Scribbled note that has to be improved later (if I'm lucky enough to still understand it): on energeia & simultaneity as it pertains to relativity
This concerns the thing I wrote long, long agoabout structure and process. I now realize that what I wrote back then has to do with Aristotle's distinction between energeia and kinesis. Only the energeia here is the most basic one, what Aristotle would call the first energeia. It is the source of identity of a material being. In a living thing it is called the "soul," although it does not have to be spiritual at all (for Aristotle, all living things have souls, b/c "soul" means only "principle of life activities." But non-living things have a source of identity or form as wll. That in virtue of which it is one being.
I have the hunch that the connection between structure/movement and energeia/kinesis is supported by the way relativity renders problematic our everyday notion of simultaneity. How? Well, if we take that critique of the common sense notion of our everyday notion of simultaneity very, very seriously, then we see that a problem--a potential absurdity--begings to show up on the horizon. That absurdity is the claim that, given the lack of simultaneity at long distances, there really isn't such a thing as that at short distance as well, only in the latter case, the non-simultaneity is too small to spot.
I have the hunch that the connection between structure/movement and energeia/kinesis is supported by the way relativity renders problematic our everyday notion of simultaneity. How? Well, if we take that critique of the common sense notion of our everyday notion of simultaneity very, very seriously, then we see that a problem--a potential absurdity--begings to show up on the horizon. That absurdity is the claim that, given the lack of simultaneity at long distances, there really isn't such a thing as that at short distance as well, only in the latter case, the non-simultaneity is too small to spot.
In order to avoid that absurdity, we need to posit something that acts on an entire material thing, giving it structure (and stuff like that). This cause of structure cannot itself be a process, for if it were, then it could only active in one part. In fact, the more we analyze that part, the smaller it becomes (in a manner analogous to how time shrinks to nothing when analyzed by Augustine in Book 10 of the Confessions) In such an analysis the material entity shrinks to a point in a manner also similar to Leibnitz's monads. And its duration would shrink as well, and do so in a manner that would give joy to the disciple of Heraclitus's who said you can't even step in the same river once.
Why all this wierd stuff happening in this analysis? Well, if it doesn't make sense to speak in absolute terms of two very, very distant things happening at the same time, then at a very, very nano scale, it doesn't make sense to speak of two parts belonging to the same body. Each part of me has its own space time. There is (in this reductio ad absurdam) no computer, no book, no light, no communication, no Leo: just a lot of infinitely small time-space atomistic-events.
Uh, but there is aLeo , etc. That is because the parts do parts makeThat is because there is some kind of activity that simultaneously belongs to all of me; an activity that is not susceptibe to the kind of reductio mentioned above. But that activity can't be a process (kinesis), because--in such a case--it would be going on here in this part of me but not over there in that other part of me. There would be nothing making me be one being. Process always goes at a finite speed. It is never at every point. Process can't do what needs to be done here. So we need something that doesn't really "travel" (if we thought it did, then we'd suppose that it travelled at a n infninite speed, but I am not claiming that at all: I'm claiming only that it is not so that it travels at a finite speed b/c it doesn't travel. It is "As if" a process took place at infinite speed, but in truth there is no speed at all involved (well, as long as we are not analyzing a person taking amphetimines...) Emphasis, therefore, on AS IF. It is entirely here and there. Like a field.
Hey, no wonder Pannenberg got almost goofily excited about fields, as if they prove the existence of the immaterial (one angel per field--yean, right!): they do accomplish something inconceivable from a more mechanistic point of view. They are more like being than becoming.
It gotta get my notes on structure and process onto this blog. But the gist of it is as follows: when you try to say
Uh, but there is aLeo , etc. That is because the parts do parts makeThat is because there is some kind of activity that simultaneously belongs to all of me; an activity that is not susceptibe to the kind of reductio mentioned above. But that activity can't be a process (kinesis), because--in such a case--it would be going on here in this part of me but not over there in that other part of me. There would be nothing making me be one being. Process always goes at a finite speed. It is never at every point. Process can't do what needs to be done here. So we need something that doesn't really "travel" (if we thought it did, then we'd suppose that it travelled at a n infninite speed, but I am not claiming that at all: I'm claiming only that it is not so that it travels at a finite speed b/c it doesn't travel. It is "As if" a process took place at infinite speed, but in truth there is no speed at all involved (well, as long as we are not analyzing a person taking amphetimines...) Emphasis, therefore, on AS IF. It is entirely here and there. Like a field.
Hey, no wonder Pannenberg got almost goofily excited about fields, as if they prove the existence of the immaterial (one angel per field--yean, right!): they do accomplish something inconceivable from a more mechanistic point of view. They are more like being than becoming.
It gotta get my notes on structure and process onto this blog. But the gist of it is as follows: when you try to say
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