> On Sep 26, 2014, at 12:41 PM, Benjamin Udell <bud...@nyc.rr.com> wrote: > > Clark, list, > > > I've also noticed a difficulty of finding usefulness for the formal cause in > physics, though I came at it from other directions, simpler ones for me since > I'm not a physicist, but also I'd like to add a clarification of the idea of > formal causation. > >
I think there are things like formal causes in physics. For instance if you are discussing symmetries how different really is that from discussing forms? However I think there’s a huge gap within physics simply because of how physics views foundational theories. Right now there’s near universal consensus we don’t have a foundational theory and (except for the string proponents) most don’t think we have any idea what one would look like. (I’ve no idea how far string theory has fallen in favor the last few years. There’s definitely been a backlash, but how widespread it is at the moment I couldn’t say) Given that acknowledged ignorance of foundations there’s a strong sense even among realists that most of what we do in physics is model making with the models highly idealized from what’s really going on. So a realist might be a realist towards certain structures and behaviors about GR or QM but a bit of a skeptic regarding particular models. If that’s true, even if a realist appears to be appealing to Aristotle’s four causes in practice what they really think is going on is probably something different. That is on a practical basis for most physical theories even realists behave as an instrumentalist. If true, then in what way can Aristotle’s categories really be seen ontologically? So it’s really a subtle point about realism, foundational ontology and Aristotle I'm making. > If I remember Peirce correctly, the ideas of force, impulse, momentum were > ideas of ways to quantify (efficient) 'causativeness' or capacity to cause, > impart motion, etc., while power (wattage), work, energy, were ways to > quantify effect (_telos_, end, in a sense) or capacity for effect. The matter > obviously was quantified as mass, and related mechanical quantities would be > change of mass and the rate of it, which I guess one could call 'affluence' > :-), but nowadays I guess one would say that internal work, internal power, > are also mechanical counterparts to rest mass (i.e., to rest energy). It’s true that Peirce adopts telos in terms of capacity. So he says idea in the Platonic sense is “anything whose Being consists in its mere capacity for getting fully represented.” I only have the EP to search through but I couldn’t find a passage like that. I’d be interested if you know it. The closest I could find was the more typical (even today) physicts view that we haven’t a clue what energy is beyond it’s place in an equation. We should hardly find today a man of Kirchhoff’s rank in science saying that we know exactly what energy does but what energy is we do not know in the least. For the answer would be that energy being a term in a dynamical equation, if we know how to apply that equation, we thereby know what energy is, although we may suspect that there is some more fundamental law underlying the laws of motion. (EP 2:239) Peirce here was using energy and its meaning as an analogy for relations. I do think Peirce is influenced by Aristotle’s two grades of being as actuality and potentiality. But I’m not sure he put things in quite the form you suggest. I may be completely wrong here I should add - this is just coming from me scanning EP. If you have a reference I’d be very interested as I’ve honestly not even looked to see what Peirce’s theory of physics was. Partially because he wrote before the great revolutions of the early 20th century.
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