On Norton's dome

Jon Pérez Laraudogoitia

pp. 2925-2941

in: Synthese 190 (14), 2013.

Abstract

Norton’s very simple case of indeterminism in classical mechanics has given rise to a literature critical of his result. I am interested here in posing a new objection different from the ones made to date. The first section of the paper expounds the essence of Norton’s model and my criticism of it. I then propose a specific modification in the absence of gravitational interaction. The final section takes into consideration a surprising consequence for classical mechanics from the new model introduced here.