vol VII: Notes

2015

Notes

[Sunday 25 January 2015 - Saturday 31 January 2015]

[Notebook: DB 78: Catholicism 2.0]

[page 90]

Sunday 25 January 2015

[page 91]

Exegesis: Scientific method and exegetic method have much in common, both striving to understand the meaning of texts, some provided by ancient authors and others provided by reality through systematic stimulation (where possible) and observation,.

Aristotle: physics

For a few years after I left the Dominicans I used to go back to visit my old mates and see how they were getting on. These visits slowly faded, as I began to see that they and I were fixed in our positions and there could be no agreement on the fundamental questions on the nature of God and the best way to serve it. As a single person, I could not influence the views of many. Now, however, as I began writing to the pope on a peer basis, I feel that I can eventually convince him of the error of his way and the need to change course by 1 bit.

The space-time setting of my work is abut 2500 years and ten billion people.

Aristotle Physics book V, 3. Changes of quality, quantity or place are between contraries, creation and annihilation are between contradictories. Contraries are overlapping sets, contradictories are disjoint sets. Large objects like myself can maintain my substantial existence while changing [in detail], but fundamental particles with no substance [parts, degres of freedom] of their own are created and annihilated as a unit. Aristotle - Physics

Aristotle 227 a 7: 'Since all change is between opposites and opposites are either contraries or contradictories, and there is nothing between contradictories, it is clear that the intermediate or 'between' can only exist when there are contraries.'

[page 92]

Monday 26 January 2015

Over the last fifty years I have given the idea [of making the Universe into God] a lot of thought and become convinced that it deserves a hearing.

Euclid fl 300 bc, Aristotle 384-322 bc, Plato 428-348 bce

John Dee Wiki: His ultimate goal was to help bring forth a unified world religion through the healing of the breach of the Catholic and Protestant churches ans the recapture of the pure theology of the ancients. John Dee - Wikipedia

On continuity: basically the task is to rebuild physics on logical continuity rather than geometrical continuity to reveal its characteristic divine intellect.

Practical people are concerned with measurement because they must make things fit into whatever space they are occupying.

Absolute monarch answers to no one and so is completely irresponsible.

Responsibility builds civilizations, care for others. The right, the monarchists say everybody for himself and may the top dog rule. The left says we are all in this together and if we cooperate rather than compete we will be better off.

Tuesday 27 January 2015

Aristotle's notion that continuity requires overlap is reflected in his use of the middle term in logic. Modern logic has bypassed this by assigning binary truth values to logical inputs and computing the outputs

[page 93]

using deterministic functions like and, or, not. Middle term - Wikipedia

Tunnelling - paradigm change - change of state

The bandwidths of pleasure and pain. Pain, low complexity, high signal to noise ratio, pleasure high complexity, low signal to noise (from a power point of view) but high (from an entropy point of view) [so relatively error free]. Submission wrestling vs consensual sensuality. Everything we observe in the Universe is a consequence of local action, where 'local' for quantum mechanics, which is non-local, means logically rather than geometrically local.

Wednesday 28 January 2015

Thursday 29 January 2015

Friday 30 January 2015

Aristotle first touched on the idea of logical continuity when he introduced the middle term to connect premisses to a conclusion in his logical work. Aristotle

Saturday 31 January 2015

What does scientific theology have to offer the world? In contrast to Christianity and neo-liberalism that concentrate on individual salvation, it shows that we are all in this together and that human groups are systems or organisms just like plants or animals, with diversification o cellular tools contributing to the welfare of the whole. in a nutshell, socialism is more in tune with reality than individualism

Is the Universe Divine knocked back by Zygon because the approach is too broad for a scholarly article!

[page 94]

My problem is that documentation is very boring compared to discovery, and I need a new bright idea to get enthusiastic about. From the perspective of symmetry with respect to complexity. the foundation of social unity is logical continuity, ie protocols that enable everyone in the social group to communicate with one another, The ultimate consequence of the breakdown of such protocols is murder - I do not understand you so I find it necessary to kill you, you are in my way. From a global perspective, the foundation of human unity is the physical and biological unity of the planet. The Catholic Church by constructing a false alternative reality in which it considers itself to be the one true Church and all the others to be wrong is, like many similar organizations the root of evil in the world, fragmenting something that is in fact a unity. God is one, and we must, like the Hebrews, reject the notion that there are many incompatible gods.

