Re: Inertia or the "amount of substance"

["Miguel A. Santos" <msantos@ETSE.URV.ES>]

 This is exactly the point which I had in mind when replying to Ludwig,
but I feel your idea of inseparability ambiguous. That's why I looked for
a more concrete counterexample.
 One could reply to your comment that one can indeed 'take something away'
from those particles namely when they decompose into other particles.

 Regards,
        Miguel A. Santos
        msantos@etse.urv.es


On Sat, 13 Nov 1999, Kirkpatrick, James wrote:

>   Moreover the idea of 'amount of substance' is misleading because if we
> think of an object as the sum of fundamental particles, thinking about the
> 'amount of substance' of the object seems to suggest that we're thinking
> about the number of fundamental particles that compose it. This, however,
> can only delay the question to describing the mass of fundamental particle
> for which the definition of mass as "the amount of substance which cannot be
> changed without taken somehting away, or adding", is meaningless due to the
> inseparability of the particle.
> james