"natural theology > notes > 2016

vol VII: Notes

2016

Notes

Sunday 13 March 2016 - Saturday 19 March 2016

[Notebook: DB 80: Cosmic plumbing]

[page 41]

Sunday 13 March 2016

Time goes by and work goes on but I feel that I am getting no closer to my goal, whatever that may be. This is in effect an observation supporting the notion that the fun lies in the journey rather than the destination. Every trip I take ends back at home, somewhere I know well and feel secure. The excitement lies in the unforeseen events on the journey. Each of these events has a conclusion or closure, however, which qualifies it as an event, and it is a step along my spiralling journey toward a credible account of an observable deity, is an observable whole, my piece of the life of god.

Language 'flattens' complex parallel structures into serial strings, like a traffic roundabout [changing the two dimensional intersection problem into a single dimension].

Monday 14 March 2016

Violence is motivated by fear. Fear, motivated by the belief that the others (heretics) may attack (maybe motivated by their

[page 42]

own fear (eg Hitler and the Jews)). These days we are experiencing terror of terror, stirred up by the fear of others, eg Muslims, Sharia Law, etc. Also motivated by the fact that there is money to be made from weapons and security. Sharia - Wikipdia, Dana Priest and William M. Arkin: Top Secret America

From humanism to universalism, the next step beyond [the step] from Christianity to humanism.

violence = not-peace = liquidation of capital
peace - capital accumulation.

How do we measure capital? Not by quantity but by utility = productivity = reward / cost.

love - cooperation vs hate - mutual destruction. Every linguistic product involves a duality. One can only make unitary exclamations which are nevertheless dual in that their existence depends on the existence of non-exclamations, ie modulation.

Tuesday 15 March 2016

Wednesday 16 March 2016

I wish I could write text as beautiful and powerful as the universe (divinity) it is suposed to represent.

The boundaries on human action and behavior in general are boundaries on insight - we cannot do things,

[page 43]

nor can the world do things that it does not 'know' how to do, that is it cannot move from an initial condition to to a final condition unless a path, ie algorithm, is available. This seems to relate to Caratheodory's theorem and the second law of thermodynamics. Most of our 'progress' lies in discovering new ways to achieve old dreams like flight or peace in our lives. The randomness of insight might also explain the randomness of quantum events, each of which is equivalent to an insight. the lining up of a series of events to give a completed process. So we can (maybe) compute the probability of a quantum event if we know the probabilities of the more elementary events which are steps to the execution of the relavant eigenfunction. Callen: Thermodynamics

Thursday 17 March 2016

Little bits and pieces, but still not enough to make a picture. Yet all big processes are built from small processes. The assembly of the small processes is random as a consequence of requisite variety, words cannot control sentences. On the other hand we need to explain how a big process, like gravitation or the construction of a book, creates the small processes (particles, words) from which it is constructed, that is design. It seems both in principle and in practice that design is a process of trial and error which in the human case is greatly facilitated by imagination. How does this apply in the non human world?

Friday 18 March 2016

[page 44]

We learn from quantum mechanics that the simplest operations in the universe are complex addition (superposition, parallel) and multiplication (serial, ie the passage of time).

Why complex? Because recursive?

The Church promised me a heaven it could not deliver and now its brand is trashed in my mind, and I am raking over the ruins to find second hand and recyclable materials to aid in the construction of the new secular religion that I see growing around me.

Saturday 19 March 2016

Cornwell Seminary Boy page 47: Imitation of Christ: 'Avoid the concourse of men as much as you can, for the discussion of worldly affairs is very bad for the soul, even though they are discussed with good intention. For we are quickly defiled and enslaved by vanity.' Inhumanity. Cornwell, a Kempis: Imitation of Christ

Cornwell appears to have been a convinced believer during his seminary days and this gave him strength to deal with the hardships My short monastic career, on the other hand, seems to have been a period of sceptical crankiness which somehow doomed me to failure by not fitting in, I have continued to not fit in, when I find it very hard to settle into a comfortable feeling of belonging but continue to struggle to find a place for myself in the world, often conscious that I have not 'lived up to expectations'.

[page 45]

Cornwell page 100: 'The feeling of peace ws so intense that I believed that Our Lady had granted me a special and personal grace on her feast day.' Never happened to me. Too critical.

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

Please click here to buy a copy of this book and support this project

a Kempis, Thomas, and Aloysius Croft (Translator), Harold Bolton (Translator), The Imitation of Christ, Dover Publications 2003 Amazon Product Description 'This classic, second only to the Bible for religious instruction and inspiration, has brought understanding and comfort to millions for centuries. Written in a candid and conversational style, the topics include liberation from worldly inclinations, preparation and consolations of prayer, and the place of eucharistic communion in a devout life.'
Amazon back

Callen, Herbert B, Thermodynamics: an introduction to the physical theories of equilibrium thermostatics and irreversible thermodynamics, John Wiley and Sons 1962 Preface: 'In writing this book I have forgone the conventional inductive development of thermodynamics in favor of a postulational approach, which I believe is more direct and logically simple. . . . In order to motivate the postulates, an elementary qualitative statistical discussion is given in an appendix, and some appeal is made to experimental observations, but the spirit of the development is that the postulates are best justified by a posteriori success of the theory rather than by a priori proof.'back

