Dwight saw his chance. His opponents last jab was halfhearted, and the other boxers hand dropped a little as he pulled the punch back. Dwight followed his opponents retreating hand in with a hard right, just as the other man was stepping forward. Dwight’s fist connected, and the man went down.
For spectators, the knockout punch is the main event of the main event. It isn’t the only event though. There are events upon events coincident with the main event of the main event.
We think we have something very clear in mind when we speak of events. Perhaps the best formulation of that clear vision is the “property exemplification” form. According to the “property exemplification” characterization of events, an event is best understood as the manifestation of a property, by an object, at a time.
Nice. Now we just have 3 more entities to define: properties, objects, and times. However, the job may not be much harder due to our proliferating terms.
We can go back to Dwight’s knockout punch to try to clarify things.
If you think about it, many, many events occur in the moment of the punch. There are Newtonian events (Dwight’s fist exerts a force and transfers kinetic energy to his opponents jaw). There are neuromuscular events (Dwight follows through and refrains from tensing his arm at the last moment). There are atomic events (covalent bonds flex within the structure that we classify “Dwight’s fist”).
All of the aforementioned constitute legitimate events. They also refer to a single event, which supervenes upon all the little happenings designated by the punch.. Resolution of the resulting paradox may simplify our job immensely. Because, the one and many account reveals properties as categories, objects as summaries of events, and times as contents of objects.
Dwight’s fist exemplifies the property of striking his opponents jaw at 59 seconds into the 3rd round. Dwight’s fist is the hand, which developed from a limb bud when Dwight was an embryo, whose knuckles were hardened against the heavy bag, whose fingers were closed in a certain configuration, and which struck his opponents jaw at 59 seconds into the 3rd round. Like the ship of Theseus, Dwight’s fist (like any object) is never truly static, though we mistakenly speak of it as such for convenience’s sake.
So, analysis of Dwight’s fist reveals a particular collection of property exemplification’s.
Dwight’s fist strikes. “Striking” is constituted by rates of energy transfer within certain parameters. As such it is, as are properties generally, a category of relationships. Striking is not pushing, because pushing happens more slowly. Slapping is striking because it does happen quickly, with the qualification that it occurs with a particular hand conformation, and depending upon the speaker, perhaps with the implication of lower levels of force. There is an interlocking pedigree between the tropes and other instances of similar properties nearby.
59 seconds into the 3rd round means a specific number of position changes, between the fighters, the people in the crowd, the air molecules and particles of light within the room, and the vibrating atoms in the timing elements of the ringside clock. A differential accrual of happenings defines 3 rounds and 59 seconds.
There are problems with this scheme, but events are a confusing topic. More to follow.
Dedicated to the Game 