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_______________________________________________===== Original Message From Forum for Physics Educators
<PHYS-L@list1.ucc.nau.edu> =====
On the other hand it is not all that difficult:
If someone in a dark alley in Birmingham -- I assume that there are in fact
dark alleys if Birmingham -- approaches you and zonks you over the head
with a bat, you could reasonably be expected to admit that the pain is real
-- that the damage to your brain is real -- that the loss of your wallet
and gold watch is real. But if someone suggested that we should gather up
all the pain in Birmingham, pour it into a jug, and then slosh it out to
the ocean in a pipe, this is reifying the concept of pain and brain
damage. I don't think that you would want to say out loud that there is
somewhere a bucket of pain. Someone would ask you what color it is. Or if
it smelled perfumy.
Well, it may be beyond my capacity, but allow me to examine your example and
compare it to mine, in which an electron enters the region between the charged
plates of a parallel-plate capacitor. In your example I'm beaten and robbed.
In my example the electron is pushed from its straight line path. I'm real,
and the electron is real-- we can both be put into a bucket. In your example
I suffer pain and I am separated from my gold watch. In my example the
electron gains kinetic energy and momentum. My pain/injury and condition of
having been separated from my gold watch don't pass the bucket test for
tangible reality, and neither do the conditions of the electron having gained
kinetic energy and momentum. In your example, there is a jerk who attacked me
and took my watch. In my example, there is an electric field that pushed the
electron from its straight line path. The jerk is real, since he can be put
into a bucket. But the field is not, according to you, since it cannot be put
into a bucket. This seems to bring us to one of two options:
(1) Something that is not tangibly real, the field, somehow managed to push
the electron. How can an abstract concept push an electron?
(2) There was something tangibly real that pushed the electron, but the field
is not that thing. I assume this is the option you're picking. What is the
real thing that pushed the electron?
--
Rodney Dunning
Assistant Professor of Physics
Birmingham-Southern College