...The Origin of Substance continued
A Question of Substance
Clearly this was pure metaphysics! It required what moviemakers call "willing suspension of disbelief." I simply had to set aside atoms, molecules, and voids to understand the fundamental concept of materials science: stress. But I was struck by the contradiction. How could this be science, if it is necessary to assume that materials are not composed of atoms and molecules and contain no voids? What is physical science without atoms and molecules and who can deny the existence of voids?
Implicit in the author's explanation was the view that the progressive composition of materials is from atoms to molecules to globs. This made me uneasy. It did not seem rational to posit that the progression of matter is along a continuum from atoms to globs. Science is so rigorous with regard to atoms and molecules. The progression from one to the other is a tight tautology, i.e., a single atom is also a molecule. How could this rigorous scientific progression conclude with the enigmatic glob? How could I rationally forsake atoms, molecules, and voids to learn the science of materials engineering?
Frankly, I could not. There must be a better explanation. There are massive amounts of theoretical and empirical evidence to support the existence of atoms and molecules. More significant is both atoms and molecules are governed by very precise laws of nature. The precepts of these laws are generally accepted and have been carefully documented by the scientific community over the last hundred years. There is, however, no scientific evidence to support the existence of continuous and cohesive globs of indeterminate size and composition. I could not accept the proposition that nature would resort to the glob as the sine qua non of substantive matter.
The continuum of matter, from atoms to molecules to substance, must evolve a credible body at the border between molecules and substance. It is inconceivable to me that nature would be so slipshod as to follow the exactitude of atoms and molecules with the ambiguity of the glob. The glob denies the very existence of atoms and molecules and these, I remind you, are more void than matter. So, my question is: What is the initial form of matter at the point along the continuum where molecules coalesce into substance? It certainly is not the glob.