Autor: Vertin, Michael -- Mehrere Autoren: Lonergan Workshop, Volume 8

Buch: Lonergan's "Three Basic Questions" and a Philosophy of Philosophies

Titel: Flanagan, J., Insight: Chapters 1-5

Stichwort: Bezugssyteme: senso-motorisch, Sprache; Kopernikus - Newton - Einstein; Licht als Konstante; Bemessung der Relativität; Zeit - Raum

Kurzinhalt: Einstein, therefore, relativizes Newton's absolute frame not by deabsolutizing it, but by making all physical constants limited invariants, intrinsically limited by the finite velocity of light.

Textausschnitt: Reference Frames

102c Reference frames may be personal, public, or universal. A reference frame may be defined as the ordering set of relations and terms that fix the origins and orientations of any and all things. How can one shift from one reference frame to another in a manner that will unite these frames to one another in a systematic and invariant way? For example, how does one shift from a personal to a public reference frame in a consistent manner? Or how does one shift from a personal and public frame to a universal context that unites any and all personal and public orderings of places and times? (Fs)

102d Piaget's studies on the way children develop their sensory-motor reference frames are very helpful in illuminating this issue. Piaget has shown how children first develop their own sensory motor frameworks to guide them in their ramblings from one place and one time to other places at other times, and back again to the place at a different time. He also has shown how children's emerging language systems are conditioned from below by their skeletal, muscular, and other sensory-motor skills. Finally, his research has demonstrated how difficult it is for children to decenter themselves in relation to their own personal frameworks and correlate their particular frames to those of other children (e.g., learning that what is your right side may be another person's left side or what is here for you may be there for another child). Gradually children do decenter themselves and become able to move from a personal to a more public spatio-temporal context of places and times. This decentering takes place primarily through ordinary language that expresses directional differences through the system of prepositions relating terms like down-up, to-from, in-out, and temporal differences through the tenses of verbs modified by a set of adverbs. This public ordering of places and times grows to include the geography of the planet and the correlations of dates to one another through cultural calendars that order the succession of events in single, unified time lines. The next step is to move from a public reference frame to a universal frame that includes any and all positions and times. Here Lonergan makes a distinction between concretely possible, probable, and actual ordering frames. (Fs)

103a The Greeks ordered the position of the moon to the position of the earth through triangles or trigonometry-measurement by triangles. The moon, however, had a series of different positions during a series of different times. The Greeks tried to account for the moon's series of temporal positioning by showing how it was conditioned by a series of concentric spheres, with the earth at the center, with each sphere depending ultimately on the outermost, or first, mover that received its motion from an unmoved mover. But, just as children eventually decenter themselves in relation to their own sensory-motor frameworks and recenter their spatio-temporal intervals within a public context of meanings, so Copernicus decentered the Greek frameworks towards a universally solar-centered framework of terms and relations. Copernicus's decentering, however, was not as significant as most people considered since it was not completely decentralized: he still assumed that the physical universe was absolutely centered. Moreover, this concretely possible way of framing theoretical measurements still used the Greek or Euclidian universal measuring frame that depends on the public Greek and Latin language system of meanings which operated in terms of the descriptive framework of the seasonal calendar. (Fs)

104a A key step in trying to abstract both from the descriptive seasonal frame and from the public frame of Greek and Latin was taken when Vieta and Descartes, primarily, invented new modes of symbolic expression that broke from the Greek and Latin languages that had influenced the Euclidian meaning-system. They thus made possible a more universal mode for framing positions and times. At roughly the same time Galileo began to abstract from descriptive relations of "heavy" and "light" as grounding the basic meaning of "up" and "down" and the other directions. These developments prepared the way for Newton's formulation of new sets of terms and relations which could be expressed in the new algebraic symbolism invented by Descartes. (Fs)

104b Through a series of misconceptions, unfortunately, these new ways of expressing the meaning of Euclid's geometric framework also led to an invalid discrediting of the particular and public frameworks that consist of descriptive frameworks of positions and times expressed in ordinary language systems. Renaissance and Enlightenment scientists actually began to operate in two quite different frameworks of measurement. The first were their own conventional public and particular frameworks that centered on the earth with its cycles of the seasonal calendar; and the second was the mathematical measuring framework that originated from the minds of the scientists and was centered physically in the sun's gravitational field. They solved the problem of how to unite the ordinary, descriptive set of relations and terms with the abstract mathematical reference frame (e.g., Newton's method for coordinating any and all positions and times) by simply asserting that descriptive reference frames are merely apparent orderings of positions and times. For these theorists and propagandists the only real and objective order of positions and times is the abstractly possible reference frame invented by Descartes and Newton. They held that this real, objective Cartesian framework of coordinates corresponds to the actual physical framework of the entire universe. But how could they empirically verify this assertion of this abstract, absolute measuring system of positions and times? (Fs) (notabene)

