Noam Chomsky: Newton, Mechanical Philosophy and Unintelligible Universe

January 31, 2023

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[MassDefibrillator]

I think the key point here, is that, general relativity also is not able to reduce gravity to mechanical means: something that could be reproduced by a skilled artisan. An artisan cannot grab a hold of space time, and modify it to produce gravity. There is still no contact force between observable matter that produced gravity. That was the mechanical philosophy: the idea that everything in nature could be reduced down to the motions and collisions of matter; introducing this new entity called spacetime, that is itself not directly observable, is not a reduction to the mechanical philosophy. So while GR technically does away with non-contact force, it introduce entities that are equally if not more "absurd".