"Both Democritus and Anaxagoras try to explain the puzzling behaviour of ordinary reality by appeal to a microscopic replica of reality, in which another set of tiny bodies or minute scraps of stuff move around and cause things to happen. As a way to overcome the difficulty of explaining changes in the world, this ultimately emerges as unsatisfying: if there were problems with explaining chemical and physical events as they appear to us, there will be the same problems with explaining the reactions between smaller and yet smaller bodies."
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University of Cambridge alumniPhilosophers from EnglandUniversity of Cambridge facultyGreen Party of England and Wales politiciansMembers of the European Parliament
Original Language: English
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Catherine Rowett
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