Postulate 1 part 1
I was thinking. . .
Sadly, it is all about comparative philosophy/physics. But, back to my last post, (specifically, postulate #1) Aristotle uses matter and form as a means of explaining motion. Here again, by motion we mean change (although it seems that the moderns have reduced all change to local motions, for better or for worse. . .). Let's think about it though, what does matter and form conjoined in substance teach us about change? Clearly there must be some potentiality in the thing itself in order that it be other than it is (locally, with relation to quality [hot/cold] and so forth). Even if we understand accidental forms in another way, still the reasoning looks good. For example, take the accidental form of "hot" in a lump of metal. That accidental form could be explained as increased molecular motion [local] and the corresponding collisions because of this motion. But is that to say that this motion is not something superadded to the "metalness" of the thing? Again, if mathematics is a study of form, then even the mathematical description of the heat will be formal, if accidental to the substance. Even if we say that all of the molecules, atoms, and particles of a particular lump of metal are always moving, the particular "hotness" or relative rapidity of motion is still an additional formality, or determination of the thing. Just because all inside the thing is moving, it is not to say that it has to move in any particular way.
Now we step back. E=mc^2. C is the speed of light in a vacuum. M is mass, E is energy. Now I know that modern textbook high school science gives workable definitions to these two, m and e. But I ask, perhaps following the shulamite, what is the definition of energy?
And if we had a definition of energy, would it be possible to say that Einstein's equation somehow brings something to bear on potentiality in substance? On matter (in the Aristotelian sense)? On substantial form understood mathematically?