Governments lose their way because politics floats free of any grounding in reality and complexifies into personalities, secrecy and gossip, so that government stops, as we can see with the current Australian administration and many other around the world.

Back to where I began in Ground for Concern [1977]: requisite variety. Elliott

Pitch to Guardian: Is there a silver bullet?

Our world seems to be going downhill. Does it have to be so? It seems as the Earth got along pretty well before we came along. Now we are in a mess. Can we have missed something? I think so. There is a massive defect in our theology. Or more accurately, we no longer have a theology. Theology is the traditional theory of everything and provides the fundamental references system we use navigate our way through life. No wonder we are lost.

Our traditional theology is based on the writings of inspired individuals who mostly lived thousands of years ago. They lived in a different world. It would not be surprising if their ideas have been overtaken by new developments.

Theology is the science of God. Traditionally, God is both everything and nothing. The traditional mystical view is that from our point of view God is nothing. In the words of Christianity's premier theologian, God is omnino simplex. Absolutely simple. No distinguishing marks to provide a hold for the human mind. A mystery totally beyond our ken.

On the other hand for those who claim to rule by divine right God is everything, present all the time everywhere micromanaging every event, omnisicient, omnipotent, ubiquitous and eternal.

Neither of these pictures is very helpful by itself, but taken together they have been and remain a potent source of inspiration for us. First, the simplicity of God shows that God is one. There are no divisions in it. From this we derive the fundamental act of human faith: whatever is is part of some huge system which works, so don't worry.

The devil, on the other hand, is in the details. How do we fit in with this divine system of control if we want to survive? The ancient view is listen to the prophets. The modern view is listen to the scientists. Modern civilization, insofar as it works, is based on scientific understanding of how the world works. Once we could not live in cities because the filth and disease overwhelmed us. Then we developed sewerage. The enormous expense of digging up a whole city and laying pipes was amply justified by the improvements in human life.

The sewer network is a paradigm for all the other networks that make civilized life possible: water, transport, mail, telephony and now computer networks that can transmit anything a computer can do.

Whatever the prophets say about creation, we can be pretty certain that it evolved from a simple beginning, just like the mystical paradigm of God. Hawking and Ellis predicted the existence of this singularity and all the evidence suggests that their prediction is true.

One thing we can learn from evolution is that complicated things are made out of simple parts. The world is built on a platform of fundamental particles that combine and interact to give us atoms, molecules, cells, planets, galaxies and so on. This hierarchy of structure provides us with a way to understand the world.

The bodily systems that sustain are lives are studied in physiology, and the fundamental questions are all matters of communication and control: how do the trillions of cells in our bodies work together to make us what we are? It must be possible because we are alive. The study of communication and control is cybernetics. Cybernetics depends heavily on the principle of requisite complexity. A simple system cannot control a complex one.

This is the cybernetic silver bullet. It means the death of monarchy. How can one person control many? Only by violence, by restricting the behaviour of many down to the behaviour of one. The worst effects of monarchy can be seen in the theological world. Here the monarchs want to keep total control of the doctrine and excommunicate anyone who steps out of line. This sort of behaviour has got to stop if we are to fit in with divine reality. The world obeys cybernetics.

I live in Australia, and we are enduring a very clear example of cybernetically ignorant government right now. We have a prime minister who has positioned himself as the captain of a ship, master of all he surveys. This outlook has led him from political disaster to political disaster, and soon, (we hope) he will be gone.

The Australian government is just a local problem. We also have a global problem. The Roman Catholic Church is an absolute monarchy. There is no recourse from any judgement of the Pope. Over its two thousand year history the Church has demonstrated all the bloodthirsty characteristics of those who maintain doctrine by authority rather than conformity to reality. Violence and monarchy are intimately related.

My feeling is that peace on Earth will be greatly facilitated when the Roman Catholic Church becomes a scientifically based democracy. As it makes the transition, and explains, like the builders of sewerage systems, why the change is necessary, lesser monarchs and the people they rule might take note. Let the ire the silver bullet and initiate the process of converting the Catholic Church into an humane organization. Let the murder of God no longer be part of theological control.

