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Notes

[Notebook: DB 57 Language]

[Sunday 10 April 2005 - Saturday 16 April 2005]

Sunday 10 April 2005

[page 109]

Monday 11 April 2005

Getting something done requires the correct balance between know-how (knowledge) and motivation (emotion). One theory (Thomas, Socrates? etc) says motivation follows knowledge, ie will follows intellect, what is perceived as good is then desired. But what about the other way round: when we perceive something as good and then set about knowing it. Will and intellect are not effect and cause, but peers, working together to produce effective action and increased fitness, ie increased probability of projection into the next generation. We can see logic gates as the simplest and most deterministic such projectors, eliminating (annihilating) some states and creating others.

An empirical foundation of intellect and will is the quest for food, the necessary input for all forms of life = all dissipative structures.

The fact that ego-oriented power trippers can impress their ideas on a naive population and profit thereby is just another feature of the world we inhabit. The religions of the world lie within nature, not outside it. There are parts of god as we find it, but far from the whole of god. Christians are

[page 110]

so egotistical and parochial that they thing all of this was made by god to give them a good time and that some misdemeanour by an ancient fruit lover deranged the whole Universe adding the drama of incarnation, redemption and apocalypse to the original fantasy of personal creation.

Powder Burn page 76: 'barbaric subculture' a( get even, b)never go to the cops. Hiaasen and Montalbano

Human dynamic range: '. . . was he simply the product of a society so well ordered that fear had become as anachronistic as small-pox?'

Other things being equal, the scared (motivated) ones rise to the top and their fears (particularly of other people) lead them to use their power to control (suppress) the energy of others (variety reduction) as a means to enhance their control and so to guarantee their position of safety at the top of the heap. This depends on constitutional arrangements, but the law of non-decreasing entropy eventually guarantees that they will lose their apparent security and live just as dangerously as everyone else. Such a thermodynamic argument suggests that if one person is to live in peace all must live in peace.

Do molecules constrain atoms? They modify their outer orbitals but they can in no way 'kill' an atom as human societies do to human individuals. The big tradeoff is between

[page 111]

safety. Ruling classes try to achieve safe freedom for themselves by oppression; falsely. Information theory/network theory tells us that thee is an optimum point in the balance between state security and individual freedom.

The peace theorem

pen name Noah

Tuesday 12 April 2005

McGrath: A Scientific Theology. A scam. Not scientific theology, but dyed in the wool Evangelicism attempting to use science as an 'ancilla theologiae' a handmaiden or servant, rather than the master. Here we still prefer blind faith in ancient texts to the realities of experience. McGrath

[page 112]

We ask why is the Universe quantized? And answer that it is essential for error free communication that we be able to distinguish between inherently distinct (ie quantized) symbols.

aTheology.net will (maybe) follow the design of the Summa Theologiae quite closely, treating the same questions in the same order, using the transfinite network rather than standard metaphysics as the back bone model. We begin by showing how the two models differ in their construction of god.

Model : Intro ; the key

The key idea in this model is the power of order. This power was first codified by Georg Cantor.

ECONOMICS = the management of a HOUSEHOLD
POLITICS = the management of a CITY.

(OIKOS, POLIS)

METANOMICS = the management of any entity, ie the study of the features common to any entity. Einstein helped to answer the question 'is the atom an entity?' The answer, we know, is year. There exist subspaces in the Universe that have a certain independence and certain properties, in other words they move as a whole in the universal environment.

The universal network builder can (among other things) build houses, households and cities. The creative force comes in two classes, dissipative and conservative.

[page 113]

We learn to understand it by studying the relationship between this duality. Our tool is the transfinite network which defines the causal structure of the Universe through communication and the concurrent implementation of the principle of requisite variety. REAL vs COMPLEX numbers.

Our formal theology is developed in the chapter MODEL;. In the theology chapter we make a mapping between classical theology and the transfinite network.

PHYSICS: applying the transfinite network in physics can be done by mapping quantum mechanics to the transfinite network and then applying the result to quantum field theory.

A conservative network with motion must be destructive. In some way destruction = creation. We may envisage other regimes where destruction is greater than or less than creation.

