Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-75dct Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-04T13:24:30.360Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Dome: An Unexpectedly Simple Failure of Determinism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

John D. Norton
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Newton's equations of motion tell us that a mass at rest at the apex of a dome with the shape specified here can spontaneously move. It has been suggested that this indeterminism should be discounted since it draws on an incomplete rendering of Newtonian physics, or it is “unphysical,” or it employs illicit idealizations. I analyze and reject each of these reasons.

Type
The Vagaries of Determinism and Indeterminism
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 75 , Issue 5: Proceedings of the 2006 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers. Edited by Cristina Bicchieri and Jason Alexander , December 2008 , pp. 786 - 798
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

‡

My thanks to my cosymposiasts, John Earman and David Malament; to Michael Dickson, Bernie Goldstein, Stephan Hartmann, Alexandre Korolev, and Dmitri Tymoczko; and to visiting fellows of the Center for Philosophy of Science: Boris Grozdanoff, Antigone Nounou, Hernan Pringe, and Stéphanie Ruphy.

References

Alper, Joseph S., Bridger, Mark, Earman, John, and Norton, John D. (2000), “What Is a Newtonian System? The Failure of Energy Conservation and Determinism in Supertasks”, What Is a Newtonian System? The Failure of Energy Conservation and Determinism in Supertasks 124:281–293.Google Scholar
Earman, John (1986), A Primer on Determinism. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Korolev, Alexandre (2006), “Indeterminism, Asymptotic Reasoning, and Time Irreversibility in Classical Physics”, http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00003003.Google Scholar
Kosyakov, Boris (2007), “Is Classical Reality Completely Deterministic?”, arXiv:hep-th/0702185v3.Google Scholar
Malament, David (2008), “Norton's Slippery Slope”, Norton's Slippery Slope 75 (5), in this issue.Google Scholar
Norton, John D. (1999), “A Quantum Mechanical Supertask”, A Quantum Mechanical Supertask 29:1265–1302.Google Scholar
Norton, John D. (2003), “Causation as Folk Science”, Causation as Folk Science 3 (4), http://www.philosophersimprint.org/003004/. Reprinted in H. Price and R. Corry, Causation and the Constitution of Reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Norton, John D. (2004), “Why Thought Experiments Do Not Transcend Empiricism”, in Hitchcock, Christopher (ed.), Contemporary Debates in the Philosophy of Science. Oxford: Blackwell, 44–66.Google Scholar
Norton, John D. (2007), “Probability Disassembled”, Probability Disassembled 58:141–171.Google Scholar
Pérez Laraudogoitia, J. (1996), “A Beautiful Supertask”, A Beautiful Supertask 105:81–83.Google Scholar
Tymoczko, Dmitri (n.d.), “Newtonian Pathologies and Newton's First Law”, manuscript.Google Scholar
Wilson, Mark (2007), “Determinism and the Mystery of the Missing Physics”, http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00003372.Google Scholar