Abstract
Dynamics has puzzled researchers since long ago. Among them are Greek philosophers such as Zeno of Elea (about 490-425 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC). They pointed at the phenomenon that the world occurs to us in different states at different points in time. However, for the transition from a given physical state to another physical state, it is not always clear from the given physical state what will be different in the next state. For example, Zeno and Aristotle argue that at one specific instant in the physical world (a snapshot) a moving arrow cannot be distinguished from an arrow in rest, yet the next state for a moving arrow is different (e.g., Aristotle, 1931). What is it in this given state that is driving the change to a next state in one case but which apparently is absent in the other case? When no physical property can be found in the given original physical state that can explain this change, what other entity can be there to explain the change? Usually an entity that is not part of physical reality, and therefore cannot be sensed in any way, but still may bring about changes in the physical world, is called a ghost. If for a transition from a given physical state nothing physical can be found in this state that can explain what will be different in the next state, then it may seem that this change has to be attributed to a ghost or ghost-like entity or property in the original state.
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Treur, J. (2016). What Is It that Drives Dynamics: We Don’t Believe in Ghosts, Do We?. In: Nguyen, N., Kowalczyk, R., Mercik, J. (eds) Transactions on Computational Collective Intelligence XXIII. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9760. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-52886-0_14
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