Clausewitz, Carl von, and Michael Eliot Howard (translator), Peter Paret (Introduction), On War, Princeton University Press 1999 Amazon Product Description 'On War is the most significant attempt in Western history to understand war, both in its internal dynamics and as an instrument of policy. Since the work's first appearance in 1832, it has been read throughout the world, and has stimulated generations of soldiers, statesmen, and intellectuals.'
Amazon back

Cornwell, John, Seminary Boy, Fourth Estate 2006 Jacket: 'In one of the most extraordinary memoirs of recent years, the acclaimed writer John Cornwell tells us of a world now vanished: the colourful community of priests in charge; the boys and their sometimes intense and passionate friendships; the hovering threat of abuse over this cloistered environment. And he tells us of his struggle to come to terms with a shameful secret from his London childhood — a vicious sexual attack that haunts his time at Cotton.
Amazon back

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 back

Hofstadter, Douglas R, Goedel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Basic/Harvester 1979 An illustrated essay on the philosophy of mathematics. Formal systems, recursion, self reference and meaning explored with a dazzling array of examples in music, dialogue, text and graphics.
Amazon back

Hofstadter, Douglas R, and Daniel C Dennett, The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self & Soul, Bantam 1985 Jacket: 'In this unique, mind-jolting book, DH, the author of G¨del, Escher, Bach, the intellectual best seller that won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize, and Philosopher Daniel Dennett, author of the widely acclaimed Brainstorms, explore the meaning of self and consciousness through the perspectives of literature, artificial intelligence, psychology and much more. . . . '
Amazon back

Tolle, Echhart, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, New World Library 1999 Amazon product description: 'Eckhart Tolle is emerging as one of today's most inspiring teachers. In The Power of Now, a #1 national bestseller, the author describes his transition from despair to self-realization soon after his 29th birthday. Tolle took another ten years to understand this transformation, during which time he evolved a philosophy that has parallels in Buddhism, relaxation techniques, and meditation theory but is also eminently practical. In The Power of Now he shows readers how to recognize themselves as the creators of their own pain, and how to have a pain-free existence by living fully in the present. Accessing the deepest self, the true self, can be learned, he says, by freeing ourselves from the conflicting, unreasonable demands of the mind and living "present, fully and intensely, in the Now."'
Amazon back

Papers

Scholes, R J, R Biggs, "A bioldiversity intactness index", Nature, 434, 7029, 3 March, page 45-49. 'The nations of the world have set themselves a target of reducing the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. Here we propose a biodiversity intactness index (BII) for assessing progress toward this target that is simple and practical - but sensitive to important factors that influence biodiversity status - and which satisfies the criteria for policy relevance set by the Convention of Biological Diversity. ... '. back

Wilson, Kenneth G, "The Renormalisation Group and Critical Phenomena", Reviews of Modern Physics, 55, , July 1983, page 583. back

Wilson, Kenneth G, "Problems in physics with many scales of length", Scientific American, 241, 2, August 1979, page 140-157. 'Physical systems as varied as magnets and fluids are alike in having fluctuations in structure over a vast range of sizes. A novel method called the renormalisation group has been invented to explain them'. back

Links

Adam Lee, Are we ready to confrant death without religion?, 'For centuries, the Christian church wrote the script for how westerners deal with death. There was the deathbed confession, the last rites, the pallbearers, the obligatory altar call, the burial ceremony, the stone, the angels-and-harps imagery. Yet that archaic and stereotypical vision of death, like a mossy and weather-worn statue, is crumbling – and in its place, something new and better has a chance to grow.' back

Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, Top Secret America: A hidden world, growing beyond control, 'The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.' back

David Sarna Galdi, The Real Traitors in Israel are Not the Arabs, 'Mr. Harel’s argument is based not on truths, but on what can only be a hateful, populist desire to sow fear and disparage Arabs. The truth that Mr. Harel has chosen to ignore is that most Israeli Arabs live in harmony with their Jewish Israeli neighbors, whatever their political opinions or allegiances might be.' back

Jacon S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, Clinton's Bold Vision, Hidden in Plain Sight, 'Mrs. Clinton is heir to an enormously successful bipartisan governing tradition. Yet this tradition has been disowned by the Republican Party and has lost allure within a significant segment of the Democratic Party; it also runs sharply against the grain of current public sentiments about government and politicians. In this hostile environment, it should come as no surprise that Mrs. Clinton has proved reluctant to lead the charge for a more balanced discussion of government’s role. back

Neera Tanden and Matt Brown, New Ideas for the Future of the Progressive Movement, back

Paul Krugman, Republican Elite's Reign of Disdain, 'the argument that the social safety net causes social decay by coddling slackers runs up against the hard truth that every other advanced country has a more generous social safety net than we do, yet the rise in mortality among middle-aged whites in America is unique: Everywhere else, it is continuing its historic decline.' back

Sharia - Wikipdia, Sharia - Wikipdia, the free encyclopedia, 'Sharia, Islamic sharia or Islamic law ( . . is the religious legal system governing the members of the Islamic faith. It is derived from the religious precepts of Islam, particularly the Quran and the Hadith. The term sharia comes from the Arabic language term sharīʿah, which means a body of moral and religious law derived from religious prophecy, as opposed to human legislation.' back