At first glance, Isaac Newton’s bucket argument seems invulnerable to scrutiny. I never found the argument to be truly convincing, but like Newton’s supporters and perhaps a few of his critics, I possessed no means of successfully refuting it. In fact, proponents of the bucket argument have been so confident in its fortification that even now, in the 21st century, they continue to cite the bucket as undeniable evidence of absolute motion and, therefore, absolute space. One such supporter is Robin Le Poidevin, who revisits the bucket argument in Travels in Four Dimensions to defend the experiment against further scrutiny. However, in doing so, Le Poidevin inadvertently introduces to the experiment a new criticism that he does not fully discredit and that I now find to be an effective means of rejecting the entire argument. He blatantly states that, in the experiment, the motion of the water could be relative to “itself at earlier times,” but also that the relationist cannot substantiate this relative motion in a void using relative time, which is merely a system of relations (Le Poidevin 49). This may be true, but Le Poidevin fails to account for absolute time in the void, which can in fact be used to measure the water’s motion.
Let us review Newton’s bucket argument, which relies on the existence of absolute motion to prove the existence of absolute space. Assume that there is a plane of existence completely devoid of matter—call this plane a “void”—save for a bucket full of water and a rope tied to the bucket. The argument is as follows: Firstly, in an instance where the water displays the effects of centrifugal force, the water is not moving relative to the bucket or any material object. Secondly, all centrifugal forces result f...
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...r, Newton’s bucket experiment does not prove that absolute space exists because it relies too heavily on absolute motion, and it would be in the best interest of Newton’s followers to craft a more reasonable argument for absolute space. They can begin by formulating a better argument for absolute motion, if they so choose. In scrutinizing the bucket argument and the use of absolute motion to prove the existence of absolute space, I only hope to generate stronger hypotheses that support the existence of absolute space or, at the very least, draw nearer to defining what space truly is.
Works Cited
Le Poidevin, Robin. Travels in Four Dimensions: The Enigmas of Space and Time. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003. Web. 13 Feb. 2014.
Leibniz, Gottfried. The Relational Theory of Space and Time. Print.
Newton, Issac. Absolute and Relative Space, Time, and Motion. PDF. 13 Feb. 2014
Within William Rowe’s Chapter two of “The Cosmological Argument”, Rowe reconstructs Samuel Clark's Cosmological Argument by making explicit the way in which the Principle of Sufficient Reason, or PSR, operates in the argument as well as providing contradictions of two important criticisms from Rowe’s argument.
“There is a fifth dimension beyond that known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, science and superstition and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is a dimension of imagination. It is an area we call The Twilight Zone!”
Throughout history there has always been discussions and theories as to how the universe came to be. Where did it come from? How did it happen? Was it through God that the universe was made? These philosophies have been discussed and rejected and new theories have been created. I will discuss three theories from our studies, Kalam’s Cosmological Argument, Aquinas’s Design Argument, and Paley’s Design Argument. In this article, I will discuss the arguments and what these arguments state as their belief. A common belief from these three theories is that the universe is not infinite, meaning that the universe was created and has a beginning date. Each believe that there was a God, deity, or master creator that created the universe for a reason. They also believe that
The doctrine of temporal parts, commonly called four dimensionalism, is a metaphysical theory concerning how it is that objects persist through time. Four dimensionalism holds that objects are both spatially and temporally extended; as such, an object is considered to be demarcated by its dimensions in both the spatial and temporal realms. In terms of parthood, then, four dimensionalism considers an object to be jointly composed of both its spatial and temporal parts. Moreover, at any one point in time, it is only a spatiotemporal part of the entire four dimensional whole that is presenting itself to us. The four dimensionalist speaks of these parts, or stages (“time slices”) of the four dimensional object as constituting, over a period of time, the entire object[1]. Another way of putting this is to say that a four dimensional object is an aggregate of all of its spatial and temporal parts.
In this paper I shall focus on Leibniz's position in the debate about these issues. In the first part I shall try to reconstruct the theory of physical space which Leibniz presents in his letters to Clarke. In the second part I shall examine, whether the existence of vacuums is ruled out by that theory of space, as Leibniz seems to imply in one of his letters (see below).
... obstacle that most people who wish to travel in time must face—the universe can only hold a certain amount of matter in order to remain stable. The article then discusses some theories of time travel, which involves the understanding of quantum mechanics and quantum realities. The article then breaks the idea of time travel into 4 sub-theories: fate, alternate universe, success, and the observer effect. Of all the theories, I was most interested in the “observer effect” theory. The “observer effect” theory stipulates that anyone who travels into the past runs the risk of altering any important events of history. It is possible to kill a relative if traveling into the past. This article helped answer many of my questions about time travel, but I wished it would have provided the readers with more theories to help extend its belief that time travel is possible.
In conclusion, the Knowledge Argument is shown to be a valid argument, but not sound. I explained all the premises that went along with the Knowledge Argument and what problem affects physicalism. I also examined and displayed Lewis’s reply to the Knowledge Argument, and whether Lewis’s is convincing or not. Overall, I believe that almost everything in this universe is physical. The Knowledge Argument will always be known as one of the most significant arguments in the philosophy of mind.
Descartes and Newton differ in their conception of theology and cosmology. Newton’s world is ruled by mechanics and Descartes’ is based on cartesian mechanics. For Newton, nature is a machine that works together in a larger scheme. Newton’s natural philosophy begins with his study of phenomena, followed by the study of motion then moves into the forces of nature. His philosophy rests on simple, general rules. He then applies those rules back to motion and nature to further analyze his studies. His method aims to understand how forces and motion work with one another. Descartes notion of theology begins with radical doubt, a belief that God would not deceive him and finally, that the entire cosmos is a plan created by God, himself. In this essay I will compare Newton’s notion of theology to
from Motion, tries to prove the existence of God as the first mover which is unmoved.
"The Foundations of Geometry: From Thales to Euclid." Science and Its Times. Ed. Neil Schlager and Josh Lauer. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 2001. Gale Power Search. Web. 20 Dec. 2013.
Newton presented that all vicissitudes in the natural world were elucidated by the doctrines of universal gravitation and the motion of bodies. Everything was thus administered by the same unbreakable laws, or mechanisms. Therefore, it is possible to compute every natural change with mathematical precision. A creation of Newtonian physics and advocate of newton’s previously mentioned, mechanistic world view, the "billiard ball" hypothesis, claims that once the preliminary conditions of the universe have been recognized, the rest of the history of the universe follows inexorably. The “billiard ball” hypothesis argues that the elementary particles of the universe function in the same manner as the rolling balls on a billiard table: moving and hitting each other in expectable ways to create anticipated outcomes. For example, if a man meets a woman and they fall in love, then according to the “billiard ball” hypothesis, their lives together will be predictable and prearranged; i.e. they will move in together, get married, and have kids, everything is already predetermined. In relation to the source, the “billiard ball” hypothesis provides a reason for the choosing of one path over the other: that, with knowledge of all the laws governing physical matter, it would be possible to calculate the time and place of the choosing of the
I am not saying that Newton’s and other theories like it are wrong, I am saying that we put too much faith in something that is not absolute, unfortunately we have no other choice.
Soames, S. (2007). Reference and Description: The Case Against Two-Dimensionalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 18.