The epistemological revolution which swept through science beginning with the rediscovery of Aristotle passed theology by. If anything it became more reactionary as the reformation replaced many of the lively doctrinal explorations by the Likes of Thomas Aquinas with an evangelical fundamentalism that has come to dominate the Christian areas of the world in this century. The Church, like Confucianism in China, was too strong to change. Even those who tampered with ideas almost completely irrelevant to the core of Christian belief, like Galileo, were harassed. More confrontational heretics faced torture and death, perhaps by burning.

[page 114]

The evangelical position vis-a-vis science is well articulated in McGrath's scientific theology. Any reader seeking to see scientific method applied to theology will be disappointed with this book, which merely concerns itself with science's ability to bolster the evangelical position (which is held to be absolutely true,. thus distinguishing it from science, which is open to continual revision). The core Christian institution, the Roman Catholic Church, claims that certain of its doctrinal propositions are infallibly true, whatever that may mean.

This positions a result of 'text-worship' whose first recorded high-priest is Parmenides of Elea (fl. c. 480 bc)

Here we distinguish scientific theology from textual theology by the fact that it is open to revision., that is a dynamic rather than a static entity. Scientific theology moves to wrap itself more and more closely around the intricacies of the universal space we inhabit.

The deconstructionist hypothesis, at its broadest, is that we can give any meaning we like to a text. it just depends on how we decode it. Now we may suppose each of the academic disciplines to be an operator which decodes texts. The natural science decode the texts of the book of nature, which present their instruments with series of states which evoke a certain response (reading) from the instrument.

So the Bible maybe observed with a battery

[page 114]

of different implements to give stylistic, theological, religious, literary, political and all sorts of other interpretations of the record contained between its covers,

A fundamental question (for priest, hippie and yuppie in me) is how hard should I work. Or more particularly, how hard should I work now? In practical terms, this question answers itself. I work as hard as I work. But 'should' raises a deeper question. Of all possible strategies to increase my togetherness (integration with self and world) is the current one optimal, ie does it produce the most togetherness for the least effort so leaving a lot of headroom (space of increasable effort) and consequent security,

In the wilderness we are adapted to do everything necessary to survive. Civilization renders some of the more extreme tactics of survival involving starvation, killing and other undesirable features less probable, so that very few of us have to be warriors or farmers anymore.

The Cantor Universe looked fantastic and dangerous to many mathematicians,m but was soon put to use in quantum mechanics, as Hilbert and von Neumann revealed. The Cantor Universe has been renamed function space. Hilbert, von Neumann

Model: transfinite network to quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics is the universal communication protocol. Having seen the protocol, we can go on to apply it in physics, biology and so on up to theology. This nested series of theoretical frameworks then becomes the foundation for practical technology and policy, all beginning with quantum field theory.

Wednesday 13 April 2005
Thursday 14 April 2005
Friday 15 April 2005
Saturday 16 April 2005

 

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Further reading

Books

Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologica (translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province), Tabor Publishing 1981 'Brother Thomas raised new problems in his teaching, invented a new method, used new systems of proof. To hear him teach a new doctrine, with new arguments, one could not doubt that God, by the irradiation of this new light and by the novelty of this inspiration, gave him the power to teach, by the spoken and written word, new opinions and new knowledge.' (William of Tocco, T's first biographer) 
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Ashby, W Ross, An Introduction to Cybernetics, Methuen 1956, 1964 'This book is intended to provide [an introduction to cybernetics]. It starts from common-place and well understood concepts, and proceeds step by step to show how these concepts can be made exact, and how they can be developed until they lead into such subjects as feedback, stability, regulation, ultrastability, information, coding, noise and other cybernetic topics.' 
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Denzinger, Henricus, and Adolphus Schoenmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum, Definitionum et Declarationum de Rebus Fidei et Morum, Herder 1963 Introduction: 'Dubium non est quin praeter s. Scripturam cuique theologo summe desiderandus sit etiam liber manualis quo contineantur edicta Magisterii ecclesiastici eaque saltem maioris momenti, et quo ope variorim indicum quaerenti aperiantur eorum materiae.' (3) 'There is no doubt that in addition to holy Scripture, every theologian also needs a handbook which contains at least the more important edicts of the Magisterium of the Church, indexed in a way which makes them easy to find.' back

