1136 lines
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1136 lines
85 KiB
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<title>Newton’s laws of motion</title>
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<meta name="author" content="Amr Gharbeia">
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><b>N<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OdkC10" align="right" hspace="5" width="53" height="24" border="0">ewton’s
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laws of motion. </b></font>Newton’s laws of motion are remarkably
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simple. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">First
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law of motion: “Every body continues in its state of rest, or of
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uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that
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state by forces impressed on it.” </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Second
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law of motion: “The change of motion is proportional to the motive
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force impressed; and is made in the direction of the right line in
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which that force is impressed.”</font></font></font></p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Third
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law of motion: “To every action there is always opposed an equal
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reaction; or, the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are
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always equal, and directed to contrary parts.” </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Law
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of gravitation: material objects always attract one another in
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proportion to the product of their masses and inversely as the square
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of the distance separating them.</font></font></font></p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Newton’s
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laws describe how material objects move and interact, and since we
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postulate matter in the form of material objects with rest mass, we
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need only see how the regularities described by Newton’s laws of
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motion would be explained on the assumption that kinetic energy and
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potential energy are forms of matter as well. That requires making
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further assumptions about the specific essential natures of these
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forms of matter and about space, but as we shall see, it affords
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genuine, even illuminating, ontological explanations of some aspects
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of classical physics.</font></font></font></p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">According
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to our working hypothesis, the motion of a material object with rest
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mass is due to the kinetic matter attached to it. The kinetic matter
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must coincide with the same part of space as the material object
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itself, but in a way that that moves the material object across space
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as time passes. Each speed and direction of motion for any given
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material objects would involve a (quantitatively) different variety
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of kinetic matter (which could be explained ontologically by aspects
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of how kinetic matter coincides with space, such as its direction and
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quantity). </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>Newton’s
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first law of motion. </b></i>Newton’s first law is an immediate
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consequence of this ontological assumption about kinetic matter.
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Since the kinetic matter that makes the material object move is
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itself a substance that endures through time with the same essential
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nature, the object in motion will continue moving at the same speed
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and in the same direction (unless it interacts with another bit of
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matter). </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">What does
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not change according to the first law of motion is called “velocity,”
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because it includes two aspects of the object’s motion, its speed
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and its direction. That is why we assume that, for any given material
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object, each different speed and each different direction requires a
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different variety of kinetic matter. The velocity is not the kinetic
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matter, but just a <i>property </i>of the material object with the
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kinetic matter, that is, an aspect of the substances constituting the
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object with rest mass together with its kinetic matter and how both
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are contained by space. (The three dimensional structure of space
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makes it possible to represent any velocity mathematically as a
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certain speed in each of any three mutually perpendicular directions.
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Quantities that depend on direction in this way are called
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“vectors.”) </font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Newton’s
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first law must be true, if the motion of objects is due to kinetic
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matter, because all the ways that an object might be thought to
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change its speed or direction on its own are ontologically
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impossible. A change in its motion would require kinetic matter of
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one variety to come into existence and another variety would have to
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go out of existence as time passes, which substances cannot do. Or it
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would require the variety of kinetic matter to change its essential
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nature, which no form of matter can do on its own. Or it would
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require space to contain kinetic matter in a different way at
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different locations, which is not compatible with the uniformity of
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space. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">To
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be sure, in order to explain motion as a form of matter that connects
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material objects to space in a certain way, the objects must have an
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<i>absolute </i>velocity, that is, a certain velocity in absolute
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space. That may seem doubtful in contemporary physics, but it is just
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what spatiomaterialism entails about the nature of space and that is
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what is at issue in this ontological explanation of physics.</font></font></font></p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #cccccc; border-top: 6.75pt double #000000; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #000000; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">N<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="HistCmt" align="right" hspace="5" width="149" height="22" border="0">otice
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that the assumption that an object’s velocity is due to its kinetic
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matter solves a problem that motion otherwise poses for any ontology
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that that postulates only substances enduring through time. The
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problem was first posed by Zeno as a paradox about motion. He pointed
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out that, at each moment, an object must be at rest (as we assume by
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holding that nothing exists but the present), and he asked, How is
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motion even possible in that case? If motion is simply how location
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changes as time passes, motion does not really exist, because the
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object always has only one location at each moment as it is present.
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This is not just a puzzle about the continuousness of time and space,
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because holding that to move is just to have a location that varies
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continuously with time leaves a problem about why the moving object
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has a different location the next moment, whereas the object at rest
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does not. What makes the object in motion different from the object
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at rest at each moment? To be sure, it is possible to simply assume
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that the essential nature of all material objects includes the
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temporally complex property of changing locations again, if it did so
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the last moment. That is what materialism does in this case (as in
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the case of every other basic law of physics), and it is not very
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satisfying, because there is nothing to distinguish the moving object
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from the one at rest at any moment except where each was the previous
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moment (which is not something that exists at that moment). If,
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however, motion is constituted by a bit of kinetic matter that exists
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in addition to the object with rest mass, then motion is actually a
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substance that endures through time, and thus, what makes the moving
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object at any moment different from an object at rest is something
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that exists at that moment (not just the fact that it has a different
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position the previous moment). </font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
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first law of motion allows for velocity to change when the material
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object interacts with another object, and given the forms of matter
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we are postulating, the only way that a material object can change
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velocity is for kinetic matter to be transferred to it or from it or
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both. Somehow the object must come to have a different variety of
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kinetic matter attached to it. That is basically what interactions do
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to objects with rest mass. In such an interaction, Newton’s laws
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say that the object is subject to a force, and our working hypothesis
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implies that the exertion of a force on the object somehow transfers
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kinetic matter to and/or from it. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Interactions
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are something that we expect, given our assumption that material
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objects are a form of matter that cannot occupy the same place at the
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same time, because if they can move, they can move to the same
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location at the same time and something must keep them from being
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contained by the same part of space. The simplest kind of interaction
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is a collision of material objects that is elastic, that is, in which
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nothing changes but the velocities of the material objects that
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collide. Though collisions of ordinary material objects are mediated
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by electromagnetic interactions, we can, for present purposes,
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abstract from the nature of the forces and consider only what happens
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when material objects collide. We know that they exchange kinetic
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matter. But we do not know how much is transferred or what effect it
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has on their velocities. The regularities about such transfers of
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kinetic matter are what is described by Newton’s second and third
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laws of motion. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>Newton’s
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second law of motion.</b></i> Newton’s second law holds that the
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exertion of a force is what changes the velocity of a material
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object. Since forces are exerted by other objects, the force on any
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object has some direction or other, which determines in some way the
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direction in which the object’s speed changes. It also has a
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determinate strength and its action on the object has a certain
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quantity. But how much an object’s speed changes in the direction
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of any given force depends on another factor, its rest mass, or the
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quantity of matter embodied in it. That is, what changes when a
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material object is subject to a force is its momentum, or the <i>product
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</i>of its velocity and its rest mass. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">In
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the case of material objects composed of many parts with the same
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rest mass, our working ontological hypothesis offers an explanation
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of the relevance of rest mass in determining the change of velocity.
