PL 772: Insight & Beyond, I Fall 2009 Patrick H. Byrne Philosophy Department Boston College Class #...

PL 772: Insight & Beyond, IFall 2009

Patrick H. Byrne

Philosophy DepartmentBoston College

Class # 8, November 4, 2009

Chapter 5: “Space and Time”

&

Chapter 6: “Common Sense and Its Subject”

Kinds of Space and Time:Special Reference Frames

• Where is everything?

• When did everything happen?

• What time is it, for whom?

• Scientific Orderings(Explanatory & Abstract Ordering of Extensions & Durations)

• “A Problem Peculiar to Physics” (167)

“Thirdly, there are special reference frames. A basic position, direction, and instant are selected…

“There can be as many distinct reference frames of any kind as there are possible origins and orientations.

“From this multiplicity there follows the problem of transposing from statements relative to one reference frame to statements relative to another.” (168)


Jean Piaget,The Child’s Conception of Space

Transformations of Intelligible Relations


• “A Problem Peculiar to Physics”

• “since all mathematical principles and all natural laws of the classical type are abstract, it follows that their appropriate expression must be invariant.”

• “However, the science of physics does not enjoy the same immunity. It investigates local movements, and it cannot state their laws without some reference to places and times.” (165)

Special Reference Frames & Transformations

(XB , YB) = (-1, 4)

(XA , YA) = (4, 2)

XB = XA - 5

YB = YA + 2

Transformation

Abstract Intelligibility:Transformations & Geometries

• “From geometrical considerations it will be possible to find three equations relating x, y, and z, respectively, to x', y', and z', and further, to show that these equations hold for any point (x, y, z). In this fashion there are obtained transformation equations, and by the simple process of substitution any statement in terms of x, y, z can be transformed into a statement in terms of x', y', z'.” (169)

O

O’



YB = ½ XB + 4.5

YA = ½ XA + 0


• “From geometrical considerations it will be possible to find three equations relating x, y, and z, respectively, to x', y', and z', and further, to show that these equations hold for any point (x, y, z). In this fashion there are obtained transformation equations, and by the simple process of substitution any statement in terms of x, y, z can be transformed into a statement in terms of x', y', z'.” (169)

Moving Transformations of Inertial Reference Frames

Galilean Transformationx’ = x – vt, y’ = y, z’ = z, t’ = t

Newton’s Presuppositions aboutSpace, Time, and Motion

“1. Absolute, true, and mathematical time, in and of itself and of its own nature, without reference to anything external, flows uniformly and by another name is called duration.

Relative, apparent, and common time is any sensible and external measure (precise or imprecise) of duration by means of motion; such a measure for example, an hour, a day, a month, a year—is commonly used instead of true time.”

x’ = x – vt, y’ = y, z’ = z, t’ = t


“2. Absolute space, of its own nature without reference to anything external, always remains homogeneous and immovable.

Relative space is any movable measure or dimension or measure of this absolute spaces; such a measure or dimension is determined by our senses from the situation of the space with respect to bodies and is popularly used for immovable space, as in the case of space under the earth or in the air or in the heavens…”


“4. Absolute motion is the change of position of a body from one absolute place to another;

relative motion is change of position from one relative place to another. Thus, in a ship under sail, the relative place of a body is that region of the ship in which the body happens to be or that part of the whole interior of the ship which the body fills and which accordingly moves along with the ship.

And relative rest is the continuance of the body in that same region of the ship or same part of its interior. But true rest is the continuance of a body in the same part of that unmoving space in which the ship itself, along with its interior and all its contents, is moving...”


• Einstein’s dissatisfaction

• Biot-Savart Law

• Faraday’s Law

• Law of Propagation of Light:

xct


• Einstein’s Law: Constancy of the Velocity of Light

Transformed Correlation of Propagation of Light:

xct

' x' c' t'

Relativity of Simultaneity

of Time

http://rafimoor.com/english/SRE.htm#The%20Relativity%20of%20Simultaneity

Einstein on Space and Time

• What is it about Einstein’s insights into space and time that strike us as so strange and alien?

