thrust of the chapter is to emphasise what the mereological principles say and what they leave open concerning the relations of part, overlap, separation and identity and the operations of sum, product and difference. Classical mereology is an incomplete theory whose axioms can be supplemented in various ways to characterise the kind of objects to which they apply. It is shown how this can be done for a theory reasonably called a theory of temporal intervals and again, when supplemented with an additional, nonmereological, primitive, to develop a theory of spatial regions. Both theories are complete first order theories (i.e., no further independent axioms can be added without contradiction). An analogous development doesn’t seem possible for a pure mereological theory of quantities of matter. Developing a theory of quantities of matter requires introducing times and spaces, as well as other entities, along with predicates relating these various kinds of entities—a project pursued in the following chapters. Readers who are not interested in the technical details may like to skim quickly over the presentations of the theories of times and spaces, together with the proof of completeness, in Sects. 1.3 and 1.4 and their corresponding subsections, and proceed directly to the final section of the chapter which outlines the strategy for the remainder of the book.

Davidson’s account of singular causal statements as expressing relations between events together with his views on event identity lead to inferences involving causal statements which many of his critics find counterintuitive. These are sometimes said to be avoided on Kim’s view of events, in terms of which this line of criticism is often formulated. It is argued that neither Davidson nor Kim offer a satisfactory account of events - an essential prerequisit for the relational theory - and an account of singular causal statements in terms of a modal sentential connective is advocated in place of the relational view. Such an account suffices to block the counter-intuitive inferences without needing to resort to a theory of events. It is suggested that a theory of events might be built upon a connective account of singular causal statements, but no such theory is presented here.

The Aristotelian notion of a proper mixture is that of a homogeneous body potentially separable into a definite proportion of elements. Its relation to more modern chemical ideas is not without interest despite the success of modern atomic theory. But there is a fundamental conflict entailed by Aristotle’s two approaches to the characterisation of elements, one in terms of the properties they exhibit in isolation and another in terms of their role as constituents of compounds. Although one source of problems for Aristotle has been put aside in modern chemistry, it seems that the underlying tension remains an issue.

Despite the importance molecular structure has acquired in 20th century chemistry, more traditional macroscopic notions in terms of a continuous concept of matter continue to play a role in chemical theorising. In the light of the extensive and determined criticism of reductionism in recent philosophy of chemistry, it is of interest to see macroscopic ontology treated autonomously. One aspect of this is developed here, namely the concept of chemical substance. This is characterised by contrast with phases and solutions. The key conception is that of an intensive property, which is defined by appeal to the mereological structure of parts of the entities bearing substance properties.

A gas in a box is perhaps the most important model system studied in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Usually, studies focus on the gas, whereas the box merely serves as an idealized confinement. The present article focuses on the box as the central object and develops a thermodynamic theory by treating the geometric degrees of freedom of the box as the degrees of freedom of a thermodynamic system. Applying standard mathematical methods to the thermody- namics of an empty box allows equations with the same structure as those of cosmology and classical and quantum mechanics to be derived. The simple model system of an empty box is shown to have interesting connections to classical mechanics, special relativity, and quantum field theory.

The accumulation of knowledge concerning the character and transformations of substances from ancient times constitutes progress in chemistry, which has accelerated enormously since the end of the 17th century. The present short article focuses on some themes in the development of theorising and conceptual clarification at the macroscopic and microscopic levels during the 19th and 20th centuries. This covers the general understanding of substances in relation to phase and the general notion of a mixture, the distinction between daltonides and berthollides, and issues connected with the notion of molecular structure. Together with the enormous body of factual material accumulated particularly over the last two centuries, this is progress in chemistry. The epistemological approach seems to give the best account of it amongst philosophical views on progress currently on offer.