Hiaasen, Carl, and Montalbano, Powder Burn , Vintage 1988 Amazon product description: 'Architect Chris Meadows has the bad luck to see an old girlfriend get hit by a car full of drugland hitmen. He has the worse luck to see the face of her murderers. Because in a town as violent as Miami, a witness doesn't stand a chance--especially when the cops who ought to be protecting him are more interested in dangling him as live bait..' 
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Lonergan, Bernard J F, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan : Volume 3), University of Toronto Press 1992 '. . . Bernard Lonergan's masterwork. Its aim is nothing less than insight into insight itself, an understanding of understanding' 
Amazon
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McGrath, Alister E, A Scientific Theology volume II: Reality, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan 2002 Amazon product description: 'This groundbreaking three-volume work by one of the world's best-known theologians is the most extended and systematic exploration of the relation between theology and science ever undertaken. Drawing on both his firsthand experience of scientific research and his vast knowledge of the Christian tradition, Alister McGrath explores how the natural sciences can be used by the Christian faith. This first volume sets out a vision for a "scientific theology" in which the working assumptions of the natural sciences are critically appropriated as a theological resource. It then deals at length with the important status of nature, a concept that has rarely been given the serious consideration it deserves. Responding to the view that the term "nature" is merely a social construct, McGrath gives the concept a proper grounding in the Christian doctrine of creation, exploring in the process the use of natural theology in contemporary Christian thought. A Scientific Theology is certain to become one of the most controversial and exciting theological publications of the decade.' 
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McGrath, Alister E, A Scientific Theology volume III: Theory, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids. Michigan 2003 Amazon product descrip[tion: '"Theory" is the third and final volume in a truly groundbreaking work by one of the world's best-known theologians. As a whole, Alister McGrath's "Scientific Theology" is the most extended and systematic exploration of the relation between theology and science ever undertaken. Now complete, it will surely become a standard entry into modern Christian thought. In Volume 3 McGrath deals with the question of how reality is represented in Christian theology and the natural sciences. Building on the insights of thinkers like Martin Heidegger and Jürgen Habermas, McGrath argues that theory is to be conceived in terms of the "communal beholding of reality." Thus understood, theory is primarily a response to experienced reality, which, for the Christian community, demands theological expression. In the course of unpacking the implications of this perspective, McGrath addresses such subjects as the explanatory dimensions of theology, the place of metaphysics in Christian theology, and the nature of revelation itself.'  
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McGrath, Alister E, The Science of God: An Introduction to Scientific Theology, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company 2004 Jacket: 'This book is a clear, concise guide to Alistair McGrath's groundbreaking three-volume work A Scientific Theology, today's most talked about new approach to systematic theology. In those recently published and already acclaimed volumes, McGrath exploits the theological potential of the natural sciences as dialogue partners for Christian thought. The Sceince of God offers an ideal starting point for anyone wishing to engage in this new vision for theology: McGrath himself here summarizes his major project and sketches out its implications for many aspects of Christian doctrine. He then explores in an accessible manner all of the major themes of his three-volume work, including the legitmacy of a scientific theology, the purpose and place of natural theology, the foundations of theological realism, the failure of classic foundationalism, the nature of revelation, and the place of metaphysics in theology.' 
Amazon
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McGrath, Alister E, A Scientific Theology volume I: Nature, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan 2002 Amazon product description: 'This groundbreaking three-volume work by one of the world's best-known theologians is the most extended and systematic exploration of the relation between theology and science ever undertaken. Drawing on both his firsthand experience of scientific research and his vast knowledge of the Christian tradition, Alister McGrath explores how the natural sciences can be used by the Christian faith. This first volume sets out a vision for a "scientific theology" in which the working assumptions of the natural sciences are critically appropriated as a theological resource. It then deals at length with the important status of nature, a concept that has rarely been given the serious consideration it deserves. Responding to the view that the term "nature" is merely a social construct, McGrath gives the concept a proper grounding in the Christian doctrine of creation, exploring in the process the use of natural theology in contemporary Christian thought. A Scientific Theology is certain to become one of the most controversial and exciting theological publications of the decade. 
Amazon
  back

Needham, Joseph, Science and Civilisation in China (Volume 1) Introductory Orientations, Cambridge UP 1954 Jacket: 'This is the exciting first instalment of a comprehensive work . . . The author has set himself to interpret the Chinese mind in Western terms, and he is perhaps unique among living scholars in possessing the necessay combination of qualifications for this formidable undertaking. The practical importance of Dr Needham's work is as great as its intellectual interest. It is a westerm act of 'recognition' on a higher plane than the diplomatic one.' Arnold Toynbee, The Observer, London. 
Amazon
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Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, The Phenomenon of Man, Collins 1965 Sir Julian Huxley, Introduction: 'We, mankind, contain the possibilities of the earth's immense future, and can realise more and more of them on condition that we increase our knowledge and our love. That, it seems to me, is the distillation of the Phenomenon of Man.'  
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Links

