When I was in Graduate School at Catholic University of America in the 1950's, working on a doctoral thesis in literary theory, it was very much impressed upon us that we must consider what everyone else had said about our particular thesis, in order that each one's particular contribution might be truly of some value in our chosen field, and neither redundant nor meaningless with regard to others. In other words, research and writing were supposed to take place in an atmosphere of charitable conversation or even debate, not unlike that of the medieval university.
Today, the internet is going far towards replacing, if only temporarily, that medieval institution, whether for good or for evil. And so, I take up my pen and begin to converse with Mister or Master Donachie. A friend has sent me some 29 pages of text on the subject of heliocentrism and in defense of geocentrism, fully exposing the contradiction of a heliocentric cosmology. Hooray! It is about time! Master Donachie is obviously an engineer and what in Europe is termed a polytechnician. He is also equally skilled on the golf course and his analogies are very enlightening. I rejoice at his demonstrations that our blessed temporary home of earth is of necessity, a body-part at rest, having much influence by reason of its centrality in the rest of the cosmos. I hope Master Donachie will take the time to read and conside my papers on Newton's laws of motion and my thesis that the universe is a vast body, entirely physical-material, but with a spherical shape and hierarchical form, as its formal cause. This is explained at length elsewhere. Here I would only wish to take some exception to Master Donachie's definition of motion as a quality.
The scholastics and St. Thomas, all following Aristotle, defined motion as the passing from potency to art in some subject acted upon by an agent in act. The subject acted upon must have the proper disposition with respect to the potency being targeted for actualization. We think of most motion as transitive, that is, a change from one place to another place. This is local motion. But actually, all motion is local because all motion, - all change (motion and change are the same), occurs in a place, whether exterior to the agent and patient or interior to the agent and/or patient. Therefore, we have transitive or immanent motion. When I walk or drive or fly from one place to another, both distance and speed of the motion/change can be measured. Time is precisely the measure of the motion. Therefore, we say it takes me an hour (time), to walk from Nazareth Village to Bardstown, the distance of two miles, if I walk briskly. The only quality here is that of the briskness, but even that depends upon the speed, i.e., quantity of my briskness. So, this local motion is entirely quantitative. Immanent action issues more likely in qualities such as heat and light.
The exercises I must do in my body, in order to keep healthy, (so they tell me), proceed from the agency of my will in act and are aimed at those parts of my body in need of stimulation, for example, my arms and legs. So I am put on the bike by my will in act, though with some trepidation with respect to the sciatic nerve which lurks there somewhere waiting to be activated, which is to say inflamed, causing great pain. These potentialities for pain and for disease and eventual corruption, are the direct effects in our human nature of Adam's sin, - effects which, by the way, were completely absent only in the Sacred Humanity of Our Blessed Lord and His Immaculate Mother Mary. The nurse is always asking me to tell her where my pain registers on a scale of 1 to 10. This, of course, is a completely subjective value, but it is quantitative, not qualitative. They really don't care much for my subjective, qualitative effects of the pain. The medicine they give me is scaled to the measurement, as far as they can get it, of the exact amount of my pain! Impossible task! But the only way. And so it goes.
All motion is change of some kind, and all change involves motion of some kind, whether exterior or interior. The motions of the particles of the atomic elements, especially the electrons, are the most interesting. We need to incorporate all this polytechnic information into our supporting sciences: The mathematical certitudes of the earth at rest and the heavenly spheres revolving with their celestial inhabitants. The authority of the Church and the clarity of the Divine Revelation are the ultimate sources of authority that come from God.
Today, the internet is going far towards replacing, if only temporarily, that medieval institution, whether for good or for evil. And so, I take up my pen and begin to converse with Mister or Master Donachie. A friend has sent me some 29 pages of text on the subject of heliocentrism and in defense of geocentrism, fully exposing the contradiction of a heliocentric cosmology. Hooray! It is about time! Master Donachie is obviously an engineer and what in Europe is termed a polytechnician. He is also equally skilled on the golf course and his analogies are very enlightening. I rejoice at his demonstrations that our blessed temporary home of earth is of necessity, a body-part at rest, having much influence by reason of its centrality in the rest of the cosmos. I hope Master Donachie will take the time to read and conside my papers on Newton's laws of motion and my thesis that the universe is a vast body, entirely physical-material, but with a spherical shape and hierarchical form, as its formal cause. This is explained at length elsewhere. Here I would only wish to take some exception to Master Donachie's definition of motion as a quality.
The scholastics and St. Thomas, all following Aristotle, defined motion as the passing from potency to art in some subject acted upon by an agent in act. The subject acted upon must have the proper disposition with respect to the potency being targeted for actualization. We think of most motion as transitive, that is, a change from one place to another place. This is local motion. But actually, all motion is local because all motion, - all change (motion and change are the same), occurs in a place, whether exterior to the agent and patient or interior to the agent and/or patient. Therefore, we have transitive or immanent motion. When I walk or drive or fly from one place to another, both distance and speed of the motion/change can be measured. Time is precisely the measure of the motion. Therefore, we say it takes me an hour (time), to walk from Nazareth Village to Bardstown, the distance of two miles, if I walk briskly. The only quality here is that of the briskness, but even that depends upon the speed, i.e., quantity of my briskness. So, this local motion is entirely quantitative. Immanent action issues more likely in qualities such as heat and light.
The exercises I must do in my body, in order to keep healthy, (so they tell me), proceed from the agency of my will in act and are aimed at those parts of my body in need of stimulation, for example, my arms and legs. So I am put on the bike by my will in act, though with some trepidation with respect to the sciatic nerve which lurks there somewhere waiting to be activated, which is to say inflamed, causing great pain. These potentialities for pain and for disease and eventual corruption, are the direct effects in our human nature of Adam's sin, - effects which, by the way, were completely absent only in the Sacred Humanity of Our Blessed Lord and His Immaculate Mother Mary. The nurse is always asking me to tell her where my pain registers on a scale of 1 to 10. This, of course, is a completely subjective value, but it is quantitative, not qualitative. They really don't care much for my subjective, qualitative effects of the pain. The medicine they give me is scaled to the measurement, as far as they can get it, of the exact amount of my pain! Impossible task! But the only way. And so it goes.
All motion is change of some kind, and all change involves motion of some kind, whether exterior or interior. The motions of the particles of the atomic elements, especially the electrons, are the most interesting. We need to incorporate all this polytechnic information into our supporting sciences: The mathematical certitudes of the earth at rest and the heavenly spheres revolving with their celestial inhabitants. The authority of the Church and the clarity of the Divine Revelation are the ultimate sources of authority that come from God.
Describing motion "as the passing from potency to art in some subject" acted upon by an active agency is correct, and well said. And the subject acted upon must have the proper disposition with respect to the potency being targeted for actualization.
ReplyDeleteThe proper disposition would be from a quality, of course. In golf practice, as people get older and experience more back pain, they more and more prefer to emphasize quality over quantity.
Quality in a given element at times may increase the value of motion more than quantity. In music some people have said "less is more", which is from the quality involved.
Quality is inescapable ab origine, so it is naturally an important part of physics and proper theories of motion.
I empathize deeply with any situation of back pain.
Immanent motion or action must occur within a plenum, and therein will be some quality in some kind.
"In Moto", yours truly