Saturday, 25 February 2017

An interesting topic came up at our group last night ....

Is 'water' simple or composite? Discussion of 'simple' here
'Water' would appear to be 'simple'.
Obj 1 If you split water into it's constituent parts, you end up with gas which is clearly not water.
Obj 2 If you try to split water, it stops being water, so must be simple.
On the other hand every created thing is composite.
I reply The composite nature of created things is apparent, whether you consider the building blocks from which they are made, or the fact that their being and essence are not the same etc.  If you can point at something, you can always demonstrate composition in some sense or other.  For example, I can split my pint of beer into two halves.  I think what we were really asking without realising it was 'is the form of water simple'.  Are forms simple?
Reply to the objections If this is simplicity, then what does complexity look like?