Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T11:48:03.107Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Fields and the Intelligibility of Contact Action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2015

David Sherry
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article concerns arguments for the impossibility of contact action and, subsequently, the use of force fields to render intelligible apparent cases of contact action. I argue that instead of unraveling the mystery of contact action, fields only deepen the mystery. Further, I show that there is a confusion underlying arguments for the impossibility of contact and present an analysis of contact, based upon Körner's treatment of empirical continuity, which restores intelligibility to apparent cases of contact action.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 90 , Issue 3 , July 2015 , pp. 457 - 477
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Empiricus, Sextus Sextus Empiricus with an English translation by R.G. Bury, vol. 3 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1933–49), 127–31Google Scholar.

2 Kline, A. David and Matheson, Carl A., ‘The Logical Impossibility of Collision’, Philosophy 62 (1993), 515 Google Scholar.

3 Lange, Marc, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Physics (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2002)Google Scholar.

4 Halliday, David and Resnick, Robert, Physics, Parts I and II (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1966), 210 Google Scholar.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid., 217.

7 See Black, Max, ‘Making Something Happen’, in Determinism and Freedom, ed. Hook, (New York: Collier Books, 1961), 31ffGoogle Scholar.

8 See Dijksterhuis, Eduard, The Mechanization of the World Picture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), 495Google Scholar.

9 Hume, David, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902), 29Google Scholar. Originally published in 1748.

10 Ibid., 43.

11 Louch, Alfred, Explanation and Human Action (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), 41Google Scholar.

12 See Holton, Gerald and Roller, Duane, Foundations of Modern Physical Science (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1958), 188CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Newton, Isaac, Opticks (New York: Dover Publications, 1953), 401–2Google Scholar. Originally published in 1730.

14 Ibid.

15 Boyle, Robert, ‘The Excellency and Grounds of the Corpuscular or Mechanical Philosophy’ in The Scientific Background to Modern Philosophy, ed. Matthews, (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1989), 116Google Scholar. Originally published in 1674.

16 Ibid., 113.

17 Holland, Roy, ‘The Link Between Cause and Effect’ in Against Empiricism (Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1980), 221 Google Scholar.

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid., 222.

20 Op. cit. note 3, 2.

21 Op. cit. note 3, 7ff.

22 But see §3 below.

23 Op. cit. note 3, 5; cf. Lewis, David, Philosophical Papers, vol. 2 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986)Google Scholar.

24 Op. cit. note 3, 3–6. The practice has its critics: See Geach, Peter Logic Matters (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 313ffGoogle Scholar., Harré, Rom and Madden, Edward Causal Powers (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1975), 109–112 Google Scholar et passim., and op. cit. note 17, 220ff.

25 Aristotle The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Barnes, (Princeton: Princeton University, 1984)Google Scholar, Phys. 243a3–4.

26 Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888), 173Google Scholar. Originally published in 1739.

27 Ibid.

28 Op. cit. note 9, 27.

29 Op. cit. note 3, 34–5.

30 Ibid., 26.

31 Ibid., 34.

32 Ibid., 163n2.

33 Ibid., 166–7.

34 Ibid., 29–30.

35 Indeed, Dretske has detailed a number of difficulties with the notion of a moving event; see Dretske, Fred, ‘Can Events Move’, Mind 76 (1967)Google Scholar, especially 489. Hacker has questioned whether existence can even be intelligibly predicated of events; see Hacker, Peter, ‘Events, Ontology and Grammar’, Philosophy 57 (1982), 479 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Op. cit. note 3, 39. See Tipler, Paul, Physics (New York: Worth, 1976), 705–6Google Scholar.

37 Lange argues that it is a problem insofar as it violates conservation of energy and momentum. See op. cit. note 3, 112ff.

38 Ibid., 32.

39 Ibid., 1. Cf. Telushkin, Joseph, Jewish Humor (New York: Morrow, 1992), 60Google Scholar.

40 Ibid.

41 See, for example, Grunbaum, Adolf, Modern Science and Zeno's Paradoxes (London: George Allen and Unwin 1968), 121ffGoogle Scholar. Grunbaum argues that since there are uncountably many points on a line, and since measure theory assigns no meaning to summing an uncountable infinity of lengths, Zeno's conclusion does not follow. But this is only an ad hoc solution to the problem, because uncountable summations can be defined - as the supremum of all possible finite sums (cf. Sherry, David, ‘Zeno's Metrical Paradox Revisited’ Philosophy of Science 55 (1988), 65 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.)

42 See Sorabji, Richard, Time, Creation, and the Continuum (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983)Google Scholar, chapter 26.

43 Körner, Stephan, ‘Empirical Continuity’, The Monist 47 (1962), 1–19 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 Ibid., 8.

45 If a given class Pi admits further division into Pi1 and Pi2, then a transition from Pi to Pi+1 that omits a discernible class would be discontinuous. Cf. op. cit. note 43, 10.

46 Ibid., 14.

47 Ibid., 12.

48 Op. cit. note 25, Phys. 226b23 and 243a34.

49 Smith, Sheldon, ‘Continuous Bodies, Impenetrability, and Contact Interactions: The View from the Applied Mathematics of Continuum Mechanics’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 58 (2007), 503–538 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Smith calls the skeptical argument ‘the root argument’.

50 Ibid., 535.

51 Ibid., 508–9.

52 Ibid., 534.

53 Ibid., 504–5.

54 Ibid., 527.

55 Ibid.

56 Ibid. Contact in this sense is possible between open bodies, i.e., bodies that do not contain their boundaries, such as a sphere all of whose points are less than a distance r from its center. The reduced boundaries of these bodies can intersect, even though the bodies do not contain them. Cf. ibid., 526 for the rather involved definition of ‘reduced boundary’.

57 Ibid., 525.

58 Ibid., 526–7.

59 Smith treats the concept of impenetrability similarly; cf. ibid., 511–518. The axiom of impenetrability can be relaxed to allow overlap between material points as long as the region of overlap has Lebesgue measure zero. Here, too, it is the available mathematics that drives the conceptualization of the bodies involved.

60 Ibid., 533.

61 Ibid., 508.

62 Ibid., 508–9.

63 Ibid.

64 Ibid., 503.

65 Ibid., 509.

66 See Wapner, Leonard, The Pea and the Sun (Wellesley, MA: A.K. Peters, Ltd., 2005)Google Scholar for a semi-popular exposition of this theorem. Strictly speaking, the theorem decomposes a ball that includes its boundary. The decomposition proceeds in two stages: First the boundary is decomposed, and then the interior, on the basis of the former. Smith's billiard balls do not include their boundary, but that would not prevent us from using their closure to carry out the Banach-Tarski decomposition.

67 I owe thanks to Peter Kosso for useful stylistic advice.