natural theology > notes > 6 february 2005

Notes

[Notebook: DB 57 Language]

[Sunday 6 February 2005 - Saturday 11 February 2005]

[page 82]

Sunday 6 February 2005

De Soto: formal property systems (and all the other social formalisms like driving licenses and NSWRFS authority cards) are necessary because people do not know each other. Knowledge creates symmetry and all these formalities are socially constructed symmetries which enable us to trust one another: you have a license so I will let you drive my vehicle. You have a fire service card, so I will let you into my house, rescue my children and put the fire out. I rely on the system which generates these formalities to reduce the probability of you crashing my vehicle or stealing my treasures. de Soto

Monday 7 February 2005

A theory of everything? N 433:527 20 Jan 05. t'Hooft et al

'By 1915 Einstein had a theory in which all space-time structures became dynamic fields. This is quite a remarkable conclusion. All other successful quantum theories - in particular non-relativistic quantum mechanics and special relativistic quantum field theory - have incorporated some kinematic background space-time structure, a stage on which the dramas of dynamics are enacted. Now there is no kinematics independent of dynamics: in this sense, general

[page 83]

relativity is a background independent theory. . . . loop quantum gravity theorists maintain that it is not only possible, but mandatory to formulate a background independent quantum theory of gravity, if the most important feature of general relativity is not to be lost. If this approach proves possible and physically fruitful,m then I believe that the formulation of the first background independent theory will rank as Einstein's greatest achievement.' John Stachel

GOD is background independent and traditionally the background of everything else.

NEWTON: space is 'god's sensorium' Newton, Opticks, q 31 page 403.

Evolutionary Dynamics on graphs Lieberman, Hauert and Nowick

'Here we introduce evolutionary graph theory, which suggests a promising new lead in the effort to provide a generic account of how population structure affects evolutionary dynamics' page 313. 'We study the simplest possible question: what is the probability that a newly introduced mutant generates a lineage that takes over the whole population.

eg mutant = natural religion.

The Malthusian ansatz: the whole structure of the world arises because resources are infinitesimal compared to possibilities.

Tuesday 8 February 2005

[page 84]

Wednesday 9 February 2005

Thursday 10 February 2005

Theology = the theory = the symmetry of good and evil

For 'sub specie unitatis' good and evil are relative: good for the predator, bad for the prey. An ideal world, we might thing, would tend to minimize the integral of evil and maximize the integral of good. Is this such a Universe? ie (we might say) is this sentiment consistent with quantum field theory. I like the question. Is it the question?

So we imagine peer groups of free agents, with different personalities and histories, interacting. Why interact? Why not? In fact we can particularize events by probabilities which can sometimes be calculates, as in gaming machines or quantum mechanics.

Business vs Diplomacy

Friday 11 February 2005

The world is foolproof because it can always drop back to a harder level. My computer freezes often because it gets itself into a loop from which thee is no exit. Sometimes it responds to a restart command, and sometimes we just have to unplug it.

Christianity owes its success more to the seduction of the Roman was machine than to any deep doctrinal or practical advantage in fitness.

[page 85]

Blum, Killing Hope page 12: 'What has been the thread common to the diverse targets of American intervention which has brought upon them the wrath, and often the firepower, of the world's most powerful nation? In virtually every case involving the Third World described in this book it has been, in one form or another, a policy of 'self determination', the desire, born of perceived need and principle, to pursue a path of development independent of US foreign policy objectives. Blum

The natural world has two (drivers) : Energy (minimize) and Entropy (maximize)

energy/entropy maximize = expand.

