Post by johnbc on Jul 30, 2020 9:09:44 GMT
We were trained in the spirit of engineering and we thought of the trigger as the cause of the process. We no longer think of the heart as the cause of the bullet's trajectory [I mean, the heart was hit by the bullet]. We live after Newton. When we see a stone that is falling, we perceive it as an object that is under the domain of gravity. We find it difficult to share the perception of the medieval scholar who sees the same phenomenon as caused by the stone's desire to reach the land. This is the final cause, [the final cause of the movement]. Instead, we perceive a force that is pushing the heavy body.
The ancient desiderium naturae, [the natural desire, the desire of nature], which is the natural desire of the stone to reach a state of rest as close as it can to the bosom of the earth has become a myth for us. Even more completely, the idea of a first cause or primary end cause, an ultimate motivating reason for all the desires that are hidden in the nature of the stone, or the plant, or the man, has become foreign to our century. Final stage, in the mental universe of the 20th century, has the connotation of death. Entropy is our ultimate destination. We experience reality as monocausal. We only know about efficient causes.
The idea that the stone moves towards the earth because it has a desire, a natural desire, a natural impulse to come into contact with the earth has become strange and almost incomprehensible to us because we live in a Newtonian world.
Newton says that it is not the stone that moves: it is moved from outside by a force he calls gravitation. In saying that matter attracts matter in the direct ratio of the masses and in the inverse ratio of the square of the distances, he is saying that the larger matter attracts the smaller matter. So it is not the stone that is going to land, it is the earth that is pulling the stone. It is as if our view of the physical universe has been inverted in relation to that appearance that nature presented to the scholastics.
Isaac Newton, when observing the behavior of nature and doing math, discovered a certain regularity, things that are repeated. And he says that things are like that. But how long are they repeated? Note that Newton, to substantiate his theory, had to invent something he called absolute time -- time as a permanent unit of measurement, regardless of what happens. But how long a time where nothing happened would last? It is inconceivable. The idea of absolute time contradicts itself. The time that is independent of what happens is the time that is independent of duration; so it's not time at all. Newton also had to invent absolute space, space without things inside; that is, space as pure measure. But if there is nothing within the space, there is also no measure. So, to arrive at a description of the behavior of nature that we consider realistic and within which we live, - - and we live within that Newtonian space-time to the point that whatever contradicts it seems unthinkable to us - -, Newton conceived two ideas that are absolutely self-contradictory. He recognized that these ideas are mere inventions, but he needed them in order to make the measurements. Then you invent unrealistic comparison plans and based on them you make a series of measurements and declare "Now I have learned the reality". You also don't know if this is true. This means the following: if you try to think of everything in terms of space-time, nothing will be left in your hand. Space and time cannot be sustained and that is what St. Hugo once said, long before Newton and long before quantum physics.
We will see how we can overcome this merely historical approach, which would be a kind of cultural relativism. Cultural relativism gives millions of reasons for you not to understand one thing: "I can no longer understand that because it was out of reality. So, as I am imbued with modern scientific culture and I know how things really are, I cannot completely get over the head of a 13th century guy, because in the 13th century they are to us like a madman to the normal person. I cannot fully enter the universe of a madman. I can see it as a structure, but I cannot participate in it". Let's see if they are crazy.
When Newton says that it is not the stone that moves towards the earth, but the earth that attracts that small piece of matter in the direct ratio of the masses and in the indirect ratio of the square of the distance, you ask yourself: "But what precisely is Earth attracting?" It is a stone. Is a stone nothing? The stone is something, it has its own properties. And if she didn't have them and if she were nothing, the earth would attract her in vain, because she wouldn't come at all. This means that the description of the world that takes place in Newton's mechanics assumes the existence of the various substances of the various beings that are affected by the law of gravity. It does not reason from these substances, but only from the mechanical relationships between them. But in order for mechanical relationships to exist, they must take place between things that exist, and things that exist have substances.
