'So far, whenever we get to the absolute end of the line on something, it has turned out that there's still more to find.'
You must be an astrophysicist. A few hundred years ago people were throwing around the wild concept that stars might be many millions of miles away. I guess they were off by few exponential units but it beat the pinholes in the shroud of heaven theory. We tend to reach these barriers of technology then maddeningly assume these are somehow limits of reality.

"However, the Greeks would've been in error only if the atoms they were talking about are the particles science defines as atoms. The possibility remains that the Greek "atom" could actually be quarks and if these can be broken down into simpler particles..."
Yeah, that's how I see it too.
It is really the idea of reaching a point where corporeal substance can no longer be divisible. The question is does indivisibility exist? We stand at this juncture where our scale of existence can be probed in both the direction of smallness or largeness but after a certain point it becomes irrelevant to our reality to move past these in a tangible way. The interaction of particles by high energy collision is our main way to trace our theories of elementary particles, while factors of time and the speed of light seem to inhibit us at the large scale. Your social science allegory is interesting because it does appear that slicing and dicing beyond practicality starts to change the meaning when scales become remote to our existence.

Nevertheless, just because people who are professionals and experts in obscurantism, State and corporate propaganda and sophistry say something, this doesn't mean they are right, especially when they are debunked by their own presuppositions on this issue of truth, and it doesn't mean that they're worthy of consideration.
...
Philosophy is about truth, if there's no truth, then go home and play soccer or watch Friends. — Dharmi

It may be pointless for me to keep trying but: earnest summaries like 'there is no truth' are basically worthless to me. 'Words have no concrete meaning' is also, by itself, stupid. All one sentence pronouncements are stupid, including this one.

I can't upload what I think I've vaguely realized in some cheap oneliner. I've explicitly said: it ain't math! That means there is no condensed theorem to present, followed by a proof. That whole approach is fucked, IMO, though it feels so natural if one begins in a certain place, with a certain fantasy about some perfect science of the immediate soul which generates unambiguous truths.

Glittering crystals !

They must be out there somewhere....yet no one understands my supposedly transparent language. No one gets my method. Those who doubt are just being impish or corrupt. Let's just ignore the possibility that the mission sometimes changes with updated facts on the ground...

It may be pointless for me to keep trying but: earnest summaries like 'there is no truth' are basically worthless to me. 'Words have no concrete meaning' is also, by itself, stupid. All one sentence pronouncements are stupid, including this one. — norm

I know, you're a nihilist. Everything is worthless to you. I understand that perfectly.

I know, you're a nihilist. Everything is worthless to you. I understand that perfectly. — Dharmi

'Nihilist' is another one of those words. I don't have high hopes for you understanding me, but it's the shallowness of all these cartoon words that I'm objecting to. Your attitude seems to be: if you don't see Philosophy asI see philosophy, you're nihilist, obscurantist, atheist, materialist, cultural-marxism guy.

I'm an irreligious guy who likes Bernie Sanders, wants health care for all, a high minimum wage, blah blah blah. I think metaphysics is hopeless but harmless, that labels without additional context are useless. I don't think that philosophy is proving things, so I won't try to prove that philosophy is not about proving things. As my vision/attitude of/toward language changed, so did the mission. Facts on the rough ground demanded an adjustment of strategy.Blah blah. Words for birds of a feather, mostly wasted, which is fine.

The Planck length may also represent the diameter of the smallest possible black hole. — T Clark

I have wondered about this relationship before, and how if (the big "if" in question in this thread) elementary particles actually are infinitesimal points, they would necessarily be black holes (the density of any point with nonzero mass is infinite, and so well above the threshold to form a black hole), and the smallest possible one would have a Schwarzchild radius of the Planck length. Since we don't even know if normal stellar-mass black holes contain actual singularities and suspect that they do not, it's probably not even necessary that fundamental particles be actual literal point particles, for us to consider them effectively tiny black holes.

'Nihilist' is another one of those words. I don't have high hopes for you understanding me, but it's the shallowness of all these cartoon words that I'm objecting to. Your attitude seems to be: if you don't see Philosophy asI see philosophy, you're nihilist, obscurantist, atheist, materialist, cultural-marxism guy. — norm

Yeah, I know you're a Derridean and a Wittgensteinian you're just going to talk about the imprecision of words and how knowledge is impossible. And I frankly don't respect that view. You can have that view, you're free to do it, but I don't respect it. I consider that sophistry, pseudo-philosophy, philodoxy, nihilism anything except true philosophy.

I'm an irreligious guy who likes Bernie Sanders, wants health care for all, a high minimum wage, blah blah blah. I think metaphysics is hopeless but harmless, that labels without additional context are useless. I don't think that philosophy is proving things, so I won't try to prove that philosophy is not about proving things. As my vision/attitude of/toward language changed, so did the mission. Facts on the rough ground demanded an adjustment of strategy.Blah blah. Words for birds of a feather, mostly wasted, which is fine. — norm

I definitely understand your position, I believed it myself once. Richard Rorty, probably the greatest Postmodern philosopher of recent times, held the same position. I just don't, and I think that's just giving up.

I think you've given up on serious questions and serious issues, and now you're stuck with pragmatic, practical things. I think that's giving up, surrender. A cop-out. You might find that fine to believe and accept, I do not. Apart from it being self-refuting at a fundamental level, it's also a cop-out.

Your question: "How small can you go" seems to be a good basic question, at first, but the other support-information you listed is confusing. Are you asking how small can you go, or are you asking how small can a detectable object be? There was some discussion on the thread about "quarks", but as I understand the term - quarks are not stand-alone particles. Their theoretical existence is only in combination with other quarks to make up a "hadron". Are you looking for what is the smallest "stand-alone particle", or are you looking at how small can anyone imagine something to be - (that is: not even physical at all.) Without knowing the nature of your question it's difficult to answer.

I think the reason the concept of smallness intrigues me is because some scientists talk of 'point particles' which are essentially one dimensional objects that occupy no space. This idea bothers me because it can't be proven but at the same time means nothing smaller is possible. The idea just seems lazy!
It is always possible to muse about things that are outside of our ability to verify and we are free to do so, but with the caveat that it is just narrative without substance.
I think that we have not yet reached the smallest elements but simply have no way to detect these.
Undoubtedly our capacity to verify objects is limited by our instruments- basically CERN's collider and some pretty complicated physics theory. This realm of minute detection is not static and in the future both the theories and instruments will evolve- we may go smaller yet.
Actually an electron does more or less count as a quark based on it's mass and inability to be split into any constituent pieces I believe.

I think the reason the concept of smallness intrigues me is because some scientists talk of 'point particles' which are essentially one dimensional objects that occupy no space. — Proximate1

Make that zero dimensional.

point taken!