A Rational Cosmology: The Nature of Forces

Essay LIV

This is Essay LIV of Mr. Stolyarov's series, "A Rational Cosmology," which seeks to present objective, absolute, rationally grounded views of terms such as universe, matter, volume, space, time, motion, sound, light, forces, fields, and even the higher-order concepts of life, consciousness, and volition. See the index of all the essays in "A Rational Cosmology" here.

After we have explicated the relationships of position, motion, and acceleration, it would be fitting to offer a cosmological examination of the concepts frequently employed by theoretical physics, both of the Classical and post-Classical variety. The idea of a force is correctly used by Classical physics to explain the cause of acceleration within the bounds to which physics can rightfully be constrained.

The simplest definition of a force is also the proper one: a force is a push or a pull. Of course, there can be no action, such as a push or a pull, without the entities which originate it. Thus, the cosmological implication of this definition is that a force requires an entity to originate.

Also, there can be no push or a pull without an entity which is pushed or pulled. Thus, a force requires an entity to be exerted upon. From all these deliberations, it can be inferred, of course, that forces are relationships, since they require multiple entities to be manifested but are not entities in themselves.

In his capacities as a physicist, Sir Isaac Newton postulated his Second Law, that the net force acting on an object is a product of the object's mass and its acceleration. All entities have mass, as mass is one of the ubiquitous qualities of entities.

Cosmologically, this implies that an entity which is accelerating must have some magnitude of force exerted on it. Since a force can only be exerted by an outside entity, this means that an entity requires another entity to accelerate it or to keep it accelerating.

While the involvement of other entities is not required for something to stay in place or move at constant speed, acceleration of anything necessarily implies the activity of some entity external to that which accelerates.