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secondary existence since they required the primary items to exist
sensible things
were mere “copies” of Ideas.
In the Modern Age, the notion of ontological dependence reappeared in two
senses. On the one hand, the relationship between primary qualities, endowed with
ontological priority, and secondary qualities, which were merely subjective, perme-
ated the philosophy of Locke and the physics of Galileo. On the other hand, Ancient
atomism, first introduced in Modern Europe by Gassendi, was reborn in Boyle
s
corpuscular philosophy. In turn, corpuscularism strongly influenced later physics,
such as Newton ' s corpuscular theory of light. The influence of Ancient atomism
arrived to the nineteenth century through John Dalton ' s modern atomic theory.
Still closer to our times, two of the most famous physicists of the late nineteenth
century devoted much of their intellectual effort to reduction. Under the assumption
that gases are nothing else than particles in mechanical interaction, Boltzmann tried
to explain thermal phenomena in gases in terms of classical mechanics. Meanwhile,
Maxwell devoted much of his scientific work to the reduction of electromagnetic
phenomena to mechanical vibrations of a luminiferous aether. In both cases, the
underlying ontological assumption was that Nature is made of mechanical entities,
which are governed by the laws of physics as first discovered by Newton; it was
precisely this assumption that justified the strategies directed to explain the new
theories (thermodynamics, electromagnetism) by means of classical mechanics.
Nowadays, ontologically reductionist ideas are still present in many areas of
science. Perhaps the most striking example is the present-day particle physics as
embodied in the Standard Model. The need of huge investments to build immense
particle accelerators, in particular, is usually justified in ontologically reductionist
terms: those accelerators are necessary to conclude the task of discovering those
tiny elemental entities of which the entire reality is composed. This ontological
picture is clearly summarized by Fritz Rohrlich: “ chemistry tells us that a piece of
wood is
'
a complicated arrangement of many kinds of molecules bound
together ; atomic physics tells us that molecules are
really
'
'
various atoms held
together by interatomic forces ; particle theory tells us that atoms are
really
'
'
really
'
'
elementary particles in interaction , and so on ” (Rohrlich 1988 , pp. 295-296).
These are only some of the many examples which show that the concepts of
ontological reduction and of ontological dependence are completely meaningful
and have a venerable tradition in the history of philosophy and of science. On the
basis of this tradition we, as philosophers of science, are entitled to use them, even
with the purpose of rejecting ontological reductionism.
3.3 Criticisms from a Non-pluralist Perspective
An author who does not deprive ontological matters of meaning is Lee McIntyre. He
acknowledges that the original argument in favor of the ontological autonomy of the
world of chemistry “ caused quite a splash in the field and is the subject of much
current debate ”(McIntyre 2007a , p. 292). Moreover, he proposes to examine not only
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