(March 24, 2015 at 5:38 pm)Esquilax Wrote: In some senses it isn't, given that the material making up the tree is, by and large, not the material of the acorn. When we say that the tree is the same as the acorn we aren't referring to it in any concrete sense, we're referring to the fact that the tree is a result of physical process begun by the acorn that ends in a tree. They are not the same thing, one resulted in the other.
In one sense it is, but then it really isn't, and it kinda is, but not really.
(March 24, 2015 at 5:38 pm)Esquilax Wrote: ...the bubble is just the composition of the soap and water, spread over a different sort of area. Nothing has actually changed but the physical form...What is it that you mean when you say the bubble has a distinct nature apart from the water...?
People regularly refer to sensible bodies by just their form or just their material, like you just did, and that becomes a source of confusion. Thus people find themselves needlessly puzzling over whether mature oaks and the acorns are one kind of thing or not. In the Western philosophical tradition between 600 b.c. and 1400 a.d. great care was taken to clarify distinctions between potential and actuality, form and substance, and accidental features versus essential features, etc.
Bubble is the form. Soapy water is the material. Soapy water can also take the form of a drop. A bubble form can also manifest in gum. An actual drop of soapy water is a potential bubble. An actual bubble is a potential drop. The soapy water cannot simultaneously be both an actual bubble and an actual drop. A bubble can contain another material, like smoke. A drop cannot. A bubble of soapy water has the dispositional property of fragility that the drop of soapy water lacks. I could go on, but hopefully you see the point.
There really isn’t anything mystical about sensible bodies having natures. The scientific enterprise is all about finding the natures of various kinds of things.
