[lbo-talk] Evolutionary theory/Gravitation

Dennis Claxton ddclaxton at earthlink.net
Fri Dec 23 13:14:30 PST 2005


Justin wrote:


>Gravity is not a force. That is the fundamental
>negative result of GTR -- the elimination of the idea
>of the "force" of gravitation posited by Newton,

I remember reading a brief response from Marc Bloch, who made his name with his two volume history "Feudal Society",to critiques of the continued usefulness of the term feudalism. To give a short version, the problem people found was that feudalism was a construct describing a uniformity in medieval Europe that did not exist. But the critique particularly centered on the term itself and there were calls for it to be abandoned. Bloch's response was that we continue to use the term atom, even though we know atoms are divisible.

Is the continued use of the term force to describe gravity similar? I don't know, I'm asking?



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