Marx on Greek Atomism

Not necessarily the most updated study of Greek atomism, but worth a look:

Marx, Karl. "The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of
Nature with an Appendix" (written: 1841; published: 1902).

Even more interesting are his notebooks from the period. Both texts available online:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1841/dr-theses/index.htm

Three cheers for transcribers.
Again, not to be consulted as a source text for reconstructions of Greek atomism. (Not even, I think, as valuable as a source for reconstructing Epicureanism as Bailey's 'The Greek Atomists and Epicurus (Oxford 1928)', much less Vlastos, G. 'Minimal Parts in Epicurean Atomism' Isis, 56 (1965), 121-47, or Furley, D. J., 'Two Studies in Greek Atomism' (Princeton, 1967).
But I find Marx's thoughts on the idea of an absolute atom per se (as conceived in abstraction from its role in physical theory and as projection of a conception of volition) intriguing. A materialism which incorporates characteristics of the mental.
What that requires, however, is the thought that we can understand volition (phenomenologically) in atomic terms. What is worth pursuing here is the concept of an atom per se as a metaphysical principle. (cf. drops of experience as instances of such a principle....) Atomism about the Mind is often harder to bring to the surface, and harder to think about. (Cf Sacks, Objectivity and Insight (Oxford)).

Whatever the continuing relevance of Marx's dissertation, it cannot be forgotten that he was writing before the source texts had been edited for quick perusal. The scholarship alone makes it worth a read.

There is also the connection between Marxist historians and the materialist traditions of Indian Philosophy (often enough dubbed 'carvaka'). It would be interesting to think about Marx's criticisms of the therapeutic paradigm of Epicurus and the Carvakan (and contemporary Marxist reconstructions thereof) critiques of Indian therapeutic paradigms, especially Buddhism. This is a difficult project: for it would have to incorporate not only the distinct ways in which Indian materialists handle the fact of the mental (as eliminativists or as emergentists), but also the skeptical trajectory of this tradition which is strictus sensu distinct from materialism per se. Traditionally, Marxist historians have been less comfortable with the skeptical forms of this tradition. More work, as always. (Thank heavens for Eli Franco's study of Jayarasi).

Galen on atoms

A passage from Galen (c129-200 C.E.) is worth considering in the context of Buddhist commitments to atomism, and the responses to arguments from the impossibility of atoms to the non-existence of anything that could be considered to have the nature of ‘matter’. For if an argument goes: if there are to be bodies that count as material, then such bodies must be atomic; but ‘atoms’ are not coherent, therefore no body counts as material, etc., one may dispute the conclusion by pointing out that if the concept of atom is incoherent there must be something wrong with the premise: if body, then they must be constituted of atoms. One could do so by various routes, but one route may lie in maintaining that any incoherency in the terms by which a revision of our everyday commitments is cast points to an incoherence in the very idea of ‘revising’ our everyday commitments (One might cast Sankara’s arguments against atomism in this register). One could also make the case by refusing to go along with the belief that it is the hypothesis of atoms that enjoys epistemic priority, wears the proverbial pants. (One could argue: The hypothesis of atoms derives whatever validity it does from the non-negotiable fact of our encounter with medium-sized objects: atoms are to be discharged on the strength of the premise that there are medium sized objects and that atoms ‘account’ for certain properties of these medium sized objects; but the burden of proof does not lie with medium sized objects and our commitments with respect to these—any problem with the concept of atoms spells trouble for only the hypothetical relation between atoms and medium sized objects, (say some-sort of ‘explanatory relation’), but not with the existence of objects. This is a route that one might plausibly attribute to Kumarilla--it goes well with a certain indifference on his part to the very idea of atomism. I hope to post something on Sankara and Kumarilla soon.
But given this context, I think Galen’s remarks vis a vis Democritus are apposite for the student of Indian philosophy, especially for a reaction to Vasubandhu’s proof of Idealism from the perspective of the Mimamsa epistemological commitments.
Here is Galen, from On Medical Experience, XV, 7-8. (Quoted (and translated) in J. Barnes, Early Greek Philosophy, Penguin Books, 1987), 254-258:

