More power to you for the last two enlightening answers, full of wisdom and understanding.
Blessed is He that I happened to think like great men, because I thought about your question and about Rabbi Blumentzweig’s answer.

My knowledge of physicka—let alone physics—is limited, but I understand that all of Newton’s laws, and those before and after him, explain the phenomena, but not the explanation for those phenomena, and therefore there really is still proof from the revolution of the sphere, just as you wrote.

I hope the laws of inertia—of the circles, not of the Torah—got disrupted at Yeshivat Yeruham, may it be rebuilt and established, because otherwise you’re apparently stuck in an eternal circle.

As for what you wrote about mamzerut, I’d like to sit with it a bit.

Permission granted (to sit with it). 🙂

(: To Boaz

I’m not sure you understood, but the story with Rabbi Blumentzweig was in jest. Also, obviously an explanation usually doesn’t explain itself. It’s turtles all the way down. So there’s no proof here at all from the revolution of the sphere.

And to the Rabbi,

Rabbi Blumentzweig is mistaken. There is no need at all for an explanation as to why a body’s continued motion does not require force. That reflects a lack of understanding of the conceptual foundations of mechanics. (Maybe philosophy of physics.) We understand that force is an explanation. And the discovery was that only acceleration requires explanation. We look for an explanation for deviation, not for the state from which there was a deviation—which is motion at constant speed and not just lack of motion. That itself is self-evident in silence. And to ask why it is as it is certainly does not constitute Maimonides’ proof.
Also the Rabbi’s initial thought is void, because the spheres are above the murky world of the four elements, and there there exists only the ether, but with it, as is well known, there has been no friction since the discoveries of our friend Albert. (I do know where bread comes from.)

Hello Ailon.
As always, I enjoy your decisiveness and absolute confidence. But as is well known, decisiveness is not an argument.
So I hope you’ll forgive me if I nevertheless dare, with due trepidation, to dispute this and say that it was neither written nor said in jest, Rabbi B. is not mistaken, and I’ll add that I don’t agree with a single word you wrote.
You assume that physics determines what requires explanation and what does not, and that is precisely what Rabbi B. did not accept. Physics is itself a kind of explanation. Just as the laws of nature are not an explanation for the creation of the world (which would make God unnecessary in the physico-theological proof), because the question still remains why they are as they are.

Like Judah and still more to read,

It is established for us that when the Rabbi wants to joke, he leaves his mark with an emoji, and it is a little smiling face like this: ?

And it is further established for us that the jokes of Torah scholars require study.

Now I am left only to wonder whether your message was itself meant humorously…
Ah, I forgot, here you go: 🙂

I enjoy it when the Rabbi enjoys it (:

But I stand by my words, and my decisiveness remains in place. After all, the background to our discussion is Maimonides’ words. Certainly current physics is a kind of explanation, and it is not what tells us what needs explanation and what does not. These are simple matters, and open rebuke to the Rabbi for suspecting me of such shallowness (and also for comparing my words to those who infer the existence of God from physics). Rather, I assume that when discussing Maimonides’ words we are working within Aristotelian physics—that is what stands in the background of our discussion—and the Rabbi wondered about Rabbi B.’s words because of its replacement, Newtonian mechanics (“the sages of physicka”). Meaning, now the assumptions of the latter stand in the background of our discussion, and in its language force is an “explanation.” Because an explanation is only for phenomena, meaning for “changes” (as I explained, the basic state is explanation-less, otherwise it’s turtles all the way down), and “change” in Newtonian mechanics—and that is its innovation relative to Aristotelian mechanics—is not motion but acceleration. With all due respect, it doesn’t seem to me that Rabbi B. (whose background in physics I have no idea about) decided to turn Maimonides’ proof of God’s power into a new proof of God’s power from the very phenomenon that, in mechanics, is an axiom: that a body can move without force. It simply seems to me (and I hope I’m wrong…) like more embarrassing ignorance of science by rabbis and an even more embarrassing attempt to restore relevance to Maimonides’ words even when it’s clear they no longer belong today. What kind of proof is there of God’s power from the fact that objects persist? That’s like bringing proof of God’s existence from the laws of physics (which is like bringing proof of His nonexistence from them). I did not claim that physics determines what requires explanation and what does not, only that when one accepts its assumptions—that is, takes it upon oneself to think like it—and that’s because of its fruitfulness, then it is the accepted explanation today. If he asks why it is as it is, fine. But what does that have to do with stopping the dancing on Simchat Torah? After all, he answered you that as a counterargument to your claim that Aristotelian physics has already been replaced. So his answer to your claim is that he doesn’t understand why Newtonian mechanics is as it is? Does he understand why Aristotelian mechanics is as it is? That certainly didn’t interest him. But the moment Maimonides—oh, holy Maimonides—adopted it, then it is Torah from Sinai and one must not question it, and anyone who argues against it must bring proof from the mouth of the Almighty.

