Portrait of Isaac Newton by Godfrey Keller (1689)
with the addition of Newton's Law of Inertia
I.
Like many people who possess a limited knowledge of physics, for a long time I thought inertia only referred to the tendency of objects at rest not to move unless acted upon by some external force or agency; that tumbleweed doesn't tumble unless blown by the wind, for example, and Phoevos the cat doesn't get off my chair unless physically encouraged to do so.
It wasn't until quite recently that I discovered that inertia also refers to the fact that objects in motion will keep on moving in the same direction and at the same pace unless something causes them to divert, slow down, or come to a halt.
Inertia, therefore, doesn't mean unmoving so much as unchanging; it essentially guarantees that the existing state of afffairs will remain the existing state of affairs - whether that state is at rest or in motion - until disrupted [1].
II.
I'm not sure this permits us to describe existence as naturally idle or metathesiophobic, but it does seem to suggest that change ultimately requires forces that are, in some sense, artificial, alien, and demonic.
In sum: whilst we may no longer need a creator god to guarantee the status quo and preservation of all things, we still need a principle of evil to shake things up and send them spinning in a new direction [2].
Notes
[1] D. H. Lawrence challenged the classical idea that objects are ever truly at rest, arguing that a thing that appears at rest to us is simply travelling at its own rate of motion, slower than we can recognise. Even the desk on which he writes or the chair on which he sits - which seem solid and stable and not going anywhere - are really in motion, says Lawrence. See 'Study of Thomas Hardy', in Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 60.
Interestingly, this aligns Lawrence's thinking with quantum physics which says that, at a quantum level, particles don't have definite positions or states of rest, but exist rather in a superposition of possibilities, described by probability waves.
[2] I'm aware of the fact that for modernist writers - including critical theorists like Adorno - it is the principle of inertia that is identified with evil, with the latter still conceived in conventional moral terms. But my thinking owes more to Jean Baudrillard, for whom evil is an inhuman form of intelligence that operates outside of the traditional moral frameworks; a principle of change and reversal that destabilises and disrupts the established order.
For a post on the art and politics of triviality (20 July 2025) which anticipates this one, click here.
