Craig Fox 🌖🇨🇦

It’s kind of funny that 300 years later people still talk and write in philosophy about Newton’s metaphysics of absolute space and time, which play no role in the Principia, meanwhile the grooviest metaphysics was hidden behind a single word he introduced, “accelerative force.”

Alas, Newton decided too many people would have read that version, so he rewrote in the “mathematical style” so basically only a handful of people could read it.

But gravity adjusts itself to pull harder on bodies with more matter, always delicately adjusted so as to accelerate all bodies the same. That doesn’t sound like a passive force, to me. Haha!

Newton’s original version of Book 3 talks about how gravity adjusts itself so that it pulls differently on different bodies, according to their quantity of matter. If it pulled the same on all bodies, they’d all have the same weight, heavy bodies would accelerate slower than lighter ones.

The passive vs active force debate after Newton (or as Leibniz construed it living vs dead force) would have been more fun had they seen Newton’s original description of gravity, where it looks like gravity is a negotiation between the attracting body and the attracted body…
#philsci

I had a stressful day. Asked my colleague who is a university teaching award winner come observe me. There are levels to this game. She observed me for 90 minutes and then we talked for 3 hours about course design and practice. Amazing. Made me feel like I have as much to improve as I have to give.

Your work on Newton’s metaphysics is super relavent.

It’s my first time teaching a 4th year seminar. on the one hand, I underestimated how reading I can/should assign. On the other hand, I did a good job presenting just enough Newton that my students have started digging in and needed some help find the papers related to what they are interested in.

Update:
I posted prematurely. The final tally is:
1. Jenann Ismael
2. Katherine Brading
3. Carlo Rovelli
4. Robert DiSalle and Howard Stein
5. Nick Huggett (generally super technical but my students love his work on Zeno)
6. Eric Schliesser

Honorable mention bc of technicality John Earman

I used to teach high school AP Biology and it easily involved teaching two orders of magnitude more new vocabulary than the AP Spanish and French instructors had to teach. It’s shocking how brutal the specialist vocabulary is!

Based on my comments on my Space & Time seminar students’ first paper outlines, apparently I have a short list of favourite philosophers:
1. Jenann Ismael
2. Carlo Rovelli
3. Robert DiSalle
4. Nick Huggett
If my students were more mathematically oriented, Earman would be there
#philsci

most textbooks have students just do the truth tables for premises and conclusion and then look for any rows where premises are all true but conclusion is false.

I prefer my variation bc it makes clearer the connection between validity and consistency.

We’re doing semantics (truth tables) in my logic class and are now using truth tables to assess consistency of sets of sentences. I teach them to assess validity by asking whether the set of premises and the negation of the conclusion is consistent. If not, argument is valid.

Monday I will lecture for an hour and a half on this one weird trick that separates consistency from validity. Smoke will pour from ears, students will leave satisfied, enlightened even. Logic is awesome. #philsci

Happy start of mop your windows every morning season to all who celebrate.

My writing career summed up in one image:

I just submitted my first faculty annual report. I’m feeling proud but the system is archaic and I have no idea what I’m doing so I almost surely fucked it up really bad.
Ask me anything.
#philsci

I’m taking my seminar class on philosophy of space and time through Geroch’s “General Relativity from A to B” book. The thing is a masterpiece. I know he’d bristle at this, but Geroch is such a good philosopher.

Gimme a D gimme an r gimme o gimme an s gimme an o… our cheer takes a while
Drosophila melanogaster, go team

Wife just accused offspring and I of being on Team Fruitfly.

I’m feel this so much. Fuck.

Wait, I might talk instead about unless, in which case I might not get to if, and will have to leave it at only if.

It’s too much fun, honestly

Tomorrow I will talk for an hour and a half about the words if, then, or and not. Smoke will pour from ears and students will leave smiling. 😍

If only

A room full of talented students are going to look at me as if I’m smart, and write everything I say.

Ooh, I’ve heard of this one, but never actually read it!

Tomorrow I’m going to talk for an hour and a half about the the words and, or and not.

What are you going to do?

Forgive the typos. I really can use a preposition properly

when my heart is even colder, when i can’t feel even a single thought, the world is dark and uninspirin, then I break out for me the really big gun… Sylvan Bromberger in Why. These absolute gems of philosophy of language scratch so many itches.

Do you ever sometimes just pull up an old Stalnaker paper to read, so so you’ll feel something again?