Against Pointillisme about Mechanics
| dc.creator | Butterfield, Jeremy | |
| dc.date | 2005-12-07 | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-07-07T06:56:09Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2026-07-07T06:56:09Z | |
| dc.description | This paper forms part of a wider campaign: to deny pointillisme. That is the doctrine that a physical theory's fundamental quantities are defined at points of space or of spacetime, and represent intrinsic properties of such points or point-sized objects located there; so that properties of spatial or spatiotemporal regions and their material contents are determined by the point-by-point facts. More specifically, this paper argues against pointillisme about the concept of velocity in classical mechanics; especially against proposals by Tooley, Robinson and Lewis. A companion paper argues against pointillisme about (chrono)-geometry, as proposed by Bricker. To avoid technicalities, I conduct the argument almost entirely in the context of ``Newtonian'' ideas about space and time, and the classical mechanics of point-particles, i.e. extensionless particles moving in a void. But both the debate and my arguments carry over to relativistic physics. | |
| dc.description | 41 pages Latex | |
| dc.identifier | https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0512064 | |
| dc.identifier | http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0512064 | |
| dc.identifier | Forthcoming 2006, in The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/106530 | |
| dc.subject | Classical Physics | |
| dc.subject | General Physics | |
| dc.title | Against Pointillisme about Mechanics | |
| dc.type | text |