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In order for the composite object to move in a certain way, each of
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objects of which it is composed (each “atom,” if you will) must
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move in the same way (assuming that the parts have unchanging spatial
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relations to one another). Since each part must be moved across space
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by its own bit of kinetic matter, a force can change the velocity of
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the whole only by changing the velocity of each part in the same way.
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Thus, the change in velocity caused by a force varies inversely with
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the total rest mass of the material object. It must be spread out
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among all the parts, so to speak. For example, an object with twice
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as much rest mass has half as much change in velocity, if subjected
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to the same force. In other words, what changes is not merely its
|
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velocity, but its momentum, the product of its velocity and its rest
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mass.</font></font></font></p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
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second law of motion also holds in the case of elementary material
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objects with different rest masses. But without a deeper ontological
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explanation of the nature of kinetic matter and material objects with
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rest mass, that regularity can only be assumed as part of the
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essential natures of those forms of matter.</font></font></font></p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Velocity
|
||
is not a measure of the amount of kinetic matter, because the change
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caused by the transfer of kinetic matter to or from an object depends
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on its rest mass. But it might seem that momentum is the measure of
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kinetic matter, since it is what changes when kinetic matter is
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transferred. However, momentum, like velocity, is just a property of
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the material object with kinetic matter, and we can begin to see why
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by considering the third law of motion. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>Newton’s
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third law of motion</b></i><b>. </b>Newton’s third law describes a
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more inclusive regularity than the second, for it includes the object
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that is the source of the force, describing how it is affected as
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well. This law holds that the action of one object on another is
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opposed by an equal and opposite action of the other object back on
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the first. That is, every action of one object on another is actually
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a symmetrical interaction of the two objects involved. And since what
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the action changes is momentum, this law says that the change in the
|
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momentum of one object is equal and opposite to the change in
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momentum of the other object. Thus, Newton’s third law of motion
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entails the conservation of momentum. That is, in any interaction,
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the sum of the products of the velocity and mass of all the objects
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involved in the interaction does not change in any direction
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regardless how the objects may interact. </font></font></font>
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</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
|
||
conservation of momentum may make it seem that momentum must be the
|
||
measure of the total quantity of kinetic matter involved. Suppose,
|
||
for example, that two equally massive objects moving toward one
|
||
another at the same speed were to collide. Given our working
|
||
ontological hypothesis, we might try to understand why the two
|
||
objects rebound from one another by thinking of the interaction as
|
||
each object transferring its kinetic matter to the other, for that
|
||
would also explain why both objects come out with velocities in the
|
||
opposite direction. Each acquires the other object’s kinetic
|
||
matter. And if the objects had different rest masses and different
|
||
velocities, this would even explain how much the velocity of each
|
||
changes. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Momentum
|
||
cannot, however, be the measure of the amount of kinetic matter,
|
||
because it is a quantity that depends on the direction of the motion,
|
||
whereas the quantity of kinetic matter does not. (In other words,
|
||
momentum is a “vector quantity,” whereas kinetic energy, as a
|
||
substance, must be a “scalar quantity,” which does not depend on
|
||
the direction of motion.) To illustrate the problem, suppose that two
|
||
objects colliding with equal and opposite momentums do not rebound
|
||
from one another, but simply come to a stop. The latter is compatible
|
||
with Newton’s third law of motion, because the change in the
|
||
momentum of one is still equal and opposite to the change in momentum
|
||
of the other. Each loses an equal and opposite momentum. Action and
|
||
reaction are symmetrical. But if momentum were the measure of kinetic
|
||
matter, it would mean that their kinetic matter simply goes out of
|
||
existence, for their momentums cancel out. And since that is
|
||
impossible for a substance, momentum cannot be the measure of kinetic
|
||
matter.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">It is no
|
||
great surprise, of course, that momentum is not the measure of the
|
||
quantity of kinetic matter on this ontological explanation, for we
|
||
postulated the existence of kinetic matter in the first place in
|
||
order to account for kinetic energy. But the foregoing example does
|
||
bring out the difference between <i>momentum </i>and <i>kinetic
|
||
energy</i>. It is currently explained only mathematically: in
|
||
Newtonian physics, momentum is the product of an object’s rest mass
|
||
and its velocity (<i>mv</i>), whereas its kinetic energy is one-half
|
||
the product of its rest mass and the <i>square </i>of its velocity
|
||
(<i>1/2 mv</i><sup><i>2</i></sup>). </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #cccccc; border-top: 6.75pt double #000000; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #000000; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">I<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="HistCmt" align="right" hspace="5" vspace="10" width="149" height="22" border="0">t
|
||
is a subtle difference, which was not obvious even to classical
|
||
physicists at first. The difference was not recognized by Cartesians,
|
||
and Leibniz was so struck by kinetic energy being different from
|
||
momentum, or mere motion, that he took the existence kinetic energy
|
||
as evidence of a <i>vis viva</i>, a “force of life” in the
|
||
object, which helped inspire his belief that atoms are really
|
||
“monads,” or minds. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The
|
||
ontological difference between <i>kinetic energy </i>and <i>momentum
|
||
</i>is that the former is the quantity of <i>a form of matter </i>that
|
||
can be attached to objects with rest mass and the latter is a
|
||
quantitative <i>property </i>that material objects have when kinetic
|
||
matter is attached. Momentum is just an aspect of those two kinds of
|
||
material substances as they are contained by space, an aspect that
|
||
depends on the direction of the motion in space. Newton’s second
|
||
and third laws of motion describe the regularity about how that
|
||
property changes when material objects interact, including the
|
||
conservation of momentum. The kinetic energy is, however, part of the
|
||
