Clark, list,
Responses interleaved.
On 9/27/2014 7:41 PM, Clark Goble wrote:
> On Sep 26, 2014, at 12:41 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:>/p>
>> Clark, list,
>>I've also noticed a difficulty of finding usefulness for the formal
cause in physics, though I came at it from other directions, simpler
ones for me since I'm not a physicist, but also I'd like to add a
clarification of the idea of formal causation.
> [CG] I think there are things /like / formal causes in physics. For
instance if you are discussing symmetries how different really is that
from discussing forms?
[BU] Yes, I should have sad a difficulty of finding usefulness for
formal _/causation/_ in physics, and of finding a useful kinetic
quantity in the manner of momentum, mass, energy. Insofar as a thing's
form is its formal cause, physics obviously has use for forms.
> [CG] However I think there’s a huge gap within physics simply
because of how physics views foundational theories. Right now there’s
near universal consensus we don’t have a foundational theory and
(except for the string proponents) most don’t think we have any idea
what one would look like. (I’ve no idea how far string theory has
fallen in favor the last few years. There’s definitely been a
backlash, but how widespread it is at the moment I couldn’t say)
[BU] On _The Big Bang Theory_, Sheldon has given up on string theory.
Clearly the walls have been breached.
> [CG] Given that acknowledged ignorance of foundations there’s a
strong sense even among realists that most of what we do in physics is
model making with the models highly idealized from what’s really going
on. So a realist might be a realist towards certain structures and
behaviors about GR or QM but a bit of a skeptic regarding particular
models.
[BU] A realist can and often enough ought to be skeptical about
particular models and diagrams as representative of reality. A realist
believes not that all generals are real but instead that some generals
are real and some generals are figmentitious.
> [CG] If that’s true, even if a realist /appears/ to be appealing to
Aristotle’s four causes in practice what they /really/ think is going
on is probably something different. That is on a practical basis for
most physical theories even realists behave as an instrumentalist. If
true, then in what way can Aristotle’s categories really be seen
ontologically?
So it’s really a subtle point about realism, foundational ontology and
Aristotle I'm making.
[BU] I'm not sure that I get you. Skepticism toward particular models,
the desire that they 'do the job' (i.e., stand up to evidence) doesn't
by itself seem to amount to choosing instrumentalism over realism.
>> [BU] If I remember Peirce correctly, the ideas of force, impulse,
momentum were ideas of ways to quantify (efficient) 'causativeness'
or capacity to cause, impart motion, etc., while power (wattage),
work, energy, were ways to quantify effect (_telos_, end, in a sense)
or capacity for effect. The matter obviously was quantified as mass,
and related mechanical quantities would be change of mass and the
rate of it, which I guess one could call 'affluence' :-), but
nowadays I guess one would say that internal work, internal power,
are also mechanical counterparts to rest mass (i.e., to rest energy).
> [CG] It’s true that Peirce adopts telos in terms of capacity. So he
says idea in the Platonic sense is “anything whose Being consists in
its mere capacity for getting fully represented.”
[BU] I was talking about capacity in all cases. Momentum isn't
'casativeness' in the sense that impulse and force seem, but it is a
kind of 'causative' capacity. Work is a kind of effect, energy is
capacity for work, capacity for effect.
> [CG] I only have the EP to search through but I couldn’t find a
passage like that. I’d be interested if you know it.
[BU] It was a brief passage, it'd be hard to find again. Peirce was
merely mentioning the history of the idea, not his philosophy of it.
> [CG] The closest I could find was the more typical (even today)
physicts view that we haven’t a clue what energy is beyond it’s place
in an equation.
We should hardly find today a man of Kirchhoff’s rank in science
saying that we know exactly what energy does but what energy is we
do not know in the least. For the answer would be that energy
being a term in a dynamical equation, if we know how to apply that
equation, we thereby know what energy is, although we may suspect
that there is some more fundamental law underlying the laws of
motion. (EP 2:239)
Peirce here was using energy and its meaning as an analogy for relations.
[BU] I like to think that Peirce would think that the equations tell us
a little more now. Energy, in nearly the sense that he understood it, is
a time-minus-proper-time quantity in the sense that momentum is a
distance (or displacement) quantity. Energy, momementum, mass, can all
be expressed in the same units, in a sense they're the same thing in
terms of different reference-frame structures. I should add at some
point that Peirce didn't think that energy was an cenoscopically
philosophical subject, since the conservation of energy requires special
experiments to establish.
I do think Peirce is influenced by Aristotle’s two grades of being as
actuality and potentiality. But I’m not sure he put things in quite
the form you suggest.
[BU] Peirce did not relate all four causes to kinetic quantities
> [CG] I may be completely wrong here I should add - this is just
coming from me scanning EP. If you have a reference I’d be very
interested as I’ve honestly not even looked to see what Peirce’s
theory of physics was. Partially because he wrote before the great
revolutions of the early 20th century.
[BU] It wasn't Peirce's theory of physics, just a bit of physics lore
that he was passing on, about an idea encapsulated in the statement that
'a force can do work'. I think he discussed only causativeness and
effect. The part about mass as quantity of matter is so obvious that I
added it, sorry that I didn't say that I didn't remember Peirce saying that.
Best, Ben
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