natural theology > notes > 7 October 2001

Notes

[Notebook TTC, DB 54]

[Sunday 7 October 2001 - Saturday 13 October 2001]

[page 173]

Sunday 7 October 2001

Monday 8 October 2001

Tuesday 9 October 2001

Kant 159: Like Lonergan and all those others who wish to distinguish "intellectual" and "sensual" knowledge, Kant is driven to create a vast artificial machinery to explain and justify a distinction that is not there. Cassirer.

Theology is the science of the whole, which we may divide (following very ancient tradition) into physical and spiritual. Physical theology is booming, under the name of cosmology,

[page 174]

and we have a pretty clear picture of the Universe at all phases since its spacetime volume was almost 0.

(Is spacetime volume of the Universe increasing at c⁴. What has this got to do with T⁴.

A view of the whole is necessary for navigation. History shows us how the needs of navigators drove rapid advances in astronomical instruments, measurements, [models] and calculation. These advances viewed in the large opened our eyes to the huge Universe that was invisible until recently.

KNOWLEDGE TEXT/CREATION

A term is a foundation for creation and a terminus of same

sub specie aeternitatis = formally

[PAGE 175]

Systemcorrupt.com

Theology: Narrative - linear book
analysis: System - hyperlinked web

Study the properties that emerge at each level of complexity.

Anarchy is not the answer to a corrupt system but an incorrupt system is. But is an incorrupt system perhaps best realized as anarchy (interrupt driven) within the rule of law (a protocol).

A good communication protocol must be able to transmit all possible packets, that is all possible strings of bits. The protocols take care of this by separating housekeeping information from data.

[page 176]

The basic linguistic violence is the deconstruction of humanity, ie verbal abuse.

Physics adds the test of life to formalism. Complexity attracts because it is bigger than simplicity.

DIVINE = CREATIVE
CREATED = DETERMINIST

Reorganizing the website. Theology, religion, policy, economy, company.

Unite all divisions for richer cross referencing.

5 divisions

[page 177]

We have internalized the seventies, now is time for another step forward : formalize creation and turn it into a technology.

Wednesday 10 October 2001

. . .

All sense impressions are measurement
MEASUREMENT = COMPARISON

Sensation: I compare the world and myself. Can I lift it? Can I jump it? Can I stand it?

Photon cannot go there Because in that environment it destructively interferes with itself so that |wave function|² = 0.

Thursday 11 October 2001

Another major reorganization of the websites, condensing five into one and attempting to improve the overall automation of the publishing

[page 178]

to be able to think more about the content, which is essentially about the evolution of systems like this web page to a profitable relationship with its environment.

We are seeking attractiveness and ease of use, but also creation of an environment where the arrangement of the elements makes the point of view we express seem natural and easily understood. In particular we want to show that properly managed change (ie transport from a to b), is not dangerous and can be valuable.

golden rules: pen is mightier than the sword
Why?

It is erasure that costs. Why?

Seeking geodesic paths to peace. We have not heard from the generalized geodesic for a while, but it inhabits the transfinite metric space.

[page 179]

One reads Cassirer's account of Kant's questions and difficulties and sees that he is groping for the idea of the machine, the a priori that processes sensory input in order to extract meaningful features from it. Meaningful means features of the input which are significant for the life process of the knower, Eg why do I pursue this knowledge? Because in the end it will yield great benefit for me (and so be my own reward) and great benefits for others (who will reward me in their own way, depending on the opportunities I provide (or constraints)). The outstanding feature of an inchoate technology [is] that it has to be so much better than its predecessor that it succeeds despite the disadvantages of youth, poverty, uncertainty, inefficiency and all the other diseases that budding technologies are heir to.

STABILITY <-> COMPLEXITY <-> PEACE / SHANNON

[page 180]

What are we trying to do? Create a human space large enough to tolerate [contain] all human spaces.

All mental explosion is founded on economic security (or necessity?)

What is the ideal marriage? A linear product space, ie the participants feel no restriction from their union.

Every polynomial has solutions in the complex domain.

Mathematics is as much bigger than Hilbert space as the world is bigger than physics (and vice versa).

The mathematical relationships of spectral theory give us deep insight into the quantum mechanical foundations of our physical world, and in the way of mathematics, this theory can be grown to give us spiritual insight into free permutation space, is transfinite network.

[page 181]

The power of a language is measured by the size of the meaning space in which it can define a point. Quantum mechanics is spoken in Hilbert space, and can mean every point in certain spaces.