substance constituting the object in motion, and so it is conserved
|
||
because it is a substance. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">This is
|
||
just the beginning of an ontological explanation of the difference
|
||
between kinetic energy and momentum. Though we can see <i>that </i>they
|
||
are different, it does not explain the quantitative relationship
|
||
between them, that is, why kinetic energy varies with the square of
|
||
velocity, while momentum varies with velocity. That can be explained
|
||
only later, when we take up a deeper ontological explanation, the
|
||
quantum theory of matter. There is a more specific nature of kinetic
|
||
matter that entails momentum being related to kinetic energy as the
|
||
velocity to the square of velocity. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">In
|
||
the foregoing case, where colliding objects with equal and opposite
|
||
momentums simply stop, the collision is not elastic, that is,
|
||
something changes besides the motion of those objects. Instead of
|
||
dropping out of existence, the kinetic energy is converted into
|
||
another form of matter (such as potential energy in new forces being
|
||
exerted among its parts) or transferred to other objects (such as the
|
||
kinetic energy of the parts of the objects, that is, becoming heat). </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>Newton’s
|
||
law of gravitation</b></i><b>. </b>Newton’s law of gravitation
|
||
holds that material objects exert an attractive force on one another
|
||
that is proportional to the product of their (rest) masses and
|
||
inversely proportional to the distance between them. But since each
|
||
object exerts such a force on the other, an object must have a
|
||
gravitational field around it even when there are no other objects in
|
||
its neighborhood. There is, in other words, a gravitational force at
|
||
every location in the space around the material object. Those forces
|
||
are radially symmetric around the object itself, and their strength
|
||
declines with the square of the distance from the object. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
|
||
gravitational field is explained ontologically by postulating matter
|
||
in the form of gravitational matter, which is spread out in space
|
||
around the material object exerting the gravitational force, though
|
||
its quantity is included, along with matter is some other (yet to be
|
||
described) forms, as the rest mass of the material object. This
|
||
affords an obvious ontological explanation of many of the aspects
|
||
described by Newton’s law of gravitation. Gravitational forces are
|
||
directed toward the object, since that is the center of the rest mass
|
||
of the material object that spreads gravitational matter out in
|
||
space. The forces are radically symmetric, because the object is
|
||
located in three dimensional space. And the strength to the force
|
||
falls off with the square of the distance, because that is how fast
|
||
space spreads out sideways as you move away from the source of the
|
||
force. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The force
|
||
of gravity is not given an ontological explanation in classical
|
||
physics. Instead, it is usually described as just a disposition at
|
||
each point in space to exert a precise, mathematically described
|
||
force on any material object (with a certain mass), if it were
|
||
located at that point. Talk of “dispositions” is a way of
|
||
predicating regularities of objects as if regularities were just
|
||
properties of the objects. But that is to leave those regularities
|
||
unexplained. There is no alternative in classical physics, because it
|
||
assumed that gravity involves action at a distance (which is
|
||
implicitly to deny the reality of the space across which it is
|
||
supposed to act). Talk of gravitation as a disposition is a way of
|
||
being skeptical about the reality of such forces as anything beyond
|
||
their effects. This ontological problem was eliminated by Einstein’s
|
||
general theory of relativity, and that discovery is what we are
|
||
anticipating by including gravitational energy as a form of matter in
|
||
this explanation of the truth of classical physics.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Gravitational
|
||
matter helps explain the truth of the principle of the conservation
|
||
of mass and energy, however, only by being counted as a negative
|
||
quantity, that is, as potential energy. The maximum quantity of
|
||
potential energy is zero, because according to our our ontological
|
||
explanation of that accounting practice, potential energy is actually
|
||
part of the matter that is already counted in the rest mass of the
|
||
material object whose forces are a potential source of kinetic
|
||
energy. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">This theory
|
||
calls for a deeper explanation of how the matter appears both as a
|
||
material object, with a definite location and rest mass, and at the
|
||
same time as force field spread out in the space around that center
|
||
of mass. We will consider such a theory later, but for now, we must
|
||
simply recognize that the rest mass includes both forms of matter.
|
||
And we can use the notion of gravitational potential energy to
|
||
illustrate further the puzzling relationship between momentum and
|
||
kinetic energy. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Gravitational
|
||
forces exist as fields in which forces are exerted continuously over
|
||
time and material objects change momentum continuously as they move
|
||
through them. The way in which material objects interact by
|
||
gravitational forces can be described as a conversion between
|
||
potential and kinetic energy, and since such conversions are also a
|
||
way of explaining the interaction of material objects by electric and
|
||
magnetic forces, I will describe some of its features by considering
|
||
what happens to a ball thrown upwards in a (nearly) constant
|
||
gravitational field, such as near the surface of the earth.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The ball
|
||
has an initial momentum when it leaves the hand that is proportional
|
||
to its upward velocity. But since its momentum is constantly
|
||
decreasing as the result of the constant downward gravitational force
|
||
on it, there is a point at which the ball comes to a stop and starts
|
||
falling again, after which its downward velocity increases until we
|
||
catch it. The ball had kinetic energy when it left our hand, but at
|
||
the top of its trajectory, it has lost all its kinetic energy. And by
|
||
the time we catch it, the ball has regained kinetic energy. Since
|
||
kinetic energy is a form of matter, it never simply goes out of
|
||
existence or comes into existence, but merely changes form. It is
|
||
converted into potential energy, which the ball has because it is
|
||
located in a way that enables the gravitational force to accelerate
|
||
it over some distance, that is, can acquire kinetic energy from those
|
||
forces as the object moves through the gravitational force field. If
|
||
we think of it ontologically, we see the ball losing kinetic matter
|
||
as it rises, but since the distance across which the gravitational
|
||
force can accelerate the ball increases, it gains potential energy
|
||
(which increases the rest masses of both ball and earth). And when it
|
||
falls, it loses potential energy (decreasing rest masses) and
|
||
acquires kinetic energy. Since the ball has lost all its kinetic
|
||
energy at the top of its trajectory, when it is at rest, its
|
||
potential energy at that point must be equal to its kinetic energy at
|
||
the beginning and end of its trip. The potential energy depends on
|
||
two factors, the force exerted by the earth on the ball and the
|
||
ball’s location in that force field. Both are needed to accelerate
|
||
the ball and give it kinetic energy, and since the force is nearly
|
||
the same at every location, the potential energy turns out to be
|
||
proportional to the height to which it rises, that is, to the
|
||
distance it can fall in the (constant) gravitational field. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">This allows
|
||
us to see, once again, the difference between momentum and kinetic
|
||
energy. How much faster would we have to throw the ball upward in
|
||
order for the point at which its stops and starts falling again to be
|
||
twice as high? It is not necessary to double its velocity, as we
|
||
would find if we tried. Instead, the initial velocity needs to be
|
||
increased only by the square root of two (or about 1.4). The reason
|
||
is that the ball consumes kinetic energy in rising to a certain
|
||
height in the gravitational field, not momentum, and since kinetic
|
||
energy varies with the square of the velocity, it is not necessary to
|
||
double the initial velocity to double kinetic energy). (Likewise the
|
||
time it takes will also increase only by a factor of the square root
|
||
