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Re: heat is a form of energy



At 16:50 -0700 9/12/99, Bob Sciamanda wrote:
Leigh,
I guess you overshot the rest point, so I get another turn!

I repeat that I am mostly just curious of your notion of "substance". It
seems that you count an atom (or even just an electron?) as a substance,
and its charge as another substance (correct me if I mis-read).
Apparently you base this on your purely mathematical definition of
substance (localizability, etc?).

That's pretty much correct. I have to admit that it is pretty
hard to separate the substance of an electron from its charge,
though. I haven't thought that one out at all. If baryons or
leptons are substantial, however, then charge is also
substantial in the same way. Once we've accepted that then we
must acknowledge that substance can be negative.

My use of the word is more vulgar. From my sensory impressions, I
construct a model of observable reality as composed of corporeal
substances (things, stuff), and their properties. A property does not
have an existence of its own (as does a substance); it is something we
invent to describe the behavior/appearance of a substance. Thus, we
describe the behavior of the sun and planets in terms of their properties,
including "gravitational charge"; in the same way we introduce the
property "electrical charge" to describe our observation of substances
which participate in (what we call) electrical interactions. But this
schema does not encompass the possibility of a substance playing the role
of a property of another substance, as your schema seems to do (charge is
a property of an electron, but both are substances). Unless you literally
model the electron's charge as a paint substance added to an electron
substance. Is this it?

I take your point. I think that these properties may be
substantial or insubstantial; I just don't know. I do know
that as a property of a substance, gravitational charge seems
always to have the same sign, matter and antimatter behaving
similarly in this respect.

(As an aside, let it be said that these substance/property notions are
derived from sensory observations of corporeal, macroscopic reality, and
are extrapolated into sub-microscope reality only tentatively and for
purposes of visualization and classification. Substance as "stuff" is
probably only a macroscopic concept, and has only some analogous meaning,
if any, beyond a certain level of analysis of matter, but we perforce
construct our conceptual models of submicroscopic reality hanging on to
this terminology.)

I think that is certainly correct. It is so because our
linguistic ability is not up to the task of describing the
submicroscopic world adequately, as your Feynman quote so
well explained.

Anyway, I think I have clearly shown that there is a difference
between the substantiality* of energy and that of, for example,
electric charge. They are different because different observers
see different energies while seeing identical charges. That is
not a surprise to me given the abstract nature of energy and
what I term the substantial nature of electric charge.

I hope I can rest now, but I know I can't.

Leigh

*Yup, I used that ugly word!