Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T16:22:38.098Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Action at a distance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2017

Robin Le Poidevin
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the broadest sense of the phrase, there is action at a distance whenever there is a spatial or temporal gap (or both) between a cause and its effect. In this sense, it is not at all controversial that there is action at a distance. To cite a few instances: the page a few inches in front of you is impinging on your senses; the Sun is now warming the Earth; we are still living with the consequences of the Second World War. What is controversial is the idea of unmediated action at a distance, where there is both a gap between cause and effect and no intermediate causes and effects to fill it. The three examples just mentioned are cases of action at a distance, certainly, but not, surely, unmediated action at a distance. What we expect to find, in each case, is a spatially and temporally continuous causal series stretching across time and space.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 61 , October 2007 , pp. 21 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2007

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

Alexander, H.G. (1956), The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, I.B., ed. (1978) Isaac Newton's Papers and Letters on Natural Philosophy, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Einstein, A., Podolski, B. and Rosen, N. (1935) ‘Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality be Considered Complete?’, Physical Review 47, 777–80.Google Scholar
Faraday, David (1852) ‘On the Physical Character of the Magnetic Lines of Force’, in Experimental Researches in Electricity, Vol. III, London: Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855.Google Scholar
Hesse, Mary B. (1961) Forces and Fields: the concept of Action at a Distance in the history of physics, London: Thomas Nelson and Sons.Google Scholar
Hume, David (1739–1740) A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, L.A. and Nidditch, P.H., Clarendon Press, 1978.Google Scholar
Kripke, Saul (1972) Naming and Necessity, Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lange, Marc (2002) An Introduction to the Philosophy of Physics: Locality, Fields, Energy, and Mass, Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Le Poidevin, Robin (2003) Travels in Four Dimensions: the Enigmas of Space and Time, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Locke, John (1700) An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 4th edition, ed. Nidditch, Ph., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Nerlich, Graham (1994) The Shape of Space, 2nd edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tooley, Michael (1987) Causation: A Realist Approach, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar