Necessary Connections (BPC)
| Broad Physical Categories (BPC) | Definition |
|---|---|
| 2. Characteristic | An aspect of an existent’s identity. |
| 3. Conditioning Connection | A characteristic of an existent where all or part of the identity of that existent is dependent in part on a characteristic of another existent. |
| 4. Necessary Connection | A characteristic of an existent where all or part of the identity of that existent is entirely determined by a characteristic or characteristics of certain other existents. |
This refers to the full set of conditioning connections that determine the identity of a given characteristic. Necessary Connections are a variation on conditional connections, which necessitates connections.
For example: The position, velocity, and net force of a physical object. These factors necessitate the location of that body at later times. They constitute the full set of conditioning connections that determine the body's future position.
Another example is the discovery that pressure, temperature, volume, and mass of a gas all mutually necessitated one another (PV=mkT). This is the classic general gas formula PV=nRT. For a specific volume, mass, and temperature, the gas must exert a certain pressure on its surroundings.
[...] Before this general law was known, however, Robert Boyle found just the connection between pressure and volume(P=k/V). Boyle was able to see that squeezing a gas, reducing its volume, increased the pressure it exerted on its surroundings. He found that the amount of pressure it exerted was not the same for any given volume; it varied from day to day. Therefore, he knew that there were additional factors that conditioned the volume of the gas. He couldn't see what those additional conditions were, but he could infer them. He could have made that inference rigorous using these broad physical categories, and understanding that there were additional conditions motivated future scientists to search for those additional conditioning factors.
The concept of a conditioning connection vs a necessary connection allows us to conceptualize when a set of characteristics constitutes all or only some of the factors that necessitate some other characteristic. This allows us to identify situations where there are unknown conditions, through evidence, which then prompts us to seek them out.