Everyone knows that the greatest charge against any argument is that it conflicts with what is evident. For arguments cannot even start without self-evidence: how can they be credible if they attack that from which they took their beginnings? Democritus too was aware of this; for when he had brought charges against the senses, saying:
By convention color, by convention sweet, by convention bitter: in reality atoms and void,
He had the senses reply to the intellect as follows:
Poor mind, do you take your evidence from us and then try to overthrow us? Our overthrow is your fall [B 125]
So one should condemn the unreliability of an argument which is so bad that its most persuasive part conflicts with the evident propositions from which it took its start.

The deeper waters concerning Buddhist atomism lie with the status of the source of identity criteria for bodies, a source which cannot be cleanly restricted to the deliverances of the senses. (In the context of Vasubandhu at least, the oft repeated claim to the effect of the ‘empiricism’ of Buddhism is misleading).

counting atoms (not quite philosophy, but...)

Here is an interesting passage:

…Suppose some man was to reduce to powder the whole mass of the [material] element [called] earth, as much as it to be found in this whole cosmos; [suppose] that after taking one minimal particle [= atom; paramANu] of dust from this world he is to walk a thousand worlds farther in the Eastern direction to deposit that single minimal particle; [suppose] that after taking a second particle of dust and walking a thousand worlds farther he deposits that second particle, and proceeding in this way at last gets the whole of the [material] element [called] earth deposited in the Eastern direction.
Now, monks, what do you think of it—is it possible by calculation to find the end or limit of these worlds?
They answered: Certainly not, Lord; certainly not, Sugata.
The Lord said: On the contrary, monks, some arithmetician or master of arithmetic might, indeed, be able by calculation to find the end or limit of the worlds, both those where the atoms have been deposited and where they have not, but it is impossible by appealing to the rules of the arithmetic to find the limit of those hundred thousands of myriads of Aeons [kalpa-s].
[This passage is from The Lotus Sutra, translated by Kern (with some modifications of my own) in Hendrik Kern, The Lotus of the True Law, Sacred Books of the East, vol. 21, originally published 1884; New York, Dover reprint, 1912, see p153-154, 155, 299.]

What is interesting about this passage may be discussed under two rubrics: (a) rhetorical trumping of the conception of the Buddha (or better: what being a Buddha amounts to) in the Lotus over and against prior conceptions, and (b) the conception of the relevance of ‘number’ to the concept of atom.
Though (a) is interesting enough in its own right, it only concerns me here with respect to the fact that it is considered more important that measures of time be non denumerable in some sense (though not necessarily in a precise mathematical sense). That ties in with the range of concerns concerning the ‘presence’ of the Buddha, and whether or not ‘historical’ measures of time are appropriate for conceptualizing the presence (and thereby the ‘absence’ of a Buddha). The dis-analogy with space might prove very interesting for a history of the changing conceptions of the Buddha, but this is not what interests me here.
Under the rubric in (b), we may point out that what is suggested as a possibility with respect to determining spatial limits and counting ‘off’ atoms is actually depicted in another text as a feat which is performed by a master none other than the Buddha-to-be: this is the domain of the mathematical exercises of the bodhisattva in the Lalitavistara. More on this later.
Worth noting, however, is the curious fact that Randy Kloetzli, in his ‘Buddhist Cosmology: From A Single World System to Pure Land: Science and Theology in the Images of Motion and Light,” (Matilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1983), p119, discusses the passage in the Lotus, and sees the relevance of the Archimedean text ‘The Sand Reckoner,’ but does not discuss the more precise counter-part to Archimedes’ measure system that can be found in the Lalitavistara. No doubt, a partial explanation is that Kloetzli seems to have focused on the Lotus as the representative Mahayana text par excellance. He also ignores more careful work in the history of mathematics which could have prevented the unfortunate use of ‘infinitesmal’ in his work, and which would have in any case directed him to the closer parallels between Archimedes'Sand Reckoner and the Lalitavistara.