[...]
>>>Richard Wein: But it makes no sense to talk about overcoming a *law*, as
in overcoming the SLOT. A law is a law. It just is. You cannot overcome it.
... If the law describes a force or tendency, then you can talk about
overcoming that force or tendency.
*********************
DNAunion: Good point. I had noticed that my language had shifted over the
course of the exchanges from saying that some law was overcome, to stating
that the tendency the law imposes on matter has been overcome (as I went from
loose to more technical).
I believe many people accept the statement:
"For an airplane to fly it must overcome gravity".
But this is probably not accurate: it is probably more correct to state that:
"For an airplane to fly, it must overcome its tendency to remain as close to
the Earth's center of mass as possible, which is imposed on it by gravity due
to the airplane's and Earth's great masses and their proximity, and that this
ability to overcome that tendency is provided by thrust and lift, which are
the results of the controlled combustion of fuel in jet engines and the more
rapid flow of air over a wing than under it, ... " and so forth and so on.
So when someone says that a law is overcome, they may be relying on another
instance of "shorthand" terminology.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Nov 20 2000 - 17:08:57 EST