Complete Lecture Notes for Lecture 10.1
Have considered the varieties of significant meanings attached to Motion, Space, Time, and Cause. Not arbitrary meanings—(1) they have been relevant to overlapping regions of common phenomena—each extensible to all: condition of rivalry or opposition of hypotheses concerning same phenomena—progress in the successive applications of hypotheses, (2) they have been mutually exclusive as theories—refutations and abandoning of phenomena.
Two aspects of scientific advance—(1) uncovering and consideration of new data, and (2) extension or alteration of hypothesis applied.
Philosophic aspects of these processes—what is being explained and how is it being explained.
Common phenomena considered—“change” as it occurs and is encountered. (Variable extension and meaning of the term).
Two movements in philosophic discussion—(1) shifting fashions of selection—things, thoughts, events or statements, and (2) ideological differences, derived from basic modes of thought at each epoch of selection.
Consider our four terms under the three headings. Begin with Interpretation (present selection) and with the mode of resolution (differentiation of concepts selected as fundamental in the other three modes of thought).
1. Interpretation
Real and apparent motion, space, time, and cause.
Phenomenal—denial of absolute motion behind or beyond phenomena.
Phenomenal
What changes is substances, either with respect to their essential nature, or with respect to properties: generation and motion. They are studied only in physics (and biology and psychology which are parts of physics) not in mathematics or metaphysics. Practical sciences study habituation, Productive sciences imitation—not motion (the motion required for imitation and habituation studied in physics). Similarly space (internal boundary of envelope) and time (measure of motion) limited to motions of bodies. Causes of being as well as change—causes of being studied in metaphysics—of change physics (Generation and Corruption and the Generation of Animals). (science of universal—only particular move). Nature internal principle of motion—external principle violent motion. Natural, violent. Four causes distinguishable with respect to both kinds.
Existentialist—interpretation from knower to known rather than from known to knower. Agent
What changes is observed events. Appearance rather than phenomena. Essentialist [—] relativity of substances to circumstances and qualities. Existentialist [—] relativity to the frame of reference of the observer or the agent. From phenomenological present creative activity—intentionality to many worlds, all characterized by events or motions. Fit them into frames relative to the observer. What changes are existential situations as constituted in those frameworks. What changes are existences rather than substances. As if the productive interpretation distinguished as one of the interpretations by mode of resolution were applied to all phenomena. Space is the distance or distinctions observed and measured in change; time is the rate of change, measured relative to other measurable distinctions; cause is the action required to initiate or imagine the change, a variable added by the knower to the measurement of the event.
Ontic interpretations. Knowledge—knowable. In both Ontic interpretations distinction between absolute and relative motion—in terms of what is in motion.
Entitative—knowable to knowledge. Motion
What changes is real thing, and our knowledge is of such changes. They are bodies and they change only with respect to space. Other changes “reducible” to motions of bodies. In addition there are apparent changes or sensible changes—like the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies observed from earth. Identification of absolute motion by the variable devices of Galileo, Newton or Clerk Maxwell; relative motions relative to other others. Therefore a sense of absolute space and absolute time even for Galileo and Clerk Maxwell with their operational methods. Cause—internal cause of motion; internal cause of continuation of motion or rest
Ontological—knowledge to knowable. Eternal basis of being or equation
Reverse of entitative: Entitative—knowledge of motion of being; ontological—knowledge of being, opinion of becoming, which is an imitation of being. Distinction therefore between motion of the world soul or of the things with respect to the same and the other—reason; and motion imposed by things on each other—as the elements—necessity. Time a moving image of eternity in the first; space a receptacle of change in the second; cause the rational or the necessary.
2. Method—what do changing things do when they change?
Universal and particular motion, space, time, and cause. Particular—denial of universal motion particularized in different kinds of motion.
Particular methods. Known—knowable.
Problematic. Motion is the actualization of the potential qua potential.
Change includes generation and motion. Generation the actuality of substances; motion three kinds—quantity, quality, place, properties of substance. All the actualities and potentialities existent bodies—physics. Place the boundary of bodies; time the measure of motion. Cause the principles of motion. Interrelation of the three kinds of motion, but not reducible. Time, numbered num[ber]; nature internal cause
Logistic method. Motion is the local motion of bodies. Space is the void in which bodies move—principle on the same level as the elements. Time a natural regular motion—motion of planets, atomic clocks. (Similar hunt for natural spatial units). Cause of motion preexistent motion.