Copyright:

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

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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!)

Ashby, W Ross, An Introduction to Cybernetics, Methuen 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'  Amazon   back

Elliott, Mary, and (Foreword by Paul Ehrlich), Ground for Concern, Penguin Books 1977 Preface: 'This book is neither a political manifesto nor a textbook on nuclear power. It is a reasoned statement of the concern that Australians, and people throughout the world, feel about the prospects of a nuclear future. The authors have tried to grapple honestly with the problems of the atomic age, which is our age. They have tried to speak about complex matters in plain language.'  Amazon   back

Everett III, Hugh, and Bryce S Dewitt, Neill Graham (editors), The Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Princeton University Press 1973 Jacket: 'A novel interpretation of quantum mechanics, first proposed in brief form by Hugh Everett in 1957, forms the nucleus around which this book has developed. The volume contains Dr Everett's short paper from 1957, "'Relativge State' formulation of quantum mechanics" and a far longer exposition of his interpretation entitled "The Theory of the Universal Wave Function" never before published. In addition other papers by Wheeler, DeWitt, Graham, Cooper and van Vechten provide further discussion of the same theme. Together they constitute virtually the entire world output of scholarly commentary on the Everett interpretation.'  Amazon   back

Hughes, I S, Elementary Particles, Cambridge Univerity Press 1991 Jacket: 'This is an extensively revised and updated edition of a text that has established itself as one of the standard undergraduate books on the subject of elementary particle physics.'  Amazon   back

Khinchin, A I, Mathematical Foundations of Information Theory (translated by P A Silvermann and M D Friedman), Dover 1957 Jacket: 'The first comprehensive introduction to information theory, this book places the work begun by Shannon and continued by McMillan, Feinstein and Khinchin on a rigorous mathematical basis. For the first time, mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, cyberneticists and communications engineers are offered a lucid, comprehensive introduction to this rapidly growing field.'  Amazon   back

Nicolis, G , and Ilya Prigogine, Self Organisation in Nonequilibrium Systems: From Dissipative Structures to Order through Fluctuations, Wiley Interscience 1977 General Introduction: 'The aim of the present monograph can ... be expressed as the studiy of self-organisation in non-equilibrium systems, characterised by the appearance of dissipative structures through the amplification of appropriate fluctuations. ... The natural approach to the problem of the emergence of new patterns is bifurcation theory. The purpose of this theory is to study the possible branching of solutions that may arise under certain conditions. We have tried to present a readable introduction to this rapidly expanding field ... Our main emphasis is in physical examples and simple but representative models, and our aim is to give the reader an idea of the variety of space-time structures that may arise through bifurcation. ... '  Amazon   back

Park, David Allen, Introduction to the Quantum Theory, McGraw-Hill Book Company 1992   Amazon   back

Streater, Raymond F, and Arthur S Wightman, PCT, Spin, Statistics and All That, Princeton University Press 2005 Amazon product description: ' PCT, Spin and Statistics, and All That is the classic summary of and introduction to the achievements of Axiomatic Quantum Field Theory. This theory gives precise mathematical responses to questions like: What is a quantized field? What are the physically indispensable attributes of a quantized field? Furthermore, Axiomatic Field Theory shows that a number of physically important predictions of quantum field theory are mathematical consequences of the axioms. Here Raymond Streater and Arthur Wightman treat only results that can be rigorously proved, and these are presented in an elegant style that makes them available to a broad range of physics and theoretical mathematics.'  Amazon   back

Veltman, Martinus, Diagrammatica: The Path to the Feynman Rules, Cambridge University Press 1994 Jacket: 'This book provides an easily accessible introduction to quantum field theory via Feynman rules and calculations in particle physics. The aim is to make clear what the physical foundations of present-day field theory are, to clarify the physical content of Feynman rules, and to outline their domain of applicability. ... The book includes valuable appendices that review some essential mathematics, including complex spaces, matrices, the CBH equation, traces and dimensional regularization. ...'  Amazon   back

von Neumann, John, and Robert T Beyer (translator), Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Princeton University Press 1983 Jacket: '. . . a revolutionary book that caused a sea change in theoretical physics. . . . JvN begins by presenting the theory of Hermitean operators and Hilbert spaces. These provide the framework for transformation theory, which JvN regards as the definitive form of quantum mechanics. . . . Regarded as a tour de force at the time of its publication, this book is still indispensable for those interested in the fundamental issues of quantum mechanics.'  Amazon   back

