Basic parts or dependence on everything
When you break things down, do you reach basic parts that exist in their own right, or does everything, down to the smallest part, depend on other things? Ancient atomists said there are indivisible atoms. The Madhyamaka tradition said nothing exists on its own.
What it is
Take a table apart and you find wood, then fibres, then cells, then molecules. Does this process end somewhere, in parts so small and simple that they exist on their own and everything else is built from them? Or is every part itself made of, or dependent on, other things, so that nothing at any level stands alone?
It is a question about what is real at the bottom, and it has been asked in Greece, in India and in modern science.
The main views
- Basic parts exist. The ancient Greek atomists held that the world consists of two things: atoms, which are indivisible and unchanging bodies, and the empty space between them. All change is atoms moving and combining in new ways. Atoms were meant to give the world a firm foundation.
- Nothing exists on its own. The Madhyamaka school of Indian Buddhism holds that all things are empty of inherent nature. A thing has no independent, unchanging essence. The natures it has come from its conditions, its parts and the way it is understood.
- Emptiness is not nothing. Madhyamaka does not say that nothing exists. It says that nothing exists independently, and that this is exactly what makes change and causation possible.
An example
Think of a wave. It seems to be one thing: you can point at it and watch it travel. Yet it is nothing apart from the water, the wind, the shape of the shore and the way you chose to carve it out of the sea. The atomist asks what the wave is built from at the very smallest level, and expects a final answer. The Madhyamaka thinker says that at every level the same thing happens: whatever you find depends on something else, and no level is the last.
Why people still disagree
- Why stop? If every part has parts, the search never ends, which some find unacceptable. The atomists argued that bodies cannot be divided without limit without paradox. Others reply that an endless chain of dependence is fine.
- Does analysis destroy everything? Critics of Madhyamaka say it only takes positions apart and leaves nothing standing. Its defenders reply that the aim is to remove false views, so as to see things as they are without clinging.
- What would an answer look like? The question can be asked about physical things, about ideas and about the self, and an answer for one need not hold for the others.
Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 8 October 2026. The sources are listed below.
Philosophies that answer it
Where each philosophy leans on this question, from the same positions the walk uses.
Nothing exists on its own
Sources we used
- Ancient Atomism · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, read on 8 October 2026
- Madhyamaka · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, read on 8 October 2026
- Nagarjuna · Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, read on 7 October 2026