November 8, 2010.
Action at a distance
E.g. Gravity/EM, something in one place can affect something far away without anything passing in between
Trying to explain how a magic trick (making a match levitate) works. 1. The magician has the power to make things levitate with their mind
This would be disturbing because it can’t be generalized / doesn’t fit into a universal scientific model
The magician has magnets in the walls and controls them with a small computer
Would alleviate the disturbance.
The magician can send out ‘levitator particles’ from the eyes. There’s a ‘levitator particle’ detector which is triggered, shows they have energy and can do work.
Would also alleviate the concern, the particles would become the new normal, a feature of the world.
Action at a distance would be like having no such explanation (though there is regularity/predictability).
Fear: if we allow action at a distance, then anything is permitted anywhere
Billiard ball motion could be determined by huge (far away) bodies of motion rather than anything local.
in 17th century, “mechanistic philosophy” (e.g. Boyle)
All explanations should be given by just matter and motion
Magnets thought to emit something similar to levitator particles
in 19th century, get the development of a field.
Newton’s gravity is action at a distance is already well-established
action at a distance now tolerated widely
Faraday/Maxwell are able to reform E&M that doesn’t require action at a distance, have nothing to say about gravity.
Einstein then gets rid of it for gravity
Einstein has methodological complaint. Science is impossible if objects aren’t independent of each other.
Leibniz Principle of Sufficient Reason: for everything that happens, there is a reason why it (in particular) happened.
Paramenides: nothing comes from nothing (apple comes from the tree, apple’s redness came from the seed (DNA))
Change is impossible follows from this
In some sense, something coming from nothing would violate the principle of sufficient reason.
Many arguments for and against.
Philosophically, one must have a framework to do science.
P.S.R. is really hard to do without.
There were never historically people who lamented loss of action at a distance when an equally predictive theory becomes available.