vol VII: Notes
2016
Notes
Sunday 31 July 2016 - Saturday 6 August 2016
[Notebook: DB 80: Cosmic plumbing]
[page 170]
Sunday 31 July 2016
One cannot act reasonably without a feasible plan. This in effect scotched my first try to be a preacher because I could not believe what they wanted me to preach. Since then I have explored the alternative view, that the universe is divine, as thoroughly as I can and feel that the idea is consistent with observation. I am trying to express this in Scientific Theology.
[page 171]
. . .
Giselle Au-Nihen Nguyen: Higher layer (relationship) must respect the integrity of the participants, as molecules do atoms, through an 'energy gap' the difference in electron energies in atoms and molecules. In human affairs this energy gap is mandated by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which defines the minmum space of existence in the human layer, upon which we can build. Giselle Au-Nihen Nguyen
A higher layer is a set of relationships between elements of a lower layer. In physics these relationships are mapped onto space-time, the fundamental space of deterministic (observable) systems underlain by the unobservable systems that drive the kinematic behaviour of the fixed points. God is the dynamics within which the fixed points are to be found.
Warm sunny winter's day after a freezing night.
A half life is the most precise measure available to us when we are predicting when a [quantum] event will happen, even though there is no uncertainty about the details of the event itself, ie which of a set of exact eigenvalues will we see.
The only real preaching I ever did was in my monastic days when I would give little talks to the brethren about scientific matters culled from Scientific American to which I subscribed. I think even then I was trying to couple psycho-physiological research with the account of knowledge given by Aristotle. Aristotle did not know how information is transformed in our cognitive systems, but the basic idea that our
[page 172]
knowledge is within us was on the right track, and that there [is] a processing pipeline from senses to intellect, and all knowledge entered by this route.
'The time dependence of φ is causal, not statistical', von N, page 210 (again). von Neumann: Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics
The skin is the interface, so we we can describe processes as subcutaneous, or subcutaneous with [communication] through the skin, ie boundary of the system.
The theory explains which the world is continually moving to the 'left' increasing entropy and complexity. How do we measure the complexity of a network: memory / bandwidth.
Monday 1 August 2016
A standard? Quotes from the King James Version, the 'definitive' introduction of the Bible into the English speaking world (1611). King James Version - Wikipedia
Green theology. The time has come to rethink the world. The old systems are breaking under the strain. Whether we like it or not, the evidence suggets that the universe (including us) evolved to our present state over the past fourteen billion years. The old story . . .
[page 173]
One feature of reality is that if you push it it pushes back. This idea is explored and exploited using all the mathematical and technical jargon of physics. We are part of this reality. It created us. The universe in which we find ourselves plays all the roles of god, not just creation but guidance and failure if we fali to heed the guidance. Occupational health and safety.
Space-time: the heart of special relativity is the Lorentz transformation which enables us to transform space-time / momentum-energy between inertial gframes. Why did we need eenral relativity?: to bring in non-inertial motion.
We can begin by studying the idea of evolution of evolution, stretching back before Darwin.
Tuesday 2 August 2016
Pais, Einstein: 'the birth of special relativity "den Schritt", the step', page 163. Every insight is a discontinuity brought about by finding a new way to arrange things. Pais
Special relativity is a new kinematics which nevertheless couples dynamics (momentum and energy) to space and time.
Pais page 170: Harold Bloom: The anxiety of Influence: "Strong poets make history by misreading one another, so as to clear imaginative space for themselves.". "strong poets, major figues with the persistence to wrestle with their strong precursors, even to the the death.' by which time they may or may not have won.
Evolution, intelligence, creation and annihilation.
[page 174]
Green theology. The essence of greenness is to recognize the role that they natural world plays on our existence and so treat the world with due respect. The universe fulfills for us in reality all the roles that have traditionally been given to God, creator, sustainer, parent and judge. The respect doe to the universe is the respect due to God. This observation is the starting point for green theology.
