What is force?
My answer to the part of Gary Berg-Cross question: "How do we avoid infinite regress in an attempt to "standardize" a vocabulary in a complex field?
Are there, say, different criteria for a meso-level physical concept like "force", a quantum level concept like "entanglement", an ecological concept like "habitat" and a social concept like "equity"?"
Gary,
One way to answer your question is to take from the bookshelf a book with a theory where we have terms mentioned, used and explained.
Let me take Theoretical Physics in 10 Volumes. Volume 1. Mechanics. Landau, Lifshitz, where we have this kind of forces:
-[simply] force - acting on particle
-generalized force
-friction force
-reaction force
-Coriolis force
-centrifugal force
Each has a nice definition.
For example, [simply] force is defined in this passage:
Knowing the Lagrange function, we can formulate the equations
Substituting (5.1) here, we obtain
The equations of motion in this form are called Newton's equations and are the basis of the mechanics of a system of interacting particles. The vector
standing on the right side of equations (5.3) is called the force acting on the a-th particle. Together with U, it depends on the coordinates of all particles, but not on their velocities. Equations (5.3) therefore show that the acceleration vectors of the particles are functions only of the coordinates.
So here we have what is a force in the mechanics of a system of interacting particles.
Ontologically speaking, in the mechanics of interacting particles, force is a vector characteristic of interaction.
Within the framework of a specific theory there is no problem of "infinite regress in an attempt to "standardize" a vocabulary".
If we need to apply different theories to the same subject area, we may have not a problem but a task of "harmonization" if I remember your terminolog
Alex
Point
We do not invent definitions or take a term separately. We find a theory and look for definitions and axioms in it.