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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
My last communication dealt with the question of what is an atom. The answer was a proposal to define the atom as the terminus of a special sort of analysis, the atomistic-structural. This form of analysis was presented as a special way of treating a “material” system or situation. A formula was suggested which expressed matter or the material as the product of structure and atomicity, or M = SA. No limitation was placed on the factoring of M into other products, but this particular product was designated as the structural-atomistic analysis. The factors, S and A, constitute a conjugate pair, so chosen that each member of the pair is meaningless without the other. Atomicity, thus, is not a matter of size or of some sort of ultimateness, but corresponds to some level of being in empirical situations which also reveals structure.
1 I might have used the term “genetic” or “generic” but I fear that their special meanings as referring to origins are too strongly fixed. “Genetistic” would have the advantage of being new, but it sounds clumsy. “Genic” still tempts me. “Genistic” was chosen because it is new and parallels the term “atomistic”.