Abstract
The paper addresses a problem for the unification of quantum physics with the new Aristotelianism: the identification of the members of the category of substance (ousia). I outline briefly the role that substance plays in Aristotelian metaphysics, leading to the postulating of the Tiling Constraint. I then turn to the question of which entities in quantum physics can qualify as Aristotelian substances. I offer an answer: the theory of thermal substances, and I construct a fivefold case for thermal substances, based on the irreversibility of time, the definition of thermodynamic concepts, spontaneous symmetry breaking, phase transitions, and chemical form.
Highlights
As I have argued elsewhere (Koons 2018a, b), the quantum revolution in physics has reopened the question of the soundness of Aristotelian metaphysics as a basis for natural philosophy, long thought to be settled by the revolution of the seventeenth century
If we assume that an explanation in terms of a model is successful only if the model faithfully represents the relevant features of the actual phenomenon, we must conclude that our current scientific explanations of phase transitions are successful only if it is the infinite, continuum-limit model that faithfully represents the facts, requiring exactly the kind of real thermodynamic fusion that I have described
The Aristotelian interpretation of quantum statistical mechanics and quantum chemistry can be summarized in three points
Summary
Substances are entities that exist in the most central, focal meaning of that analogous term. If the location of the whole is grounded in the location of the parts, this fact is incompatible with the substantiality of the whole, reducing the whole to a mere heap of simple parts with no per se unity of its own In this version, the so-called emergent whole is merely an aggregate of simple substances, and its emergent powers are latent joint powers of those parts (as argued by Meehl and Sellars 1956). If the powers of the whole can be explained entirely in terms of the natures of the simple parts, the whole is reducible to the aggregate of those parts, and the whole does not count as a fundamental entity. If the powers of the whole cannot be explained in terms of those natures, the so-called whole must really be an independent entity that interacts with those simple substances and is not in any sense “composed” of them
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