Universal methods. Knower—knowledge.
[Dialectical]. All motions a series of instantaneous generations.
Intelligible in terms of being or essence or ideas or formulae. Time the moving image of such intelligible consider[ed] in terms of essential natures and specific difference. Space the potentialities of such change under the influence of external necessity. Cause the intelligible in these varieties of operation.
Operational method. Knower—knowledge.
Reverse of dialectic—creative process of the knower making knowledge and data. Making. Space and time dimensions. Cause the equation and the application of the equation.
Prominence of time and space with respect to method[,] of motion with respect to interpretation.
3. Principles.
Principles of whole and of part motion, space, and cause
Part—denial that there is a principle or cause of the whole apart from construction of parts.
Holoscopic. Knowledge—known.
Reflexive. Distinction between causes, principles, elements. Other principles than causes. Cause the principle of knowing coinciding with principle of the known.
Nature as internal principle of motion. Virtue as a habit, mean, relative to individual rule of right reason etc. Four parts of physics, four parts of biology.
Two kinds of causes—prime mover (Physics and Metaphysics) and natural causes. Actuality as cause
Comprehensive principles
Inclusive cause of reason—motion of the world soul; motion of parts under the influence of necessity.
Reason as cause in each case.
Meroscopic principles. Knower—knowable.
Actional—eliminate knowable—motion introduced by knower. Any principle.
Simple—Any element.
1. What is the difference between Aristotle’s analysis of motion and the modern tradition beginning with Galileo?
Galileo the only one of the three read who have any element of the analysis in common with Aristotle—Reflexive principles—inertia as a cause of motion. Change from gravity as an internal cause (Ar[istotle]) to external cause (Newton).
Striking contribution of Galileo, operational method, modified to logistic by
Newton, back to operational by Clerk Maxwell.
Agreement of all three on entitative interpretation.
a. What moves? All three, material bodies in void or extension. (Aristotle—substances, with respect to essence of properties—motion).
Note that there is a tendency to think that the entitative interpretation dominant today. Probably not true[;] no atomists—particles an existentialist interpretation.
b. 19th and 20th century alternation between logistic and operational method. Shift to operational and dialectical methods in quantum mechanics and relativity physics.
c. Shift in principles—reflexive (Gal[ileo]), Comp[rehensive] (Newt[on]), Actional (Clerk Maxwell). Interplay still between the actional and comprehensive principles.
What moves?—observable characteristics of events as recorded on sensitive photographic plate. Rel[ative], no[t] absolute motion. Phen[omenal] mot[ion].
What is motion? Measurable transformation—in either form of universal motion.
What is the source of motion? External cause manipulated by measurer or internal structure of group.
(Note that only one of the three likewise agreed with Plato [and] in only one respect—Comprehensive principles[,] Newton).
Note—Dewey problematic method and essentialist interpretation as variant [of] noted tendency to operational and logistic methods in Anglo-American philosophers. Dialecticians among continental philosophers and scientists.
2. What is the relation of mathematics to the physical study of motion?
Method: universal methods, same method in mathematics and physics. Dialectic—becoming imitation of being, opinion of knowledge: knowledge [is] mathematics and dialectic—priority of dialectic. Operational method—construction of figure and relation of figure or equation to nature. Doubling in both. In both priority of mathematical analysis to analysis of becoming.
Particular methods—different methods. Problematic—method of mathematics and method of physics. Logistic only one scientific method—demonstration that mathematics is a physical method—Newton.
Differences of principles—for meroscopic[,] mathematical postulate set as principles. Difference between actional and simple interpretation of postulate set. Actional—rules of operation test the independence, consistency and fruitfulness of set by giving it a series of meanings—fruitful for one affirmative result. Simple—natural[,] not arbitrary meanings of definitions.
Interpretations—phenomenal, mathematics as means used in interpretation of phenomena. Ontic—real status of underlying mathematical relations.