Semantic loading of categories in modern science (on the example of the "Movement" concept) Chapter II

Pre-modern understanding of the category “movement” (part 2)

?Zeno of Elea played an important role in the development of the Movement category. Using the method of proof from the opposite, Zeno showed that between reason and feelings, logical and ontological, there are compelling contradictions. Following the older Eleatics, who argued that feelings and sensory knowledge were not correct enough, Zeno saw such a contradiction in the movement category.

This is a contradiction between the “ontological” and the “logical” as understood by the philosopher of Ancient Elea. Zeno's reasoning is epicherem, i.e. concise inference, as well as aporia - obstruction, a hopeless situation.

In such his aporias as "Dichotomy", "Achilles and the Turtle", "Arrow" and "Stadium", the contradictions of the Movement conceptions of ancient Greek thought are revealed. The movement can neither begin nor end (Achilles, Dichotomy). In such aporias like “Arrow” and “Stadium” Zeno comes to the conclusion that Movement is quiescence. There is no motion, there is only the sum of the quiescence. Thus, Zeno's movement is impossible neither with the continuity of space nor with its discontinuity.

Further, Empedocles, in the concept of four alternating cycles, gives the motion ontological properties again. Filia - Love and Neikos - Anger alternately replaces each other. When Philia wins, quiescence comes in the world, when Neikos overrides - dynamics, movement, destruction. Here the motion is also painted in negative tones.

Anaxagoras, one of the founders of philosophy in Athens, also brought a new understanding to the Movement category. The world consists of the smallest particles of all elements - homeomerism, but they are passive. This is the matter of the world. They need a beginning that would become active, goal-setting and creative for them. Anaxagoras sees such a beginning in the World Mind - Nusa. It is active, it moves the world, it creates.

For Anaxagoras, motion is one of the world existence goals, its way of manifesting oneself through the Mind. The mind finds order. Movement by Anaxagoras is order, while by Empedocles, with the arrival of Neykos, everything begins to move, dynamics appears and with it chaos.

Subsequently, the movement takes a huge place in the concept of the ancient atomists Leucippus and Democritus. They took the next step after Empedocles and Anaxagoras in understanding the structure of being. They introduced the concepts of emptiness and atom. The world turned out to be full of atoms of very different shapes, but at the same time, they are all motionless within themselves and move in relation to each other in emptiness. Thanks to emptiness, atoms were able to move and thereby create the things around us.

But the atomists did not receive a solution to the question of the movement cases, its appearance. For atomists, motion is eternal. Thus, they managed to formulate a certain idea of the law of conservation of motion. Based on the atomists' doctrine of necessity, we can conclude that movement was endowed with the property of necessity, and any random was rejected.

Only the later follower of the Greek atomists Epicurus introduces randomness into the ontological picture of the world. According to Epicurus, atoms can move not only under the influence of certain reasons, but also randomly change their movements, colliding with others and thereby changing the course of things.

?

Pre-modern understanding of the category “Movement” (part 3)

?At the next stage in the development of ancient thought, the sophists proclaimed that two opposite opinions can be simultaneously true or simultaneously false.

The older sophists, relying on Heraclitus, reinforced by Cratilus, "legalized" the existence of contradictory properties in an object or conception. Thus, the accumulated ideas about the movement, sometimes very contradictory, turned out to be true thanks to the sophists.

In this brief review, we will ignore the theories of Socrates, Plato and their followers because of the too ethical and socio-philosophical orientation of their ideas.

Here we will go straight to the concept of the famous thinker of Ancient Greece - Aristotle. Thanks to his ideas the category of movement acquired a form complete for Antiquity.

The concept of causes plays a huge role in the teachings of Aristotle. He identifies four causes or primordialities: a material cause (or "from what?”), formal reason ("what is this?”), movement ("where is the beginning of the movement?”), aim reason ("for what?"). Moreover, all these reasons, according to Aristotle, are eternal and are reduced to one another, except for the material one.

And such a triune reason for Aristotle is God. Movement again becomes involved in the creation of the world. For Aristotle, motion is something more than physical movement in space. He introduces the doctrine of categories. There are ten categories, three of which Aristotle attributes the properties of movement. They are quantity, quality and place. The movement of quantity is growth and decline, quality - qualitative changes, places - spatial movements. In the doctrine of the movement cause, Aristotle denies spontaneity.?