From: chiriu@cco.caltech.edu (Michael Edwin Ichiriu)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: TIME HAS INERTIA AND THE PRINCIPLE OF TENDENCY OF MAINTAINING THE STATUS QUO AND REACTION TO PROVOCATION answer to: M.E. Ichiriu
Date: 14 Oct 1992 01:53:51 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
NNTP-Posting-Host: coil.caltech.edu

abian@iastate.edu (Alexander Abian) writes:

>   I said and repeat that I will accept THE PRINCIPLE: 

>         THE  TENDENCY OF MAINTAINING THE STATUS QUO AND
>                     REACTION TO PROVOCATION

>as one of the most fundamental principles of Physics, Chemistry, Biology,
>Sociology, Psychology, and all the other aspects of Human behavior and ac-
>tivities, be it personal, social, political, scientific, etc.

The main problem with your "principle" is that you can't prove it.  This
"principle" says nothing specific about how the system will react to
provocation.  As a result, you can't test it.  You're just looking at various
phenomena and explaining them as an afterthought.  Therefore, even if it
were true (which it isn't), your "principle" would be useless.  Even as a
conceptual aid it fails; you fail to answer why the system reacts in the
way it does.  Why should the fur produce heat to burn my fingers?  Why not
absorb heat from my fingers, inducing me to stop before I get frostbite?
Additionally, how do I know its not my fingers producing the heat?

>   In your counterexamples you did not pursue my Principle far enough.

Oh, so your "principle" now warrants capitalization?

>I said very often the status quo is not maintained and is compro-
>mised and as a result another status quo is created which again has the
>tendency of maintaining itself until it is again compromised , and so
>on.
>  Yes, the mass at height  h  wants to stay there, however the gravita-
>tional force of the Earth overpowers and forces it to  height  h' < h.

Ah, but why isn't there a repulsive force to maintain the status quo?
The absence of a force leads to the conclusion that the status quo is
compromised quite easily.  There is no "tendency" to preserve the status
quo if it be compromised that easily.

>  Yes,  H2  and O  want to preserve their status quo but are overpowered
>to  form  HOH and then try to maintain the new status quo.                  
>        
>    There is always a reaction and resistance to the change of the status 
>quo or even to the PROVOCATION of changing the status quo.
>  Sometimes the reaction is so violent that it ends up in disaster both
>for the subject and the provoker and new status quo is formed.
>  
>  The striking of a match creates an unpleasant friction for the 
				      ^^^^^^^^^^
personifying obviously inanimate objects?  This is a "scientific"
explanation?

>chemical at the top of the match and in order to stop that irritation
>(and maintain the calm status quo) flame is produced.  You strike the
>gunpowder, you provoke it, it reacts by exploding to stop the provocation. 

Doesn't exploding change the status quo even more than the friction does?
Your "principle" doesn't predict the explosion.  You're trying to explain
it as an afterthought.

> You will notice that the mechanism of atomic or hydrogen bomb  is pre-
>cisely to provoke (by striking very severely) an unstable material and
> the latter reacts by exploding to stop the provocation.  Just
>like a human being who is bugged or provoked  may react sometimes
>extremely violently , because his calm status quo is disturbed and his
>reaction is precisely his tendency to maintain his calm status quo. By
>that reaction sometimes he even destroys himself and the provoker.

>    In no Physics book there is a convincing explanation  of why heat is
>produced when a pair of fingers rub a piece of fur.  I know all the
> nonconvincing thermodynamical explanations - changing the levels of 
>energy,etc, etc.  I say that the fur produces heat in order to burn the
>fingers so that they stop bugging and rubbing it.  Of course  this is
>the  major way of producing heat from time immemorial  when one piece of 
>wood rubs and bugs the other and heat and flame are produced to burn 
>the bugger and a new status quo is produced.

Again, whether an explanation is "convincing" or not has nothing to do
with its validity.  And why doesn't the wood produce localized heat
under your hands so that you drop the sticks?  If it did, your "principle"
would explain that also, as an afterthought.

>    Finally, I take you as an example.  In your answer, you make all the
> efforts to maintain the status quo of your beliefs and the theories that
> you were indoctrinated with.  This is quite natural, and indeed this is
>how everybody and everything  acts until by brutal force or by force of
>a stronger persuasion one changes the status quo of his beliefs and
>forms a new status quo of beliefs.  Right now I am doing the same thing.
>I am exhibiting the tendency of maintaining the status quo of my beliefs.

In your response, you failed to address that you are arbitrarily choosing
initial conditions.  You can explain anything you want with this "principle."
Also, you can always explain the opposite of the same phenomenon with the
"princple."  Logically, when you begin with a fallacy, you can prove anything
with it.

>   At the end of your article you made some personal innuandoes.  My
>answer to you is: "the feeling is mutual".
>                                              Alexander ABIAN

Haven't I heard this somewhere before?