vol VII: Notes

2016

Notes

Sunday 4 September 2016 - Saturday 10 September 2016

[Notebook: DB 80: Cosmic plumbing]

[page 218]

Sunday 4 September 2016

Jaynes: The intermittency of consciousness is a manifestation of the invisibility theorem, which may be seen to apply to networks as well as to individua computers (which are in effect networks). Jaynes: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Follow the heart, ie the topmost layer of integration, a dynamic layer, continually adapting to new information as it comes from inside and outside our bodies.

[page 219]

The global unified tax code is the foundation of a level playing field in financial space to mimic the level playing field established by the Declaration of Human Rights (catholic declaration of particle / system rights).

The physiological mechanisms often depend on bonding a molecule of ATP to perform a metabolic action like splitting a molecule by establishing a local potential space where splitting is more probable that staying together, like political parties in the space of national consciousness [or couples in a space of gorgeous people].

The strength of a field is discerned by the rates of communication between like 'test particles'.

Gravitation is a null message: every centre of energy in the universe can encode and decode it, it is energy contributing to energy and via the network constraints represented by Einstein's equation, constructs in the process the universe we see.

We might imagine that the theology of unstructured people was perverted by the evolving class of warlords who sought legitimacy by creating a hierarchical god to match their imposition of hierarchy on the world and then claimed that their position was established by divine right.

The political 'perversion' of theology is an artefact of the hierarchical society which is an artefact of the prevalence of violence over peace which can be countered in practice by increasing the entropy of peace by establishing human rights, that is by placing ourselves on an equipotential so maximizing our bandwidth (processing power)

[page 220]

to detect and correct outbreaks of violence as early in their develoment as possible.

A glossary of physics / network terms:

collapse of the wave function = transmission of message
energy = rate of communication = bandwidth = d(action)/dt
potential = power to act

Johnson Trump: Jenna Johnson and Vanessa Williams

Denialism, A product of fear freezing people in the headlights of reality. Justin Gillis

Kristof: 'Founders are typically bold and charismatic visionaries who inspire with their moral imagination, while their teachings sometimes evolve into ingrown, risk averse bureaucracies obsessed with money and power.' Nicholas Kristof: What Religion Would Jesus Belong To?

McLaren: The Great Spiritual Migration back to the real body of god, away from the eucharistic fantasy? McLaren: The Great Spiritual Migration

Monday 5 September 2016

It is romance that keeps us going. Our flesh melting into the flesh of God. It is an attractor but there are many forces that keep us in orbit around the attractor and prevent us from falling into it. The general theory explains why in energy terms.

[page 221]

The force driving romance is sexual ecstasy differentiated into all the myriad pleasures and pains of life, periods of high emotional entropy not necessarily guided by reason, ie straying into the incomputable world (to be tethered back to reality by computable bonds).

Writing is an attractive effort, drawn on by the creation of symbols that in some way represent the mind. The tendency to create: the second law of thermodynamics. The layer approach to counting the number of states: each transfinite digit adds a new transfinite power, just as a new decimal digit adds a new power of ten.

Horizons of causality.

I dig around in my mind. Write everything I find into this log and then go back and type and format and add references, and distribute the [relatively few] good bits into relevant files.

The basic ruling class crime: theft of the commons [and the worst: theft and enslavement of god].

Perhaps the worst thing they (the Church) did was brand me a sinner because this made me putty in their hands, to be moulded by guilt into the shape they wanted, an apparently committed impassioned preacher [I can still hear some of them roar]. But their doctrine is so wrong, and does so much damage.

Tuesday 6 September 2016

Burton: we must recognise the enormous amount of 'non-rational' information collected over a lifetime from the environment. Robert A. Burton: A Life of Meaning (Reason Not Required)

[page 222]

To say that Gödel's incompleteness explains the uncertainty in the universe is a long shot which can be made shorter by establishing that certain mathematical symbols match certain events, just as words and sentences do in everyday life.

There is a quantum of action but it has no metric so it can be anything from the swish of a bacterium's tail to the life of the universe and remain identically an act. What distinguishes acts is their environment. Physically we map act to spin, every [fundamental] act requires a quantum of spin.

The politics of pleasure and pain. Some feel pleasure at watching the pain of others in colossia and other sadistic events. On the other had there may be many who feel pain watching the pleasure of others. Should we rule by the carrot of the stick, or a mixture of both. The question is framed historically in the context of monarchy.

I was brought up to believe that enduring pain was good for you, and we read that many holy people went out of their way [to make their lives more painful].

What is my personality? I am trying to build something for the common good, that is an evidence based theology. There is plenty of room for mystery in such a theology as we strive to understand what the evidence means.

Work with Lonergan rather than confronting him? How? He seems

[page 223]

to be bound to the political status quo.

In monarchies the stick is effective and the monarch can disappear people identified by its secret service as a threat to the regime. Death is the ultimate stick. Democracies, on the other hand, revolve around carrots, port barrelling ect, which may be just as corrosive to society as dictatorship. Obviously the goods must be shared fairly for the democracy to be stable: when we can all see that each of us is getting a fair go there is little pressure to revolt, since revolution may have its origin in those left out, not getting a fair go.

Scientific method = evolutionary method [: conjecture (variation) and testing (selection)].