When ancient physics said that the stone has a natural desire to rest in the bosom of the Earth, it said exactly what Galileo will say later: that when an object is not moved by another it remains at rest or in a uniform rectilinear motion. This impulse of rest or uniform rectilinear motion is inherent in the object -- with the proviso that Galileo said that uniform rectilinear motion is only a unit of measure and does not really exist. Aristotle, in ancient physics, said that when an object is not moved by another it remains at rest. Galileo adds in brackets: "or in a uniform rectilinear movement, which does not really exist" - that is, it remains at rest. Now, from the general point of view of the theory of universal gravitation, there is a mysterious force called gravity by which larger matter attracts smaller matter. But from the point of view of another physical law, which is the law of inertia, the impulse to rest is in the object itself. It cannot receive the rest impulse from outside, it can only receive the movement. Although the expression desiderium naturae - -desire of nature -- is a literary expression, it expresses precisely what the law of inertia says.
Confronting what Hugo, or what any other medieval author, is saying with Newton's law, I ask: who said it is Newton's law that he is referring to and not something else? Seen as an expression of Newton's law, of the law of gravitation, the expression desiderium naturae does not make any sense, because it is matter that attracts matter -- the body does not move, but is moved. But if that body was nothing and had no property, it could not be moved. But the expression desiderium naturae refers not to what happens to the object, but what it is and does - that is, its substantial form. This substantial form is what makes it want to be at rest - that is, it is the law of inertia.
It is not that there is only an absurdity, an absolutely unacceptable contradiction, but the whole order of pedagogy in which we are being taught is based on the idea of accepting an absurdity in a disciplined way so that we can then understand something else that would never go back on that absurdity and explain it. In Newton's physics: you "swallow" this thing of absolute time, this thing of absolute space (which doesn't exist, that's a nonsense), but by doing this, you will learn to measure the relationship between the masses, etc. Of course, it is a gain as long as it is known that it was absurd (original). You can make an analogy with the business of René Girard:
The community that is born from an original crime that is then hidden: that trauma will always remain, that dirt will stay there
Its original absurdity, even if it leads to spectacular scientific consequences, will always be an error, an absurdity and always a sin of the spirit. If you remain attentive throughout the development of the study you are doing, attentive to the awareness of the original absurdity, and say: "This is just a game rule. We are going to postulate an absurd thing just to see what happens, and then we'll come back here", and if you do this, everything is fine, but most don't.
The ancient desiderium naturae, [the natural desire, the desire of nature], which is the natural desire of the stone to reach a state of rest as close as it can to the bosom of the earth has become a myth for us. Even more completely, the idea of a first cause or primary end cause, an ultimate motivating reason for all the desires that are hidden in the nature of the stone, or the plant, or the man, has become foreign to our century. Final stage, in the mental universe of the 20th century, has the connotation of death. Entropy is our ultimate destination. We experience reality as monocausal. We only know about efficient causes.
The idea that the stone moves towards the earth because it has a desire, a natural desire, a natural impulse to come into contact with the earth has become strange and almost incomprehensible to us because we live in a Newtonian world.
Newton says that it is not the stone that moves: it is moved from outside by a force he calls gravitation. In saying that matter attracts matter in the direct ratio of the masses and in the inverse ratio of the square of the distances, he is saying that the larger matter attracts the smaller matter. So it is not the stone that is going to land, it is the earth that is pulling the stone. It is as if our view of the physical universe has been inverted in relation to that appearance that nature presented to the scholastics.
Isaac Newton, when observing the behavior of nature and doing math, discovered a certain regularity, things that are repeated. And he says that things are like that. But how long are they repeated? Note that Newton, to substantiate his theory, had to invent something he called absolute time -- time as a permanent unit of measurement, regardless of what happens. But how long a time where nothing happened would last? It is inconceivable. The idea of absolute time contradicts itself. The time that is independent of what happens is the time that is independent of duration; so it's not time at all. Newton also had to invent absolute space, space without things inside; that is, space as pure measure. But if there is nothing within the space, there is also no measure. So, to arrive at a description of the behavior of nature that we consider realistic and within which we live, - - and we live within that Newtonian space-time to the point that whatever contradicts it seems unthinkable to us - -, Newton conceived two ideas that are absolutely self-contradictory. He recognized that these ideas are mere inventions, but he needed them in order to make the measurements. Then you invent unrealistic comparison plans and based on them you make a series of measurements and declare "Now I have learned the reality". You also don't know if this is true. This means the following: if you try to think of everything in terms of space-time, nothing will be left in your hand. Space and time cannot be sustained and that is what St. Hugo once said, long before Newton and long before quantum physics.
