atoms
The term ‘atom’ appears across the depth-psychology corpus in three distinct registers, each carrying its own theoretical weight. The oldest and most philosophically consequential usage derives from classical atomism — Democritus, Epicurus, and their Hellenistic inheritors — where the atom figures as the irreducible, indivisible particle whose chance encounters (via the clinamen) constitute composite individuals. Simondon subjects this tradition to its most searching critique, arguing that atomistic substantialism, by grounding individuation in a pre-formed principle, forecloses genuine account of individuation as process (ontogenesis). For Simondon, the atom exemplifies the foundational error of positing the individual as already-given rather than as the outcome of a metastable becoming. A second register appears in the philosophy of nature running from Plato’s Timaeus through modern physics: Cornford’s commentary insists that Plato’s geometric corpuscles are emphatically not atoms in the Democritean sense, since Platonic space is a recipient, not a void. A third, more culturally diffuse usage appears in mystical poetry cited by Campbell, Harvey, and Attar — ‘the world’s wild atoms’ as a metaphor for the irreducible particulars of phenomenal reality that rational vision cannot penetrate. Pauli and Ponte connect atomic physics to depth-psychological questions about consciousness and the psychophysical problem, suggesting that the post-classical atom has become a locus for negotiating the boundary between matter and psyche.
the atom can enter into a relation with other atoms via the clinamen, thereby constituting an individual (be it viable or not) through the infinite void and endless becoming.
Simondon identifies atomism as the paradigm case of grounding individuation in a pre-constituted entity, arguing this forecloses genuine ontogenetic explanation.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020thesis
There is really no warrant for attributing to Plato this atomistic picture of irregular particles moving at random in a void. Atoms were completely determined particles of solid substance, separated by intervals of nothingness.
Cornford distinguishes Plato’s geometric corpuscles from Democritean atoms, insisting that Platonic space is a recipient, not a void — a crucial anti-atomist claim in the philosophy of nature.
, Plato’s cosmology the Timaeus of Plato, 1997thesis
an atom receives a shock and blindly passes it on. But the ancients had not discovered the laws of motion: to say that a movement happens ‘by constraint’ is not to say that it conforms to any law.
Cornford argues that atomist ‘necessity’ — blind mechanical transmission of impact — lacks the lawful determinism later attributed to it, leaving Democritean ethics ungrounded.
, Plato’s cosmology the Timaeus of Plato, 1997thesis
Of the atom itself it can be said that, when it moves through the void as a result of its heaviness and weight, it moves without a cause, in as much as there is no additional cause from outside.
The Hellenistic sources distinguish atomic motion from externally caused motion, establishing the atom’s spontaneous movement as the philosophical basis for Epicurean accounts of volition.
, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987thesis
Their misbehaviour is quite explicitly said (B 1-4) to be attributable not to their atoms but to their selves and their ‘developments’.
Epicurus affirms that psychological self-determination is irreducible to underlying atomic motion, establishing a ‘transcendent’ layer of selfhood above atomic mechanics.
, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987thesis
electricity itself, which participates in the discontinuous actions that characterize the atomic properties of matter, has a discontinuous structure.
Simondon traces how the discovery of the electron extended atomic discontinuity into the domain of electricity, deepening the conceptual reach of atomism in physical individuation.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
Atomism, absence of moving cause in, 168 … Determinism, not complete in Atomism, 169
Cornford’s index entries signal that atomism is specifically characterized by its lack of a rational moving cause and its incompleteness as a deterministic system — key contrasts with Platonic teleology.
, Plato’s cosmology the Timaeus of Plato, 1997supporting
that which is atomic, and that which is partless, are traversed by the faster in the same time as they are by the slower. For if the slower takes a longer time, in the equal time it is going to traverse a different distance.
The Hellenistic doxography preserves Epicurus’s argument that atomic indivisibility generates an irreducible minimum of spatial magnitude, with direct consequences for theories of motion.
, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987supporting
If you could penetrate their passing show And see the world’s wild atoms, you would know That reason’s eyes will never glimpse one spark Of shining love to mitigate the dark.
Attar’s mystical verse deploys ‘atoms’ as emblems of phenomenal multiplicity that rational cognition cannot unify — a counter-image to the atomist reduction of reality to particles.
, The Divine Feminine: Exploring the Feminine Face of God Throughout the World, 1996supporting
If you could penetrate their passing show And see the world’s wild atoms, you would know That reason’s eyes will never glimpse one spark Of shining love to mitigate the dark.
Campbell cites the same Attar passage to underscore the limits of discursive reason before the irreducible particularity of the phenomenal world.
, Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine, 2013supporting
observations of atoms are a problem, because their background isn’t known. Whenever we see an atom, we can see phenomena that occur at its surface, but we don’t know, what happens inside.
Ponte draws on Eddington’s epistemological argument that atoms — unlike planets — lack a known background, making atomic observation a paradigmatic site for the psycho-physical problem.
, Carl Gustav Jung, Quantum Physics and the Spiritual Mind: A Mystical Vision of the Twenty-First Century, 2013supporting
Pictorial representation of the Radium atom by Hendrik Anthony Kramers according to Bohr’s atomic theory … before the formulation of the exclusion principle and the advent of the new quantum mechanics were sharply criticized by Pauli.
Pauli’s Nobel context situates his exclusion principle as a correction to naive pictorial representations of atomic structure, marking the transition from classical to quantum atomic models.
, Writings on Physics and Philosophy, 1994supporting
the laws of conservation of energy and momentum have proved to be valid without exception, even in elementary atomic processes.
Pauli notes that conservation laws hold at the atomic level, providing the stable structural background against which wave-particle complementarity becomes philosophically significant.
, Writings on Physics and Philosophy, 1994aside
the nature of any system cannot be discovered by dividing it into its component parts and studying each part by itself, since such a method often implies the loss of important properties of the system.
McGilchrist cites Planck’s holistic anti-reductionism as a counter to atomistic analysis of systems, connecting physics to hemisphere-based psychology.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021aside