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3 ideas
15314 | Faraday's single field of variable forces introduces a criterion of Unity into what is ultimate [Faraday, by Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: In Faraday lines of force picture the directional structure of powers,...so the fundamental entity is a single, unified field. ...A new criterion of the ultimate has stepped in: Unity. The universal field is still the final explanation, but not invariant. | |
From: report of Michael Faraday (Experimental Researches in Electricity [1859]) by Harré,R./Madden,E.H. - Causal Powers 9.II.B | |
A reaction: Almost Parmenides, except that the field is not invariant. But that was always the ancient objection to the One - that it offered no explanation of change. |
13228 | There is no time without movement [Aristotle] |
Full Idea: There can be no time without movement. | |
From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 337a24) | |
A reaction: See Shoemaker's nice thought experiment as a challenge to this. Intuition seems to cry out that if movement stopped for a moment, that would not stop time, even though there was no way to measure its passing. |
16595 | If each thing can cease to be, why hasn't absolutely everything ceased to be long ago? [Aristotle] |
Full Idea: If some one of the things 'which are' is constantly disappearing, why has not the whole of 'what is' been used up long ago and vanished away - assuming of course that the material of all the several comings-to-be was infinite? | |
From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 318a17) | |
A reaction: This thought is the basis of Aquinas's Third Way for proving the existence of God (as the force which prevents the vicissitudes of nature from sliding into oblivion). |