We will see how we can overcome this merely historical approach, which would be a kind of cultural relativism. Cultural relativism gives millions of reasons for you not to understand one thing: "I can no longer understand that because it was out of reality. So, as I am imbued with modern scientific culture and I know how things really are, I cannot completely get over the head of a 13th century guy, because in the 13th century they are to us like a madman to the normal person. I cannot fully enter the universe of a madman. I can see it as a structure, but I cannot participate in it". Let's see if they are crazy.
When Newton says that it is not the stone that moves towards the earth, but the earth that attracts that small piece of matter in the direct ratio of the masses and in the indirect ratio of the square of the distance, you ask yourself: "But what precisely is Earth attracting?" It is a stone. Is a stone nothing? The stone is something, it has its own properties. And if she didn't have them and if she were nothing, the earth would attract her in vain, because she wouldn't come at all. This means that the description of the world that takes place in Newton's mechanics assumes the existence of the various substances of the various beings that are affected by the law of gravity. It does not reason from these substances, but only from the mechanical relationships between them. But in order for mechanical relationships to exist, they must take place between things that exist, and things that exist have substances.
When ancient physics said that the stone has a natural desire to rest in the bosom of the Earth, it said exactly what Galileo will say later: that when an object is not moved by another it remains at rest or in a uniform rectilinear motion. This impulse of rest or uniform rectilinear motion is inherent in the object -- with the proviso that Galileo said that uniform rectilinear motion is only a unit of measure and does not really exist. Aristotle, in ancient physics, said that when an object is not moved by another it remains at rest. Galileo adds in brackets: "or in a uniform rectilinear movement, which does not really exist" - that is, it remains at rest. Now, from the general point of view of the theory of universal gravitation, there is a mysterious force called gravity by which larger matter attracts smaller matter. But from the point of view of another physical law, which is the law of inertia, the impulse to rest is in the object itself. It cannot receive the rest impulse from outside, it can only receive the movement. Although the expression desiderium naturae - -desire of nature -- is a literary expression, it expresses precisely what the law of inertia says.
Confronting what Hugo, or what any other medieval author, is saying with Newton's law, I ask: who said it is Newton's law that he is referring to and not something else? Seen as an expression of Newton's law, of the law of gravitation, the expression desiderium naturae does not make any sense, because it is matter that attracts matter -- the body does not move, but is moved. But if that body was nothing and had no property, it could not be moved. But the expression desiderium naturae refers not to what happens to the object, but what it is and does - that is, its substantial form. This substantial form is what makes it want to be at rest - that is, it is the law of inertia.
It is not that there is only an absurdity, an absolutely unacceptable contradiction, but the whole order of pedagogy in which we are being taught is based on the idea of accepting an absurdity in a disciplined way so that we can then understand something else that would never go back on that absurdity and explain it. In Newton's physics: you "swallow" this thing of absolute time, this thing of absolute space (which doesn't exist, that's a nonsense), but by doing this, you will learn to measure the relationship between the masses, etc. Of course, it is a gain as long as it is known that it was absurd (original). You can make an analogy with the business of René Girard:
The community that is born from an original crime that is then hidden: that trauma will always remain, that dirt will stay there
Its original absurdity, even if it leads to spectacular scientific consequences, will always be an error, an absurdity and always a sin of the spirit. If you remain attentive throughout the development of the study you are doing, attentive to the awareness of the original absurdity, and say: "This is just a game rule. We are going to postulate an absurd thing just to see what happens, and then we'll come back here", and if you do this, everything is fine, but most don't.
