4.9.2 Persistency Through Modification
To see how an object of explanation allows itself to be modified in order to remain the same let us look again at the Davisson-Germer experiment, but this time look at it not as an experiment performed in the service of validating Rutherford’s atomic model but rather as an investigation of how electrons scatter off a crystal predicated upon the manufacture of those electrons by an electron gun. We recall from Chapter 3, that the experimental apparatus used by Davisson and Germer consisted of an electron gun which provided a beam of electrons, of a nickel crystal serving as the scattering target, and of an electron collector. The gun was said to 'generate' the electrons because, as J.J. Thomson showed, a beam of particles with specified mass and electric charge well explained the behavior of its parts. The collector’s functioning was also well explained by such particles being captured within a metal container. The resulting scattering pattern, however, was not well explained by a beam of particles falling upon the crystalline structure of the target. As Davisson and Germer pointed out in their 1927 Physical Review paper, the pattern appeared instead to be that associated with the von Laue beams which would have issued from the crystal if the incident beam were not a collection of particles, but rather a beam of x-rays.
We are presented here therefore with two types of electrons: charged particles which explain the manufacturing and the detecting parts of the experiment, and von Laue waves which explain the scattering part of the experiment. However, in order to preserve the integrity of the object of explanation being observed in this predicated measurement, the two objects, the particle and the wave, must be one and the same entity. In other words, we must take what had been conceived as a particle ‘emerging’ from the gun and modify that conception in such a way as to co-opt into its Being the wave which had been conceived in order to explain the scattering pattern. This incorporation however is not the putting together of pre-existing entities which operates in a synthesis—συν meaning together and τιθημι meaning to put—but rather it is the giving together which operates in what Heidegger called a syndosis—συν meaning together and διδωμι meaning to give.
In such a syndotic unity, the particle and the wave are undeniably presented to us, but neither of them would be recognized as the entity with which we are familiar because the location of the particle is intrinsically related to the form of the wave and the wavelength of the wave is intrinsically related to the momentum of the particle. When we conceive of the object which explains the Davisson and Germer experiment, we do not put together two pre-given conceptions, the electron-particle and the electron-wave; rather, we conceive of the two as so many modifications of an object of explanation we have called an electron and give the manifold of modifications to ourselves as an original togetherness from unity. The manner of being of an object of explanation is therefore to-be-open-to-modification-in-order-to-stay-the-same, that is, to persist through modification.