CONTINUITY IN SOLIDS -

Suppose I lift a TV from the top, commonsense says that the base of the TV would also move upwards. What is the explanation of such inferences of continuity? If a thing “looks” different from others, it is a different thing.If there is continuous sameness in any respect then it is the same thing till the point that that sameness is obeyed. In fact, this is how we define a ‘THING’ in the first place. For calling anything in the world a “thing”, there has to be sameness, in some respect, throughout that thing (i.e. throughout all the constituents of that thing). This is how we point to anything, or talk about anything as the subject. Coming to specifically the physical things, we do not perceive the physical world around us as, say, some one distinct object and an imaginary section of some of its surroundings as clubbed together with it to form one thing. The moment something is identified to be a ‘thing’ (as defined above), the effect of any action on any constituent of that thing is perceived to be on that whole thing. (When I stab a point on the surface of a table with a compass, it is perceived to be stabbing the ‘table surface’ or the ‘table’, and not just a point on the surface (where the tip of the compass actually hits the table surface). This explains - when we push, say, a TV remote it is commonsense that the remote moves as a whole, and not so that just the localized portion of application of force moves or gets displaced. In other words, this is talking about constraint relations in Mechanics. So when I lift up a TV from the top, it is commonsense that, say, the base of the TV would also move up.