Combining Texts

Ideas for 'On the Question of Absolute Undecidability', 'fragments/reports' and 'Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


2 ideas

27. Natural Reality / C. Space / 1. Void
The void is not required for change, because a plenum can alter in quality [Aristotle on Melissus]
     Full Idea: There is no need for void to be the cause of all change, because it is perfectly possible for a plenum to alter qualitatively (which is something Melissus overlooked).
     From: comment on Melissus (fragments/reports [c.443 BCE]) by Aristotle - Physics 214a27
     A reaction: In modern physics this presumably gives us fluctuations in a force field. Motion is like a cat being digested by a python. The atomist claim that emptiness is needed if anything is to move still has intuitive appeal.
27. Natural Reality / C. Space / 2. Space
Unlike time, space is subjective. Empty space was assumed, but it doesn't exist [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: Space, like matter, is a subjective form. Time is not. Space first emerged through the assumption of empty space. This doesn't exist. Force is everything.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 1[003])
     A reaction: I would think modern physics endorses his opinion of space. The original atomists proposed a 'void', to prevent traffic jams of atoms. Now we see space as fields, so it is never empty.