natural theology > VII notes > 28 december 2008

Notes

[Sunday 28 December 2008 - Saturday 3 January 2009]

[Notebook: DB 65 Symmetric U]

[page 37]

Sunday 28 December 2008

Zee page 3: 'According to special relativity, energy can be converted into mass and vice versa.' Zee Is it not truer to say that energy can look like mass and vice versa. This is part of the general thesis that what

[page 38]

we see depends on how we look. Transformation theory is all about different ways of looking at things, and is not just something that affects physicists but all of reality, which in the network picture is just a whole lot of things looking at eachother and each of these looks creates new looks, which is how the Universe grows from monotheos to polytheoi.

One route from quantum mechanics to quantum field theory is Feynman's path integral, where we superpose all possible [spacetime] paths from a to b. Feynman & Hibbs The network picture is happy with this, except that we might substitute a countable network of channels between sources rather than the uncountable number implied in the continuous limit. The interesting bit lies in how we sum the amplitudes. We begin with a countable number of 'screens' each with a countable number of holes. Then each path can be defined by a sequence of pairs (screen i, hole j ), the total number of paths being the number of holes, n raised to the power of the number of screens s, ie n^s. If n and s are countably infinite, the number of routes N = n^s = ℵ₁.

We calculate the overall amplitude for each of these paths by multiplying the amplitudes for each hop along the path [and then add all the results to get a final amplitude]

Monday 29 December 2008

What does quantum mechanics mean? Basically that our intelligence is nothing special. We use the same methods to create as the Universe that created us, ie design and 'error' correction.

SUFFERING = ERROR detection and correction.

[page 39]

The basic function of religion (and all ideologies propagated by minority groups) is designed to enhance the power of the minority by deriving income from the efforts of the majority. Although this is a tribute to the intelligence and courage of the minority, it is unjust if the fruits of their cunning are not shared with all who have contributed to their harvest.

FREE = NO EXTERNAL POTENTIAL

Life is mainly a matter of designing and executing the next step in the light of the past. The influence of past events falls off as some function of their distance from the present. Some past events influence the present with no alteration at all, others with exponentially declining power asymptotic to zero. From a relativistic point of view a negative time exponential is equivalent to a negative distance exponential.

Beware of the traffic to come, which may well be an invisible superposition of log trucks, tourists, wildlife, cyclists, pedestrians and empty road which come to be as one drives along. Superpositions of possibilities become individual realities.

We break the path integral approach down into a set of discrete edges in a network surrounding the two points of our interest and compute the amplitude of the 'propagator' along each path. In Feynman's method the action is the integral of functions of velocity and position on the path. In the network model the quantum of action maps to a quantum of computation and the minimum of action corresponds to the minimum of computation needed

[page 40]

to achieve the connection.

The hypothesis: purely random is maximally intelligent (?)

Tuesday 30 December 2008

Wednesday 31 December 2008

Thursday 1 January 2009

Creation and annihilation: Crankshaw Kruschev. Stalin, Kruschev, Hitler and their ilk create new people by annihilating millions of the old. Crankshaw Is it necessary? Is it inevitable? Is it part of 'God's plan'? Since history only happens once, we can never answer these questions but by examining past evils and errors we hope to learn how to create new more peaceful worlds while minimizing the annihilation of the old.

Friday 2 January 2009

Disconnected intelligence: Theology and religion provide the integrating protocols for all the insights of a society, making it into a unified system capable of acting coherently for its own survival. In the absence of such integration, people interact rather like a gas, moving freely with no 'interaction at a distance' only interaction by collision. A gas is the most primitive state of a network?

We meet many people with cherished diseases and dysfunctions to some extent wished on them by the forces of police and social services trying to palliate the effects of a disconnected society, or should we say a society connected at a 'material' level but not 'spiritual'.

The layered network paradigm gives us an integrated way of understanding the relationship between 'material' and 'spiritual'.

Saturday 3 January 2009

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Crankshaw, Edward, Krushchev, Collins 1966 'Most of the material for my . . . book was gathered over a long period and in a number of countries, above all, of course, the Soviet Union. I cannot thank by name the many who have helped me, and those who still live in Russia and Eastern Europe would not be pleased if I did so. I am grateful to them all the same. It would be pleasant, if, twelve years after Stalin's death, I could acknowledge assistance from 'official' Russians; but from these, as always during the past 25 years, -- save for on startling gesture from Krushchev himself -- there has been nothing but obstruction.'back

Feynman, Richard P , and Albert P Hibbs, Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals, McGraw Hill 1965 Preface: 'The fundamental physical and mathematical concepts which underlie the path integral approach were first developed by R P Feynman in the course of his graduate studies at Princeton, ... . These early inquiries were involved with the problem of the infinte self-energy of the electron. In working on that problem, a "least action" principle was discovered [which] could deal succesfully with the infinity arising in the application of classical electrodynamics.' As described in this book. Feynam, inspired by Dirac, went on the develop this insight into a fruitful source of solutions to many quantum mechanical problems.
Amazon back

Zee, Anthony, Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell, Princeton University Press 2003 Amazon book description: 'An esteemed researcher and acclaimed popular author takes up the challenge of providing a clear, relatively brief, and fully up-to-date introduction to one of the most vital but notoriously difficult subjects in theoretical physics. A quantum field theory text for the twenty-first century, this book makes the essential tool of modern theoretical physics available to any student who has completed a course on quantum mechanics and is eager to go on. Quantum field theory was invented to deal simultaneously with special relativity and quantum mechanics, the two greatest discoveries of early twentieth-century physics, but it has become increasingly important to many areas of physics. These days, physicists turn to quantum field theory to describe a multitude of phenomena. Stressing critical ideas and insights, Zee uses numerous examples to lead students to a true conceptual understanding of quantum field theory--what it means and what it can do. He covers an unusually diverse range of topics, including various contemporary developments,while guiding readers through thoughtfully designed problems. In contrast to previous texts, Zee incorporates gravity from the outset and discusses the innovative use of quantum field theory in modern condensed matter theory. Without a solid understanding of quantum field theory, no student can claim to have mastered contemporary theoretical physics. Offering a remarkably accessible conceptual introduction, this text will be widely welcomed and used.
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