It can be helpful to think of flux, as of the wind, but shorn of its physical properties like pressure. Screen animation of abstract patterns is also kinematic, when shorn of the psychical properties of the eye. Note that in animation, the movement across the screen has no corresponding physical movement.
The good possibility that the kinematic aspect introduces is dynamic variation, or 'change', of which the quantitative and spatial aspects know nothing. The quantitative number(ness) 7 never changes, and the spatial triangle does not change. We might say that the quantitative aspect is pure before-and-after with no simultaneity and the spatial aspect is pure simultaneity with no before-and-after, but the kinematic aspect merges before-and-after with simultaneity.
Zeno's paradox was used by Dooyeweerd to argue that the kinematic aspect cannot be reduced to the spatial (e.g. as of a sequence of distinct spatial occurrences). That film animation makes use of exactly that, is seen as kinematic rather than as staccato sequences because smoothed out by the psychical functioning of the eye.
(Strauss [2010] sees change as physical and the kernel of the kinematic aspect as constancy, probably because "kinematics ... can define a uniform movement without any reference to a causing force" [Dooyeweerd, 1955,II:99]. However, his view is counter-intuitive and the word "can" rather than "must", implies no restriction to uniformity.)
rather than:
In NC (vol IV, p.163) Dooyeweerd says "movement is not a change of place; but a flowing space in the temporal succession of its movements".
1. Although physical acceleration does indeed need a cause, there is kinematic acceleration, which does not speak of cause. Physical acceleration is defined as force / mass, and force and mass are meaningful originally in the physical aspect, with force being the cause of the acceleration. But that is not the only definition of acceleration.
2. Acceleration is also defined as dV / dt (differential calculus) about change in velocity. That definition is meaningful in the kinematic aspect without any reference needed to the physical aspect.
3. Dooyeweerd's text does not say that acceleration is not of kinematic, but only that acceleration-less uniform movement or flow is meaningful in the kinematic but not physical. He does not say that changing movement is meaningless in the kinematic aspect but only in the physical; it is only when we think about causes of change that we need the physical aspect. I hold that changing flow and movement, as well as uniform movement, are meaningful in the kinematic aspect without the physical.
4. That we may differentiate physical acceleration from kinematic is evidenced by Dooyeweerd's differentiation of physical space from original space [NC, ===]. Notice he talks about "the physical concept of acceleration" rather than acceleration as such. In fact, in the rest of the paragraph it is even clearer that when referring to the physical concept of acceleration he is talking about causes, not change in movement: "That is to say that physical movement cannot reveal the original nuclear meaning of movement, but must have an analogical sense, qualified by the very meaning-moment of energy. In its original modal sense movement cannot have the meaning of an effect of energy."
It is unfortunate, in my view, that Strauss [===] holds that the kinematic aspect's kernel meaning is constancy rather than movement, and that all change in movement is of the physical aspect. Even more unfortunate, he seems to build a large edifice on that. Not only does this go against our intuitive grasp of kinematics (which Dooyeweerd says is a more valid understanding of aspectual kernels than is a theoretical grasp, such as Strauss offers) but it would bar the science of phoronomy from investigating changing movement. My argument above allows it to.
1. Physical rotation involves physical acceleration, and also often a dissipation of energy, so that such rotation always slows down. But pre-physical rotation does not. And may go on forever, in principle.
2. Kinematic rotation is defined as dA / dt, which is change in angle, by time.
3. (Note that the rotation of electrons around atomic nuclei goes on forever. So does that in superconductors. Is that evidence even in the physical realm for kinematic rotation?)
For me the soundest argument for the kinematical aspect in between the spatial and the physical is the notion of inertia that developed from Galileo and Newton. The View from Aristotle was that motion was somehow abnormal or unnatural. Thus things on earth moved because they were trying to find their 'natural state of rest' - in a world that presumably was trying to become static. The idea of inertia is that movement is an normal aspect of the functioning of the cosmos.
"Newton, in his first law of motion, came to formulate the idea of inertia in terms that open up the physical aspect - if a body deviates from uniform motion in a straight line, then it is because it is subject to a force.
"However, the significance for idea of inertia, in relation to the spatial aspect, is that movement - in all its anticipations - is a quite normal aspect of the being of the cosmos."
My comment: This is a useful insight, that, contrary to some Greek thought which held that rest and stasis are the 'good' or 'natural' states, movement and dynamism is indeed a 'good' and 'natural' state. Indeed, Dooyeweerd several times stressed that the cosmos and especially humanity are always 'restless'.
But to the extent that inertia presupposes mass (as it is defined in physics), then it must be of the physical aspect rather than kinematic. To be of the kinematic, inertia would have to be defined without reference to mass, i.e. as undeviating, unchanging movement. But even then I believe that from the kinematic aspect, movement can be changing, such as in rotation or acceleration.
Certainly, we have around us today a type of movement that Dooyeweerd would most likely not have experienced: that seen on a computer or television screen. There is no movement of physical things, but there is movement. Wertheimer (1912), the founder of the Gestalt movement, investigated this using alternately flashing lights and reported a kind of 'disembodied' movement, which he called 'phi' movement. Though he and many tried to reduce this to phenomena of the sensitive aspect, it would be dangerous to conclude that this is only sensory functioning and not true movement - just as it would be foolish to conclude that the black marks on paper are merely shapes and not words.
So perhaps computer and video animation is a kind of 'pure' movement that is concrete but without being of a physical body.
Concurring with this view is that I find that when putting a multimedia title together that contains animation rather than a simple sequence of static frames then the number of factors I have to get right increases enormously. (The number of factors one must take into account seems to multiply each time we gain another (later) aspect.) Moreover, animation seems to convey a completely different meaning from mere positioning of text and graphics.
Copyright (c) 2004 Andrew Basden. But you may use this material subject to conditions.
Written on the Amiga with Protext.
Created: by 16 March 1997. Last updated: 30 August 1998 rearranged and tidied. 24 December 1998 added Multilevel Flow Models and a theme. 13 September 1999 added re phi movement and did a bit of tidying; added notes from Dooyeweerd. 7 February 2001 copyright, email. 27 September 2001 wee change to themes. 24 August 2005 brought up to date with .nav,.end, a few changes. 22 September 2010 Dooyeweerd's and Basden's kernel. 5 October 2010 Roper on movement and Aristotle. 21 September 2016 briefly. 28 September 2017 diffce from physical movement. 30 January 2023 acceleration, rotation.