Thursday, March 9, 2017
Thursday classes
For Early Modern Philosophy today we discussed Feuerbach (in connection with Marx, Mill, Comte) and the impact of Humanism on the development of state religions in England and the US following Mill and The Utility of Religion, Comte in France, and through Marx on Communism. The quiz question was what do you think of Marx' line regarding religion being the opiate of the masses? (Sorry I have neglected to bring in batteries for my video camera lately! I keep forgetting.) For Introduction to Philosophy this afternoon we discussed Leibniz and Newton and the quiz question I asked was if light passing us at speed C - obviously looks like light to us, what do we look like to light? (Since wouldn't we be traveling light speed to that passing light?) For my evening Introduction to Philosophy we covered Locke and Leibniz. For John Locke I asked the famous question If a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody there to hear it does it make a sound? For Leibniz I asked if light passing us at speed C - obviously looks like light to us, what do we look like to light? (Since wouldn't we be traveling light speed to that passing light?)
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John Locke:
ReplyDelete1. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound.
a. Yes, it makes a sound whether or not anyone was there to here it. Ask the bird that lost its nest, the fleeing mouse that was crushed by the tree as it fell,or the flower that bloomed because the light of the sun could now reach it leaves.
Space is a vacuum but yet there is still sound so, therefor, a great tree falling to the ground in the woods will make a thunderous sound and shake the ground when it hits the ground.
Gottfried Leibniz
1. I ask if light passing us at the speed C-obviously looks like light to us. What do we look like to the light (since wouldn't we be traveling light speed to that passing light?)
a. The visible spectrum of light that we see will cast a shadow if blocked by us or any object in its path, However, the atomic level of light it self continues for it is continuous depending on the power of the source and the distance the light has traveled even at light speed.
b. We would be like a telephone pole on the side of the road one passes on the highway, first a blurry object, then clear as day and then distant and blurry. A perception in a moment of time at the speed of light as it passes us like the telephone pole, providing light has eyes to perceive the world around it , in that case we would be nothing to the light for it would not be aware we are there at all.