A Rational Cosmology: The Nature of Motion

Motion is the change in the three spatial dimensions facilitated by change in the one temporal dimension.

Having now an understanding of the four different qualities we know as dimensions, three spatial and one temporal, which entities must exhibit all four of and cannot conceivably exhibit any more than four of, we may proceed to describe a phenomenon which is a subcategory of the broader term, "change," namely, motion.

When we observe motion, what we truly perceive is the change of measurements of the three spatial dimensions pertaining to an entity. The entity's uniform accumulation of the quality, time, is, of course, what makes this change, like all other changes, possible.

We can verify the occurrence of the motion of a given entity when we note that its spatial separation from other entities has changed in some manner; that is, the threefold magnitude of the relationship, "space," between that entity and certain other entities has been altered.

Such relations of multiple entities' past and present positions are sufficient to assert beyond doubt that motion has happened, but they do not in themselves define what motion is. This is so because entities' relative positions to one another can change due to a multitude of different events taking place.

A can move toward B until they are separated by X units, or B can move toward A until they are separated by X units. These two events are not one and the same, though defining motion solely in terms of relationships among different entities would conflate them. The sole means of avoiding this pitfall is to define motion solely in terms of the entity said to be moving, which would entail the use of an indispensable spatial coordinate system.

Due to uniformly accumulating measurements of the quality of time, it is possible to observe spatial separation in certain entities not only with respect to other entities, but also with respect to themselves at past times.

For example, we can state that, 24 hours ago, a ball's center was located at point A. Presently, it is located at point B, 50 meters away. By relating the ball's position when it has age X (in hours) at present to its position when it had age (X-24), we can claim with certainty that the ball's center has indeed moved a net distance of 50 meters during 24 hours.

By defining motion as a relationship between an entity's present and past configurations of qualities, it is possible to refer to motion on all surfaces, in all environments, and in contexts where all entities other than the one explicitly analyzed can behave in any of the entire range of conceivable ways.

Points A and B could be located beyond the Earth's orbit, in an ocean, on a ramp, or slightly above a floor, and, if one configuration of a ball's qualities entails its presence at point A, while another necessitates its presence at point B, the ball could be said to have moved from A to B.

A and B need not be entities themselves, however; they are merely reference points. This is where a coordinate system is necessary to identify them as such and to relate the entity's past and present states to each other, as well as to the spatial measurements of all the entities in the universe, by means of a set of uniform parameters.

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