Our biggst problem is understanding ourselves. Why do people act sometimes as lovers and concerned parents, at other times as murderers, terrorists, practising genocide to eliminate opposing points of view. The immense dynamic range of human responses is best understood in the light of our evolutionary history, the process by which the universe created us. Here we replace the simple story "God created the people" [with] the fourteen billion year process that led to us by ultimately working out how to get a vast number of atoms to form as community we call a person. By seeing how this was developed step by step we begin to understand the powerful intelligence manifested by the creation of the world.
Of coure, many of the adherents of the old God laugh at green theologians. Their God is a total control freak and gives no responsibility at all to humans for their fate. It is all preordained, a history of salvation that relies entirely on the notion that God is a very loving and very helicopter parent who makes everything come out right in the end. We can go on burning coal like there is no tomorrow because our God will take care of it.
The green god is nothing like this. The old god is invulnerable. The new god is subject to Newton;s third law: to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
[page 175]
The world has a nature, a personality, and we must respect it as we once respected the old gods if we are to survive.
and so to the usual story, universe divine, theology science.
Pais page 172: ' "Lorentz had already recognized that the transformations named after him are essential for the analysis of Maxwell's equations, and Poincare deepened the insight still further." '
Special relativity, velocity and computation. The Lorentz algorithm / symmetry
General relativity, coupling, networking, force, mass, physically embodied process, action and energy. This is second order, creating and annihilating.
Special relativity is linear and computable, Minkowski metric, Lorentz algorithm. This is expressed in continuous mathematics but the logical reality must be symbolic / orthogonal / non-linear in execution (even if the results are linear because only linear functions exist at this level of complexity), an unbounded space of inertial dust, no interaction but idealized (classical) observation (formal). [continuousl] Formalism cannot be fully implemented with physically represented information because the smallest pixel is h.
Pais: 178: Einstein ' " . . . if there exists but one single object that falls in a gravitational field in a way different from all the others, then with its help the observer could realize that he is in a gravitational field and is falling in it. If such an object does not exist however—as experiment shows with great accuracy— then the observer lacks any objective means of
[page 176]
perceiving himself as falling in a gravitational field. Rather he has the right to consider his state as one of rest and his environment as field-free with respect to gravitation. The experimentally known matter independence of the acceleration of fall is therefore a powerful argument for the fact that the relativity postulate has to be extended to coordinate systems which, relative to eachother, are in non-uniform motion." '
page 179; ' "I was sitting in a chair . . . " '
' " . . . it was most unsatisfactory to me that although the relation between inertia and energy is so beautifully derived [in special relativity], there is nop relation between inertia and weight." ' Between energy and weight.
page 180: ' ". . . we shall. . . assume the complete physical equivalence of the gravitational field and the corresponding acceleration of the reference frame." '
page 195: 'Thus in 1911 we discern the first glimplses of the new Einstein program: to derive the equivalence principle from a new theory of gravitation.'
derive = logically connect = program a computer to bind together in a proof [codec]
Lorentz transformation = measurement across a velocity gap. General relativity - measurement
[page 17]
across an acceleration gap - transformation across the gap.
No gravitation without clocks, ie we need periodic function (quantum mechanics) as a foundation for constructing general relativity. It is all a matter of time.
So we approximate the theory of gravitation with an infinitely dense continuous network and then digitize it at the Planck scale which is so small that the continuous theory of gravitation remains the asymptote toward [which] the complexifying digital theory tends. Once we have this transfinite network we can start abstracting our way down to the zero network, the initial singularity.
Pais page 205: equivalence holds only locally
In quantum gravity the quantum of action may be nh, n integral — an action is an [one] action even when it comprises many actions. What we are trying to achieve here is equivalence between God (pure action) and the quantum of action. Size is irrelevant, it is the existence of an event that counts [the initial singularity has no bounds on its size].
page 219: ' "the corresponding natural distance can be determined only if the gμν which determine the gravitational field are known. . . . The gravitational field influences the measuring bodies . . . in a definite way." With these words, he states the broad program of the theory of relativity.'
