Notes
2010
Notes
[Sunday 25 July 2010 - Saturday 31 July 2010]
[Notebook: DB 69 Creation]
[page 190]
Sunday 25 July 2010
. . .
Fortun & Bernstein, Muddling Through Fortun & Bernstein
The act of intelligence is muddling through like evolution.
Christian say 'I believe in God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth'. These words are traditionally understood to mean that God is not only the source of the heavens and the earth, but differs completely from them. This position is bolstered by 'proofs' for the existence of God which use various theses and observations to contend that the world of our experience is unable to explain its own existence, which we therefore attribute top a preexisting, eternal God outside the world. This view is so deeply
[page 191]
ingrained in our Western thought that the alternative, identifying God and the World is almost unthinkable. The purpose of this research project is to give some thought to this alternative and to produce some evidence and argument suggesting that it might be true.
Theology, the study of God (the traditional theory of everything) pAted company from the physical sciences (somewhat acrimoniously) in the time of Galileo. Since that time the empirical sciences have grown enormously and contributed to widespread changes in the human condition.
Popper characterized the exegesis of the book of nature as conjecture and refutation; refutation the attempt to exclude conjectures that arte either internally inconsistent ot inconsistent with observation.
This project follows this path.The conjecture is a model of the world called a transfinite computer network. The refutation explores the consistency of this model with physics, biology, and human social and political experience and explores objections to the notion that this model can explain the evolutionary creation of the world. Like the traditional models of God and creation, this model can not get close to answering Heidegger's question 'Why are there existents rather than nothing', but given that God and the World do exist, it suggests a way for theology to be based b contemporary evidence rather than ancient authorities thus paving the way for theology to seek a return to its ancient role of doyen of the sciences. Roy Sorensen: Nothingness
Monday 26 July 2010
Tuesday 27 July 2010
Still Holbrook. A state of suspended animation dependent on the
[page 192]
slow machinery of transport and the slow transport of machinery. One hopes for a new gearbox tomorrow.
Compare Moravia and Fortun & Bernstein, both taking a novelistic view of life., F&B moving away from the laboratory bench to the personal, social ans political milieux in which laboratories and science in general are embedded. Although this approach is interesting it adds little to the science itself, only to the genesis and interpretation of science. In both cases the communication model seems [a] guide capable of coping with all the detail while remaining its fundamental simplicity. Alberto Moravia
Wednesday 28 July 2010
Thursday 29 July 2010
Friday 30 July 2010
Saturday 31 July 2010
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Further reading
Books
Click on the "Amazon" link below each book entry to see details of a book (and possibly buy it!)
Dawkins, Richard, Climbing Mount Improbable, W. W. Norton & Company 1997 Amazon editorial review: 'How do species evolve? Richard Dawkins, one of the world's most eminent zoologists, likens the process to scaling a huge, Himalaya-size peak, the Mount Improbable of his title. An alpinist does not leap from sea level to the summit; neither does a species utterly change forms overnight, but instead follows a course of "slow, cumulative, one-step-at-a-time, non-random survival of random variants" -- a course that Charles Darwin, Dawkins's great hero, called natural selection. Illustrating his arguments with case studies from the natural world, such as the evolution of the eye and the lung, and the coevolution of certain kinds of figs and wasps, Dawkins provides a vigorous, entertaining defense of key Darwinian ideas.'
Amazon
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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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Feynman, Richard, QED: The Strange Story of Light and Matter, Princeton UP 1988 Jacket: 'Quantum electrodynamics - or QED for short - is the 'strange theory' that explains how light and electrons interact. Thanks to Richard Feynmann and his colleagues, it is also one of the rare parts of physics that is known for sure, a theory that has stood the test of time. ... In this beautifully lucid set of lectures he provides a definitive introduction to QED.'
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Fortun, Mike, and Herbert J Bernstein, Muddling Through: Pursuing Science and Truths in the Twenty-First Century, Counterpoint 1998 Amazon editorial review:
'Does science discover truths or create them? Does dioxin cause cancer or not? Is corporate-sponsored research valid or not? Although these questions reflect the way we're used to thinking, maybe they're not the best way to approach science and its place in our culture. Physicist Herbert J. Bernstein and science historian Mike Fortun, both of the Institute for Science and Interdisciplinary Studies (ISIS), suggest a third way of seeing, beyond taking one side or another, in Muddling Through: Pursuing Science and Truths in the 21st Century. While they deal with weighty issues and encourage us to completely rethink our beliefs about science and truth, they do so with such grace and humor that we follow with ease discussions of toxic-waste disposal, the Human Genome Project, and retooling our language to better fit the way science is actually done.'
Amazon
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Moravia, Alberto, The Woman of Rome, Zoland Books 1999 Product Description
'THE GLITTER AND CYNICISM of Rome under Mussolini provide the background of what is probably Alberto Moravia’s best and best-known novel — The Woman of Rome. It’s the story of Adriana, a simple girl with no fortune but her beauty who models naked for a painter, accepts gifts from men, and could never quite identify the moment when she traded her private dream of home and children for the life of a prostitute.
One of the very few novels of the twentieth century which can be ranked with the work of Dostoevsky, The Woman of Rome also tells the stories of the tortured university student Giacomo, a failed revolutionary who refuses to admit his love for Adriana; of the sinister figure of Astarita, the Secret Police officer obsessed with Adriana; and of the coarse and brutal criminal Sonzogno, who treats Adriana as his private property. Within this story of passion and betrayal, Moravia calmly strips away the pride and arrogance hiding the corrupt heart of Italian Fascism.'
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Popper, Karl Raimund, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, Routledge and Kegan Paul 1972 Preface: 'The way in which knowledge progresses, and expecially our scientific knowledge, is by unjustified (and unjustifiable) anticipations, by guesses, by tentative solutions to our problems, by conjectures. These conjectures are controlled by criticism; that is, by attempted refutations, which include severely critical tests.' [p viii]
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Russell, Bertrand, A History of Western Philosophy, and its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from Earliest Times to the Present Day, Simon & Schuster 1945 Amazon ditorial reviews: Ray Monk: 'A History of Western Philosophy remains unchallenged as the perfect introduction to its subject. Russell . . . writes with the kind of verve, freshness and personal engagement that lesser spirits would never have permitted themselves. This boldness, together with the astonishing breadth of his general historical knowledge, allows him to put philosophers into their social and cultural context . . . The result is exactly the kind of philosophy that most people would like to read, but which only Russell could possibly have written.'
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Links
| Roy Sorensen Nothingness (Standord Encyclopedia of Philosophy) 'Since metaphysics is the study of what exists, one might expect metaphysicians to have little to say about the limit case in which nothing exists. But ever since Parmenides in the fifth century BCE, there has been rich commentary on whether an empty world is possible, whether there are vacuums, and about the nature of privations and negation.
This survey starts with nothingness at a global scale and then explores local pockets of nothingness. Let's begin with a question that Martin Heidegger famously characterized as the most fundamental issue of philosophy.
1. Why is there something rather than nothing?' back |
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