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63 6 Constraints on the Origin of Coherence in Far-from-Equilibrium Chemical Systems Joseph E. Earley Sr. Consideration of how dynamic coherences arise from less organized antecedents (“concrescence”) is one of the central concerns of Whitehead’s thought.1 Other chapters in this volume consider how his concepts may apply in various branches of physics, including quantum mechanics. But many of the coherences that are of human interest are macroscopic. Earlier interpreters generally regarded Whitehead’s actual entities as exclusively submicroscopic. There is now a growing consensus that Whitehead’s conceptual scheme ought also to be applicable to larger items. The origin of dynamic coherence in far-from-equilibrium chemical systems has been widely studied experimentally and theoretically , and is now rather well understood. The chemical level illustrates many features that are also characteristic of more complex aggregations (biological and social, for instance), but chemical systems are more amenable to experimental and theoretical investigation. This chapter considers some aspects of the origin of chemical coherence. Logicians and analytical philosophers tend to be more comfortable with mathematics and mathematical physics than with chemistry. This seems apparent in current treatment of wholes and parts. The term mereology (coined by Leśniewski) is “used generally for any formal theory of part-whole and associated concepts.”2 A “mereological whole” is an individual that is composed of parts that are themselves individuals. Any two (or more) individuals can compose a mereological whole—the star Sirius and your left shoe, for instance. Concerning such aggregates, D. M. Armstrong’s “doctrine of the ontological free lunch” seems valid: whatever supervenes, or . . . is entailed or necessitated, . . . is not something ontologically additional to the supervenient, or necessitating, entities. What super- 64 Joseph E. Earley Sr. venes is no addition of being. . . . Mereological wholes are not ontologically additional to all their parts, nor are the parts ontologically additional to the whole that they compose. This has the consequence that mereological wholes are identical with all their parts taken together. Symmetrical supervenience yields identity.3 This kind of mereology may well be quite appropriate to deal with some questions of mathematics,4 but it seems quite inadequate for dealing with situations that chemists encounter. Chemical combination is not well understood in terms of mere addition of properties of components. Chemical combination generates properties and relations that are not simply related to the properties and relations of the components. Entities that are important in other branches of science , and in other parts of culture, have all the complexity of chemical combination —and more. It does not seem that the standard approach to mereological questions has wide applicability, much less metaphysical generality. It may well be that every system of reckoning must have a unit—some thing, or class of things, that may properly be taken as simple (not composite), at least for the sake of the reckoning. For instance, Armstrong observes: the existence of atoms, whether particulars or universals, is held to be a question for science rather than metaphysics, and one that we should at present remain agnostic about. The world divides, as Wittgenstein wrote, but it may divide ad infinitum, and there be no terminus, even at infinity.5 If, strictly speaking, there are no “simples” (atoms, in the classical sense), but yet we need to deal with entities that are “relatively atomic,”6 then we require what Armstrong calls “unit-determining properties”—qualities that give rise to “unithood.”7 Before getting into what sort of things unit-determining properties might be, we have to decide which level (spatial, temporal, or other) is appropriate to use in this discussion. Whitehead is usually interpreted as holding that there is a fundamental level of description, perhaps at some submicroscopic level of spatial size.8 But if we hold the alternative position—that there are no classical “atoms,” merely entities that are “relatively atomic,” then it is not at all obvious that any spatial, temporal, or other level has priority—it seems that there may well be no “fundamental” level. In this alternative view, we ought to be able to consider working at any spatial or temporal level whatsoever. We might even hope that we could identify unit-determining features that were operative at many levels—that might provide warrant for a consistent, adequate, and applicable metaphysics. In previous centuries, chemists used to say that certain chemicals had high “affinity” for certain materials (those with which they reacted) and low affinity for others (with which they did...

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