Concrete and Abstract Motion
We must pay attention to facts regarding things and their nature, not to words or to someone's authority. The mind should be concerned with particular and concrete things themselves, not with abstract terms. The effects that are felt on our senses should be noticed. The causes of these effects are rationally inferred and are occult qualities.
Gravity and force are examples of occult qualities. But they can be useful terms. Gravity can designate concrete bodies in motion and force can designate the concrete effort of resisting. However, they should not be used abstractly, separate from concrete, individual things. If no change occurs and there is no effect, then there is no force. Force, gravity, and attraction are mathematical, hypothetical abstractions and they are not found in nature as physical qualities. The parallelogram of composite forces is not a physical quality. It is mathematical. Attempts to explain the cause and origin of motion are abstract and obscure. They are not particular and determinate assertions. Such attempts try to explain the unknown by something that is even more unknown.
Read more about this topic: De Motu (Berkeley's Essay)
Famous quotes containing the words concrete, abstract and/or motion:
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—William James (1842–1910)
“We must trust infinitely to the beneficent necessity which shines through all laws. Human nature expresses itself in them as characteristically as in statues, or songs, or railroads, and an abstract of the codes of nations would be an abstract of the common conscience.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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