Are there Atoms?

Or, alternatively, what does it mean for something to be false, or explanatory, etc.? Parmenides holds that what is, is, and what is not, is in no way at all. Which seems to be pretty straightforward, and I've been thinking that there is something right on and profound here. It has sometimes been applied to the problem of evil: evil is a privation of being (what "is not") and so does not actually exist. It is like the hole in an umbrella: you feel the rain falling on you, but not because of what is there. Put in another way, any reality evil has is relative, and not absolute. Even a dictator is still pursuing some good in oppressing subjects; pursuing evil purely for its own sake would be nonsensical on this view.

But I don't wish to discuss traditional accounts of the problem of evil; the relation between goodness and being is not straightforward. I am bringing this illustration up for the sake of another issue: what is truth? What does it mean for something to correspond to reality? A statement is true if it says of what is, that it is, and of what is not, that it is not. But what is not, is in no way at all; so how does it even make sense to talk of what is absolutely false?

In order to try to understand the problem here, let us take scientific theories: specifically, are there atoms? On a simple view, we say that atoms exist and make up the world. There are carbon atoms and oxygen atoms and gold and hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, etc. But then we turn around and see that these are constructs, models we make in our understanding to navigate the world, and so do not actually exist in the world, but are merely tools for us in our thinking, arising out of specific historical circumstances.

I am proposing that we take another step, which I've suggested before on this blog. The problem is that both of these views assume that there must be some sort of correspondence for there to be truth. What is explained and the explaining are two distinct things which must match up. But why not say that the explaining, the unifying of experience, is itself the explanation? Insofar as atoms unify our view of the world, they exist. They do not exist because they unify our worldview; this unification is their existence, where this sort of explanation and unification takes place in our ongoing interaction with the world and not with us on one side and the world on another.

If this is right, then falsity is relative as well as non-being. Statements come from a context and speak to that context; some better than others, to be sure, but there is also some explanatory power of statements and so some way in which they have truth, since a contextless and therefore non-unifying statement is meaningless. Even a con artist or conspiracy theorist needs to make statements that resemble the truth, and so to that extent cannot be purely false; it's just that closer examination would find much better explanations (that is, ones that unify experience more and that unify more experiences; namely, the experience that you will lose your money to the con artist and sanity to the conspiracy theorist).

What about fictional characters? They would exist as well, but only in their own fashion. Santa Claus must exist, as a fictional character; the notion of "Santa Claus" pulls together various social narratives and practices and children's games, and so is real precisely insofar as it does this. It is not real insofar as we would expect to come upon a sleigh with flying reindeer on Christmas Eve. Insofar as the notion would include this, it would create disunity with our experience.