[FOM] [FOM) Everett question again

[José Félix Costa]

Returning to his mail, and knowing that reference on pointless topology was
given by Bas, I would like only to add some philosophic remarks:

--- a kind of pointless philosophy was developed by Aristotle too (and his
medieval followers) that can be examined in the different solutions given to
the «cosmic edge riddle» (what happens to a spear when it is hurled across
the outer boundary of the universe?).

--- the substantial space of Descartes and Leibniz is thought as a
continuum: cosmological theory was developed by McCrea (in 1934) inter alia
and synthesized by Bondi in his Cosmology (Cambridge University Press) in
1960.

--- the theory of relativity also develops space as a continuous: e.g.
expansion is seen as dynamics of space as ''substance'' and not as motion of
bodies through space, black holes are seen as sinks in space.

--- Now, inter alia (as promised), Newton writes in the his Opticks (Book
III):

... can be the effect of nothing else than the Wisdom and Skill of powerful
ever-living Agent, who being in all Places, is more able by his Will to move
the Bodies within his boundless uniform Sensorium, and thereby to form and
reform the Parts of the Universe, than we are by our Will to move the Parts
of our own Bodies.

Yet...

... and what hinders the fix'd Stars from falling upon one another?... does
it not appear from Paenomena that there is a Being incorporeal, living,
intelligent, omnipresent, who in infinite Space, as it were in his Sensory,
sees the things themselves intimately, and throughly perceives them, and
comprehends them wholly by their immediate presence to himself: Of which
things the Images only carried though the Organs of Sense into our little
Sensoriums, are there seen and beheld by that which in us perceives and
thinks.

That's how action at a distance works for Newton.

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J. Felix Costa
Departamento de Matematica
Instituto Superior Tecnico
Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisboa, PORTUGAL
tel:      351 - 21 - 841 71 45
fax:     351 - 21 - 841 75 98
e-mail:   jfc at math.ist.utl.pt
www:    http://fgc.math.ist.utl.pt/jfc.htm
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