MD3PAD 13-15

[Dave Monroe]

You need a Latin dictionary, Toby ...

Motrix
15; Latin: "engine" or "motor" (as in "vis motrix" =
"motor force" aka "soul"); 104; 451

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/mason-dixon/alpha/m.html

Vis Motrix, or moving force of a centripetal body, is
the tendency of the whole body towards the centre,
resulting from the tendency of all the parts, and is
proportional to the motion which it generates in a
given time; so that the Vis motrix is to the Vis
acceleratrix, as the motion is to the celerity: and as
the quantity of motion in a body is estimated by the
product of the velocity into the quantity of matter,
so the Vis motrix arises from the Vis acceleratrix
multiplied by the quantity of matter.

The followers of Leibnitz use the term Vis motrix for
the force of a body in motion, in the same sense as
the Newtonians use the term Vis inertiæ; this latter
they allow to be inherent in a body at rest; but the
former, or Vis motrix, a force inherent in the same
body only whilst in motion, which actually carries it
from place to place, by acting upon it always with the
same intensity in every physical part of the line
which it describes.

Vis Mortua, and Vis Viva, in Mechanics, are terms used
by Leibnitz and his followers for force, which they
distinguish into two kinds, Vis mortua, and Vis viva;
understanding by the former any kind of pressure, or
an endeavour to move, not sufficient to produce actual
motion, unless its action on a body be continued for
some time; and by the latter, that force or power of
acting which resides in a body in motion.

http://141.14.236.86/cgi-bin/archim/dict/hw?lemma=VIS&step=entry&id=d006

"The advantage? First of all, my good friend, a
negative one: namely that it would be incapable of
affectation. For affectation, as you know, appears
when the soul (vis motrix) is located at any point
other than the center of gravity of a movement. Now
because, with his wires and strings, it is this very
point and no other that the puppeteer controls, all
remaining members are, as they should be, dead, pure
pendulums, which follow the basic law of gravity -- a
marvelous quality, which we look for in vain in most
of our dancers."

http://www-class.unl.edu/ahis498b/parts/week9/puppet.html

Kant’s Pre-Critical Philosophy of Mind

In the decades before the publication of the Critique
of Pure Reason, Kant was a metaphysical dualist who
offered a positive account of mind/body interaction.
Thoughts of the True Estimation of Living Forces
(1747), his first philosophical work, contains an
argument that the mind/body problem presupposed
several false and interrelated assumptions, all of
which fell under the general view that the essential
force of body is vis motrix. Kant argued that the
traditional vis motrix view, which was defended by
Wolff and other post-Leibnizian German rationalists,
appealed to an unexplanatory and metaphysically
incoherent conception of force.

Kant’s Pre-Critical Understanding of the Mind/Body
Problem

Kant maintained that a number of alleged difficulties
with mind/body interaction shared several false
assumptions: that bodies possess vis motrix only, that
a body can act only by causing motions in itself or
something else, that a body can be acted upon only by
being moved, and that the moving force of bodies is
alien to whatever type of force immaterial substances
possess. He believed that these assumptions generated
two main difficulties for understanding mind/body
interaction. First, if a body can act only by exerting
vis motrix, then a body can act on a soul only if it
can cause the soul to move. But, Kant objected, such
an explanation would do nothing to explain the
characteristic effect of matter on the soul, namely
the production of representations. If bodily force is
a moving force, he concluded, the body's power to
produce mental representations is an unfathomable
mystery. The second problem is closely related to the
first. If bodies can be acted upon only by being
caused to move, then the assumption that the essential
force of the soul is not vis motrix (but some unknown
power) provided no basis for explaining how souls
could act on bodies. For these reasons, he concluded,
the vis motrix view entails that the nature and
possibility of the mind's action on the body are
hermetic puzzles that philosophy will never crack.

Kant maintained that God acted to unify our world in
such a way that all its finite substances possess an
essential force—a vis activa—capable of producing
motion in bodies and representations in souls. Unlike
Leibniz’s account of vis activa, Kant’s account was
compatible with the existence of transeunt or
externally-directed forces. Indeed, Kant argued that
every change in our world involves the exercise of a
transeunt force that acts in accordance with the
"divine schema" by which God unified our world.

http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/MindDict/kant.html

--- Toby G Levy <tobylevy at juno.com> wrote:
> 
>         Pynchon uses the phrase "the Motrix of
> honest Mirth."  I couldn't find Motrix in my
> dictionary.


		
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