Buddhists believe in the following two propositions although, to non-Buddhists, they seem an odd fit. 1) I have no self or soul, no substantial thing that is "I" or "Me," and the idea that there is an I is an illusion. 2) I'll probably be reincarnated. The obvious response to this conjunction has to be: if there is no you, that what or who is to be reincarnated when "you" are? The Buddhist response, as I understand it, is that the illusion of me is a distinctive one, and this this illusion that there is a substantive me is what is reincarnated. A guest lecturer at a college course I took way back in the 1970s explained it this way. I may hold a lit match in my hand and transfer the flame from that match to something else -- another match, let us say. At SOME point both matches may be lit. Right after that, I may blow out the older match. It certainly appears that something substantial, a thing, the flame, moved from one match to the oth...
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The Nobel Prize in Chemistry this year went to three men who together pioneered cryo-electron microscopy. The explanation of their work by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences includes this: " Researchers can now freeze biomolecules mid-movement and visualize processes they have never previously seen, which is decisive for both the basic understanding of life’s chemistry and for the development of pharmaceuticals.” Jacques Dubochet is Swiss, Joachim Frank is German born and a long time resident of the US, (thank God for our immigrants), Richard Henderson is a Scot. In the "philosophy of chemistry" article in wikipedia (yeah, using wikipedia today), one finds the following quote from philosopher Joachim Schummer: " Substance philosophers define a chemical reaction by the change of certain substances, whereas process philosophers define a substance by its characteristic chemical reactions." It's a nice line, and it is intended to convey the idea t...
I have now and then wondered, as my mind wandered, whether there can properly be said to be such a creature as the "philosophy of chemistry." Biology has philosophical controversies specific to itself: the explication of the concept of natural selection for example, or the age-old reductionism-versus-holism thing. Physics, likewise, has its own philosophical controversies. Indeed, much that goes by the name "philosophy of science" seems actually to be a philosophy of physics.The nature of space and time. Statistical mechanics, etc. But chemistry? Wouldn't any effort to assign specific philosophical controversies to chemistry inevitably veer in one or the other of those directions? So I mused. Bu t it appears there really is a "philosophy of chemistry." Philosophers working this field debate whether chemistry is the study of substances or reactions -- stuff or events. In the words of Joachim Schummer, " Substance philosophers define a che...