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Re: Bernard's Philosophical Reference.



At 02:06 10/15/00 -0700, Bernard wrote:
Ah ha!

Ludwik has stated one of the necessary factors for a belief in cause (and
effect) - temporal propinquity and order. I suggest a reading of the
following for more.

<http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/0/0,5716,108560+8+106052,00.html>

bc

It is not every day one can hope for a single URL to provide
the opportunity to take the heat out of a conflagration -
to dephlogisticate it, so to speak.

Here in the words of a philosopher who died in the year the
English colonist fired the shot that was heard round the world,
we are reminded again of propinquity, priority, continuity
(and custom).

Feeling somewhat remorseful in earlier proposing an
experimental arrangement for infinite jerk arranged by
releasing a ball, I now mention another experimental
arrangement in honor of Hume:

We have suspended over an awful chasm, a mile long slinky
which when released at its highest point - the foot of the
spring then hovers endlessly in the air until the fact of its
release is communicated down endless helices of spring wire -
a process that might well take more than 15 seconds.

I assert that the removal of a pull here clearly precedes but
eventually is seen to provoke the downfall of the slinky.
One might be forgiven for assuming the pull and its removal is
causal in the motion, in at least some immediate sense?

Brian

[Ludwik continues in similar vein by pointing out...]
John is referring to idealizations in which F acts on a particle,
or on a rigid body.
Leigh, on the other hand, was bringing a very persuasive
argument for "F being a cause of a" in non-ideal situations. The
center of mass of a real body does not start accelerating at the
same moment at which the force is applied.
brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net> Altus OK
Eureka!