4.9.3 Retaining Previous Modifications
This process of modification, which was forced upon us by the predicated nature of the measurement, can occur any number of successive times. Consider, for instance, the 1922 Stern-Gerlach predicated experiment with silver atoms. The manufacturing context used to produce the silver atoms was a furnace vented to the outside through a hole made in one of its walls because that particular context was well explained by conceiving that atoms were ejected through the hole. The observational context was designed to observe how those atoms behaved when passing through an inhomogeneous magnetic field. If the atoms were conceived of as simple particles moving through the magnetic field, they would have followed a straight line. In the event, they split into two beams suggesting that the atoms should rather be conceived as having an intrinsic angular momentum which can only take on two distinct values. Self-consistency would then compel us to modify the original atoms in such a way as to syndotically include such a spin into the Being of the atoms produced by the oven. Subsequently, therefore, whenever atoms are to be manufactured, the manufacturing context used would have to account for this more complex characterization of the objects produced either by expressly ignoring it or by expressly focusing on it. Hereafter, then, the process of manufacturing a beam of silver atoms will have to include a decision as to whether to prepare the atoms in a given state of intrinsic angular momentum or not. If the former, one should first let the beam pass through an inhomogeneous magnetic field and then use either of the two beams emerging from the magnetic field; if the latter, one should use the beam emerging directly from the oven.
One way or another, therefore, the atom is now something different from the object of explanation which informed the manufacturing context of the Stern-Gerlach experiment, but for all that, it is still a silver atom. Were one to have performed this kind of measurement with electrons rather than atoms, one would have been forced to further modify the electrons which were conceived by us to explain the Davisson-Germer predicated measurement in such a way as to incorporate into their Being an angular momentum as well. Consequently, because manufacturing an object of explanation involves re-creating the experiential context which that object had previously explained, the syndosis which gives an object of explanation must successively retain all previous modifications.