105a Newton simply postulated that all the various positions and times of resting and moving masses are coordinated through a universal system of gravitational forces; and that these forces can be measured from any place in the universe, because whatever the origin and orientation of the ordering framework, this framework could be referred to an absolute frame of space and time existing independently of any system of physically moving masses within which scientists make their measurements. Newton had no problem in uniting physically different frameworks to one another, because Nature did it for him, providing an objective (though in fact only postulated) norm for correcting every scientific observer's framework with a single, universal scale that ordered every instant and position to one another. (Fs) (notabene)

105b The physical existence of this independent reference frame was never actually verified. Instead, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries scientists discovered other possible geometric measuring frames besides the Euclidian one. Whether these other geometric frames might have an existential reference was not considered until developments in electromagnetic theories began to raise certain doubts about the existence of what they called the aether frame, which was a modified form of Newton's absolute frame that had served as a completely universal map and calendar for uniting all scientific measurements. (Fs)

105c If this universal reference frame did not actually exist, then scientists could not provide standards or normative corrections for reference frames. They would have lost their normative center that grounded the measurements in verifying their laws. But just as Copernicus decentered the Aristotelian reference frame, Einstein decentered the Galilean and Newtonian universe by drawing attention to the problem of performing the measurements by which scientists test their laws. Lonergan has grasped how Einstein thus raised the problem of relating abstract explanatory frameworks to the descriptive frameworks that had been eliminated by Galileo, in all its generality. (Fs)

105d Einstein dramatically assumed that the aether frame does not exist, or that it is not measurable, which for scientists means the same. He also eliminated the absolute center of the universe by supposing that any position in the universe could serve as a center, because, besides being a spatial position, it is also a temporal position; and any spatio-temporal position could be related to any other spatio-temporal position by light signals which always moved at the same speed no matter what their point of origin. This was a shocking assumption, since scientists expected a light signal to have its own velocity plus the acceleration or deceleration due to its originating position. However, if it did not matter how fast, or how slow, or in what direction two different frameworks were moving, then the speed of light could order their different speeds and directions to one another even in an infinite universe. As Lonergan saw, Einstein opened up the problem of coordinating descriptive frameworks, because in supposing his universal constant to set a maximum limit to velocities, just what the differences happen to be among all the particular frameworks of lesser velocities is left completely open. Finally, by limiting his assumption of special relativity to inertial frames, Lonergan understood that Einstein also opened up the concrete possibilities for measurements of frameworks that are accelerating with respect to one another in terms of other explanatory systems of geometry. (Fs) (notabene)

106a Einstein, therefore, relativizes Newton's absolute frame not by deabsolutizing it, but by making all physical constants limited invariants, intrinsically limited by the finite velocity of light. Newton distinguished between relative motions and absolute motions, with relative motions being merely apparent, while absolute motion is the true or real motion grounded in the truly real space and time, postulated to be unlimited, infinite, normative, and objective. Einstein eliminated this distinction and made all motions relative to one another. Thus Einstein made it possible to understand that space and time, as well as potencies or limits, are not intelligible in themselves but become understood through the gravitational and electromagnetic correlations that order them to one another. (Fs) (notabene)

106b To phrase this more in Lonergan's way, the times fix the spaces, the spaces fix the times, and the equations co-order both. Spaces and times thus may be defined heuristically as those properties of atomic things that become known through electromagnetic and gravitational equations. To measure the concretely possible spaces and times knowable through Newton's and Maxwell's equations as modified by Einstein, you in fact select some particular here-now and some other there-now and coordinate their spatio-temporal relations internally through light signals. This reveals the concretely possible spatio-temporal schemes operating in our universe of proportionate beings. This does not also embrace the myriad concrete public and particular spatio-temporal reference frames as such. To include all the concrete probable and actual reference frames means shifting to Lonergan's theory of emergent probability. As Lonergan says at the end of chapter five, "concrete extensions and concrete durations are the field or matter or potency in which emergent probability is the immanent form or intelligibility." Spaces fix the times, times fix the spaces, and emergent probability orders both. (Fs; E09 16.02.2009)