Saturday 12 February 2005

Related sites

Concordat Watch

Revealing Vatican attempts to propagate its religion by international treaty

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

Armstrong, Karen, A History of God: The 4 000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Ballantine Books 1994 'In this stunningly intelligent book, Karen Armstrong, one of Britain's foremost commentators on religious affairs, traces the history of how men and women have perceived and experienced God, from the time of Abraham to the present. From classical philsophy and medieval mysticism to the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the modern age of skepticism, Karen Armstrong performs the near miracle of distilling the intellectual history of monotheism into one superbly readable volume, destined to take its place as a classic.'
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Blum, William, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II - Updated Through 2003, Common Courage Press 2003 Amazon customer review: ' Written by a former State Department employee, the author's wealth of knowledge and experience are thoroughly impressive, and this book is very easy to read and follow. Beginning at the end of WWII, the author lists, by country, US military involvement in chronological order. Readers will find the consequences - some of which are being seen today - profoundly interesting. Another reviewer mentioned that the book had a "blame America first" slant, but I sincerely doubt that reviewer read the entire book. Whilethe book does specifically mention US involvement in the overthrow of democratically elected governments in places like Iran, Chile, and Indonesia, these incidents are generally known now. The people responsible are blamed, not the American people who were not privy to such Washington secrets. It is interesting to read why Washington powerbrokers chose military intervention: In some cases bowing to political interests, in other cases with fine intentions, in most cases not foreseeing the negative consequences for the US and the world. This book provides a concise background for the state of the world today.' Mary F Czach (APO, AP United States)
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de Soto, Hernando, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism triumphs in the West and fails everywhere else, Basic Books 2000 'The hour of capitalism's greatest triumph is its hour of crisis. The fall of the Berlin Wall ended more than a century of political competition between communism and capitalism. Capitalism stands alone as the only feasible way to rationally organise a modern economy. . . . As a result, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, Third World and former communist nations have balanced their budgets, cut subsidies, welcomed foreign investment, and dropped their tariff barriers. Their efforts have been repaid with bitter disappointment. . . . In this book I intend to demonstrate that the major stumbling block that keeps the rest of the world from benefiting from capitalism is its inability to produce capital. . . . The poor . . . do have things, but they lack the process to represent their property and create capital. The have houses but not titles, crops but not deeds, businesses but not statutes of incorporation. It is the unavailability of these essential representations that explains why people who have adapted every other Western invention, from paper clips to nuclear reactors, have not been able to produce sufficient capital to make their domestic captialism work.' pages 1-7
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de Voragine, Jacopone, The Golden Legend: Selections (Penguin Classics), Penguin Classics 1999 'One of the central texts of the Middle Ages, The Golden Legend deeply influenced the imagery of poetry, painting and stained glass with its fascinating descriptions of saints' lives and religious festivals. By creating a single-volume sourcebook of core Christian stories, Jacobus de Voragine (c. 1229-98) attracted a huge audience across Europe. This selection of over seventy biographies ranges from the first Apostles and Roman martyrs to near-contemporaries such as St Dominic, St Francis of Assissi and St Elizabeth of Hungary. Here, witnesses to the true faith endure horrific tortures; reformed prostitutes win divine forgiveness; while other women live disguised as monks or nobly resist lustful tyrants. Lucid and compelling, The Golden Legend offers an enthralling insight into the medieval mind.'
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Guthridge, Ian, The Rise and Decline of the Christian Empire, Medici School Publications 1999
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Newton, Isaac, and Albert Einstein (foreword), Edmund Whittaker (Introduction) Bernard Cohen (Preface), Opticks : Or a Treatise of the Reflections Inflections and Colours of Ligh, Dover 1952 Jacket: 'Here is one of the most readable of the great classics of physical science. First published in 1704, Newton's Opticks provides not only a survey of the 18th century knowledge about all aspects of light, but also a countless numnber of the author's unique scientific insights. It will impress the modern reader by its surprisingly contemporary viewpoint.'
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Papers

t'Hooft, Gerard, Leonard Susskind, Edward Witten, Matasaka Fugita, Lisa Randall, Lee Smolin, John Stachel, Carlo Rovelli, Georege Ellis, Steven Weinberg, Roger Penrose, "A theory of everything?", Nature, 433, 7023, 20 January 2005, page 257-259.

year of physics endgame:

'In his later years, Einstein sought a unified theory that would extend general relativity and provide an alternature to quantum theory. Thee is now talk of a they of everything (although Einstein never used that phrase). Fifty yeras after his death, how close are we to such a theory?. back