Rick, Andrea, Glenn, (and lurkers)
It's really surprising the mileage that can be got out of this gravity
thing. When I wrote that Andrea had said it all, I meant just that - though
I suppose I didn't expect you to all immediately agree...
RICK WRITES:
> Hey Glenn and Elephant and all,
> I just wanted to make a brief textual examination of the passage that's
> causing all the trouble to see if it actually says any of the things that it
> claims to say.
> (from chap.3 pg.30)....
>
> PIRSIG:
> "For example, it seems completely natural to presume that gravitation and the
> law of gravitation existed before Issac Newton. It would sound nutty to think
> that until the seventeenth century there was no gravity."
>
> RICK:
> Well, it seems nutty to say there was no gravity. Notice he doesn't say that
> it seems nutty there was no "law of gravitation" before Newton... that seems
> fine now but watch what he does....
ELEPHANT:
Word to the wise Rick: never underestimate the importance if this word
"seems" in a philosopher's mouth. Appearance and reality. If someone of
Pirsig's ilk goes so far as to state that it "seems" that such and such, you
can bet your bottom ECU that he's about to say that it *only* "seems" that
such and such, and that, on the contrary, *really* it is so and so.
> PIRSIG:
> "So when did this LAW start? Has it always existed?" (emphasis added)
>
> RICK:
> But wait, now we're talking about the "law of gravitation" again. He was
> supposed to be explaining why it's not nutty to think that there was no
> "gravity" before Newton. Of course it's not nutty to think that the LAW
> didn't exist before Newton...everybody agrees on that part.
ELEPHANT:
Point of information: no they do not. Glenn says that the Law was
"discovered" - and you can't discover something if it didn't exist before
you discovered it. Glenn also says that "gravity itself" is "bound up with"
this law of gravity - by which he presumably means that "gravity itself"
just is this law, but written as it were in the language of nature rather
than the language of men. Actually I think that sums up the whole issue -
there are some people who think that there are facts in the world (written
in the language of nature) which, when we discover them, can then be written
out in the language of men (eg as "force=mass*acceleration"). In fact some
of these people go further and say that mathematics *is* the language of
nature, and that the discovery of a law of nature is a discovery pure and
simple, without even a translation into human tongue being required.
Pirsig's point, as I understand it, is that there isn't any such thing as a
"language of nature". There's what we call language, and that's all the
language there is. So when you get a linguistic expression like
"force=mass*acceleration", saying that this is discovered as a pre-existing
law of nature is absurd as saying that the planets speak english or that
apples perform maths. It can't be written in the language of nature, there
already for us to discover it, simply because there is no such thing as a
language of nature. There's just english, or maths: both languages of Human
Beings, who have to invent such linguistic entities as that
force=mass*acceleration.
It's this 'language of nature' business that Prisig is gunning for:
> PIRSIG:
> "What I'm driving at," I say, "is the notion that before the beginning of the
> earth, before the sun and the stars were formed, before the primal generation
> of anything, the LAW of gravity existed." (emphasis added)
>
> RICK:
> Well sure that's silly... but once again, we all already agree that the LAW of
> gravity (or gravitation) only dates back to Newton. The issue here is whether
> the GRAVITY described by the law is older.
ELEPHANT:
That's one issue, but it's not the important issue at all. The really
important issue is not whether the "gravity itself" is older or younger or
the same age as "the law of gravity", but rather *whether there is any such
thing as "gravity itself" beyond this law*. I mean, is there any measured
to correspond to the measure here? Or is the measured thing the continuum,
rather than "gravity itself"?
Glenn, and also Rick I now find, are captivated by the powerful intuition
that stuff falls whether or not you have ever heard of Newton. Well there's
nothing wrong about that intuition, and everything right about it - what's
problematic is where Glenn and Rick want to go from there. They think this
proves that there is this force, gravity, which pre-exists all scientific
enquiry. This is the "whoa there boys!" move which I find so entertaining
about the whole discussion. Because since gravity is, as we all agree, a
kind of *force*, it can only be said to exist insofar as forces exist.
- That's just fine, you say, forces have always existed from the dawn of
time. Well no, actually, that's just where you are wrong. Force is a
concept, not an empirical fact. The peculiar concept of force of which
gravity is an example is an eighteenth century innovation, invented by none
other than... Issac Newton. His famous law "force=mass*acceleration" is not
the empirical discovery that Glenn and Rick apparently take it to be.
Newton didn't gaze out at the heavens and see "force=mass*acceleration"
written in the language of nature - and there wasn't a learned maggot
scribling this text it on the apple skin with his maggotty molars. No, this
wasn't an empirical discovery, so much as an intelligent *decision*: and in
fact it was a very high quality and rather beautiful *definition* of
"force", which, as some of my earlier posts point out, also goes a long way
towards defining what we mean my "mass", how to go about determing it, and
separating it off from weight etc.
