2.65
‘Ontological attention is all fine and good, as is paying attention to particularities, but the world just is composed of uniformity and constancy. Earlier, you said: “All space is the same, all time is the same, each atom is an atom. Forces act with uniformity and constancy. All is thrown into a massive indifference, blanketed in ‘the same’” (§1.65). – But isn’t what you’re questioning or criticizing a description of how things really are as uncovered by science?’
It seems to me that contemporary physics is increasingly calling into question the idea of spatiotemporal uniformity in areas such as relativity theory, quantum mechanics, and superstring theory. And yet, there’s still a dominant or common view that maintains and saves this uniformity: as example, Newtonian physics can be used on most scales with which humans are concerned. And even though space and time have been relativized (i.e., as spacetime) and aren’t absolute, doesn’t mean they aren’t uniform; spacetime is relative to a perspective/an entity, but for each entity, space and time are uniform, i.e., space is the same and time is the same (setting aside extreme cases, e.g., black holes, and drastic changes in one’s speed of travel). In other words, space and time depend on the frame of reference, yet I encounter them structurally the same way as another does. In this picture, space and time don’t really depend on other beings,[1] even while they’re relative to each entity.
In general, seeing things under the rubric of uniformity, constancy, and sameness has been highly effective in securing ends we’ve had. Yet, every description, theory, and fact require a web of support to lend them comprehensibility (§2.29): a fact on its own is no fact at all. A fact needs the world out of which it emerges.
Are there no other ways to describe things? Are there no other gestalt shifts that could explain the same phenomena from different metaphysical starting points?
The basic experimental model isolates phenomena from webs of relations to isolate constants and variables so we can determine causes for general phenomena. But what has to be excluded for this? Can we shear enough off any given experimental subject such that we actually isolate one variable? Can we shear it of its relations, of its particularity?[2] Are explanations or deductions from an experiment applicable outside the experiment? How could this be tested? How is the experiment itself constituting a set of relations that allow phenomena to be a particular way?
I’m not denying that there may be regularities or repeatability in the world. Scientific research emerges from and uncovers facts within a particular disclosure (a world) with particular metaphysically-laden assumptions, yet this doesn’t negate the aspects it picks up on (i.e., these aspects cannot, in good faith, simply be denied).
The question, however, is whether we do in experiments what we think we’re doing, and whether analysis—isolating the smallest ‘common denominator,’ for instance—is the best way to think of things. What needs to be shorn off to claim ‘sameness’ or generality? The temptation is a reduction of all to a small palette of the same entities: elements. — Yes, we can see things this way.
[1] Setting aside warping.
[2] Is every atom of a given element the same?