In arithmetic we can have up to ℵ₀ digits assembled into units ℵ₀ digits long (tapes of Turing Machines)

[diagram] new logo

The narrative: creation is work performed by the creator. There is also destruction. Can one create oneself? The ancients said no, so the creator became other, an eternally subsistent being.

An error. Bit my tongue. Pain deters me from doing it again, though it happens every six months or so,

[page 182]

We all want freedom but we must work for it, and having obtained it share it if we don't want it destroyed by those taking it.

We must learn from our roots. In terms of decadence and corruption two truth theories become popular. We may see the root of modern violence in the distinction between 'humanities' and 'science' ie Geisteswisschenschaften and Naturwissenschaften. Corruption = breakdown in communication, in this case communication between matter and spirit.

Put these notebooks into history with the first person intact, but keep the rest in 'scientific passive and third person' designed to minimize emotional reaction and maximize creative and reasonable appraisal of the evidence.

The fundamental theological problem is how we live with one another, and personal experience is a major input into this question, the data within which we hope to find the vestigia of a model.

[page 183]

Modelling aleph(n) in the context of aleph(m < n) is to explore a vast range of possibilities in an abstract manner, at a cost of measure zero compared to realizing and testing all the possibilities at the level of aleph(n)

cf Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules, on gossip, "The Lernean Hydra". Christie.

LINEAR = NOT CURVED. To say that the Universe is expanding is to say that its curvature is decreasing. Quantum Mechanics is linear. General relativity is not linear. Between them they shape the whole.

Jesus' answer: Love God, love one another. An advance on the Greek gods?

People with small hearts kill one another because they do not have the breadth of vision to accommodate eachother.

We build little closed cyberworlds called games. Open means can go to places outside itself.

[page 184]

Violence arises when a peer space is incomplete. Incomplete in fact means non-transfinite and non-fertile. Spaces are completed by their product spaces and so on ad infinitum.

We have the same amount of information after an insight as before the insight, we just see it differently, as being united in a meaningful structure (eg the solar system) by a symmetry of some sort (ie law of universal gravitation).

You are my only connection with professional theology and I write to you at least for the record, and at most to excite interest. The record will deal with practical questions of priority and attribution such as might arise when the proposed theological revolution begins to bite and theology becomes a revitalized and vibrant discipline capable of leading the world to a new degree of peace and wholiness.

[page 185]

To be a theologian requires a certain amount of self-exposure because our data includes not just the measurements of physicists and biologists, but the feelings of our hearts. By proposing a model of my heart, I hope to see others recognize themselves in it and so join in a community of mathematical and survival understanding of the world.

In the religion pages we can express feeling. In theology we are trying to be scientific.

Hanza Yosuf: "Islam was hijacked . . . "

Islam is in a mess.

Probability theory begins from the equiprobable and builds its distributions from that.

Friday 12 October 2001

Saturday 13 October 2001

Related sites:

Concordat Watch
Revealing Vatican attempts to propagate its religion by international treaty

Copyright: You may copy this material freely provided only that you quote fairly and provide a link (or reference) to your source.

