A Tale of Two Vectorsdltc

Why (according to classical physics) do forces compose according to the parallelogram of forces? This question has been controversial; it is one episode in a longstanding, fundamental dispute regarding which facts are not to be explained dynamically. If the parallelogram law is explained statically, then the laws of statics are separate from and (in an important sense) “transcend” the laws of dynamics. Alternatively, if the parallelogram law is explained dynamically, then statical laws become mere corollaries to the dynamical laws. I shall attempt to trace the history of this controversy in order to identify what it would be for one or the other of these rival views to be correct. I shall argue that various familiar accounts of natural law (Lewis’s Best System Account, laws as contingent relations among universals, and scientific essentialism) not only make it difficult to see what the point of this dispute could have been, but also improperly foreclose some serious scientific options. I will sketch an alternative account of laws (including what their necessity amounts to and what it would be for certain laws to “transcend” others) that helps us to understand what this dispute was all about. 1. A forgotten controversy in the foundations of classical physics Today’s classical physics textbooks tell us without ceremony that forces, as vectors (i.e. directed quantities), combine by “vector addition”. A force applied at a point can be represented by an arrow from that point in the force’s direction with a length proportional to the force’s magnitude (see figure 1a). The resultant of forces F and G acting together at a point is a force represented by the arrow from that point forming the diagonal of the parallelogram whose adjacent sides represent F and G (figure 1b). Accordingly, this principle is frequently called “the parallelogram of forces”. Despite the routine treatment it receives today, the parallelogram of forces was the subject of considerable controversy throughout the nineteenth century. Its truth was unquestioned. The controversy concerned its explanation (that is to say, why it is true) and also, I shall argue, its metaphysical status. An adequate metaphysics of natural law should help us to understand what this dispute was about. Presumably, it should also leave room for any side of this scientific dispute to have possibly been correct. That is, philosophy alone should not suffice to settle an essentially empirical question: What is the scientific explanation of the parallelogram law? But various familiar philosophical accounts of natural law not only † Department of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB#3125 – Caldwell Hall, Chapel Hill, NC USA 27599-3125; Email: [email protected] dialectica dialectica Vol. 63, N° 4 (2009), pp. 397–431 DOI: 10.1111/j.1746-8361.2009.01207.x © 2010 The Author. Journal compilation © 2010 Editorial Board of dialectica. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA make it difficult to see what the point of this dispute could have been, but also foreclose some options that were taken seriously in science. The main point in dispute was whether the parallelogram of forces is explained by statics or by dynamics. If it is explained statically, then statics (the study of systems in equilibrium) is autonomous; it has its own laws. In particular, it is independent of dynamics (the study of systems in motion); the laws of statics are separate from and (in an important sense that I must elucidate) transcend the laws of dynamics. On the other hand, if the parallelogram of forces is explained dynamically, then “statics thus becomes a special case of dynamics, when the forces concerned happen to be in equilibrium” (Cox 1904, 68); the laws of statics become corollaries to the dynamical laws. My concern is not to settle this controversy, which concerns a matter of contingent fact that is for empirical science to investigate. My concern is what it would be for one or the other of these rival views to be correct. In particular, what would make it the case that the laws of statics transcend the laws of dynamics? The goal of this paper is to identify what the statical and dynamical interpretations are 1 I discuss this point further at the start of section 5. By calling the question “empirical”, I do not intend to suggest that some possible observation is logically consistent with a statical explanation of the parallelogram law but not with a dynamical explanation, or vice versa. Rather, I mean to suggest that questions like this one (i.e. questions concerning why some natural law holds) are the province of empirical science rather than a priori philosophy. Even if our most perspicacious application of “inference to the best explanation” in this case fails to yield a strong argument favoring either proposal as against its rival, I would not conclude that metaphysics should settle the matter. Rather, I would still insist that an adequate metaphysics should leave room for possible worlds where either proposal is true. A useful comparison here is the question of whether the Lorentz transformation laws are explained dynamically (as Brown 2005 argues) or by the principle of relativity, various spacetime symmetries, and other facts about spacetime geometry (as many interpreters – and, I think, Einstein – believed). Perhaps different views regarding the order of explanatory priority here do not differ in their empirical predictions. Nevertheless, the issue concerns which scientific explanation is more plausible and so should be addressed not by metaphysical theories of natural law and scientific explanation, but empirically – that is, in the same way as we proceed in other cases (beloved by fans of underdetermination) where rival scientific explanations fit all of our observations (in the narrowest sense of “fit”) but may not be equally well confirmed by them. G