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Substantial Change and Spatiotemporal Coincidence
Author(s) -
Lowe E. J.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
ratio
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.475
H-Index - 29
eISSN - 1467-9329
pISSN - 0034-0006
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9329.00212
Subject(s) - statue , coincidence , object (grammar) , bronze , epistemology , computer science , philosophy , theoretical physics , history , artificial intelligence , physics , ancient history , medicine , alternative medicine , pathology
Substantial change occurs when a persisting object of some kind either begins or ceases to exist. Typically, this happens when one or more persisting objects of another kind or kinds are subjected to appropriate varieties of qualitative or relational change, as when the particles composing a lump of bronze are rearranged so as to create a statue. However, such transformations also seem to result, very often, in cases of spatiotemporal coincidence, in which two numerically distinct objects of different kinds exist in exactly the same place at the same time, such as a statue and a lump of bronze. Various attempts to resist this way of describing the results of such transformations are examined and found wanting and objections to the possibility of cases of spatiotemporal coincidence are rebutted.