You've Got Something There

An unspoken assumption that often enters into human thinking is that of "things." The assumption of "things" is that reality is divided into multiple "things" that could be said to have these characteristics:

• Things are unitary, that is, they form an individual unit. A thing may be composed of parts, but it possesses a sort of unity and completeness in itself.

• Things are distinct, that is, separable from one another. A thing may be considered in isolation, separately from anything else.

• Things are persistent, that is, they exist over a span of time. They have a beginning, middle, and end. Although they change over this time span, there is some quality in them that persists as recognizably the same thing from moment to moment.

• Things are substantive, that is, they have form, and this form has substance. The substance may be solid, liquid, gas, energy, whatever, but it is something and it is there. It is not nothing.

Let us address the concepts of unitary and distinct. The idea is that a thing can be separated from its environment.

One approach to examining this assumption is scientific. Scientifically, is there any basis for distinguishing one thing from another?

Modern physics teach us that "things" behave as if they are made of energetically moving atoms connected with bonds of force. However, there are no firm boundaries to "things;" the atoms of a rose mix with the atoms of the air around it with no clear, distinct boundary between the two. Atoms are atoms, whether they are in one particular spatial location or another. While they interrelate according to the bonds connecting them, these bonds do not form distinct boundaries.

Not only that, but "atoms" are merely a mental construct which in actuality consist of tiny particles in mostly empty space. These particles exist as a wave function and not in some clearly defined location.

Another approach to examining the assumption of "thingness" is epistemological. Epistemologically, "things" are not external objects, but ideas within the mind, theories of how perceptions will behave. Even the ideas themselves do not have firm boundaries, but change over time to fit the context.

If our concept of "things" includes sharp boundaries, it does not have much support for it. Perception seems to be marked more by boundlessness rather than boundaries, by fuzziness rather than distinctness.

Next, let us look at the concept of persistence.

From the scientific viewpoint, persistence could be stated as the view that a thing extends through a region of space, and moves from moment to moment through time. Modern physics contradicts this, saying that space-time forms an indivisible continuum. The chair at one moment is not the same thing as the chair the next moment. They are two different space-time events, however related they may be. Just as there are no firm boundaries between objects in space, there are no firm boundaries between objects in time. Further, there is no such thing as a single moment "now" for the whole universe; "now" is relative to each observer. Past and future are equally present to the universe as a whole.

From an epistemological viewpoint, persistence implies that there is some quality of an object which stays the same from moment to moment. However, all information about the object comes from our senses and our ideas about them. Our sensory perceptions and ideas change from moment to moment; there is nothing in them that stays exactly the same. There is no basis to say that an object from one moment is the same as another.

Last we come to the idea of substance.

Scientifically, the world behaves as if it is mostly or entirely empty space. Unimaginably tiny particles, waves, or multidimensional strings vibrate energetically in a vast emptiness. At the very smallest level, physicists can deal with things only in terms of abstract mathematics, pure information, without any concept of "substance" attached. The qualities we typically assign to substance, such as solidity and resistance, are actually the result of interacting forces, energy which is attracting or repelling. With the arising of virtual particles in a vacuum, the very distinction between "something" and "nothing" becomes blurry.

Epistemologically, the belief that perception implies substance is an irreducible assumption. There is no reason to believe that anything has substance. If I have the perception of touching a brick wall, I have the perception of feeling a brick wall. No substance is required, only the expectation of certain perceptions.

The concept of "substance" is redundant, unnecessary. It adds nothing meaningful to the content of our thoughts, but rather is a sort of mental shortcut for summarizing certain common expectations.

Why bother addressing all these hidden assumptions? If the mental effort is disconcerting, why not ignore it? Why is confronting mental distortions and misunderstandings worth the trouble?

Next: Because!