4 ms·
Hmmm, from a Newtonian perspective I would have argued (or at least my personal impression is) the only thing we actually perceive is force (i.e. acceleration).
by codethief 3y ago
Hmmm, from a Newtonian perspective I would have argued (or at least my personal impression is) the only thing we actually perceive is force (i.e. acceleration). All the situations you described are just (higher-order) changes of acceleration and even if you give them a name: At the end of the day, the only thing that matters to our bodies is the force.
- jameshart 3y agoSure, but my argument is that you only really take note of changes in the acceleration you experience. Yes, your internal sense of ‘which way am I accelerating’ is the sensor you’re using (also ‘which way and how hard are my limbs being pulled’ and ‘how much force am I feeling in my joints and on the parts of my body that are touching the objects around me’) - but when those all indicate a generally constant vector with a magnitude close to 10m/s^2 your body just intuits that that direction is ‘up’. If that vector is changing your body figures you must be moving because ‘up’ normally doesn’t move. So it’s changes in acceleration that create movement sensations, not acceleration itself.
- codethief 3y agoInteresting thought but I'm not entirely convinced yet: 10m/s² down (along your body axis) is not the same as 10m/s² in any other direction. I would assume the body is perfectly able to distinguish between those.
- jameshart 3y agoYes, you know if you are standing up or lying down. But your body doesn’t interpret either of those sensations as movement. If you flip from one to the other suddenly, your brain figures out ‘we’re rotating’ pretty quickly though.