This stems from an inverse insight underlying uniform motion, but is more fundamentally a matter of intellectual conversion, away from Space and Time as already-out-there-now-real (body-grounded, as fundamentally known as related to our senses) to intelligible relations, and intelligible relations lack that bodily sense of reality.


“Galileo, Newton, and Kant were looking for some sort of absolute, but they were looking in the wrong places. They sought the real as opposed to the apparent, only to end up with everything apparent, the notion of the real included. Let us follow a different tack.” (178)


• “In the foregoing consideration of transformations, the procedure in the special case was based upon geometrical considerations. It is worth noting that the inverse procedure is possible, that is, that from a consideration of transformations one can work out the general theory of geometries.” (169)

Non-EuclideanSpherical & Elliptical Geometries

Non-EuclideanHyperbolic Geometries


“Moreover, a geometry cannot refer to Space or to Time except through a reference frame. Accordingly, the invariance proper to the expression of geometrical principles and laws is an invariance under transformations of reference frames.”

“However, there is a range of such sets of invariants, and so there remains the task of determining the specific solution.” (174)

Concrete Intelligibility of Space and Time

“Since reference frames are an endless multiplicity, their intelligible order cannot be more than descriptive…”

“[Scientific, explanatory] geometry is abstract… it consists in a set of abstract propositions and invariant expressions and that, while applicable to concrete extensions and durations, still it is applied differently from different spatiotemporal viewpoints.” (194-95)


“May one not expect an intelligibility proper to Space and proper to Time?”

“What is wanted is an intelligibility grasped in the totality of concrete extensions and durations and, indeed, identical for all spatiotemporal viewpoints.”

(195)


“The concrete intelligibility of Space is that it grounds the possibility of those simultaneous multiplicities named situations.

“The concrete intelligibility of Time is that it grounds the possibility of successive realizations in accord with probabilities.

“In other words, concrete extensions and concrete durations are the field or matter or potency in which emergent probability is the immanent form or intelligibility.” (195)

• Human and biological and environmental schemes on the earth emerged from stellar and planetary schemes, which emerged from prior

schemes at earlier stages of the universe, which themselves emerged from prior schemes. While accounts

of durations and extensions of the emergences vary according to

origins and orientations, the intelligibility of emergent

probability holds for all events.

Concrete Intelligibility of Space & Time:

The universe is a process, not a container

PL 772: Insight & Beyond, IFall 2009

Patrick H. Byrne

Philosophy DepartmentBoston College

Class # 8, November 4, 2009

Chapter 5: “Space and Time”

&

Chapter 6: “Common Sense and Its Subject”

Common Sense as Intellectual

• What is “common” in common sense?

• “Not only are [people] born with a native drive to inquire and understand; they are born into a community that possesses a common fund of tested answers, and from that fund each may draw.” (198)

• “For every difference of geography, for every difference of occupation, for every difference of social arrangements, there is an appropriate variation of common sense.” (203)

Jean Piaget,The Child’s Conception of Space

Transformations of Intelligible Relations

Common Sense as Intellectual

• “just as the scientist advances from data through insights and formulations to experiments that stimulate further insights, so too the spontaneous and self-correcting process of learning is a circuit in which insights reveal their shortcomings by putting forth deeds or words or thoughts, and through that revelation prompt the further questions that lead to complementary insights.” (197)

Common Sense as Intellectual:Common Sense as Intellectual:Self-correcting Process of LearningSelf-correcting Process of Learning

Patterning of Experience

Insights

ActionsInquiries

Common Sense vs. Science?

• What differentiates common sense insight from scientific insight?

• “Common sense, unlike the sciences, is a specialization of intelligence in the particular and the concrete. It is common without being general, for it consists in a set of insights that remains incomplete until there is added at least one further insight into the situation in hand; and once that situation has passed, the added insight is no longer relevant, so that common sense at once reverts to its normal state of incompleteness.” (198-99)

Common Sense vs. Science?

“Common sense, on the other hand, has no theoretical inclinations. It remains completely in the familiar world of things for us. The further questions by which it accumulates insights are bounded by the interests and concerns of human living, by the successful performance of daily tasks, by the discovery of immediate solutions that will work. Indeed, the supreme canon of common sense is the restriction of further questions to the realm of the concrete and particular, the immediate and practical.” (201)

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