But wait, what exact desire can move all those objects? Here we have two options. One possibility is that it is the will of the inanimate objects themselves. It may sound strange to us to think that stones, stars, or atoms have a will, but it is no more strange than that they are able to move, or of the claim that they move for no reason. There is no need to humanize those objects, draw a face on them and attribute personality to them; it’s enough if we attribute to them a certain kind of will, which is expressed in a movement according to certain legality.
I found that this explanation is not new.
This was Aristotle’s physical method, which medieval scientists held for centuries. Aristotle argued that every object wants to return to the element to which it belongs – earth, air, water, or fire – so stones fall to the ground, air bubbles float out of the water, and so on. Although his conception of the elements has been proven wrong, nothing has refuted the principled assumption that inanimate objects have a will that drives them. One can of course sneer at this as a primitive belief, but as we have seen earlier, the alternative options are not really more successful. In fact, this explanation fits well with the philosophical approach called panpsychism, according to which the universe is composed not only of particles of matter but also of particles of consciousness or mind. Each particle of matter contains not only neutrons and protons but also a “soul” particle. While in inanimate objects this mind is extremely primitive, in more complex structures, such as brains, the particles of the mind connect and create more complex souls and consciousnesses.
This is not the place to extend this approach, whose supporters have included great philosophers throughout history, such as Plato, Spinoza, Leibniz, Schopenhauer, and Russell. It has been said that while most of the practice of the method is in the context of human consciousness and body-mind relations, it can also be seen as an explanation of the laws of physics and the motion of inanimate objects.
So one possibility is, then, that it is the will of the inanimate objects themselves that drives them. Of course, it must be assumed that all similar objects have similar desires, and therefore they all move according to the same legality throughout the universe.
Also, it seems that a certain feeling or consciousness should be attributed to them, because if they do not feel that the earth is in the region, for example – how did they know that they now want to move towards it?
Of course, in order to assume the uniformity of the laws of physics throughout the universe, we must hope that no group of particles suddenly developed different desires and decided to rebel or deviate from its role.
