VII Notes
2010
Notes
[Sunday 29 August 2010 - Saturday 4 September 2010]
[Notebook: DB 70 Mathematical Theology]
Sunday 29 August 2010
[page 34]
Monday 30 August 2010
Congar "La 'reception' comme realite ecclesiologique" Revue des sciences philosophiques et theologiques 56:3 (1972) 369-403. [ "By 'reception' I understand here the process by which an ecclesial body truly makes its own a resolution which it had not given to itself, recognizing in the measure so promulgated a rule which is applicable to its own life."]
McGrath page 74: For Bauer, the distinction between orthodoxy and heresy was thus essentially arbitrary, reflecting the sociological and political dominance of power groups rather than anything intrinsic to the ideas themselves.' Bauer
Sed contra page 77: '. . . there has been renewed appreciation of the merits of the more traditional view which holds that second-century Christianity ought to be viewed as essentially an orthodox core surrounded by a penumbra within which the borderline between orthodoxy and heresy was still somewhat blurred and open to further clarification through controversy and debate.'
page 79: 'orthodoxy is an emergent phenomenon'.
[page 35]
McGrath page 80: 'doctrines - attempts to express the central themes of the Christian vision of reality in words.'
All people are equal - all people have the same spiritual mass = same rate of spiritual activity.
To a casual observer, theology might be the justiofifcationof impossible positions.
Tuesday 31 August 2010
Debray God Jacket: 'Régis Debray's purpose in this major new book is to trace the episodes of the Genesis of God, the stages of His itinerary and the costs of His survival. Debray, Régis Debray - Wikipedia
Débray page 5: '"Our investigation goes up to the threshold of the mysteries.' said Gabriel Le Bras, the founder of religious sociology in France, quite naturally refusing to allow his "science to get involved with the supernatural."
We are inside the Absolute, to it is not absolute to us because we cannot see its absolution from anything else that may exist.'
Deterministic and unpredictable - the halting problem. Halting problem- Wikipedia
Wednesday 1 September 2010
Débray page 9: 'My aim is not to provoke a sacred text into interpreting itself, but to find out how such things as the sacred, a text, and traditions of reading came to be.
[page 36]
A text is a stationary point in human action
Complementarity, duality, covariance: ħ = ∆E.∆t
A dynamic system is of its nature 'omnino simplex' yet it may have stationary points, symmetries, conservation laws, DNA, sacred texts which are not outside the dynamics but part of it. On this view the complexity of the world does not contradict the divine simplicity.
Débray page 10: 'Religions and doctrines have been depicted from the waist up in the noble history of ideas; yet they progress on two legs.'
The natural religion project aims to draw attention to the reproductive underpinnings of life.
'"Do this in remembrance of me." The act of retaining, repeating what has been eradicated, is at the heart of every cult.'
page 15: 'Veritas filia temporis' (Bernard de Chartres) Bernard of Chartres - Wikipedia
The transfinite computer nework is the medium (milieu, ether) of natural theology.
I used to be a greenie but I am becoming a theologie, since I am too old to climb tripods but young enough to argue with the pope and his ayatollahs.
What does quantum mechanics mean?
[page 37]
Schlesinger Science 329:609. 'Unless the discoveries of ecological science are rapidly translated into meaningful actions, they will remain quietly archived while the biolsphere degrades.' Schlesinger
Good to hear it has become mainstream a century after awareness of our ecological problems began to gain attention [driving the science we can now use].
Science 329:613 Wally Broecker: Q 'What's the most misunderstood thing about climate change? I always tell people that if all we had was a natural record, we would be in a weak position with regard to saying we should do something about carbon dioxide. But our position is really based on the physics which says that if you add greenhouse gases to the planet, its going to warm. . . . If it doesn't happen that would mean we're in the dark ages as far as understanding climate.'
Débray page 20: 'God is essentially unthinkable without writing and secondarily without the wheel, which together reduce by several degrees man's dependence on natural space (the wheel) and natural time (writing).'
The first Australians got by without wheels and painted instead of wrote, but they had a rich set of stories about the constitution of the world by7 intelligent beings.
page 20: 'That moment, which we may call miraculous, is that of a stunning act of technoconspiracy which married pastoral nomadism to alphabetic scripts.' And what about China?
page 29: 'Our surprise is far from negligible when we learn from specialists of historio-critical exegesis that Abraham was a petty southern hero promoted in rank and seniority by a team of intelligent editors.'
[page 38]
Débray page 30: 'Lying to oneself rather than dying is preferable to the other way round/'
This is an example of 'opportunistic' fitness but it may be true that telling the truth is the safest long run strategy.