Wheeler, John Archibald, and Wojciech Hubert Zurek, Quantum Theory and Measurement (Princeton Series on Physics), Princeton University Press 1983 Amazon customer review: 'This is a must-own collection for anyone studying or working in quantum physics. These are the original papers concerning the so-called problem of measurement. Minority views are included; for instance, both parts of Bohm's 1952 paper are here. Not only physicists, but also historians and philosophers of science, will want to read these papers.' Paul E Oppenheimer  Amazon   back

Wigner, Eugene, Symmetries and Reflections: Scientific Essays , MIT Press 1970 Jacket: 'This volume contains some of Professor Wigner's more popular papers which, in their diversity of subject and clarity of style, reflect the author's deep analytical powers and the remarkable scope of his interests. Included are articles on the nature of physical symmetry, invariance and conservation principles, the structure of solid bodies and of the compound nucleus, the theory of nuclear fission, the effects of radiation on solids, and the epistemological problems of quantum mechanics. Other articles deal with the story of the first man-made nuclear chain reaction, the long term prospects of nuclear energy, the problems of Big Science, and the role of mathematics in the natural sciences. In addition, the book contains statements of Wigner's convictions and beliefs as well as memoirs of his friends Enrico Fermi and John von Neumann. Eugene P. Wigner is one of the architects of the atomic age. He worked with Enrco Fermi at the Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago at the beginning of the Manhattan Project, and he has gone on to receive the highest honours that science and his country can bestow, including the Nobel Prize for physics, the Max Planck Medal, the Enrico Fermi Award and the Atoms for Peace Award. '.  Amazon   back

Papers

Pennycuick, C J, "The soaring flight of vultures", Scientific American, 229, 6, December 1973, page 102-109. 'The six common vultures of East Africa can make a round trip of as much as 200 kilometres by skilfully riding updrafts. How they do so is examined with the aid of a powered glider.' . back

Salart, Daniel, et al, "Testing the speed of 'spooky action at a distance'", Nature, 454, , 14 August 2008, page 861-864. 'Correlations are generally described by one of two mechanisms: either a first event influences a second one by sending information encoded in bosons or other physical carriers, or the correlated events have some common causes in their shared history. Quantum physics predicts an entirely different kind of cause for some correlations, named entanglement. This reveals itself in correlations that violate Bell inequalities (implying that they cannot be described by common causes) between space-like separated events (implying that they cannot be described by classical communication). Many Bell tests have been performed, and loopholes related to locality and detection have been closed in several independent experiments. It is still possible that a first event could influence a second, but the speed of this hypothetical influence (Einstein's 'spooky action at a distance') would need to be defined in some universal privileged reference frame and be greater than the speed of light. Here we put stringent experimental bounds on the speed of all such hypothetical influences. We performed a Bell test over more than 24 hours between two villages separated by 18 km and approximately east–west oriented, with the source located precisely in the middle. We continuously observed two-photon interferences well above the Bell inequality threshold. Taking advantage of the Earth's rotation, the configuration of our experiment allowed us to determine, for any hypothetically privileged frame, a lower bound for the speed of the influence. For example, if such a privileged reference frame exists and is such that the Earth's speed in this frame is less than 10-3 times that of the speed of light, then the speed of the influence would have to exceed that of light by at least four orders of magnitude.. back

Shannon, Claude E, "Communication in the Presence of Noise", Proceedings of the IEEE, 86, 2, February 1998, page 447-457. Reprint of Shannon, Claude E. "Communication in the Presence of Noise." Proceedings of the IEEE, 37 (January 1949) : 10-21. 'A method is developed for representing any communication system geometrically. Messages and the corresponding signals are points in two function spaces, and the modulation process is a mapping of one space into the other. Using this representation, a number of results in communication theory are deduced concerning expansion and compression of bandwidth and the threshold effect. Formulas are found for the maximum rate of transmission of binary digits over a system when the signal is perturbed by various types of noise. Some of the properties of "ideal" systems which transmit this maximum rate are discussed. The equivalent number of binary digits per second of certain information sources is calculated.' . back

