De Motu (Berkeley's Essay) - Nature of Motion

Nature of Motion

Motion should not be considered as an abstraction, separated from space and time. It should not be analyzed into abstract ideas such as movement, velocity, and force. Mathematical considerations of spatial and temporal infinitesimals lead to paradoxes. Motion should not be equated with the cause of motion. To say that the quantity of motion is always conserved is to confuse motion itself with the force that causes motion. The force of the cause of motion is conserved. Motion is not an internal, living force in things. It is a lifeless, indifferent effect.

Read more about this topic:  De Motu (Berkeley's Essay)

Famous quotes containing the words nature of, nature and/or motion:

    There are some things, my dear Fisher, which do not bear much looking into. You undoubtedly have heard of the Siberian goat herder who tried to discover the true nature of the sun. He stared up at the heavenly body until it made him blind. There are many things of this sort, including love and death.
    Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)

    Flushed with new life, the crowd flows back again:
    And all is tangled talk and mazy motion—
    Much like a waving field of golden grain,
    Or a tempestuous ocean.
    And thus they give the time, that Nature meant
    For peaceful sleep and meditative snores,
    To ceaseless din and mindless merriment
    And waste of shoes and floors.
    Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)

    Two children, all alone and no one by,
    Holding their tattered frocks, thro’an airy maze
    Of motion lightly threaded with nimble feet
    Dance sedately; face to face they gaze,
    Their eyes shining, grave with a perfect pleasure.
    Laurence Binyon (1869–1943)