I was riding in the car with my oldest son today and we somehow got on the topic of Newton's First Law of Motion. I paraphrased it as "something keeps moving unless something stops it" but I will give you the complete version from wikipedia.

A body remains at rest, or in motion at a constant speed in a straight line, unless it is acted upon by a force.

He was immediately aware of what I was talking about (my wife is an excellent homeschool teacher!). As I worked on explaining things to him I realized just how deep this insight really is.

What I Realized

What really stuck out to me as I explained this to my son was its implications for cause and effect. I remember being taught this axiom as a child but had never realized that if you accept this statement you also have to accept very strong perspectives on cause and effect. Things don't move without being pushed. Pushed things don't stop without being pushed again. Nothing happens unless something else makes it happen. Stated plainly it almost sounds absurd!

What a challenging statement. I don't deny it, at least on a natural level, but it does lead to so many questions. If everything has to be pushed at some point what was the first push? If there was a first push why can't there be a second or third or fourth push?

On another note I noticed that Newton said that objects will move in a constant speed and in a straight line unless acted upon. It is very fitting to me that the man credited with discovering gravity would add this addition to his description of motion. Upon hearing Newton's law for the first time and thinking critically I would probably realize that I had never observed anything that moved in such a way as was described. We never see anything move at a constant speed or in a straight line unless it is self propelled and able to steer itself. That just doesn't happen in nature. To me this is a very subtle observation of something that happens so often that it is too obvious to notice.

A Brain at Rest or A Brain in Motion?

After sharing these thoughts with my son I began to introduce him to the implications for consciousness. Are our thoughts governed by this law like balls on a billiard table? Do our thoughts only move because something pushed them into this state and they have no option but to move forward at a constant speed in a straight line?

Many philosophers think so. Many lay people claim to be "enlightened " by their pop-science articles they read on the internet. I doubt they had an opportunity to think very deeply about it before scrolling on.

So why the epiphany now, some twenty years or more from when I was first taught this law? Were my thoughts set on a course decades ago and only now do I have awareness of their implications? Was my brain at rest, content with its surface level understanding, when suddenly some outside force acted upon me to set a new pattern of thought in motion?