of two, since gravity changes its momentum at the same amount each
|
||
unit of time and the amount of momentum to be changed is only
|
||
increased by the square root of two.)</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
|
||
conversion between kinetic and potential energy is basic to classical
|
||
physics, though the quantities become more complex when we take into
|
||
account that gravitational forces are not constant, but have a
|
||
strength that varies inversely with the distance from the center of
|
||
gravity. But we need not consider all the complexities of the
|
||
quantitative relations (though these ontological causes must be able
|
||
to explain them in the end), because we are merely trying to see what
|
||
is involved in an ontological explanation of the basic laws of
|
||
classical physics. We have seen how such ontological causes would
|
||
make Newton’s laws of motion true, and spatiomaterialism is not
|
||
trivial, like materialism, considering that it implies the existence
|
||
of kinetic matter (and begins, at least, an explanation of the
|
||
relationship between momentum and kinetic energy). The one form of
|
||
matter that has not been described is electromagnetic waves, and that
|
||
brings us to the explanation of Maxwell’s laws of electromagnetism.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><b>M<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OdkC11" align="right" hspace="5" width="52" height="26" border="0">axwell’s
|
||
laws of electromagnetism. </b></font>The other basic set of laws
|
||
making up classical physics at the end of the 19<sup>th</sup> Century
|
||
were Maxwell’s four laws of electromagnetism. They describe the
|
||
electric and magnetic forces and how they interact, and these forces
|
||
can be explained in much the same way as gravitation, that is, as a
|
||
form of matter that coincides with space by being spread out spread
|
||
out in space like a field, and yet contained in the rest mass of
|
||
material objects with electric charges. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Electromagnetism
|
||
is more complex than the gravitational force, because there are two
|
||
forces, electric and magnetic, which interact with one another, and
|
||
there are two opposite electric forces that material objects can
|
||
have, positive and negative. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Maxwell’s
|
||
great triumph was to show how the interaction of the electric and
|
||
magnetic forces can couple them in a way that propagates both across
|
||
space at a fixed velocity, that is as electromagnetic waves
|
||
propagating at the velocity of light. Since electromagnetic waves
|
||
exist independently of all the other forms of mass and energy (and,
|
||
thus, the other three forms of matter, on this ontological account),
|
||
there is less room for doubt about these forces being a form of
|
||
matter. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">It is now
|
||
known that electromagnetic interactions mediate all the
|
||
non-gravitational interactions among molecules, among atoms in
|
||
molecules, and even between electrons and protons in atoms. Even the
|
||
elastic collisions that we took for granted in discussing Newton’s
|
||
laws of motion are mediated on the micro level by interactions
|
||
involving both electric and magnetic forces among objects with
|
||
electric charges. But all these interactions involve events with a
|
||
unit-like nature which was unexplained until the discovery of quantum
|
||
mechanics, and we will take them up later (in <font color="#0000ff"><u><a href="/F:/Philosophy/Existentialism/The%20Wholeness%20Of%20the%20World/www.twow.net/Lo/L/LoOtkCaL15.htm" target="Lo"><font face="Arial, sans-serif">Change:
|
||
Quantum mechanics</font></a></u></font>.) </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">At
|
||
this point, I will discuss aspects of the regularities described by
|
||
Maxwell’s laws in an order that adds up to an explanation of
|
||
electromagnetic waves, and then I will discuss how spatiomaterialism
|
||
can explain such waves ontologically. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>Electric
|
||
charge.</b></i> One of Maxwell’s laws describes the electric forces
|
||
that can be exerted by material objects. When a material object has
|
||
an electric charge, it exerts a radial force surrounding the center
|
||
of rest mass whose strength declines with the square of the distance.
|
||
This is like the force of gravity, except that the electric force
|
||
acts on other objects because of their electric charges, rather than
|
||
their mass. And unlike the gravitational force, the electric force
|
||
can be either attractive or repulsive, depending on whether the other
|
||
object has an opposite or same electric charge, respectively. The
|
||
electric force can give such objects kinetic energy (or become
|
||
another form of energy, such as an electromagnetic wave), and so it
|
||
is counted as potential energy. But once again, the maximum potential
|
||
energy is zero, making it a negative quantity when some of it has
|
||
been consumed. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Spatiomaterialism
|
||
can explain potential electrical energy ontologically as some of the
|
||
matter that is counted in the rest masses of the material objects
|
||
exerting the electric forces. Thus, when potential energy is
|
||
consumed, the rest masses of the charged objects are less. If we
|
||
think of the potential energy as a form of electromagnetic matter
|
||
that is spread out in space around the objects with the electric
|
||
charges, we can see why the quantity of potential energy varies with
|
||
the matter. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Objects
|
||
with opposite charges attract, and their potential energy is maximum
|
||
when they are far apart from one another, because their electric
|
||
fields more nearly approximate a spheres (of forces declining with
|
||
the square of radius), which requires the maximum quantity of
|
||
electromagnetic matter to constitute them. But when opposite charges
|
||
are next to one another, their electric fields are mostly
|
||
neutralized, and the electric field they jointly set up is deformed
|
||
in a way that requires less electromagnetic matter. In this case,
|
||
their total rest mass is less than if they were independent of one
|
||
another.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Objects
|
||
with like charges repel, and their potential energy is maximum when
|
||
they are close to one another, because instead of neutralizing one
|
||
another, their electric fields oppose one another. Though holding
|
||
them together yields an electric force that is twice as strong as the
|
||
radial force field they jointly set up, additional electromagnetic
|
||
matter is required for the two charged particles to have a force
|
||
repelling them from one another. In this case, their rest masses are
|
||
greater than they would be if the objects were at a distance from one
|
||
another. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">In either
|
||
case, in the equations describing these situations, the potential
|
||
energy is represented as zero when it is maximum, and thus, what is
|
||
actually a loss of rest mass, which comes from consuming potential
|
||
energy and converting electromagnetic matter into other forms of
|
||
matter, is counted as negative potential energy. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
|
||
electric field is also more complex than gravitation in another way
|
||
because of its interaction with the magnetic force. It affects the
|
||
motion of a charged object in an electric field. For example, in an
|
||
electric field is set up by a material object too massive to move
|
||
much, a charged object that is accelerated by it will increase its
|
||
velocity not only in the direction of the force, but also in a
|
||
direction perpendicular to both the electric force and the direction
|
||
of its own motion in the electric field. That is the work of the
|
||
magnetic force. The magnetic force on the charged object is a
|
||
function of its velocity through the electric field as well as the
|
||
strength of the electric field. This effect of electric forces is not
|
||
mentioned in this first law, but is a consequence of another of
|
||
Maxwell’s laws.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>No
|
||
magnetic charges.</b></i> The second law holds that there is no
|
||
material object with a magnetic charge, even though there are
|
||
magnetic forces. A material object with a magnetic charge would have
|
||
a radial force surrounding its center of rest mass which declines
|
||
with the square of the distance. Instead, as it turns out, magnetic
|
||
forces occur in fields in which they are all directed around a closed
|
||
loop, such as a circle. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">According
|
||
to another law, as mentioned above, the magnetic force can arise
|
||
because of the motion of a material object with an electric charge.
