Can something be said to move without change? Isn’t changing in fact moving? I was told that there is something that moves without changing. What could it be? Is this possible?
"In order to sustain the theory of a mechanistic world, therefore, we always have to stipulate to what extent we are employing two fictions: the concept of motion (taken from our sense of language) and the concept of the atom (=unity, deriving from our psychical “experience”): the mechanistic theory presupposes a sense prejudice and a psychological prejudice…
The mechanistic world is imagined only as sight and touch imagine a world (as “moved”)-- so as to be calculable-- thus causal unities are invented, “things” (atoms) whose effect remains constant (–tranference of the false concept of subject to the concept of the atom)…If we eliminate these additions, no things remain but only dynamic quanta, in a relation of tension to all other dynamic quanta: their essence lies in their relation to all other quanta, in their “effect” upon the same. The will to power is not a being, not a becomming, but a pathos– the most elemental fact from which a becomming and effecting first emerge–"
From The Will to Power, s.635, Walter Kaufmann transl.
ok. sure. you can tell me that my question is itself crazy (which is what i pick up from this). But, i’m thinking in terms of aristotle (physics/metaphysics). In this context, what do you think?
hey, while i’m at it. detrop: if you are an existential detective, can you tell me about the mysteries of my existence? After all, I’m alexistentialism and you are an existential detective…
I mean anywhere you start is as good as anywhere else, really. In terms of quantifiables there are several etymologies and lexicons which have evolved in philosophy. There are many gradations. I think essentially the question here is “what is a unit of being.” Many define it as “that which occupies a space.” Some add “that which has an effect or can be effected.” Further still, that which can and does “move.” You know all this and starting with Aristotle is as good as anywhere else. You end up in quantum physics and the table-cloth gets pulled out…but the flowers remain standing. Who the fuck knows what “movement” is?
I personally am inflicted with the china doll paradox everytime I try to imagine “motion” as real, because I can always imagine a bigger organization which isn’t moving in its own context, but rather has things moving around in it, and vice-versa reductio ad absurdem.
Probably not, and I apologize for that, although I think Wittgenstein had a good go at it. Something along the lines of “there being no problem.” The implications of a “mystery” suppose the sense of anxiety to know and the neccesity of knowing…the suspense, the looming of the question, why there is a mystery at all.
I dunno.
time marches on…
-Imp
so, when a professor tells me:
“there is something than moves but doesn’t change”
and i say:
“isn’t that a contradiction? Isn’t a movement a change?”
and he says:
“no”
what should i take from this? (besides the long stares of multiple people)
I dunno. Try this. Tell 'em that in order for something to be moved it must have a collision with another body. Then tell 'em that that same collision produces change in the composition of its parts, even to the smallest bit of divisible matter known to us. Say that change cannot happen without there being some entropic force and that that force is none other than the progressive collisions of those “dynamic quanta,” as Fritz called them. Motion and the unit are both necessary fictions for the rationalization of the sensible, to conform to logic. I say flip it. Logic and rationalization are both necessary fictions for the conforming of the sensible “units in motion.”
I guess that makes me an empiricists in a sense but I fail to see how motionlessness can even be concieved without running into contradictions and paradoxes. Nor can I literally continue to cut an atom in half, and those halves in half, for the rest of eternity.
No longer can things be described as either coming together or falling apart. “Change” cannot be thought of as a movement from one state to another that is either a progress or a disgression. Entropy isn’t a negative no more than it is positive. The terms creative and destructive are interchangeable but there is always movement. For something to move but not change would mean that it wasn’t at the mercy of impact with another body. This is impossible because there are bodies everywhere and things bump about…even at a quantum level.
Only the fattest man can be bumped without causing the body to fall off its axis. The spirit of gravity is excentrifugal to the fat man. Our universe is one where size is power and motionless is a fought for privilege.
The thing your professor speaks of can only be a man so fat that he literally encompasses all moving things within his center. Nothing else could move without changing.
detrop: i like your answers.
i spoke to some others about this little problem of mine and the answer that i’ve gotten is: if what we are talking about is “divine” then, basically, it can do what i wants.
fuck that.
Physically? What about the interference of gravity. I guess you could still say that the fabric of space time ‘collided’ with some object, but that’s just getting into semantics 
- BTW: I tend to agree with your assessment on the impossibility of motion w/out change.
However, it’s kind of synchronistic that I saw this thread as I was reading about Greek philosopy earlier and the emphasis they put on ‘motion’ as a conscious entity itself. As you may already know…the meaning of the word theoi, “gods,” - derived from the root “to move.” Matter, they believed, was merely something to respond to an impulse to move.
In all sincerity, I like to humor the possibility of motion (in general) having a substantial amount of weight in the ‘consciousness’ debate. All motion tends to behave (microstate and, usually, macrostate) in a way that works according to a ‘greater good’ by entropy…follows the path of least resistance COLLECTIVELY that is.
That, to me, is a very simplistic form of ‘reacting’ to stimuli and a way to see how they could be considered ‘constructs’ of consciousness - kind of like a foundation. Of course, that is under the assumption that you put any belief into a collective conscious that includes inanimate and animate objects…although all matter IS in motion. Aristotle approached the topic of motion a little more indirect - if something can’t move itself, it at least was moved by something that CAN move itself, so tracing that logic back…everything in motion is a cause of something that can move independently.
This is a hard one if we are talking within the restrains of physical reality.
Nothing moves without change on some level that i can think of, but then there is always an exeption. Unless this is the exeption where there is no exeption.