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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Mechanical natural philosophy held that all observable causal relationships could in principle be reduced to the motions and impacts of microscopic parts of bodies.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Leibniz argued that impact mechanics presupposes active force (vis viva) irreducible to extension and motion, undermining purely mechanical reduction.
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    • 2.If force is a primitive, non-mechanical reality, then contact causation cannot serve as the self-sufficient explanatory base mechanical philosophy requires.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Newton's introduction of gravitational attraction as action-at-a-distance demonstrated a causally efficacious relationship explicitly not reducible to contact or impulse.
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    • 2.The success of Newtonian mechanics thus empirically refuted the completeness of the contact-mechanics paradigm from within natural philosophy itself.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Communication of motion by contact or impulse was treated as the paradigm a priori intelligible causal connection.
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    • 2.All other causal connections were to be reduced to this paradigm.
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    • 3.The reduction was to be achieved by resolving observable causal relationships into the motions and impacts of the tiny microscopic parts of bodies.
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