|
||
For example, when electric charges are moving in a certain direction
|
||
through space, they set up a magnetic field in which the magnetic
|
||
forces are aligned in a circle around their direction of motion.
|
||
(Such a circular field is set up even when the moving electric
|
||
charges are neutralized locally by opposite charges, as in a wire in
|
||
which a current is flowing, and the net strength of the electric
|
||
force is not changing at any point in space in the surrounding
|
||
space.) </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>Coupling
|
||
of magnetic and electric forces.</b></i> The two remaining aspects of
|
||
the regularities described in Maxwell’s equations explain
|
||
electromagnetic waves. One holds that a change in the magnetic field
|
||
causes a circular electric force around the direction of the magnetic
|
||
forces. The other holds that a change in the electric field causes a
|
||
circular magnetic field around the direction of the electric forces.
|
||
In both cases, the strength of the field being set up varies with how
|
||
fast the first field changes (and thus indirectly on the strength of
|
||
the forces). But the directions are reversed (so that an increasing
|
||
electric force causes a magnetic force, while an increasing magnetic
|
||
force causes a electric force in the opposite direction).
|
||
Furthermore, the change in the strength of each force generates a
|
||
force of the other kind that is related to it spatially in a certain
|
||
direction, so that changes in the two forces are coupled as a wave
|
||
that propagates across space at the velocity of light. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">An
|
||
impression of how electromagnetic waves propagate can be gathered by
|
||
considering how the motion of electric charges generates them.
|
||
Consider, for example, a current of electrically charged objects in a
|
||
wire that is changing direction. The current sets up a magnetic force
|
||
circling the wire, but as the electric charges slow down, the
|
||
magnetic force declines (because the rate of change in location of
|
||
the electric charges becomes lower). The decline in the magnetic
|
||
force field causes an electric force that circles it. But the change
|
||
in that electric force causes, in turn, a magnetic field around its
|
||
direction, which is in the opposite direction of the first magnetic
|
||
field. And the change in the second magnetic field then causes an
|
||
electric field, this time in the opposite direction. And finally its
|
||
change causes a magnetic field that is like the one caused by the
|
||
electric charges in the wire, except that it is located a fixed
|
||
distance away from the wire which depends on the velocity of light.
|
||
Thus, the changes in the two forces are coupled in a way that
|
||
propagates across space at the velocity of light as an
|
||
electromagnetic wave. And a steady succession of such waves is
|
||
generated as long as the current in the wire continues to oscillate.
|
||
That is basically how antennas send electromagnetic waves. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Electromagnetic
|
||
waves are a form of energy counted in the principle of the
|
||
conservation of mass and energy, and though the quantitative details
|
||
are not relevant here, we should consider what our working hypothesis
|
||
implies about the nature of "electromagnetic matter." The
|
||
matter involved in these waves is similar to the matter that makes up
|
||
the electric field of a material object with an electric charge,
|
||
except that in the electromagnetic wave, the electric force is
|
||
changing and the changes couple it with a magnetic force that also
|
||
changes. The forces interact in such a way that they go through
|
||
complete cycles, putting them in a position to do the same thing over
|
||
and over again. But the forces they generate are so related to one
|
||
another in space that the wave moves across space over time at
|
||
certain fixed velocity, that is, the velocity of light. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The matter
|
||
constituting electromagnetic waves may not be as different from the
|
||
electromagnetic matter constituting electric charges as this contrast
|
||
makes them appear. According to current quantum theory, material
|
||
objects with electric charges also have a spin angular momentum.
|
||
Since that is a magnetic force, it suggests that the electric charge
|
||
may actually be an electric force that is changing cyclically by
|
||
somehow spinning around an axis. That possibility will lead us to
|
||
speculate (when discussing quantum mechanics and the basic particles)
|
||
that the opposite electric charges (positive and negative) differ
|
||
from one another by being in opposite phases of their cycles wherever
|
||
they are located in space.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>Inherent
|
||
motion in space.</b></i> Maxwell deduced the velocity of light in a
|
||
vacuum from measurable constants mentioned in his laws, and since
|
||
classical physics assumed that space is absolute, it could hope to
|
||
explain this implication as the result of electric and magnetic
|
||
forces being exerted on an extremely elastic substance that was
|
||
assumed to be at rest in absolute space. They called it the
|
||
“luminiferous ether” (or “ether,” for short). Since the ether
|
||
was supposed to be a kind of matter, it seemed plausible to explain
|
||
the propagation of electric and magnetic forces mechanically, as an
|
||
interaction between charged particles and the ether, on the model of
|
||
waves of forces in ordinary material objects. That project did not
|
||
work out, but that does not mean that <i>space </i>cannot be playing
|
||
a similar role in the motion of electromagnetic waves.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">In
|
||
recognizing that space is a substance, spatiomaterialism departs from
|
||
classical physics as well as from materialism. Though classical
|
||
physics assumed that space is absolute, it did not take space to be a
|
||
substance that could interact with bits of matter in any way other
|
||
than providing all the locations where they are could move or be
|
||
located. In particular, space was not supposed to affect the motion
|
||
of bits of matter, at least, not in the way other bits of matter can.
