I finished today a short paper (6 pages) for my natural philosophy class on the topic of Motion in Aristotle's Physics and Its Relation to the Infinite, to Place, and to Time. Follow the link here or on the sidebar if you are interested in reading it. For those who don't want to bother reading the whole paper, I'll give you the short version: motion is the actuality of the potential as potential. The infinite exists only in potency. Place is the first immobile limit of the containing body. Time is the number of motion. Go ahead, see if you can come up with better definitions.
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18 comments:
Let me try to come up with better definitions...nope, can't be done.
I wrote a paper on Scotus on time, and the relation between his theory and Aristotle's and Newton's, which I will be giving at a little conference here in a few weeks; if you want to read it, I could send it to you. I think the ancient/medieval (pre-Scotist) view of time and so much more intelligent than the "time as an empty vessel" view that we have nowadays. The same goes for Aristotle's view of place versus our view of space.
God bless! I am excited to see you and Lisa and Maria this summer!
Please, send it to me. What's the conference?
We're also looking forward to the summer; Susanna suggested a Tigers vs Cardinals game...
It's not a real conference; we are having talks throughout the year on Scotus as this is the 700th anniversary of his death, and in a few weeks there is going to be a little graduate student symposium on his thought for which I submitted a paper, which was selected. I will e-mail you a copy.
A Tigers v. Cardinals game would be excellent--poor Susanna; she'll be so outnumbered.
Buy me a decent beer and I will be fine, even if I am out numbered. And with my luck the Cardinals will lose.
How about Tiger vs. Cardinals in October? Again! But John'll be in Austria. Too bad!
Well, this all seems terribly abstract. At least, in my years as a practicing engineer, I've never needed to know what time is, so long as the calculations worked out properly. . .
And, on the topic of time, it would seem that you are here talking about 'chronos' - the hands moving around the face of the clock. Whereas 'kairos' - 'lived time', or 'such a time as this' is something else entirely. . .
I'm also wondering if, in the sense of Einsteinian relativity, we don't need a more 'robust' notion of time, even in the 'physical' sense; something more closely-coupled to matter and space. . .
Yeah, that was me, above, complaining about how 'abstract' this all was. . .
;)
Abstract, yes, this is Aristotle after all, and the truth generally is a matter of abstraction, i.e., the mind operates by abstracting general principles from particulars and all that.
I'm not sure I understand the distinction between chronos and kairos...
As for Einstein, I'll admit to being a little bit skeptical of his physics - not that I would presume to question his mathematics, I just wonder if his mathematical schema really corresponds to reality.
If I'm not mistaken (and I may be, really I'm quite an amateur here) he would disagree with Aristotle's claim that time cannot move faster or slower.
For Aristotle, all time is /both/ chronos /and/ kairos, in a sense. Time is "a number (or measure) applied to motion and rest with respect to before and after." This implies that time involves 1)a motion in the world and 2)a mind that measures that motion. Thus there can be no time without both "chronos", in the sense of objective motion, and "kairos" in the sense of subjective or lived experience, which is here described as a measurement of such motion.
Einstein, like everyone after Galileo and Newton, and especially after Kant, makes time (and space) a "thing" separate from objects and their motion. For Einstein time and space can be affected by massive objects and their motion, but they still remain "things" or "receptacles" ("rubber sheets", to use the common metaphor) which are related to, but not the same as, the bundles of matter and energy which we call things.
But, it seems to me, this is an abstraction from the actual world in which we live. Certainly, this idea of time as abstracted from actual objects is very useful in calculations, mathematical theories, and generalized science. But the question must be asked whether is actually describes the world of our actual everyday experience. It is there that I think that Aristotle does a far better job than anyone after Galileo.
Re 'chronos/kairos', the distinction I'm drawing is more one of 'significance'. In the 'kairos' sense, certain times are 'larger' than others - Christ's Incarnation, my wedding day, the births of my children (or yours; not meaning to be all egocentric here. . .) So 'kairos' is not simply a matter of the presence of my mind to perform the measurements, but a matter of my soul/intellect as expressions of the imago dei.
Or something like that.