In short, when I said Rabbi B. is mistaken, I didn’t mean because he claimed that inertia itself requires explanation (that is a good question: why no force is needed for inertia), but because he said it in response to the Rabbi’s point that Maimonides’ physics is no longer relevant (in terms of its explanatory power regarding nature—and again, that too is a good question, why that is so), and consequently that his proof of God’s power is also no longer relevant. And his answer to the Rabbi’s point is that they are relevant, because one needs an explanation why Newtonian mechanics is the relevant one? That is exactly what I was talking about when I said this reflects a lack of understanding of the foundations of physics.

Maimonides was not dealing with the explanatory power of Aristotelian physics. He was speaking about a proof for the existence of God, and he brought it from the fact that the sphere persists. In Rabbi B.’s translation, the proof is from the fact that no force is required to continue motion, meaning from Newton’s first law. And indeed, one can perhaps bring a similar proof from any law, as long as it is not trivial. The claim is that the first law is not trivial. On this view, a trivial law would be, for example, that a body always remains at rest unless a force acts on it. The basis for that is intuition, not physics (for here we are examining our physics against possible physicses that do not exist).
Fine, but we’re really getting much too deep into the anecdote I mentioned here only in passing.

I wouldn’t trouble myself or the Rabbi with this anecdote—which, as I said, I thought this whole business was a joke anyway—were it not connected to the question of the person who asked. Now the Rabbi should understand what he is actually saying. He is saying that Rabbi B.’s translation of Maimonides is this: 1. Previously we needed an explanation for the revolution of the sphere, which required great force, and behold, here we have proof for the existence of a mover with such power. 2. Translation for our time: today there is no need for a mover, because it can revolve on its own. Ah, but that is strange and non-trivial. So behold, here we have proof for that same mover who in fact is not moving anything at all (some wise entity etc. standing behind the non-triviality). This of course turns the whole business into something of a joke, because in trying to save Maimonides’ words he turns them from false into meaningless. For with any such kind of proof (which is an explanation of some phenomenon in the world) that I reject by the force of the new physics, since there is a conservation law of difficulty or a conservation law of non-triviality, the phenomenon on which the proof is built will require another explanation. And that explanation will also require an explanation, and so on. And there you have proof of God’s existence from the non-triviality of physics (and reality). Then one can never refute Maimonides’ words. Perhaps that is actually the physico-theological proof (or the cosmological one) that the Rabbi means. From the very fact that the world is non-trivial, we have proof of an intelligence behind it. But it feels like the kind of claim that cannot be put to the test (it can—the test is our experience that the world is non-trivial—but it is a claim that cannot be refuted). It is contingent (necessarily true), and in that it loses much of its meaning, if any meaning remains at all. In a non-trivial world we wouldn’t open our mouths and ask questions.

Sorry, correction to the note at the end. In a trivial world we wouldn’t open our mouths, etc.

Maimonides’ proof is not scientific and therefore does not need to stand up to a test of falsification. It is based on common sense and not on physics (what I called in the third notebook a proof from the laws, or thinking outside the laws and not within them), and that is exactly what I have been answering you all along, and in fact that is exactly what Rabbi Blumentzweig told me in the original conversation. We keep circling around this point the whole time.