Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Circle, Clockwise, Counter-Clockwise

Spinoza's definition of Circle--"the figure described by any line whereof one end is fixed and the other free"--is flawed in two respects.  First, it also defines a mere Arc.  Second, it leaves indeterminate the 'freedom'--clockwise or counter-clockwise--and, so, as a "proximate cause", it lacks Necessity.  Now, the first can be rectified by the qualification of "figure" as 'closed'.  But the second continues a deeper, pervasive problem.  Even those, e. g. Aristotle, who attribute divinity to celestial bodies because of their Circular motion cannot deny that such motion--spinning, orbiting--consists in one of two possible directions, of which there is no actual uniformity among those bodies in direction of motion, i. e. some are clockwise, some are counter-clockwise.  Now, according to the most highly developed theorizing of astrophysicists, these motions have been determined arbitrarily--e. g. by the happenstance of direction of spin at a very early stage of the development of the Universe.  Thus, even if subsequent motion does follow uniformly, the purported Determinism of the Physical Universe is falsified very early, and, with no guarantee of a recurrence of such happenstance any time thereafter, as Lucretius proposes.  In any case, specification of Circular motion as either Clockwise or Counter-Clockwise is not at all helpful to either astrophysicists or Spinoza.  For, while the distinction might be decisive for a Plane figure, it is only arbitrary for a Solid, e. g. from the perspective of the North Pole, the spin of the Earth is Counter-Clockwise, but from the South Pole, Clockwise.

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