It seems to me that Einstein's core insight is that 'physical reality' - space, time, matter - is more 'closely-coupled' than had been thought to be the case. Space affects time affects matter; they aren't simply mutually independent parameters.
In terms of physics, Einstein has been confirmed quite impressively in various (and very different) ways. It really does seem to involve real insight into 'how things are', altho what that 'means' might have gotten a tad less clear. . .
And yes, Einstein would say that time moves faster/slower. Specifically, as an object's velocity approaches the speed of light, its time 'moves slower'.
This has been experimentally tested by sending clocks on space flights, moving much faster than they would on the face of the earth (although not approaching the speed of light all that closely), and the discrepancies observed upon their return to earth have corresponded to what Einstein would have predicted.
In terms of physics, I would regard Einstein as a refinement of Newton, who in his turn built on Galileo, and those who went before. I don't suppose that an 'Einsteinian paradigm' of the physical Universe is any manner of a threat to faith. . .
Probably not a threat to the faith objectively speaking but very much a threat to the faith subjectively.
I know the conversation thus far has been about Einstein, and I'm going to throw it over to Copernicus/Galileo, but as was noted above, Einstein can be seen as standing in line with Newton and Galileo before him.
Many know that Friedrich Nietzshce said "God is dead," but less know the context of his words, or what it was that "killed God." The Copernican revolution lies at the heart of his nihilism.
He writes: "Where has God gone?" he cried. "I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the Earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves?
C.S. Lewis adds: "Go out on a starry night and walk alone for half an hour, resolutely assuming that the pre-Copernican astronomy is true. Look up at the sky with that assumption in your mind. The real difference between living in that universe and living in ours will then, I predict, begin to dawn on you."
Friedrich Engels (co-author with Marx of the Communist Manifesto): What Luther's burning of the papal Bull was in the religious field, in the field of natural science was the great work of Copernicus."
James Burke: "The scheme [Copernicus'] met the requirements of philsophical and theological belief in circular motion. In every other respect, however, Copernicus struck at the heart of Aristotelian and Christian belief. He removed the earth from the center of the universe and so from the focus of God's purpose. In the new scheme man was no longer the creature for whose use and elucidation the cosmos had been created."
E. A. Burtt: "Man begins to appear for the first time in the history of thought as an irrelevant spectator and insignificant effect of the great mathematical system which is the substance of reality."
Or, as a character in Herman Wouk's "The Winds of War" put it: "Christianity is dead and rotting since Galileo cut its throat."
Sorry that was so long. The point is that modern physics (true or false) poses a substantial threat to the faith subjectively speaking.
The above quotes (and many more) can all be found on pp. 21-23 of Volume I of Robert Sungenis's "Galileo Was Wrong."
I think we can benefit from the discoveries and theories of modern science as long as we remember what they are and what they are doing; it is when we take them out of context that they pose a threat to faith. As you say, Ckgaler, it is not necessarily so clear what it means anymore to say 'the way things are'. And even if they do not pose that much of a threat to faith, they may pose a threat to knowing the truth about things, which is what we are trying to do here, we knowers (to cop a phrase from Nietzsche).
It seems to me (and I could be wrong--I know Aristotle better than the modern physical tradition) that the experiments designed to test the special and general theories of relativity can be interpreted in an Aristotelian way: rather than positing a completely mind-independent notion of time which is directly affected by motion and mass, we could argue that motions and massive bodies affect other motions and massive bodies. We in turn measure these motions differently, because we too are affected by different motions as we measure them; thus we assign different times to them. It must be remembered that all time measurement (by watches, sundials, atomic clocks, etc.) is just assigning a number to different motions; some motions are very regular, and so we use these as a standard by comparison with which we can measure other, less regular motions, and assign times to them. No one ever has seen 'time as such' (because, I would suggest following Aristotle, it does not exist). None of this threatens the coherency or worth of Einstein's discoveries: but it must be remembered that when he discusses time, he is discussing a mathematical abstraction or projection onto the world, which is very helpful, but must be translated back into a language closer to reality if we are to discuss the actual way things are. I think similar things can be said for many of the discoveries of modern science.