Aristotle, and H Tedennick (translator), Metaphysics I-IX , Harvard University Press, William Heinemann 1980 Introduction: "[Aristotle] felt that there must be a regular system of sciences, each concerned with a different aspect of reality. At the same time it was only reasonable to suppose that there was a supreme science which was more ultimate, more exact, more truly Wisdom than the others. The discussion of ths science - Wisdom, Primary Philosophy or Theology, as it is variously called - and of its scope, forms the subject of the Metaphysics' page xxv.
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Bell, John S, Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics, Cambridge University Press 1987 Jacket: JB ... is particularly famous for his discovery of a crucial difference between the predictions of conventional quantum mechanics and the implications of local causality ... This work has played a major role in the development of our current understanding of the profound nature of quantum concepts and of the fundamental limitations they impose on the applicability of classical ideas of space, time and locality.
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Cassirer, Ernst, Kant's Life and Thought, Yale University Press 1971 Jacket: 'Ernst Cassirer's own philosophical system and approach to the history of ideas developed under the continuous influence of Kant. Cassier looked on Kant's teachings as an expression of the permanent tasks of philosophy, and it was as an heir to Kant's work that he produced this intellectual biography which is at the same time as a survey of Kant's writing.' Note: 'Kants Leben und Lehre was first published in 1918, by Bruno Cassirer in Berlin, as a supplementary volume to the edition of Kant's works of which Ernst Cassirer was both general editor and also sole or coeditor of four individual volumes.' p xxii
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Christie, Agatha, The Labours of Hercules, Berkley Publishing Group 1997 Amazon: 'The most intricate and clever criminal challenges of Hercule Poirot's illustrious career can be found in this classic that fans have been dying to rediscover.'
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Dirac, P A M, The Principles of Quantum Mechanics (4th ed), Oxford UP/Clarendon 1983 Jacket: '[this] is the standard work in the fundamental principles of quantum mechaincs, indispensible both to the advanced student and the mature research worker, who will always find it a fresh source of knowledge and stimulation.' (Nature)
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Einstein, Albert, and Robert W Lawson (translator) Roger Penrose (Introduction), Robert Geroch (Commentary), David C Cassidy (Historical Essay) , Relativity: The Special and General Theory, Pi Press 2005 Preface: 'The present book is intended, as far as possible, to give an exact insight into the theory of relativity to those readers who, from a general scientific and philosophical point of view, are interested in the theory, but who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus of theoretical physics. ... The author has spared himself no pains in his endeavour to present the main ideas in the simplest and most intelligible form, and on the whole, in the sequence and connection in which they actually originated.' page 3
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Feynman, Richard P, and Robert B Leighton, Matthew Sands, The Feynman Lectures on Physics (volume 3) : Quantum Mechanics, Addison Wesley 1970 Foreword: 'This set of lectures tries to elucidate from the beginning those features of quantum mechanics which are the most basic and the most general. ... In each instance the ideas are introduced together with a detailed discussion of some specific examples - to try to make the physical ideas as real as possible.' Matthew Sands
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Marr, David, Patrick White: A Life, Knopf 1992 Editorial review from Library Journal : 'From Library Journal An admirably readable biography of the Nobel Prize-winning author of Voss , The Tree of Man , and many other books, this work is full of detail on White's family and prosperous background, the events and people in his life, his writing habits, his religious beliefs, his cantankerousness and temper, his causes and doubts, his attraction to the theater, and much more. White helped Marr gain access to people and material, even authorizing him to collect his letters, "the backbone of this book." Marr deals intelligently with important issues (among them, White's rootedness in and dissatisfaction with Australia, his sense of himself as an outsider, his relation to his mother, and, in particular his homosexuality, which White considered central to his novelistic and theatrical ability), avoiding psychoanalytical speculations and other intrusions. White reviewed the book shortly before he died, finding it "so painful he often found himself reading through tears. He did not ask Marr to change a line."' Richard Kuczkowski Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Peskin, Michael E, and Dan V Schroeder, An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory, Westview Press 1995 Amazon Product Description 'This book is a clear and comprehensive introduction to quantum field theory, one that develops the subject systematically from its beginnings. The book builds on calculation techniques toward an explanation of the physics of renormalization.'
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Souder, William, On Farther Shore: The Life and Legaxy of Rachel Carson, Crown 2012 'Published on the fiftieth anniversary of her seminal book, Silent Spring, here is an indelible new portrait of Rachel Carson, founder of the environmental movement She loved the ocean and wrote three books about its mysteries, including the international bestseller The Sea Around Us. But it was with her fourth book, Silent Spring, that this unassuming biologist transformed our relationship with the natural world. Rachel Carson began work on Silent Spring in the late 1950s, when a dizzying array of synthetic pesticides had come into use. Leading this chemical onslaught was the insecticide DDT, whose inventor had won a Nobel Prize for its discovery. Effective against crop pests as well as insects that transmitted human diseases such as typhus and malaria, DDT had at first appeared safe. But as its use expanded, alarming reports surfaced of collateral damage to fish, birds, and other wildlife. Silent Spring was a chilling indictment of DDT and its effects, which were lasting, widespread, and lethal. Published in 1962, Silent Spring shocked the public and forced the government to take action-despite a withering attack on Carson from the chemicals industry. The book awakened the world to the heedless contamination of the environment and eventually led to the establishment of the EPA and to the banning of DDT and a host of related pesticides. By drawing frightening parallels between dangerous chemicals and the then-pervasive fallout from nuclear testing, Carson opened a fault line between the gentle ideal of conservation and the more urgent new concept of environmentalism. Elegantly written and meticulously researched, On a Farther Shore reveals a shy yet passionate woman more at home in the natural world than in the literary one that embraced her. William Souder also writes sensitively of Carson's romantic friendship with Dorothy Freeman, and of her death from cancer in 1964. This extraordinary new biography captures the essence of one of the great reformers of the twentieth century. '
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White, Patrick, The Tree of Man, Vintage 1994 'Stan Parker, with only a horse and a dog for company journeys to a remote patch of land he has inherited in the Australian hills. Once the land is cleared and a rudimentary house built, he brings his wife Amy to the wilderness. Together they face lives of joy and sorrow as they struggle against the environment.'
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White, Patrick, The Eye of the Storm, Penguin Books 1988 'Elizabeth Hunter, an ex-socialite in her eighties, has a mystical experience during a summer storm in Sydney which transforms all her relationships: her existence becomes charged with a meaning which communicates itself to those around her. From this simple scenario Patrick White unfurls a monumental exploration of the tides of love and hate, comedy and tragedy, impotence and longing that fester within family relationships.'
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Papers