|
||
But since spatiomaterialism has independent reasons for believing in
|
||
the existence of space as a substance enduring through time (that is,
|
||
in addition to presentism, reasons deriving from the recognition of
|
||
the validity of ontological-cause explanations and inferring to the
|
||
best ontological-cause explanation of the natural world), it has no
|
||
reason to doubt that space can interact with bits of matter in ways
|
||
that are quite comparable to the interactions of bits of matter in
|
||
space. Thus, spatiomaterialism can use space to explain the velocity
|
||
of light without having to postulate the existence of the ether as an
|
||
additional kind of matter that coincides with space. We can take talk
|
||
about the ether to be referring to an aspect of space as a substance.
|
||
That is what we will do by taking space itself to be the medium of
|
||
light transmission. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">To
|
||
be the medium of light transmission, space must have an aspect by
|
||
which it interacts with electric and magnetic forces and carries them
|
||
across space as electromagnetic waves at a certain velocity. In order
|
||
to explain how space does so, I will assume that there is an
|
||
“inherent motion in space.” By “inherent motion,” I mean a
|
||
further relationship among the parts of space, beyond the geometrical
|
||
relations we have already assumed, which involves their endurance
|
||
through time. We have assumed that the parts of space are particular
|
||
substances, that is, so that each point has an existence that is
|
||
distinct from all the others and each point endures, like any
|
||
substance, through time, never coming into existence nor going out of
|
||
existence. But since only the present moment exists, only one moment
|
||
in the history of each part of space exists, and that moment in the
|
||
history of all the parts of space always occurs at the same time.
|
||
That is how these substances exist together as a world, and it is the
|
||
wholeness of space that relates the bits of matter it contains as
|
||
parts of the same world. This temporal aspect of the nature of the
|
||
parts of space is the ontological foundation for a further
|
||
relationship among the parts of space. What I am calling the
|
||
"inherent motion of space" (as our substitute for the
|
||
"luminiferous ether") is a spatio-temporal relationship
|
||
among the parts of space.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Such a
|
||
temporal aspect to space is not only plausible, but also required by
|
||
the role of space in constituting what happens. If the parts of space
|
||
did not have a spatio-temporal relationship to one another, they
|
||
could not affect one another as time passes. Nor could they enable
|
||
bits of matter to affect one another. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The
|
||
geometrical relations among the parts of space explains which parts
|
||
of space can be affected by any other given part, namely, those
|
||
nearby, then those next to it, and so on. But in order for a change
|
||
occurring at any one part of space to affect another part of space,
|
||
the other part of space must change <i>at a later moment</i>. If the
|
||
effect were immediate, the effect would not be distinct from the
|
||
cause, and they could not act on one another like particular
|
||
substances enduring through time. Space would interact with bits of
|
||
matter as a whole. Thus, let us assume that the rate at which one
|
||
part of space can affect another part of space as time passes is
|
||
finite. That would be a maximum velocity by which one part of space
|
||
can affect other parts of space. I call it the “inherent motion”
|
||
in space in order to make clear that it is a temporal aspect of the
|
||
nature of space as a substance.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">I
|
||
think of the "inherent motion" as a motion sweeping through
|
||
every part of space at the same velocity, both ways in every
|
||
direction possible in three dimensional space, at every moment. This
|
||
is how space is an ontological cause, along with the nature of
|
||
electromagnetic matter, of the velocity of light. That is, we can
|
||
explain the motion of electromagnetic waves as bits of matter (or
|
||
so-called “photons’) being carried along by the inherent motion.
|
||
But there is an inherent motion, even when there are no photons.
|
||
Indeed, it would be happening, even if there were no matter in the
|
||
world. In other words, the inherent motion is an aspect of space as
|
||
a substance. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The
|
||
postulation of an inherent motion may seem ontologically excessive,
|
||
since all we need to assume is that the parts of space are so related
|
||
temporally, as well as geometrically, that there is a maximum rate at
|
||
which it is possible for what happens to matter at one part of space
|
||
to affect what happens to matter at another parts of space. Thus, it
|
||
may be urged that the inherent motion is not real, but merely the
|
||
velocity of <i>possible </i>effects across space. It is merely a
|
||
spatio-temporal geometry about space, that is, a geometry describing
|
||
how the present moment of any one part of space is related to the
|
||
past or future moments of other parts of space because of the maximum
|
||
velocity with which events can affect one another. Such an account,
|
||
it could be argued, would be a better ontological explanation in the
|
||
end. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Though a
|
||
spatio-temporal geometry to space may be a sufficient ontological
|
||
explanation, I will continue to speak of it as the "inherent
|
||
motion in space." I can take this liberty, because I am not
|
||
claiming that the more specific natures of matter and space that I am
|
||
introducing in order to explain the truth of physics are <i>the best
|
||
</i>possible spatiomaterialist ontological explanation of the basic
|
||
laws of physics, only that they are <i>a </i>possible
|
||
spatiomaterialist ontological explanation. That is all that is
|
||
required for ontological philosophy to make the case for using
|
||
spatiomaterialism as the foundation for its argument about necessary
|
||
truths. And I allow myself the liberty of postulating an actual
|
||
inherent motion in space, because that invokes an image (in rational
|
||
imagination) that makes it easy to think about an aspect of the
|
||
essential nature of space that will be central in the following
|
||
explanation of the laws of contemporary physics. I find it preferable
|
||
to “spatio-temporal geometry,” because talk of motion brings out
|
||
vividly the temporal aspect of what might otherwise be seen as a
|
||
static structure (such as spacetime in Einsteinian relativity). And
|
||
it emphasizes that it is always happening everywhere in space,
|
||
connecting the parts of space ontologically in a further way than
|
||
merely having geometrical relations, a way that is central to the
|
||
existence of causal connections among events in the world.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">As it turns
|
||
out, nothing turns on the difference between saying that space has a
|
||
an inherent motion and saying that space has a spatio-temporal
|
||
geometry, as long as we recognize that we are talking about an aspect
|
||
of a substance that endures through time and has the opposite nature
|
||
from matter. The motion of electromagnetic waves (or photons) is only
|
||
one manifestation of this aspect of the essential nature of space.
