Same, similar, or different?

William Williams27 said:As a skydiver... I haven't really read much about this or spent a lot of time dwelling on it lately—my focus just isn't where it used to be. But one thought immediately popped into my head and I had to share it... wouldn't it make sense that if something is made up of fewer basic elements, it would naturally be more similar to another entity of that kind than something way more complex?

Yeah, but the real question is where we get the idea that there's even such a thing as a "basic substance" made up of perfectly identical "elementary particles," especially since we never actually encounter anything perfectly identical in our own experience, right?

So, it feels like this isn't really based on any actual observation. 🤔

James Lee77 said:Yeah, but the real question is where we get the idea that there's even such a thing as a "basic substance" made up of perfectly identical "elementary particles," especially since we never actually encounter anything perfectly identical in our own experience, right?

So, it feels like this isn't really based on any actual observation. 🤔

Interesting. If you look at the history of philosophy—and I'll go ahead and separate "science" from religion and magic here—it all starts with some kind of "fundamental substance." Be it an atom, God, an essence, or a number... does it even matter?

Empiricism isn't that simple.