If despite the light of reason shining from my keyboard you still persist in
thinking that force=mass*acceleration was empirically "discovered" to be
true, perhaps one or the other of you would like to descend from your lofty
theories to explain in practical terms just how one could devise an
experiment to confirm or disconfirm force=mass*acceleration? You can't do
it. The school boy business with the frictionless tracks is a demonstration
of how everything is in accord with Newton's laws, which depends crucially
on our accepting the definitions of "force" and "mass" which newton's law,
and only newton's law, gives us. Nothing is being tested here - it is all
being assumed in order to bring the text book to life - a 'demonstration' of
an axiom at work, not an empirical discovery. This law
force=mass*acceleration is an *axiom* of physics, and like all axioms it is
invented, not discovered. Euclid defines the line: he does not conduct an
empirical enquiry, studying all the lines he can observe (wave patterns,
sunbursts, ropes on the quayside etc) and then come up with a generalisation
hypothesis - that's a ridiculous conception of Euclidean Geometry, and the
same is true for Newtonian Physics.
>
> PIRSIG:
> Sitting there, having no mass of its own, no energy of its own, not in
> anyone's mind because there wasn't anyone, not in space because there was no
> space either, not anywhere-this LAW of gravity still existed?"
ELEPHANT:
Precisely - there is no mind of nature or languge of nature for such a law
to exist in, prior to Newtons' invention of the necessary terminology of
force and mass.
>
> RICK:
> Same problem again, he's arguing the wrong point. Gravity itself was likely
> born at about the same time as the "space" he refers to in the above quote...
> but his point has nothing to do with that.
ELEPHANT:
Look, what's the force if your "likely" here? Is it because you think
things wouldn't fall without gravity? That's just where you are wrong.
Gravity is a force, force is a physico-mathematical concept, apples can fall
just fine without physico-mathematical concepts. Clear? And there is no
'what' that the concept refers to - the concept creates the "what".
> PIRSIG:
> "If the law of gravity existed," I say, "I honestly don't know what a thing
> has to do to be nonexistent. It seems to me that law of gravity has passed
> every test of nonexistence there is. You cannot think of a single attribute
> of nonexistence that that law of gravity didn't have. Or a single scientific
> attribute of existence it did have...."
>
> RICK:
> Again, he's arguing a point everyone already agrees with. HOWEVER, this time
> there's an additional oddity this time. He refers to the "attributes of
> nonexistence" and tells us that there's not one the law of gravity didn't
> have. I submit, the are no such things as "attributes of nonexistence".
> Rather, "nonexistence" is the ABSENCE of any attributes of all. How could you
> possibly name an attribute of nonexistence? If it really didn't exist, what
> would the attribute belong to?
ELEPHANT:
You're obviously bored with this Topic, and want me to discuss Parmenides
instead. In the mean time, just let me point out that being a contradiction
in terms is one attribute, and that it would be an attribute *signifying*
(Pirsig surely doesn't mean 'of') non-existence. EG: the square circle.
Look everybody - elephant is criticising Pirsig..... I found one attribute
"of" non-existence that RMP didn't happen to think of at that precise
moment. But it's a point of no real significance whatsoever, and I don't
for a moment beleive that the passage in question is Pirsig's statement on
the non-existence question. So we'll leave that - I'll only repeat as I
said before that what Rick thinks "everyone" agrees to is *not* commonly
assented to, and that actually the meat of this discussion does indeed
center on whether the law of gravity pre-exists newton, its supposed
discoverer - because this concept of "gravity itself" which is quite apart
from that law doesn't begin to make sense.
>
> PIRSIG:
> "Well, I predict that if you think about it long enough you will find yourself
> going round and round and round and round until you finally reach only one
> possible, rational intellegent conclusion. The law of gravity and GRAVITY
> ITSELF did not exist before Issac Newton. No other conclusion makes sense."
> (emaphasis added)
>
> RICK:
> Whoa there boy... All of a sudden we are talking about GRAVITY ITSELF again!?!
> His argument doesn't address this at all. In fact, the ONLY time he mentions
> GRAVITY ITSELF anywhere in this argument is when he makes it clear in the
> first line that "gravitation" and "the law of gravitation" are distinct.
ELEPHANT:
To a sloth, all things happen suddenly - not that you, in your ready grasp
of the clocks analogy, in anyway resemble a sloth. But in anycase I hope
that I've dragged things out long enough for you to notice them passing:
Pirsig throughout emphasises the distinction between the dynamic continuum
and our linguistic entities codifying and particularising everything. And
so in this instance he's making a case for gravity itself being just the law
- that's why he can so freely jump from "the law of gravity" to "gravity
itself".
You refer to the first passage:
>"For example, it seems completely natural to presume that gravitation and the
> law of gravitation existed before Issac Newton. It would sound nutty to think
> that until the seventeenth century there was no gravity."
Well, I've already made my point about that word 'seems'. Look deeper,
Rick, look deeper. It may "sound" nutty, but as Pirsig often repeats, it's
the sane who get called mad in our world.
Toodlepip,
Elephant
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