|
||
There will be several others as we proceed, and it will be a somewhat
|
||
more complex aspect of space by the time we are through, variations
|
||
in its velocity at different locations in space. It is easier to
|
||
think about these ontological effects of space by thinking of space
|
||
as having an inherent motion prior to the motion of photons, because
|
||
the picture is spatial imagination is more concrete. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The the
|
||
inherent motion in space is the medium of light transmission, and
|
||
though it may also be called the "ether," as it was in
|
||
Newtonian physics, it is ontologically important to keep in mind that
|
||
it is an aspect of space. The ether was supposed to be an ethereal
|
||
matter that is at rest everywhere in space, and no such thing is
|
||
needed in a spatiomaterial world, because when space is a substance,
|
||
it can interact with bits of matter in much the same way as other
|
||
bits of matter. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">It should
|
||
be noted, however, that just as it made sense to speak of being at
|
||
rest in the ether, it will make sense to speak of being at rest
|
||
relative to the medium of light transmission. In either case, it is
|
||
the reference frame in which the one-way velocity of light is exactly
|
||
the same both ways in every direction in three dimensional space. It
|
||
was assumed in Newtonian physics that being at rest in the ether
|
||
would be at rest in absolute space, because they assumed that the
|
||
ether was at rest in absolute space. Though we also assume that there
|
||
is a reference frame that is at rest relative to the light medium, we
|
||
will not assume that it is at rest in absolute space, because in
|
||
order to explain ontologically the truth of the general theory of
|
||
relativity, we will have to assume that the light medium itself can
|
||
have a velocity in space. That will be to hold that that inherent
|
||
motion in space can have a different velocity at different locations.
|
||
But if you prefer, such talk can always be translated into talk about
|
||
the spatio-temporal geometry of space as a substance enduring though
|
||
time. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
|
||
basic laws of classical physics can, in sum, be explained
|
||
ontologically by postulating various forms in which matter can
|
||
coincide with space as a substance. Those forms of matter are
|
||
<i>material objects with rest mass</i>, <i>kinetic matter</i>,
|
||
<i>gravitational matter</i>, and <i>electromagnetic matter </i>(including
|
||
both matter as electric and magnetic forces and as electromagnetic
|
||
waves). And they explain the truth of the laws of classical physics
|
||
in the sense that a world made of such substances enduring through
|
||
time has aspects (properties, relations and regularities about
|
||
change) that correspond to those laws. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">That is,
|
||
the laws of classical physics are true because they correspond to an
|
||
aspect of the world that has been constructed from our assumptions
|
||
about the basic nature of substances, about space and matter as the
|
||
two opposite kind of basic substances that make up the world, and
|
||
about the specific forms of matter that coincide with space. There
|
||
is, therefore, one way, at least, that a spatiomaterialist ontology
|
||
can make its basic laws true, which shows that spatiomaterialism is
|
||
possible, as far as classical physics is concerned. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Thus,
|
||
we have laid the foundation we will need in order to explain the
|
||
truth of the basic laws of contemporary physics ontologically. The
|
||
first step in that project has already been made by postulating an
|
||
inherent motion in substantival space to explain the velocity of
|
||
light ontologically. In assuming that light has a medium through
|
||
which it is transmitted, it may seem that we are resurrecting the
|
||
"luminiferous ether" of Newtonian physics. But if so, it is
|
||
no longer a strange form of ethereal matter at rest in space, but an
|
||
aspect of space itself. Space itself is the medium of light
|
||
transmission.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font color="#993366"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><b>C<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OdkC12" align="right" hspace="5" width="82" height="27" border="0">ontingent
|
||
laws: Contemporary physics. </b></font></font>In the early 20th
|
||
Century, revolutions in physics have made it seem impossible for
|
||
spatiomaterialism to explain the basic laws of physics ontologically.
|
||
There were two revolutions, Einstein’s two relativity theories and
|
||
quantum mechanics. The first led to the belief in spacetime, and the
|
||
second made it seem that processes at the micro-level are
|
||
indeterministic. These new theories were irresistible in physics,
|
||
because they were justified by the empirical method in the same way
|
||
as Newtonian physics had been. They were inferences to the best
|
||
efficient-cause explanations, where the best depends heavily on
|
||
making surprising, quantitatively precise predictions that turn out
|
||
to be true when measurements are made. And both revolutions have been
|
||
extremely fruitful, leading to surprising predictions in new fields. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Two
|
||
theories are involved in the Einsteinian revolution: the special
|
||
theory of relativity, which covers phenomena that occur in material
|
||
objects with velocities approaching that of light, and the general
|
||
theory, which is a more accurate account of gravitational phenomena.
|
||
Together with quantum mechanics, the special theory led to quantum
|
||
field theory, a more accurate account of electromagnetism, which
|
||
included the discovery of spin and positively charged electrons. As a
|
||
gauge field theory, quantum electrodynamics became the model for
|
||
theories about the two short range forces, the so-called weak and
|
||
strong (or color) forces, which are responsible for the composition
|
||
of particles in ordinary material objects, and that has exposed more
|
||
basic particles of nature, such as quarks and neutrinos. Together
|
||
with the observation that the universe seems to be expanding
|
||
(Hubble's law), the general theory is now used to support the big
|
||
bang theory about the origin and expansion of the universe. In sum,
|
||
our understanding of every kind of physical phenomenon has been
|
||
radically enriched by these two revolutions in physics. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">There
|
||
is one way, however, in which these two revolutions do not fit well
|
||
together. It is often characterized as the main theoretical problem
|
||
of contemporary physics. Einstein’s general theory of relativity
|
||
explains gravitation, one of the four basic forces, but it is
|
||
mathematically quite different from the theories describing the other
|
||
three forces (electromagnetism, the color force and the weak force).