Prior left us with a problem which he stated in the following way: ‘Very roughly, it would seem that countable “things” are made or grow from bits of stuff, or from other countable “things”, that are already there. The precise logic of this process hasn’t been worked out yet, and until it has been, it seems likely that any tensed predicate logic can only be provisional in character.’ Although I disagree with much of the philosophy of time underlying Priorean tense logic, the problem of presenting a coherent view of ‘countable things’ and ‘bits of stuff’ within a framework accommodating temporal reference and modal expressions along broadly the lines Prior proposed remains an interesting one. The present paper sketches a general framework within which more specific questions raised by this general issue can be addressed, and makes a number of tentative suggestions without, however, proceeding so far as to settle on and develop a definite logical theory.

This undergraduate textbook introduces some fundamental issues in philosophy of science for students of philosophy and science students. The book is divided into two parts. Part 1 deals with knowledge and values. Chap. 1 presents the classical conception of knowledge as initiated by the ancient Greeks and elaborated during the development of science, introducing the central concepts of truth, belief and justification. Aspects of the quest for objectivity are taken up in the following two chapters. Moral issues are broached in Chap. 4, which discusses some aspects of the use and abuse of science, taking up the responsibilities of scientists in properly conducting their business and decision-makers in their concerns with the import of science for society. Part 2 contrasts the view of scientific progress as the rejecting of old hypotheses and theories and replacing them with new ones, represented by Karl Popper, with the conception of progress as accumulating knowledge, saving as much as possible from older theories, represented by Pierre Duhem. A concluding chapter defends the natural attitude of taking the theories of modern science to be literally true, i.e. realism, in the face of arguments drawn partly from the history of scientific progress in criticism of this stance.

Classical atoms—“part-less, ontologically irreducible simples” as the conference flyer puts it—are not the atoms of modern chemistry and analogies with the latter can be construed in various ways. They have figured in the historical development of concepts of chemical affinity but without, as Alan Chalmers and I have independently argued, making any significant contribution to empirically justified theories. A purely combinatorial conception of the formation of compounds by juxtaposing atoms is associated with Daltonian atomism. I review the merits of this idea as a solution to problems posed by developments in early nineteenth century chemistry and go on to suggest that subsequent developments in chemistry are as much in agreement with ideas associated with Aristotle as with the ancient atomists, if not more so. The basic issues can be understood without getting involved in detailed chemistry and I hope what I have to say will be of interest to philosophers concerned with the metaphysics of matter but with no special knowledge of chemistry.

With the background provided by the previous chapters, the dyadic predicate “water” is discussed in some detail in this chapter as illustrative of substance predicates. The familiar claim “Water is H2O” cannot be construed as a claim about the constitution of water at the microlevel, but is a purely macroscopic claim about what chemists call the composition of water. Relating the macroscopic term “water” to microscopic constitution must take cognizance of the fact that the situation is a dynamic one, not a fixed, unchanging structure. The continual restructuring renders macroscopic quantities effectively homogeneous for macroscopic times, say of the order of a millionth of a second or longer. (Spectroscopists describe the structure accessible over shorter times via higher frequency radiation as indiscernible—blurred—over the longer times probed by lower frequency radiation.) What should we say about extremely small parts of a quantity of water for extremely short subintervals of a time?Infinite divisibility of time entails that intervals have proper subintervals without limit. A uniform treatment of quantities is less obviously appropriate in moving from the macro- to the microdomain of quantum mechanically indiscernible entities. Nevertheless, a uniform treatment is considered, bearing in mind that the parts are parts of a macroscopic quantity for the times at issue and not isolated from the bulk matter. But an alternative treatment is also developed where, following French and Krause’s two-sorted interpretation in which identity is meaningfully predicated of macro- but not microentities, the mereology of quantities is restricted to exclude microentities as parts. This is consistent with the conclusion that might be drawn from the discussion in Chap. 4, that the quantity, time and space variables to which predicates at issue here are affixed range over macroscopic domains.Phase predicates don’t follow the same pattern, mereologically speaking, as substance predicates. The microscopic understanding of the dynamic equilibrium between the exchange of matter between abutting phases calls for a different mereological interpretation and an accumulation condition similar to that applying to the occupies relation comes into play.