'Inasmuch as "a people without legends is condemned to die of cold", the retroactive construction of origins is part of the thermal effect indispensable to the maintenance of the human group.
page 32: 'It was not Abraham and Moses which invented Judaism but the other way round (as with Jesus Christ and Christianity).
Abraham and Moses are points, Judaism a space, and point and space are duals of one another as are Christ and Christianity.
page 32: '"Even with God at the top, if there is no water at the bottom there is no monastery.."'
Changing alliances motivated by dissatisfaction with the old, attraction to the new.
Science 329:630 Graham, Happiness Ak, Graham
Thursday 2 September 2010
Physical review: What waves in wave mechanics? Omnes: On continuity and discreteness.
1. Logical vs geometrical continuity
2. Quantum mechanics one dimensional - Bell
[page 39]
3. Quantum information theory: probability, orthogonality, processing times
4. Quantum field theory: Veltman: qm then sr vs sr the qm.
5. Observation and emergence
6. Transfinite computer network
7. Symmetry and creation: the 'collapse' of the wave function.
8. Toward a theory of everything.
'FACT' = MESSAGE
'LAW' = CODING OF MESSAGE
Zemanian: transfinite resistor network determines the currents in all the connections between resistors. The resistance of a resistor is a measure of the probability of an electron getting through it, ie the probability of the resistor (interpreted as a computer) 'halting'. Zemanian
Muse: a potential that induces structure in the poet's mind.
PhD: create an archive of 'laboratory notes' that led to the thesis.
STRUCTURE = solutions to a wave equation, ie zeros of the characteristic polynomial.
Ant 10 cm per second, legs 1 mm long, stride 1 mm, stepping 100Hz.
Quantum mechanics tells us what is probable.
Things happen when they are actually unconditioned, ie everything is in place. The core of an Agatha story is a central body of truth (x killed y) which is hinted at by a series of clues which, properly understood (ordered) point to x and only x.
[page 40]
To enter a new milieu is a pattern-recognition challenge. In order to survive in a new school , new job or new community one must learn 'the rules', expected behaviour. As long as one is subordinate one cannot break the rules with impunity, as punishment will follow. This is the problem faced by the human race as it enters the real of consciousness, wondering why we are here, what we are for, etc etc, in other words theology.
Theology is a product of self awareness projecting our personalities onto 'Gopd', ie the whole system as a dual of ourselves.
The fixed points are the dual of the dynamism (?) [also part of the dynamism] ,p> Everything eventually becomes explicit, perhaps in the memoirs of the participants.
. . .
Friday 3 September 2010
Franson Science 329:396 Franson, Sinha et al.
Débray page 34: Judaeo-Christian --> Assyrio - Canaano - Judaeo - Christianity.
Bushwalking in my God is the new ritual!
[page 41]
All matter is 'pneumataphoric'. Débray page 41 (except maybe 'dark matter', but even this has a role in the structure of the Universe).
The structure of the Universe enables us to look back into the past, and in fact everything we see is in the past, in the 4D Universe the further away it is the further back we see it, using photons (or other vehicles) with finite velocity.
Catch these little concepts as they flit through my consciousness.
Débray page 42: 'To every niche its God'; God is our dual, our environment, the ground of our symbol etc (Theory of peace lecture 3 A Theory of Peace: Lecture 3: Symbols
Débray page 43: 'That God should prefer hostile landscapes, extreme temperatures and the harshness of stones is a sight of a passage to the limit.' Is this why I moved from stony SA to lush Elands to drop monotheism and to take up pantheism?
Débray page 44: Between farmers and cowboys, Yahweh made his choice.'
We make up religions as children make up games to that they can play together.
page 45: 'Yahweh is to man as man is to his animals, in a relation of benevolent domination [a higher layer in the network].
page 47: 'Anaxagoras said: "Man thinks because he has a hand." To which we would add: "and he believes because he has two feet." If our sciences are daughters of the sedentary position, our various mysticisms stem from our mobility. As do our wars. Anaxagoras - Wikipedia
[pge 42]
An hypothesis.
Débray page 48: 'The donkey is the preferred mount of our God, and the animal He trusts.'
page 49: The donkey is obstinate: Jewish memory. The lamb inspires tenderness: Christian love; The horse conquers: holy war.'
Débray page 290: The Roman Catholic Church has not rejected the death penalty 'urbi et orbi (note e) Catholic Enquiry Centre
Débray page 63:'In the beginning was the Word'; the stationary point. And the Word was made flesh,embodied, dramatized.
'"writing that scans", says Julien Gracq, "makes do without verification".'
scansion, rhythm, periodicity, wave mechanics.
Saturday 4 September
Débray page 91: 'Whether secular or revealed, religion is the art of holding individuals together by tying them to a common foundation.'
