“FUNDAMENTAL PARTICLES ARRANGED BASEBALLWISE.”

FUNDAMENTAL PARTICLES ARRANGED BASEBALLWISE. In the division of labor in our marriage, Mary Jane does all the philosophy, and especially, all the metaphysics. The Times Literary Supplement for June 6 has a review by Terry Horgan of ORDINARY OBJECTS by Amie L. Thomasson. The book is a “spirited and vigorous defence of the reality of ordinary objects.” (Of course, I never wonder about the reality of ordinary objects). The review is entitled “What broke the window?” and deals with Eddington’s argument that what seems to be a table is “mostly emptiness together with sparsely interspersed particles rapidly rushing about; hence tables and other such common-sense objects do not exist.” The book and review deal with the assertion that we can’t say that a baseball broke a window because “there are no baseballs, only ‘fundamental particles arranged baseballwise.’” I still can’t follow the arguments even when they’re expressed in terms of baseballs.