Wednesday 3 August 2016
Do I believe myself? This has always been a worry, particularly since I have always been a
[page 178]
bit of a fish out of water. The question became critical in my monastic days when I had to ask myself if I really had a vocation to the priesthood. The first question being what is a vocation? The orthodox view is that a vocation is a special call from God to act in a certain way, like acting as though one had powers to consecrate bread and wine, forgive sins and so on. But is any of this real? I was a bit sceptical, but took some comfort from the view that I had been carefully questioned about all this and my behaviour watched by the authorities, so they must have approved of me. This went on until if was disapproved and asked to leave This was very clear cut to me I could no longer believe the Catholic story. But I still have a vocation of sorts to work with the real God to save the world from the fake God cooked up by the Catholic dictatorial politicians to claim that they rule by divine right. Catholic Encyclopedia: Ecclesiastical and Religious Vocation
Space carries things from place to place toplogically [no metric? How does Hilbert space map to 4D space?].
Space has two layers, the shapeless smooth 4D Gaussian version with no metric and the next version coupling metric to energy/momentum/space/time. Can we identify the lower layer as quantum mechanics and gravitation as a second order effect of quantum mechanics built into space at creation?
'the gravitational field influences the measuring bodies': influences measure and measured equally so their relationship is fixed, a la quantum mechanics.
The Catholic history of salvation is a very large scale attempt and durable attempt
[page 179]
to work out how the world works, based on the absolute sovereignty of their imagined god, a political / legal fiction.
Intellectual evolution: evolution is a response to a changing environment which, like all its elements, are adapting to [one another].
What is it to be part of something, part of God?
Just keep writing. State the problems that you cannot solve and suggest solutions for the ones you can.
Thursday 4 August
Pam's 52nd birthday. A family tragedy induced by the intransigence of Archbishop Beovitch of Adelaide on the Church's attitude to contraception. Matthew Beovitch - Wikipedia
A winter of some discontent moving toward another glorious summer.
So back, as ever, to Scientific Theology
New blurb for scientific theology:
. . .
[page 180]
[Scientific Theology blurb]
Most current theologies are based on the assumption that God exists independently of this world, a mysterious other. It is hard to know a mystery, so we have a jungle of competing theologies corresponding to different guesses about the nature of God
This book takes the opposite approach. Let us say that God and the Universe are identical. In other words, the Universe performs all the roles traditionally assigned to God, creator, sustainer and judge.
If the Universe is divine, all our experience is experience of God. Theology can, therefore, become a real evidence based science. Since there is but one God, true knowledge of God will put us on a path to the unification of theology, as science has done, for instance, with physics and biology.
Science has already taught us a lot about God. On our hypothesis, all science is knowledge of God and so part of theology. But we are missing the big picture, how the world creates itself. This book is a search for the essence of creative divinity.
Begin with theology and end with physics - or vice versa, or go around in a circle.
Building I understand because I actually make something useful. Writing is a much chancier occupation - maybe no one will want it and no one will read it. As a work of art, however, it longs to come into existence.
Aiming for one long continuous (but punctuated) narrative from beginning to end - beginning with time, Cantor, infinity creation. I go off writing into the wilderness and cannot find a way home. What we want in a book of this type is closure, a satisfactory story cycle that ends at its beginning. So we start with time, the sequence of events, and then introduce mathematics [and quantum mechanics] to get fixed points.
Then we begin to inquire into the structure of the fixed points beginning with very simple systems and building up to more complex system by tensor [Cartesian] products. Cartesian product - Wikipedia
The logical metric is the quantum of action. Then we have the bandwidth metric of energy, rate of action, implying time.
The revolution in the Church has been slowly building since the reformation when abuses in the Church motivated Luther and others to split from the mainstream
[page 181]
What am I trying to say? If you understand the network approach to understanding and relating the fixed points of God you can apply the same ideas to the construction of a dynamic society whose fixed points are people. We do this by modelling quantum mechanics on a network [using symmetry with respect to complexity to explain creativity from the initial singularity on up].
What is the point: variable order creates entropy creates peace. The opposite of the absolutist position, which says we need fixed order, like the Catholic Church [Euclidean vs differential geometry, motion relieves stress, reducing pain].
