Re: Cause and Effect

[Gary Karshner <Karshner@STMARYTX.EDU>]

At 10:32 PM 10/25/00 -0400, you wrote:
Ludwik,
        I think your getting close. Newton in his laws doesn't tell us about cause
and effect, they describe the interaction of objects. As close as they get
is in the terms action and reaction, but even those are interchangeable
depending on your frame of reference. Newton composed his laws to finally
overturn Aristotle's system where cause and effect are critical. To have
unnatural motion, something that is not seeking its own level, requires a
mover - a cause. Things don't move unnaturally unless an animal, man or an
angel moves it. (The last of these  was added in the middle ages to move
the planets around the Earth.)   We shouldn't try to put into Newton's laws
more then is there. Cause and effect come from what happens before and
after - the boundary conditions of the problem and not the interaction itself.
        Newton's physics is very Spartan, that is intrinsic to its beauty. The
Cartesians complained of Newton's law of gravitation that it does not tell
us what gravity is but only how it behaves. Newton's reply was that is all
you need.  Here cause and effect come from outside the boundaries of his
laws but not necessarily the boundaries of problem.

Gary

> > I think that most of us agree that two forces in the third
> > law, or F and a, in the second law, appear simultaneously
> > in those problems we solved (inertial frames, rigid objects
> > etc.). In my opinion the "cause and effect" issue is essential
> > but it is not part of physics; it is philosophy. Questions like
> > "why does this or that happen?" would become meaningless
> > wihthout a belief that everything that happens is caused by
> > something else. Does this make me an Aristotelian?
> > Ludwik Kowalski

Gary Karshner

St. Mary's University
San Antonio, Texas
KARSHNER@STMARYTX.EDU