|
||
The latter three are formulated as gauge field theories, making it
|
||
possible to fit them together mathematically, but no one has found a
|
||
simple way of connecting them with Einstein’s general theory of
|
||
relativity. Attempts to connect them have led some physicists to
|
||
believe that there are ten or more dimensions to space! </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Notice that
|
||
this theoretical problem in contemporary physics is basically a
|
||
mathematical problem. It derives from the so called "holy grail"
|
||
of physics, which is to discover a single law from which all the laws
|
||
of physics, describing all the basic forces, can be derived. But the
|
||
incompatibility between quantum theory and the theory of gravitation
|
||
is very likely intractable as a mathematical problem. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Physics is
|
||
crying out for a new approach. That is what ontological philosophy
|
||
supplies. The solution to the main problem of contemporary physics is
|
||
an extra benefit of its spatiomaterialist interpretation of
|
||
contemporary physics. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Each
|
||
of the basic revolutions of contemporary physics poses, however, a
|
||
challenge to spatiomaterialism all by itself. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Einstein’s
|
||
two relativity theories pose a challenge to ontological philosophy,
|
||
as we have already seen, because they seem to describe a world in
|
||
which space and time are not absolute. Realism about Einsteinian
|
||
relativity entails the belief in spacetime, which puts time
|
||
ontologically on a par with space: each moment in time is supposed to
|
||
exist alongside every other moment in time, just as each point in
|
||
space exists alongside every other point in space, as equal parts of
|
||
an eternal four-dimensional world. But the belief in spacetime is
|
||
incompatible with spatiomaterialism, because spatiomaterialism holds
|
||
that only the present moment exists and takes space to be one of two
|
||
opposite kinds of substances that endure through time. Thus, unless
|
||
there is a way that Einstein’s special and general theories of
|
||
relativity can be true in a world where space and time are absolute,
|
||
ontological philosophy cannot use spatiomaterialism as the foundation
|
||
for its arguments about what is necessary. Showing how the belief in
|
||
spacetime could be replaced in a spatiomaterial world was one of the
|
||
mortgages we took out in order to make this argument, and now the
|
||
time has come to pay it off. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Quantum
|
||
theory however, may also seem incompatible with spatiomaterialism. In
|
||
addition to its apparent denial of determinism, it seems to deny that
|
||
physical processes are constituted by material substances that
|
||
coincide with space. Quantum mechanics is often interpreted, at
|
||
least, as denying that the smallest entities have definite locations
|
||
and as implying that they behave in ways that are incompatible with
|
||
the principle of local motion and local action. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Quantum
|
||
mechanics is less challenging than Einsteinian relativity, because
|
||
the received interpretation of it (the so-called “Copenhagen
|
||
interpretation, due mainly to Bohr) is more like skepticism about
|
||
ever knowing the real nature of the smallest bits of matter than a
|
||
generally accepted ontological belief about what exists on the
|
||
micro-level that is incompatible with spatiomaterialism. The belief
|
||
in spacetime is incompatible with the belief in absolute space and
|
||
time. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">It
|
||
is possible, however, for spatiomaterialism to explain the truth of
|
||
both theories. What is more, by explaining their truth ontologically,
|
||
it solves the problem about how gravitation is related to the other
|
||
three forces of nature. This ontological solution to the basic
|
||
theoretical problem of contemporary physics will also provide the
|
||
foundation for more speculative suggestions about cosmology, both the
|
||
basic particles recognized by high energy physics and about the
|
||
origin of the large scale structure of the universe.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i>Relativity
|
||
theories. </i>The two theories involved in Einsteinian revolution
|
||
will be discussed in sequence. The notion of spacetime was introduced
|
||
with the special theory of relativity as a way of explaining
|
||
measurements made from objects with very high relative velocities,
|
||
and Einstein used it as the basis for his explanation of gravitation.
|
||
In a parallel way, the ontological explanation of spacetime in the
|
||
special theory of relativity will be the foundation for the
|
||
ontological explanation of the role of spacetime in the general
|
||
theory of relativity. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">In the case
|
||
of Einstein’s special theory of relativity, it may not be
|
||
surprising that it is possible for spatiomaterialism to explain its
|
||
truth, for even Einsteinians admit that the empirical implications of
|
||
Einstein’s theory could be explained on the assumption that space
|
||
is absolute. It is just a matter of assuming that one of all possible
|
||
inertial reference frames is at absolute rest and explaining the
|
||
appearance that it is not different from the others on the assumption
|
||
that absolute space causes certain distortions in material objects
|
||
that move through it. Such a theory is possible, and it was begun, at
|
||
least, by Newtonian physicists before Einstein first published his
|
||
special theory of relativity. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The
|
||
ontological explanation of Einstein’s general theory of relativity
|
||
may be more surprising, because contemporary physicists apparently do
|
||
not even suspect that it is possible to understand the gravitational
|
||
phenomena discovered by Einstein on the assumption that space and
|
||
time are absolute. The universal acceptance of the special theory of
|
||
relativity and its notion of spacetime as a description of the nature
|
||
of space and time has kept physicists from even considering a very
|
||
simple, intuitively satisfying, ontological explanation of
|
||
gravitation.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
|
||
spatiomaterialist special and general theories of relativity that
|
||
result are not ontologically necessary truths, according to
|
||
ontological philosophy, because they do not follow from
|
||
spatiomaterialism, but rather depend on what has been discovered
|
||
empirically about what happens in the world. All that needs to be
|
||
shown is that it is possible for Einstein’s two theories to be true
|
||
in a spatiomaterial world. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Once the
|
||
laws of physics are explained ontologically, the additional
|
||
assumptions that must be made about the nature of matter and space in
|
||
order to explain them will be incorporated into the foundation of
|
||
ontological philosophy as a way of explaining ontologically other
|
||
aspects of the world, such as the global regularities. That is how we
|
||
incorporate the laws of physics into spatiomaterialism. But since
|
||
those further explanations will depend on the more specific natures
|
||
of matter and space assumed here in order to explain the truth of
|
||
classical and contemporary physics, their ontological necessity will
|
||
be only conditional. They hold only of all possible spatiomaterial
|
||
worlds like ours, that is, in which the laws of physics are true. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">As it
|
||
happens, however, the spatiomaterialist ontological explanation of
|
||
the truth of classical physics together with its explanation of
|
||
quantum mechanics seem to entail the ontological assumptions that
|
||
have to be made in order to explain the truth of the special theory
|
||
of relativity. If so, the regularities described by Einstein's
|
||
special theory of relativity have a deeper ontological explanation,
|
||
even if they are not unconditionally ontologically necessary. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">It should
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be mentioned, however, that the explanation of the global
|
||
regularities to be given under <font face="Arial, sans-serif">Change
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</font>does not depend on this ontological explanation of the truth
|
||
of contemporary physics. Given that space is a substance, they depend
|
||
only on matter obeying the regularities described by the laws of
|
||
contemporary (and classical) physics. Though we shall make further
|
||
assumption about the nature of space and matter in order to explain
|
||
ontologically the truth of quantum mechanics, the basic objects of
|
||
physics, and the origin of the universe, they are required only to
|
||
show the possibility of spatiomaterialism. They are not relevant in
|
||
explaining the global regularities. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
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</body>
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</html>
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