Cantor's theorem - Wikipedia, Cantor's theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In elementary set theory, Cantor's theorem is a fundamental result which states that, for any set A, the set of all subsets of A (the power set of A, denoted by P(A) ) has a strictly greater cardinality than A itself. For finite sets, Cantor's theorem can be seen to be true by simple enumeration of the number of subsets. Counting the empty set as a subset, a set with n members has a total of 2n subsets, so that if card (A) = n, then card (P(A)) = 2n, and the theorem holds because 2n > n for all non-negative integers.' back

Carl Zimmer, Scientists Unveil New 'Tree of Life', 'A team of scientists unveiled a new tree of life on Monday, a diagram outlining the evolution of all living things. The researchers found that bacteria make up most of life’s branches. And they found that much of that diversity has been waiting in plain sight to be discovered, dwelling in river mud and meadow soils.' back

Chris Graham, The World's Most Popular website Just Ripped The Rug Out From Under Australia Day, 'Over to Google for the explanation: “Doodle 4 Google 2015 was won by Ineka Voigt from Canberra High School in ACT, for her entry ‘Stolen Dreamtime’,” explains the corporate giant. “In response to the theme of ‘If I could travel back in time I would…’ Ineka wrote “… I would reunite mother and child. A weeping mother sits in an ochre desert, dreaming of her children and a life that never was… all that remains is red sand, tears and the whispers of her stolen dreamtime”.' back

Henrieta Cook, Parents shopcked as priest compares adultery to paedophilia, 'A Catholic priest has offended parents at a Malvern East school by comparing paedophile priests to adulterous women in a school newsletter. St Mary's Primary School parish priest Father Bill Edebohls also took aim at lawyers and the media for not showing enough mercy during the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse. He said he was concerned the Royal Commission would not give victims an opportunity to heal.' back

Isabel Kershner, New Evidence on When the Bible Was Written: Ancient Shopping Lists, 'Based on a statistical analysis of the results, and taking into account the content of the texts that were chosen for the sample, the researchers concluded that at least six different hands had written the 18 missives at around the same time. Even soldiers in the lower ranks of the Judahite army, it appears, could read and write. back

Jane Lee, The workers we trust to look after our mums and dads are changing - and struggling, 'Chanmakara Sun has been a registered nurse in an Adelaide nursing home for about three years and is already planning to leave. . . . Mr Sun said the home for 90 patients - most of whom have multiple chronic illnesses including heart and kidney failure and dementia - is constantly understaffed. During the day he has three enrolled nurses to help him medicate, monitor patients and dress wounds. He also manages 11 carers who are not qualified to do more than bathe, feed and change the elderly residents.' back

John Keane, The 18th-century Enlightenment and the problem of pubic misery, 'Thomas Paine was arguably among the greatest Enlightenment champions of this fresh way of thinking about misery. Author of the three biggest-selling books of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Common Sense (1776), Rights of Man (1791) and The Age of Reason (1794), Paine still ranks as the greatest English champion of clean, open, humble government. He should be remembered for his life-long devotion to the cause of liberty for all; his unshrinking opposition to lying; his deep-seated dislike of monarchy and priestly tyranny and his daring public attacks on the hypocrisy and hubris of the American and French revolutionaries. Most compelling of all was Paine’s burning desire to meet the arguments of his foes, not with gunpowder or the sword, or haughty bitterness, but with words from Isaiah: ‘Let us reason the matter together’.' back

Josh Bornstein, Alarmism, economic idiocy, and Orwellian appointments: three years of political disaster, 'Exactly how the federal government would cut taxes, reduce government debt and transition to a budget surplus, boost infrastructure and not cut major expenditure like health, education and the pension was never made clear. Nor could it be made clear. The laws of mathematics do not accommodate such idiocy.' back

