What Is Water?
"It is a straightforward fact, corrections to it are endlessly ignored, but it is simply false to say that water is H2O unless we are speaking very, very loosely" — Water Is Not H2O. "The idea that water simply is H2O is one of those false reductions that people can't seem to get out of their heads."
Labels: Philosophy, Science
5 Comments:
Man is a featherless biped.
Plato was right, or at least righter than Darwin.
Water is not H2O. True.
Nor is it a complexity as explained in the article, because if it was, then substance is nothing more than a complexity of accidents. And bread is what we consume thinking it is Christ because the complexity of accidents are the substance.
What water is, is water. What water has are characteristics that God in his wisdom made knowable to us. Characteristics knowable to us in a simplistic manner so that we could manipulate matter for the manufacture of goods for our use.
Characteristics are not substance.
"Whiskey's for drinking, water's for fighting over."
Reminds me of Vonnegut's ice-9.
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