Does the fact that the atom is infinite in the way that everything is made up of them — MountainDwarf

Might be useful to you if you thought about what you were saying before you posted it - I'm pretty sure that's what most of us do. Not everything is made of atoms. Nor is any atom "infinite."

Please try again.

Sorry, I just thought that cells were on the atomic level and they reproduce, die, and regenerate all the time.

In essence the cell never dies out even though individual cells die.

In essence the cell never dies out even though individual cells die. — MountainDwarf

The part of it that's called life seems to have a capacity for adaption and endurance, although not so much the survival of individuals. More interesting is the question if life is inevitable.

The way I see it is if life is inevitable so is death, and death is inevitable. The question you propose is much more interesting seeing as none of us know what it's like to be in a state of non-existence, we're here. I guess I always wonder why. If there is no good reason for why we're here then what keeps all of us from checking out? That's a head scratcher.

none of us know what it's like to be in a state of non-existence — MountainDwarf

Well, we kind of do, don't we? We sleep, and some of use have other experiences of unconsciousness. Death is inevitable. If you're willing to think of DNA as a kind of life, then those who have children, especially lots of children, delay death maybe for a very long time. As to reasons, I think we make our own - we bootstrap it.

It's useful to think about what actually dies, in death. Maybe potential, the possibility of what isn't; the past, that isn't any more; and the present. Ego dies. It's somewhat comforting to think that with ego goes all the thing that matter to ego. A line heard in a film I find helpful: "Think of all of those who have gone before."

Well, we kind of do, don't we? We sleep, and some of use have other experiences of unconsciousness. — tim wood

Dreams? Those are experiences not of unconsciousness but of subconsciousness. I feel that we come from different philosophical planets. Who would you say influences you the most?

Ego dies. It's somewhat comforting to think that with ego goes all the thing that matter to ego. — tim wood

I agree. Death is a mysterious, dark, beautiful thing.

What's the Ape-Iron theory? In my estimate Anaximander lived in the Bronze age, and had no knowledge of iron; and definitely no knowledge of the classification of animal species in which a class or order or family or whatever is called Ape.

So I am still baffled, because the Opening Post promised to open up the way to show how the existence of atoms proves the Ape-Iron theory, which theory was actually not mentioned, or the proof, or what Ape-Iron actually is.

This was a let down, a disappointment, but I'll live.

Apeiron (/əˈpaɪrɒn/; ἄπειρον) is a Greek word meaning "(that which is) unlimited," "boundless", "infinite", or "indefinite"[1] from ἀ- a-, "without" and πεῖραρ peirar, "end, limit", "boundary",[2] the Ionic Greek form of πέρας peras, "end, limit, boundary".[3] It is akin to Persian piramon, meaning "boundary, circumference, surrounding".

It seems to me that much care is needed in translating the Greek. No doubt with any language, but with the Greek we encounter just those topics that require special care. As noted in above, the α is privative. To go from "without" to some positive quality like infinite is very problematic - and in many case destructive of original meaning. The surface of a sphere, for example, is without boundary, but that doesn't make it infinite in any sense. Except maybe a Greek sense, the sense of the possibilities of unboundedness. If, for example, everything is made up of "atoms," and atoms make up anything and everything, then there's a built-in ἄπειρον.

Fun fact: iron working wasn’t unknown in the bronze age, it’s just that bronze was a better metal, but people switched to iron when bronze became prohibitively expensive.

I humbly ask the users of this site to speak / write in English. If they use a word that is not in English, but it is in the vocabulary of the professional language of philosophy, then I humbly ask those users to:
1. Alert readers that this is a well-defined word in philosophy use;
2. and possibly give a meaning to it (unless it is tedious to do so.)

So, okay, well, then, what is this apeiron theory? What is its starting point, argument and conclusion? We still don't know, we, the great unwashed who use this site.

Short version is that back when presocratic philosphers were arguing that “all is fire” or “all is air” and so on, Anaximander introduced the idea that everything is indeed made of one substance, but it’s not one of those traditional elements or anything else with which we are familiar, because those are all forms of this same one, undefined (or “boundless”) stuff that underlies all of them.

This was the earliest era of philosophy where a lot of things were really speculative so whatever arguments Anaximander had are not as important as just the fact that he proposed this possibility.

I think the modern physicalist conception of everything being made of energy taking different forms matches pretty well with Anaximander’s “aperion”, myself.

But I can’t make sense of the rest of the OP.

This is distantly connected with wave/particle duality in physics. But when an electron, for example, is detected, it is detected as a particle. Whereas its wave form is a probability wave detected by slit experiments. Does everything "exist" as a wave form? Yes, I suppose, but at larger sizes that's not a useful approach. (Calling a real, live physicist if there is one around this forum - correct me!) :chin:

Thanks, PFH.