Re: CAUSATION IN PHYSICS

[Rick Tarara <rtarara@SAINTMARYS.EDU>]

It dawned on me this morning that one point of confusion here may well be
the 'World View' of the participants.  I would wager that most physicist,
especially educators, have a Newtonian world view.  Yes we understand there
is a more sophisticated and encompassing view and many even understand much
of that view, but few have really adopted a relativistic/quantum mechanical
world view.  For those with a firm Newtonian view, it is evident that forces
cause accelerations and not the other way around.  For those with such a
world view, the ACCELERATED FRAME OF REFERENCE is always viewed in terms of
the 'real' forces, that is, viewed from outside the frame and then the
actions and sensations inside the frame are interpreted from this external
viewpoint.  With a more 'modern' world view, it is perfectly natural to put
ourselves INSIDE the accelerated frame, and in such cases one might argue
that the acceleration DOES create forces--the centrifugal, Coriolis, and
other such forces that the Newtonian view terms FICTITIOUS.  These are
clearly not Newtonian forces since there are no identifiable agents and no
Third Law counterparts.

What this says to me is that most people here are probably pretty good
Newtonian thinkers and therefore are comfortable with 'forces cause
accelerations but accelerations don't cause forces.'  Those with a purely
modern world view or those with a mixed Newtonian/modern view, might be
quite happy with the statement 'accelerations cause forces.'

ASIDE:  I would offer that the 'world view' of many (if not most) physicists
as Newtonian accompanied with the _knowledge_ that there is a 'better' world
view that corrects the discrepancies between nature and their own view, is a
more reasonable model for the education of  students in introductory
courses.  It has taken us, as physicists, some time to incorporate the
Newtonian view as our own, and only some _really_ move on to adopt the more
sophisticated 'modern' view.  To expect our introductory students to embrace
the Newtonian view after a single class is perhaps not a reasonable
expectation.  That they realize that there is a more sophisticated, more
encompassing model (Newtonian) than their own (Aristotelian) that must be
applied in certain circumstances may be all that is really possible for the
majority of students.

Rick

**********************************************
Richard W. Tarara
Associate Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556
rtarara@saintmarys.edu

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----- Original Message -----
From: "D.V.N.Sarma" <narayana@HD1.VSNL.NET.IN>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Monday, October 16, 2000 9:08 AM
Subject: Re: CAUSATION IN PHYSICS


> In spite of all the discussion we are having
> Newton has treated force as the cause of
> acceleration as is obvious from the first and
> second laws of Newton.
>
> regards,
>
> sarma.