The natural theology project has been sailing along happily for about thirty years now and often looks pretty good to my unpractised eye. But now I am feeling some pressure to go public and realize that while I have a first principle (universe is divine) I still have a long way to go to explain its ramifications. Clearly enough we go from fixed point theory to quantum mechanics and the eigenvalue problem, and from there to the construction of the universe would look quite straightforward if we could find a way to map this onto the transfinite computer network The link seems to be computability but how to apply it? In other words I have a few ideas but cannot yet put them together into a consistent story, but I have high hopes of mapping the universe to the network — at least in 4-space and hopefully will find a map from Hilbert space to Einstein space [via 'metadata' since quantum mechanics is trafic analysis, not decoding actual messages,which occurs in higher layers?].
The easiest way is to stay abstract and then apply the details of concretion, ie the limitation of physical resources in the beginning followed by the generation of the vast space of structure out of which the
[page 182]
present universe has been selected.
I think that I must get serious about all this, but I thinkI am already at the limits of seriousness. I cannot control my insights, they are creations and they come in their own time as a result of quasi-random conditions in my brain.
The half life on an insight: the 'decay' of a problem by a solution.
Friday 5 August2016
Always trying to find the order of emergence of structure in the universe so as to be able to build a plausible network picture of corruption [construction?]. At this point still favour act which is consistent with the traditional god, then energy / time / quantum mechanics followed by space / momentum / velocity of light [quantum field theory]. In the more complex environment, act appears as angular momentum which we measure by phase. Just shuffle the pieces of the jigsaw around until we get a fit.
The traditional god knows everything, past, present and future. The real God only knows the past, and the future is uncertain.
A quantum of energy may have any size becasue E = ℏω where ω is a real number of any size.
A key to peace is opening the mind, creatively broadening the Church. World Peace ≡ Broad Church.
[page 183]
Monastic life is difficult because is it difficult to live an abnormal life, putting artificial constraints on one's dynamic range.
Th theoretical root of the broad church is Cantor's universe of cardinal numbers.
The basic marketing problem for natural religion is that we accept that death is real so we cannot offer an eternity of bliss in the afterlife as a reward for a lifetime of suffering and obedience to ancient rules. The only alternative [on] offer is heaven on earth. This requires both psychological and technological adjustment. Psychologically we must learn to see ourselves as immersed in the divinity and beneficiaries of the create powers of god, ready to welcome everyone into our church and care for them and their milieu. Evils are also part of God, and we must learn to see where they come from and act to reduce them. Technologically and politically we must open ourselves to achieving our happiness with less, so reducing our footprint on the face of the earth. Our greatest problem is ultimately a problem of greed and the noxious feedbacks in the economic system which make the poor poorer and the rich richer. In the kong run the psychological benefits of natural religion are the most powerful, since they carry the relaxing message that we are not pilgrims, refugees of travellers on the earth, but we are all at home and it is possible to make home life pleasant for everybody. Our mathematical theory, mooted in the theory of peace, is that the world is creative enough to supply the entropy necessary to fully implement full human rights, in other words there is enough space for us all to have as much space as we want and stil not clash with our neighbour. The growth of spiritual and noetic space requires the growth of the industrial layers beneath it so we can gain our noetic space without excessive consumption of physical space, ie action, the countably infinite foundation of divinity. A Theory of Peace, lecture 1: Mathematical Theology
[page 184]
Bergson: La Evolution Creatrice
We understand natural theology as the theoretical foundation for building egalitarian political software, that is law.
The beauty of mathematics is that the evidence is there on the paper in the sequence of symbols representing a proof when the symbols are given consistent mathematical meaning and put together in mathematically meaningful syntax, a coding system. The actual effect of each symbol depends on its position in some sequence of symbols, ie operations. A symbol is an operator if we fix the operators and let the state vectors vary; the other approach is to fix the vectors and vary the operators. Interpretations of quantum mechanics - Wikipedia
Does the paper game match some aspect of reality? This is an hypothesis to be tested.
Saturday 6 August 2016
Full implementation of human rights requires an appropriate number of degrees of freedom for every individual. . . . Saul Newman: Whither Anarchy
We take the cantor universe as the largest possible memory space and cut it down to size.
Scientific theology has to tell the whole story but it will just describe the mathematics in the vernacular in a way which will be as near as possible to the accepted formalism.