But I think that you are right, John, that subjectively, many of them can pose a threat to faith. I don't think that's a reason to throw them out altogether (because they do point to true discoveries, albeit ones of limited, though often much-inflated, importance).
And regarding the chronos-kairos distinction: I think both can be interpreted along a broadly Aristotelian model, for both involve motions and changes in the world and measures or interpretations by the mind. It is just that chronos measures changes in relation to some other perfectly regular motion, and kairos measures changes according to an irregular but qualitatively rich measure, such as the liturgical calendar or the moments one has found to be important, etc. I think that this is the sort of time in which we operate normally, as you say, the "lived experience of time," a sort of framework through which we interpret the whole world (as in a Heidegerrian notion of time).
Sorry that was so long--I find time to be one of the most fascinating topics in natural philosophy. Let me know what you guys think.
True, of course, I did not mean to imply modern physics should be chucked because it is so often harmful to the faith (subjectively speaking). I only wanted to make the point that subjectively and historically speaking much of it has done untold damage to the faith.
However, the truth of the matter is important and this must be evaluated on its own grounds so to speak.
Although, and I admit that it might be fallacious reasoning on my part, the fact that some things in particular, such as the Copernican theory and Relativity theory, have caused such incredible damage to the faith of so many and especially in the former case to the very fabric of Christendom, renders them at least suspicious in my eyes.
Which is not to say that I would reject them as false on these grounds, but that I would consider them guilty until proven innocent. Although they should be considered in this way merely because they so violently contradict common sense.
I mean, the earth is moving? Seriously? Time can move faster or slower? Seriously? We ought require pretty hefty proof for such claims, and I'm not sure we've been given it.
I would want to stop well short of saying that physics, qua physics, has damaged the faith; it seems to me that a materialistic philosophy piggy-backing on the scientific success of modern physics, has done such damage as has been done.
As Newman said, Truth cannot be contrary to Truth; to the extent that modern physics seeks and discovers the Truth about the Universe, it is reflective of the mind of God. And, to the extent that it is true, faithful Christians need not fear it.
Continuing with Newman, he said (in The Idea of a University, I think) that when some truth discovered by science is seen to contradict Revealed Truth, we can know that either (1) it isn't really true, (2) it isn't really contradictory, or (3) it isn't contradictory to anything really revealed. And this third sense, I think, applies to the 'Copernican revolution'. There is nothing inherent in any of the doctrines of Christianity that requires the earth to be stationary, or located at the center of the Universe. It is possible, even helpful, to think that the very particularity of God's intervention in our lives, on this planet, orbiting this star in this galaxy, only serves to underscore His sovereignty and His love - who are we, that the Son of the Most High should dwell among us, as one of us?
If Copernicus caused damage to someone's faith by even figuratively 'removing the earth from the center', then that is/was a defect of faith, not of physics. Or so it seems to me. . .
Just to be clear, WOC, I didn't say that Einstein rendered the meaning of 'the way things are' unclear (or at least, that wasn't what I meant). I think that Galileo, Newton, Einstein, et al, give us real insight into 'the way things are' - the equations, abstract as they are, do correspond to actual physical reality, at least in the sense of giving a 'true enough' account of how physical objects behave. What is perhaps less clear than before is what the physical reality itself 'means'. If, once upon a time, it 'meant something' that the earth was at the center of the Universe (whether rightly or wrongly), it is less clear under a more 'modern' paradigm what the physical state/location of the earth 'means'. That's all I meant. Put another way, if once upon a time the 'clockwork universe' seemed to speak of the orderliness of the Mind of the Creator, it is not quite so simple to think that in an Einsteinian, or quantum, sense (although the 'subtler' paradigm engendered by modern physics certainly doesn't 'do away' with the need for a Creator; Stephen Hawking notwithstanding).
The physical Universe is what it is, and it will, to the extent that we are able to rightly understand it, tell us what it is. The 'meaning' of the physical Universe (or, if you prefer, its 'significance') is harder for us to know. . .
Truth can't contradict truth. Can't argue with that CKG.
Good to talk to you again by the way, it's almost like the good old days.
I hope all is well with you!
Well, hey, once you get back stateside, maybe we can go for a drive, just for old times' sake. . .
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