An important feature of the transition from ancient to modern views of matter is the recognition of the distinction between substance and phase, and the realisation that a substance like water is not necessarily liquid, as Aristotle thought, but the same substance might be solid or gas too. This chapter reviews just how surprisingly tenacious the older view was, noting that even Lavoiser had difficulty abandoning it completely although he prepared the ground for doing so. The distinction was clear enough throughout most of the nineteenth century, but received its definitive formulation in Gibbs’ phase rule, which he presented in connection with his formulation of chemical thermodynamics in the late 1870s. The import of this fundamental principle of chemistry is discussed and illustrated in the final sections.

Processes are introduced in this chapter. In the wake of a discussion of the notion of change and the recognition of the relational character of many processes, any idea of introducing occurrents on the basis of a distinction between intrinsic and Cambridge changes in continuants is abandoned. The understanding of occurrents as temporally extended processes—causings rather than relata of a dyadic causal relation—based on the analysis of processes implicit in the articulation of thermodynamics in the second half of the nineteenth century is conceptually more illuminating. The chapter continues with a development the mereological features of processes. Mereological properties include distinguishing temporal parts, parts arising from a consideration of the parts of bodies involved and parts of complex processes such as the elementary reactions underlying complex chemical reactions. The relational character of processes (arising from the several bodies typically involved in processes) and their modal character are taken up in the final sections. A distinction is made between accomplishments and activities, and an analogy with the constitution relation between individuals and their constitutive quantities is suggested by construing continuant events as constituted of processes.

Modal features of quantities are discussed in the final chapter. Talk of atomic number as the essence of something, unclear exactly what, is put aside in favour of pursuing Paneth’s more fruitful distinction between elements as simple and as basic, leading to a discussion of how resilient being the same element is to possible changes in states of combination. The chapter goes on to develop the idea of it being possible for a quantity to be such-and-such, which is introduced to deal with claims difficult to capture with conventional sentential modal operators. This leads to the replacement of a model theory of possible worlds by the explicit quantification over possible states to achieve appropriate expressive power. Incorporation of possible processes is a natural development, linking up with the discussion in the previous chapter. The interplay between possibility and time is developed, keeping track of the time when a possibility arises and the time when it is possible for a quantity of have a property or be related to something.

Duhem is perhaps the last active scientist to have produced a philosophi- cal text, and TheAim and Structure of Physical Theory retains its status as one that every textbook writer in the philosophy of science has to take into consideration. Several of Duhem’s other books have since appeared in English translation, but the Essays in the History and Philosophy of Science is the first collection of Duhem’s papers to appear in English. Commentators have oRen pointed out that the roots of Duhem’s main philosophical work are to be found in a series of articles he wrote in the Catholic journal, Revue des Questions Scientijiques, during the first part of the 1890s, and it is not before time that these should be made available in English. In fact, the editors of the Essays have done us the greater ser- vice of including some of these seminal papers in a broader selection from Duhem’s shorter pieces, ranging over the years from 1892 to 1915 and covering his interests in the history of science and the relation between science and religion, as well as the philosophy of science. In the latter cat- egory, there is a nice little essay, “The Nature of Mathematical Reason- ing” from 1912, in which he takes issue with Poincark’s views on math- ematical induction, a review of Mach’s The Science of Mechanics (1903) and “Logical Examination of Physical Theory” - the section dealing with his philosophy of science from the submission he wrote in 1913 in sup- port of his membership of the Academie des Sciences. Like the latter, the last two chapters of To Save the Phenomena (1908) and “Some Reflec- tions on German Science” (1915) have already appeared in English. Of the remaining nine essays, eight appear, as far as I’m aware, for the first time here in English, while the “lightly edited” “History of Physics” origi- nally appeared in English.

A logic of intervals is proposed akin to the one published by Hamblin (Hamblin (1969) and (1971)). Like Hamblin's, the present system is also based on a single primitive. However, the work presented here differs from Hamblin's in a number of respects. Most importantly, the present system is explicitly based on mereological ideas in such a way that not only are the two notions of abutment and temporal order involved in Hamblin's primitive two-place relation "abuts at the earlier end" distinguished ; the temporal ordering itself is built up from a symmetric mereological primitive. The present system is shown to be complete.