Looking at Things Atomistically

 The title of this piece may seem a bit deceptive. When I talk about seeing things 'atomistically', I am talking about a particular period in my life when I was 10 years old, and I started reading old chemistry books in the library and learning about the structure of atoms and molecules. It seems hard to believe in retrospect, but that period for me was a kind of religious conversion, because I started to realize that what I thought to be 'solid' enduring entities turned out to be composed of vast and infinite distances of space and matter, all of which can be broken down further and further into sub-particles. This kind of 'atomism' gave me a sense of joy and wonder, because it made me realize that things no longer need to be taken as things, but can be broken down further into these interrelated chains of events and situations, many of which could be colorfully illustrated. I don't think that science was ever as romantic for me as it was at that time, because later, the notion of this vast universe was replaced with something called "hard science", where data comes is said to confirm something that is 'fixed' and unchanging. At that time, I read that the criterion for a 'good' science fiction novel is that its parameters conform to realistic science that could be backed up by some physically tenable, or measurable idea.
   My point is that there are two ways to look at things 'atomistically': one is in the spirit of seeing how parts interconnect in intricate and infinite ways, while the other is to try to 'separate' or divide processes into discreet and segregated parts. While the former tends to lead to a sense of awe at the universe, the latter tends to lead to a narrowing of consciousness and even a rejection of holistic views of life. It's as though whenever we try to use our analyses to 'fix' things down to a few common denominators or substances, the view of the world collapses and we are unable to link things together in creative ways. I think that many Buddhist texts do indeed see things from the perspective of the constituents of experience (for example, the 5 skandhas), but this is not as a way of fixing or narrowing consciousness to one or two things. Rather, it is a way of realizing the deep intricacy of how things are similar and relate in a co-existing way. Could science be taught more along the lines of this sort of harmony, I wonder?