Combining Texts

Ideas for 'reports', 'Human Nature' and 'The Relation of Sense-Data to Physics'

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3 ideas

27. Natural Reality / A. Classical Physics / 1. Mechanics / a. Explaining movement
Motion can't move where it is, and can't move where it isn't, so it can't exist [Pyrrho, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Motion is not moved in the place in which it is is, and it is impossible that it should be moved in the place in which it is not, so there is no such thing as motion.
     From: report of Pyrrho (reports [c.325 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.11.11
27. Natural Reality / B. Modern Physics / 4. Standard Model / a. Concept of matter
Matter is the limit of appearances as distance from the object diminishes [Russell]
     Full Idea: We offer the following tentative definition: The matter of a given thing is the limit of its appearances as their distance from the thing diminishes.
     From: Bertrand Russell (The Relation of Sense-Data to Physics [1914], §IX)
     A reaction: This strikes me as empiricism gone mad. Russell is famous for being a 'realist', but you would hardly know it at this point. Personally I put emphasis on 'best explanation', which fairly simply delivers most of our commonsense understandings of reality.
27. Natural Reality / C. Space / 2. Space
There is 'private space', and there is also the 'space of perspectives' [Russell]
     Full Idea: In addition to the private spaces, ..there is the 'space of perspectives', since each private world may be regarded as the appearance which the universe presents from a certain point of view.
     From: Bertrand Russell (The Relation of Sense-Data to Physics [1914], §VII)
     A reaction: This replaces his concept of 'public space', which he introduced in 1912. Russell gradually dropped this, but I like the idea that we somehow directly perceive space in two ways simultaneously (which led him to say that space is six-dimensional).