Re: Causation in Physics: F=ma

[Brian Whatcott <betwys1@SBCGLOBAL.NET>]

At 03:57 PM 11/14/2003, Dan Crowe, you wrote:
> /// I'm still waiting for
> someone to provide evidence that the word
> "cause" necessarily implies precedence.
>
> Daniel Crowe


There is a succession of models which can display
a varied propinquity in time (to use the picturesque
description) as between cause and effect.
One could point to a tallness gene which 20 years later
can result in tallness, I expect there would be reasonable
 agreement as to causality here.
 One could think of Leigh's striking an oriented natural,
resulting in a pocket ball.
One could visualize a particle consisting of four atoms in
a pyramid, hi on the apex, whose bonds first compress
then stretch the base bonds.

Does this progression of decreasing intervals vanish if we
consider the forces and accelerations of two electrons
heading towards each other?
Though we may well suppose the electrons are points,
still their effects are mediated at a distance, so that
there is an elastic buffering in effect.
One could argue, I suppose, that at close range, an electron
is braked through the electric field which it senses.
This electric field reconformation takes some little time to
 communicate its change to the other colliding electron....?

This gets us to the nub of an argument - which may not be
the one which we should be considering - on the relativity.
 This is to say that what precedes in one frame, may be
simultaneous in another, and may follow in a third.

It is this idea which above all, argues with causality.
If you show a preceding and 'causal' event in one frame,
 I can show it succeeding in another, I suppose I can say.


Brian Whatcott    Altus OK    Eureka!