Argument
Bucket argument
Overview
Isaac Newton's rotating bucket argument (also known as Newton's bucket) is a thought experiment that was designed to demonstrate that true rotational motion cannot be defined as the relative rotation of the body with respect to the immediately surrounding bodies. It is one of five arguments from the "properties, causes, and effects" of "true motion and rest" that support his contention that, in general, true motion and rest cannot be defined as special instances of motion or rest relative to other bodies, but instead can be defined only by reference to absolute space. Alternatively, these experiments provide an operational definition of what is meant by "absolute rotation", and do not pretend to address the question of "rotation relative to what?" General relativity dispenses with absolute space and with physics whose cause is external to the system, with the concept of geodesics of spacetime.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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After this examination we will find that nothing remains in the idea of body, except that it is something extended in length, breadth, and depth; and this something is comprised in our idea of space, not only of that which is full of body, but even of what is called void space.
René Descartes, Selections from the Principles of Philosophy
States what Bucket argument is; the author is tied to Bucket argument in the knowledge graph.
For this system, which is called that of _occasional causes_ (because it teaches that God acts on the body at the instance of the soul, and _vice versa_), besides introducing perpetual miracles to establish communication [157] between these two substances, does not obviate the derangement of the natural laws obtaining in each of these same substances, which, in the general opinion, their mutual influence would cause.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Theodicy Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil
States what Bucket argument is; the author is tied to Bucket argument in the knowledge graph.
Again, let the required natures be motion and rest. There appears to be a settled classification, grounded on the deepest philosophy, that natural bodies either revolve, move in a straight line, or stand still and rest. For there is either motion without limit, or continuance within a certain limit, or a translation toward a certain limit. The eternal motion of revolution appears peculiar to the heavenly bodies…
Francis Bacon, Novum organum
States what Bucket argument is.
Related ideas
- General relativity
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Argument
- Isaac Newton
- Classical mechanics
- Heliocentrism
- Newton's law of universal gravitation
- René Descartes
- Galilean invariance
- Spacetime
- Water
- Principles of Philosophy
- Thought experiment
- Ernst Mach
- Operational definition
- Absolute space and time
Place in the tradition
Part of Philosophy of space and time.