David Peat

54 From Certainty to UncertaintyWhat is true of water applies equally to so many other substancesthat surround us. Iron rusts, butter melts in the sun, meat putrefies,grape juice ferments, wine turns to vinegar, heated metals merge toform alloys. All around us are endless processes of growth and decay,and countless transformations of shapes, forms, colors, tastes, andsmells. The growth of civilizations is driven by, in part, the understandingand mastery of such transformations.Taoism of Ancient China is based on a philosophy of endlesschange. The worldview of the various Algonquin peoples of NorthAmerica (Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Ojibway, Micmac, etc.) embraces fluxand transformations. The philosophers of fifth century B.C. Greece,however, believed in an essence that lies behind such change. Thalessuggested that everything is composed of water. For Anaximenes it wasair. Heraclitus favored fire. Empedocles suggested a different approach:There is no single basic constituent. Rather, matter is created out of acombination of four elements—air, fire, water, and earth. Dependingupon the relative proportions, substances are more earthy, fiery, airy,or watery.Atoms or ArchetypesAssociated with this idea of a fundamental foundation to the materialworld was the question of the divisibility of matter. Is matter continuous?Can it be endlessly divided while retaining its basic properties? Ordoes one finally arrive at some ultimate constituent, a basic buildingblock that can be split no further, an atoma (that which cannot bedivided)?Leucippus and Democritus taught that everything is composed ofelementary objects in constant movement. This proposal did not meetwith the approval of Plato or Aristotle, for if everything is made ofcorpuscles in motion, why are the forms of things so well preserved?The atomic theory could not account for the stability of nature or forthe reappearance of organic forms generation after generation. All inall, atoms appeared to be a rather mechanical explication. This cer-