Landauer, Rolf, "Information is a physical entity", Physica A, 263, 1, 1 February 1999, page 63-7. 'This paper, associated with a broader conference talk on the fundamental physical limits of information handling, emphasizes the aspects still least appreciated. Information is not an abstract entity but exists only through a physical representation, thus tying it to all the restrictions and possibilities of our real physical Universe. The mathematician's vision of an unlimited sequence of totally reliable operations is unlikely to be implementable in this real Universe. Speculative remarks about the possible impact of that, on the ultimate nature of the laws of physics are included.'. back

Links

Aquinas 388 I, 78, 4: Whether the interior senses are suitably distinguished 'I answer that, As nature does not fail in necessary things, there must needs be as many actions of the sensitive soul as may suffice for the life of a perfect animal. If any of these actions cannot be reduced to the same one principle, they must be assigned to diverse powers; since a power of the soul is nothing else than the proximate principle of the soul's operation.' back

Constantine the Great and Christianity - Wikipedia Constantine the Great and Christianity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'Constantine's conversion was a turning point for Early Christianity, sometimes referred to as the Triumph of the Church, the Peace of the Church or the Constantinian shift. In 313, Constantine and Licinius issued the Edict of Milan legalizing Christian worship. The emperor became a great patron of the Church and set a precedent for the position of the Christian emperor within the Church and the notion of orthodoxy, Christendom, and ecumenical councils that would be followed for centuries after 380 as the State church of the Roman Empire. He is revered as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church and Oriental Orthodox Church for his example as a "Christian monarch."' back

Dot product - Wikipedia Dot product - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'In mathematics, the dot product, or scalar product (or sometimes inner product in the context of Euclidean space), is an algebraic operation that takes two equal-length sequences of numbers (usually coordinate vectors) and returns a single number obtained by multiplying corresponding entries and then summing those products. The name "dot product" is derived from the centered dot " " that is often used to designate this operation; the alternative name "scalar product" emphasizes the scalar (rather than vector) nature of the result.' back

Kamila Shamsie What has Malala Yousafazi done to the Taliban 'The attempted assassination of a 14-year-old girl was driven by pathological hatred of women – not politics, as the Taliban claim' back

Paul Collins Fifty years after Vatican II, Catholics are still hoping for new vision 'Catholicism today is incomprehensible without some knowledge of the Second Vatican Ecumenical or General Council. It was the 21st such gathering of Catholic leaders in the history of the church. It opened 50 years ago today in Rome's St Peter's Basilica. . . .

It was a genuinely worldwide gathering of 2500-2800 bishops from almost every country. It met over four sessions between 1962 and 1965. , , ,

Pope John died in June 1963. He was succeeded by Paul VI (1963-1978) who continued the council and generally supported the thrust of the large majority of the bishops. But psychologically Paul was a hesitant man, a ditherer even. He was afraid of alienating reactionary bishops especially those from the Roman Curia, the Vatican bureaucracy. He feared that they would walk out of the council, leading to schism.

The result was that key documents of Vatican II were compromises. For instance, the document on the nature of the church first envisions the church as a community drawn together by God's spirit and built not on the hierarchy but the people. But then, almost as if the community model didn't exist, the church is characterised as an authority-driven, clerical institution dominated by Pope, bishops and the Vatican.' Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/fifty-years-after-vatican-ii-catholics-are-still-hoping-for-a-new-vision-20121010-27d7w.html#ixzz28wFLGy4b back

SMH Editorial A rancorous debate when politics gets personal. 'It would be difficult for many observers to restrain their feelings of gall at Gillard's defence of the indefensible. She made a ringing speech in service of an ignoble cause - the survival of an office-holder whose words and behaviour have aroused widespread revulsion. In making defence the best form of attack, Gillard had to speak for female dignity to save the job of Peter Slipper, a man given to making despicable comments about women.' Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/editorial/a-rancorous-debate-when-politics-gets-personal-20121010-27dhk.html#ixzz29DeQWSmj back