Turing, Alan, "On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem", Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, 2, 42, 12 November 1937, page 230-265. 'The "computable" numbers maybe described briefly as the real numbers whose expressions as a decimal are calculable by finite means. Although the subject of this paper is ostensibly the computable numbers, it is almost as easy to define and investigate computable functions of an integrable variable or a real or computable variable, computable predicates and so forth. The fundamental problems involved are, however, the same in each case, and I have chosen the computable numbers for explicit treatment as involving the least cumbrous technique. I hope shortly to give an account of the rewlations of the computable numbers, functions and so forth to one another. This will include a development of the theory of functions of a real variable expressed in terms of computable numbers. According to my definition, a number is computable if its decimal can be written down by a machine'. back

Zurek, Wojciech Hubert, "Decoherence, einselection, and the quantum origins of the classical", Review of Modern Physics, 75, , 2003, page 715-775. The manner in which states of some quantum systems become effectively classical is of great significance for the foundations of quantum physics, as well as for problems of practical interest such as quantum engineering. In the past two decades it has become increasingly clear that many (perhaps all) of the symptoms of classicality can be induced in quantum systems by their environments. Thus decoherence is caused by the interaction in which the environment in effect monitors certain observables of the system, destroying coherence between the pointer states corresponding to their eigenvalues. This leads to environment-induced superselection or einselection, a quantum process associated with selective loss of information. Einselected pointer states are stable. They can retain correlations with the rest of the universe in spite of the environment. Einselection enforces classicality by imposing an effective ban on the vast majority of the Hilbert space, eliminating especially the flagrantly nonlocal “Schrödinger-cat states.” The classical structure of phase space emerges from the quantum Hilbert space in the appropriate macroscopic limit. Combination of einselection with dynamics leads to the idealizations of a point and of a classical trajectory. In measurements, einselection replaces quantum entanglement between the apparatus and the measured system with the classical correlation. Only the preferred pointer observable of the apparatus can store information that has predictive power. When the measured quantum system is microscopic and isolated, this restriction on the predictive utility of its correlations with the macroscopic apparatus results in the effective “collapse of the wave packet.” The existential interpretation implied by einselection regards observers as open quantum systems, distinguished only by their ability to acquire, store, and process information. Spreading of the correlations with the effectively classical pointer states throughout the environment allows one to understand “classical reality” as a property based on the relatively objective existence of the einselected states. Effectively classical pointer states can be “found out” without being re-prepared, e.g, by intercepting the information already present in the environment. The redundancy of the records of pointer states in the environment (which can be thought of as their “fitness” in the Darwinian sense) is a measure of their classicality. A new symmetry appears in this setting. Environment-assisted invariance or envariance sheds new light on the nature of ignorance of the state of the system due to quantum correlations with the environment and leads to Born’s rules and to reduced density matrices, ultimately justifying basic principles of the program of decoherence and einselection.. back

Links

Aristotle, Prior Analytics (translated by A J Jenkinson), 'I call that term middle which is itself contained in another and contains another in itself: in position also this comes in the middle.' back

Emmy Noether, English translation of 'Invariant variation problems' , "Invariante Variationsprobleme," Nachr. v. d. Ges. d. Wiss. zu Göttingen 1918, pp 235-257 English translation by M. A. Tavel. Reprinted from "Transport Theory and Statistical Mechanics" 1(3), 183-207 (1971). Provided to this site by M.A. Tavel and Henry M. Paynter. back

Emmy Noether - Wikipedia, Emmy Noether - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Amalie Emmy Noether, . . . (23 March 1882 – 14 April 1935) was a German mathematician known for her groundbreaking contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics. Described by Albert Einstein and others as the most important woman in the history of mathematics, she revolutionized the theories of rings, fields, and algebras. In physics, Noether's theorem explains the fundamental connection between symmetry and conservation laws.' back

