For the past three hours I have spent my time trying to find this quote, obviously with no success. This has given me a really bad feeling, and I'd probably be willing to tip if someone finds it. Context: I believe I was looking on Google, Project Muse, or JSTOR for an article on (I *THINK*) Plato, probably more specifically Plato's Apology. If using Google, I would have been searching solely for .PDF's. Content: The quote was somewhat... "nihilistic", ontologically speaking, which is why it stood out since it was in a paper about Plato('s Apology) (If I remember correctly. I could be wrong, and could simply have been searching for nihilism or absurdism, but I'm 95% sure I wasn't). This is my rendition of the quote: "Look at the chair in front of you. It has no special properties. There is nothing essential to it that makes it a chair. Rather, it's a random allocation of particles that have formed into a particular fashion." If you find that quote, you'll immediately see why I want it. It explains what I want to explain, in a far more perfect manner. Again, this search is bugging me, and I'll probably tip whoever is able to find it.

That doesn't sound much like Plato to me. Actually, it sounds quite antithetical to Plato's Theory of Forms. That might be why you're having difficulties finding that particular quote if you're looking for it in the context of Plato, unless it was in the context of a counter to Plato. [grin] Try looking up Nietzsche or one of the other existentialists. I doubt it's Nietzsche, myself, but that's probably a better direction to look that Plato or his contemporaries.

edit: Actually, now that I think of it, it sounds very similar to something in a particular chapter of Plato's Republic, if rather in opposition to it. I think it may have been in book 10, but I'm not sure.

To clarify: It's not a quote by any famous philosopher. I believe it's from some esoteric novel or relatively unknown contemporary person. I only mentioned Plato because the quote was in a paper about him.

Sounds more like Carl Sagan than Plato. The particle model of matter is only a couple of hundred years old. Sure, the ancient Greeks came up with the notion of the atom as that which could not be further divided, but they didn't take it so far as to claim that everything was composed of such particles. That notion didn't take shape until Dalton formulated his atomic theory in 1808.

This probably isn't the one, but I'll give it a shot anyway.

"I sat on the bed. I looked at the Rorschach blot. I tried to make it look like a spreading tree, shadows pooled beneath it, but it didn't. It looked more like a dead cat I once found, the fat, glistening grubs writhing blindly, squirming over each other, frantically tunneling away from the light. But even that isn't the real horror. The horror is this: in the end, it is simply a picture of empty meaningless blackness."
Alan Moore

>>"Look at the chair in front of you. It has no special properties. There is nothing essential to it that makes it a chair. Rather, it's a random allocation of particles that have formed into a particular fashion."<<

>>you'll immediately see why I want it.

as an example of a bollux statement perhaps? Surely u can come up with some better bollux assertions, quote bush jr + the 'war on terror' for example