Beyond the Greeks: Anti-Atomism

I have wanted for a long time to write a historical survey of different ideas about how things become definite and how novelty arises. We tend to think the answer is obvious: there are certain basic definite entities and novelty arises through new combinations of those entities, whether they are physical atoms or psychological perceptions, or logical concepts. I have wanted to write about nonstandard views which depart from this atomist consensus. These range from the hyper rationalism of Plato and Einstein, through medieval divine voluntarism and modern human social constructivism, to the self-developing definiteness of Whitehead and Deleuze, and the blended position proposed by Hegel. That book never got written but this is my most developed outline for the history part of the project on the origin of determinations.

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