John Dee - Wikipedia, John Dee - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'John Dee (13 July 1527 – 1608 or 1609) was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, occult philosopher, imperialist[5] and adviser to Queen Elizabeth I. He devoted much of his life to the study of alchemy, divination and Hermetic philosophy. Dee straddled the worlds of science and magic just as they were becoming distinguishable. One of the most learned men of his age, he had been invited to lecture on advanced algebra at the University of Paris while still in his early twenties. Dee was an ardent promoter of mathematics and a respected astronomer, as well as a leading expert in navigation, having trained many of those who would conduct England's voyages of discovery. Simultaneously with these efforts, Dee immersed himself in the worlds of magic, astrology and Hermetic philosophy.' back

Oracle machine - Wikipedia, Oracle machine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In complexity theory and computability theory, an oracle machine is an abstract machine used to study decision problems. It can be visualized as a Turing machine with a black box, called an oracle, which is able to decide certain decision problems in a single operation. The problem can be of any complexity class. Even undecidable problems, like the halting problem, can be used.' back

Quantum electrodynamics - Wikipedia, Quantum electrodynamics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Quantum electrodynamics (QED) is a relativistic quantum field theory of electrodynamics. QED was developed by a number of physicists, beginning in the late 1920s. It basically describes how light and matter interact. More specifically it deals with the interactions between electrons, positrons and photons. QED mathematically describes all phenomena involving electrically charged particles interacting by means of exchange of photons. It has been called "the jewel of physics" for its extremely accurate predictions of quantities like the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron, and the Lamb shift of the energy levels of hydrogen. back

Richard P. Feynman, Nobel Lecture, Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1965: 'We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as possible, to cover all the tracks, to not worry about the blind alleys or to describe how you had the wrong idea first, and so on. So there isn't any place to publish, in a dignified manner, what you actually did in order to get to do the work, although, there has been in these days, some interest in this kind of thing. Since winning the prize is a personal thing, I thought I could be excused in this particular situation, if I were to talk personally about my relationship to quantum electrodynamics, rather than to discuss the subject itself in a refined and finished fashion. Furthermore, since there are three people who have won the prize in physics, if they are all going to be talking about quantum electrodynamics itself, one might become bored with the subject. So, what I would like to tell you about today are the sequence of events, really the sequence of ideas, which occurred, and by which I finally came out the other end with an unsolved problem for which I ultimately received a prize.' back

Wojciech Hubert Zurek, Decoherence, einselection and the quantum origins of the classical, 'Decoherence is caused by the interaction with the environment which in effect monitors certain observables of the system, destroying coherence between the pointer states corresponding to their eigenvalues. This leads to environment-induced superselection or einselection, a quantum process associated with selective loss of information. Einselected pointer states are stable. They can retain correlations with the rest of the Universe in spite of the environment. Einselection enforces classicality by imposing an effective ban on the vast majority of the Hilbert space, eliminating especially the flagrantly nonlocal “Schr¨odinger cat” states. Classical structure of phase space emerges from the quantum Hilbert space in the appropriate macroscopic limit: Combination of einselection with dynamics leads to the idealizations of a point and of a classical trajectory. In measurements, einselection replaces quantum entanglement between the apparatus and the measured system with the classical correlation. Only the preferred pointer observable of the apparatus can store information that has predictive power. When the measured quantum system is microscopic and isolated, this restriction on the predictive utility of its correlations with the macroscopic apparatus results in the effective “collapse of the wavepacket”. Existential interpretation implied by einselection regards observers as open quantum systems, distinguished only by their ability to acquire, store, and process information. Spreading of the correlations with the effectively classical pointer states throughout the environment allows one to understand ‘classical reality’ as a property based on the relatively objective existence of the einselected states: They can be “found out” without being re-prepared, e.g, by intercepting the information already present in the environment. The redundancy of the records of pointer states in the environment (which can be thought of as their ‘fitness’ in the Darwinian sense) is a measure of their classicality. A new symmetry appears in this setting: Environment - assisted invariance or envariance sheds a new light on the nature of ignorance of the state of the system due to quantum correlations with the environment, and leads to Born’s rules and to the reduced density matrices, ultimately justifying basic principles of the program of decoherence and einselection. back