Laura A. Hug et al, A new view of the tree of life, 'The tree of life is one of the most important organizing principles in biology. Gene surveys suggest the existence of an enormous number of branches but even an approximation of the full scale of the tree has remained elusive. Recent depictions of the tree of life have focused either on the nature of deep evolutionary relationships or on the known, well-classified diversity of life with an emphasis on eukaryotes. These approaches overlook the dramatic change in our understanding of life's diversity resulting from genomic sampling of previously unexamined environments. New methods to generate genome sequences illuminate the identity of organisms and their metabolic capacities, placing them in community and ecosystem contexts. Here, we use new genomic data from over 1,000 uncultivated and little known organisms, together with published sequences, to infer a dramatically expanded version of the tree of life, with Bacteria, Archaea and Eukarya included.' back

Massimo Faggioli, What Is Francis Saying with 'Amoris Laetitia'?, 'The third kind of text--pertaining to gender, the masculine and the feminine, and education in the family--sound painfully inadequate for a discourse on marriage and family. The language seems dated, to say the least, and confirms Francis’s greatest weakness on one of the most urgent issues in the contemporary Church: women.' back

Matt Broomfield, GCHQ apologises for 'horrifying' teatment of Alan Turing and discrimination aainst other LGBT peole, 'GCHQ chief has apologised for the espionage service's "horrifiying" treatment of Alan Turing and historic prejudice against LGBT people. The pioneering mathematician, whose code-breaking skills are said to have shortened World War Two by two to four years, lost his job with the secret service following a conviction for indecency. Robert Hannigan is the director of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the successor to the Government Code and Cypher School which first employed and then summarily fired Mr Turing.' back

Ned Manning, Australian schools will never match Finland's unless teachers can tell the truth, 'We've just finished writing reports, making sure that we have reached "outcomes" that are incomprehensible to parents and students but fulfil a bureaucratic need for accountability. Instead of giving our students marks or, God forbid, rankings, we have disguised their results in generalities so their parents are saved from facing the truth about their children's real progress. We aren't allowed to tell it how it is. back

Nicholas Kristof, The Real Welfare Cheats, 'We often hear how damaging welfare dependency is, stifling initiative and corroding the human soul. So I worry about the way we coddle executives in their suites. A study to be released Thursday says that for each dollar America’s 50 biggest companies paid in federal taxes between 2008 and 2014, they received $27 back in federal loans, loan guarantees and bailouts.' back

Pope Paul, Amoris Laetitia, 'Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation of the Holy Father Francis to Bishops Piests and Deacons, Consecraed Persons, Cjristian Maried Couples and all the Lay Faithful on Love in the Family. back

Ranjana Srivastava, Gurrumul: is this a case of racial profiiing of a symptom of rushed medicine?, 'Last week, the talented and multi-award winning Aboriginal singer Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu made the news for another reason when his nephrologist alleged that his patient’s care at Royal Darwin Hospital was compromised by the assumption that his chronic liver disease was related to alcohol abuse rather than hepatitis, from which may have followed other medical decisions when he presented very unwell to emergency.' back

Simon Gubler, Philosophizing With Guns, 'Of course, if we resolve that the most responsible thing to do under campus carry is to avoid topics that are likely to elicit strong feeling, then there is little point in continuing with the academic practice of philosophy. But before we do away with philosophy altogether, let us decide whether there is anything that we can or should do to resist the wider adoption of campus carry policies. And let us resolve, where resistance is unsuccessful, to think carefully about what needs to be done to protect the practice of philosophical inquiry, and our students, from harm.' back

Waleed Aly, Banking Royal Comission: Turnbull's budget policy responds to Labor's agenda, 'As the inequities of capitalism have become clearer, and as crises like the global financial meltdown seem to have dealt out pain mainly to those who had least responsibility for creating them, we've witnessed a growing popular sense of disillusionment. And every now and then, something like the Panama Papers comes along to refresh this sense that the whole thing might just be a rort: that gaping inequality doesn't mean everyone's doing better, and might instead mean money and power keep flowing to those who already have it.' back

Yu Keping, Crossing the river by feeling the stones: democracy's advance in China, 'To say “democracy is a good thing” means that democracy can benefit the people. Yet if democracy is to benefit the people, a precondition is that social order must be maintained and hardship shouldn’t burden them. If democracy causes unrest, the people will lose hope, corruption will go unchecked. Under these circumstances, who would still wish for democracy? Those who are against democracy often use this possibility to frighten their audience.' back

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