Representationalism takes the notion of separation as foundational. It separates the world into the ontologically disjunct domains of words and things, leaving itself with the dilemma of their linkage such that knowledge is possible. If wor…Bohr’s break with Newton, Descartes, and Democritus is based not in “mere idle philosophical reflection” but on new empirical findings in the domain of atomic physics that came to light during the first quarter of the twentieth century. Boh…
Democritus
philosopher · 3 mentions across 2 readings
In this course
Democritus appears as the ancient atomist whose metaphysics—the idea that matter consists of indivisible particles—underwrites classical representationalism's separation of words from things. The readings invoke him as a foundational figure whose mechanistic worldview Bohr had to break with in light of twentieth-century quantum physics, establishing that the material substrate cannot be understood through pre-quantum atomic theory alone. He functions here as a philosophical ancestor whose assumptions about discrete, separable matter are being fundamentally challenged by modern physics and its implications for how we think about representation and reality.
Mentioned in 2 readings
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