Notes
[Notebook TTC, DB 54]
[Sunday 21 October 2001 - Saturday 27 October 2001]
[page 192]
Sunday 21 October 2001
Wisdom operates in the concrete, guided by theology, to deal as closely as possible with the full complexity of the situation. It is a product of long experience, learning and careful practice.
The devil is in the details.
[diagram THEORY, PRACTICE, ABSTRACT, CONCRETE/ PHYSICS, THEOLOGY, RELIGION, WORK
so RELIGION = {human mind=human}
FRONTIER is an example of a computer network. Each entry in the database is a computer, as it does something even if this us only to add a copy of itself to the output.
PROGRAM = Network of Routines (often the network is a tree, but this is
[page 193]
not necessary, since a superposition of trees can make a fully connected graph).
THEOLOGY - RELIGION are duals.
THEOLOGY is the theory (ie abstract but complex) of RELIGION. RELIGION is the practice of THEOLOGY. How do we represent this is dual spaces. They do? (do not?) commute.
TR - RT - 1 or 0.
What do we say to the uni, who have finally found and posted their last letter to me. Personal act of charity (HECS relief) but an institutional admission of fault. The question of my competence . . . cannot be answered unless we answer a prior question. And that is whether the department is open to the full canvassing of all the aspects of my question Is the Universe divine?, or is it constrained by its institutional fidelity to the church and the anathemas
[page 194]
of Pius IX. If in fact the department is fettered in its investigations by the requirements of the owners of the university, then the university is not a university in the true sense of the word, but rather an indoctrination center for a sect. Since the university accepts public funds for its operations this should not be allowed to continue because sectarianism is a destroyer of political harmony.
If it is decided that the research project can be accommodated in the department, then perhaps my essays and proposals can be seen as an ansatz in the direction I propose and be judged on their merit rather than their conformity to the doctrine they oppose.
The Bible is simply a human document, written by some consummate spin doctors working for and against the establishment and often changing sides. It is brilliant literatures [refined in the oral domain] but not something to base your life on. The story of a grumpy old god who
[page 195]
had his son murdered to appease himself because he was upset with some of his toys. Put alongside all the other murder and mayhem wrought in the name of goodness, it seems a very inappropriate foundation for a religion of peace. And in fact it has underpinned a religion of conquest and violence which has been on the rampage tearing the bodies of its opponents apart with swords, guns and bombs for the last 1700 years, since it gained imperial power. At this moment Christians are once again bombing innocent people merely because they are identified as being faithful to the enemy.
How the meaning can slide along a word to get from one point to another in the flow of text and ideas.
THEOLOGY = CRITICISM OF ACTION/OUTPUT, ie CRITICISM.
The market criticizes output and so is theological in its effect. But is the criticism desirable? A question for metacriticism, and so on.
[page 196]
Bed.
Monday 22 October 2001
Tuesday 23 October 2001
Wednesday 24 October 2001
Thursday 25 October 2001
The alphabet for interatomic conversation is all the number states of the quantum harmonic oscillator (photons).
I believe that I have made it clear that I have conscientious objection to large areas of Roman Catholic doctrine, and could no more suggest to people that they use these suspect areas (particularly the underestimation of nature and the undercurrent of retribution) as a guide to living that I could recommend the construction of a building designed with obviously false data about the properties of the material specified.
The question is: can there exist a person capable of successfully completing the MA course while expressing opposition to the central dogma of Catholicism, that god and the Universe are separate entities, and that while god can exist without the
[page 197]
Universe, the Universe cannot exist without god, given the current constitution, rules and policies of the ACU.
Until this question is answered, I feel that discussions of the grading of my work at the ACU are futile.
I repeat my contention: I feel that Lonergan's attempt (which follows a historical line at least 2500 years long) fails. I agree with his contention that the divinity be fully intelligible but I disagree with his datum, that the world accessible to science contains empirical residue, that is data without intelligible meaning. Lonergan's failure has two roots: the first is to mistake theory for reality when judging reality; and the second is to have taken no effective notice of quantum mechanics as the most effective description of nature. He can be excused for this latter omission, since he appears to have worked in an environment devoid of quantum mechanical culture and he wrote before the recent golden age of quantum mechanical theory and experiment.
[page 198]
Of course I must get my story together too, and this demands the quantum rewrite of Lonergan to show by formalization that INSIGHT = MEASUREMENT.
Nature 413:400 27 September 2001
'An entangled state of a system consisting of two (or more) subsystems cannot be described as a product of the quantum states of the two subsystems.'
get EPR
461: 'What is it that human beings ultimately depend upon? We depend upon our words. We are suspended in language. Our task is to communicate . . . without losing the objective or unambiguous character [of what we say]' Neils Bohr.
Friday 26 October 2001
von Neumann QM. von Neumann.
'The object of this book is to present the new quantum mechanics in a unified representation which, so far as is possible and useful, is mathematically rigorous.
Transformation theory: Hilbert Space; Hermitean operators.
Theory goes beyond classical limits to unbounded operators.
viii 'as a rule calculations should be performed with the operators themselves (which represent physical quantities) and not with the matrices, which, after the introduction of a (special and arbitrary) coordinate system in Hilbert space, result from them. This 'coordinate free' ie invariant method, with its strongly geometric language, possesses notable formal advantages.'
Newton: calculus. QM: infinitely many
[page 200]
variables.
Despair: Nothing works, it is all wrong, my life is wasted, I will never receive any tangible benefit for all the world I have put into this, and so on. Working on an article for somewhere.: quantum information theory and theology, which seems to have such a good beginning and is not going anywhere. But press on, since experience shows that it is darkest before the dawn, and 48 hours of work (till Monday morning when I have to go back to real work) will yield something of value, at least to send to . . . .
Saturday 27 October 2001
Archimedes insight yielded a procedure based on a principle (Archimedes Principle) for assaying Hiero's crown.
For me, often, dope cures depression (which may be a by-product of lack of dope) by opening my mind to my consciousness.
[page 201]
Stress - energy: problems become more pressing as the spacetime confinement of options becomes tighter. One must change the voice from trenchant to insightful.
My institution is probing the behaviour of you institution using as an instance of institutional interaction the human being called jhn.
Politics is the process of developing institutions to achieve certain ends in human life,
Union of Hilbert spaces = product of Hilbert spaces. Explain this succinctly. Here we go deeper into the structure of both natural language and Hilbert space.
Theorems cut spaces down to size by showing us 'wormholes' that connect one part to anther.
It is time for the human Universe to enter an inflationary phase of spatial flattening.