Unwanted messages: advertising

Wednesday 7 September 2016

Thursday 8 September

Wondering at the source of my motivational deficit ie an internally forced period of thinking time which may indicate that my internal unconscious processes have not yet come to a halt and dictated a new course of acton. A bit like the western end of my house which I stopped building some time ago because I no longer needed it and could not see a satisfactory route to conclusion. At the moment I am a bit overloaded with outside work which is good for the bank and reminiscent of my monastic days when the peak of my doctrinal progress was

[page 224]

accompanied by long afternoons of joinery production making hundreds of tables, bookshelves, wardrobes, priedieus, altars, crosses for the figures that the Provincial had purchased in Europe, and other furniture for the new monastery in Canberra which was only a bit past lock-up stage when we moved in. The place was still full of tilers, painters, plumbers and other finishing stages.

Eat God and become divine: eucharist. What does this tell us about the Catholic Church? Where did this idea come from, since it is not apparent in the Jewish religion from which Christianity sprang, nor in the later Greek Theology that inspired Christianity, nor, as far as I know, in any of the religions and cultures occupied by the Roman Empire. Weird and hopefully an important bit of data for the renovation of the Church. Catholic Church

The right to eat implies the right to kill, the assumed prerogative of a monarch.

Greek god cannibalism: Thyestes, Tereus, Cronus. Cronus - Wikipedia

Information reduces uncertainty (if it is true). False 'information' increases the certainty of error.

Friday 9 September 2016

The dogmatic assertion of the real presence of Jesus in the bread and wine of the Eucharist 'body, blood, soul and divinity' leads to the strange metaphysical distinction between substance and accidents. Catholic Church: Catechism §1413

[page 225]

According to the theologians, transsubstantiation occurs with no change to the appearances of bread and wine, a difficult belief to hold in our current physical world where all substances are believed to give us true data about their internal processes. No one ever assumes that physical systems lie to us. Joseph Pohle (Catholic Encyclopedia): The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist

Saturday 10 September 2016

We face a spectrum of situations in which decisions range from clear cut (run from oncoming danger) to effectively undecidable. Now it is Saturday I do not need to go to work, but on the other hand I want to get the job finished, so a bit of progress would be good. Something else may make the decision for me. It is verging on rain after an early period of sunshine, so I might stay inside. On the other hand, if I stay here I can possibly make some progress on the book. etc etc. In times of violence energy is higher, entropy lower so the space of possibility is smaller. In times of peace entropy is higher, possibilities are greater and decisions must be made at random for want of better knowledge. The decision making algorithm at all scales is 'no regrets', we feel that we did the best in the circumstances.

Who am I to write a book about scientific theology? I have no professional standing. What I do have is some education in the epistemology of science , and some experience. Also I think I am an outlier, and a point of view that is a model, a language, worth considering to see whether it fits reality.

[page 226]

De Vaux page 274: 'Cult is the outward homage paid to a god.' De Vaux: Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions

Copyright:

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

Further reading

Books

Click on the "Amazon" link below each book entry to see details of a book (and possibly buy it!)

Brillouin, Leon, Science and Information Theory, Academic 1962 Introduction: 'A new territory was conquered for the sciences when the theory of information was recently developed. . . . Physics enters the picture when we discover a remarkable likeness between information and entropy. . . . The efficiency of an experiment can be defined as the ratio of information obtained to the associated increase in entropy. This efficiency is always smaller than unity, according to the generalised Carnot principle. . . . '  Amazon   back

Carnot, Sadi, and Translated by R H Thurston; edited and with an introduction by E Mendoza, Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire: and other papers on the second law of thermodynamics by E Clapeyron and R Clausius., Peter Smith Publisher 1977 Reflections: Everyone knows that heat can produce motion. ... in these days when the steam-engine is everywhere so well known. ... To develop this power, to appropriate it to our uses, is the object of heat engines. ... Notwithstanding the work of all kinds done by steam-engines, notwithstanding the satisfactory condition to which they have been brought today, their theory is very little understood, and the attempts to improve them are still directed almost by chance. ... In order to consider in the most general way the principle of the production of motion by heat, it must be considered independently of any mechanism or any particular agent. It is necessary to establish principles applying not only to steam-engines but to all imaginable heat engines, whatever the working substance and whatever the method by which it is operated. ... [Here enters the seed of entropy] The production of motive power is then due in steam-engines not to an actual consumption of caloric, but to its transportation from a warm body to a cold body, that is, to its reestablishment of equilibrium - an equilibrium considered as destroyed by any cause whatever, by chemical action such as combustion, or by any other.' pages 3-7.  Amazon   back

De Vaux, Roland, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1961, 1997 'Considered by many to be a modern classic, Ancient Israel offers a fascinating, full-scale reconstruction of the social and religious life of Israel in Old Testament times. Drawing principally on the text of the Old Testament itself, as well as from archaeological evidence and information gathered from the historical study of Israel's neighbors, de Vaux first provides an extensive introduction to the nomadic nature of life in ancient Israel and then traces in detail the developments of Israel's most important institutions --family, civil, military, and religious --and their influence on the nation's life and history.'  Amazon   back

Denzinger, Henricus, and Adolphus Schoenmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum, Definitionum et Declarationum de Rebus Fidei et Morum, Herder 1963 Introduction: 'Dubium non est quin praeter s. Scripturam cuique theologo summe desiderandus sit etiam liber manualis quo contineantur edicta Magisterii ecclesiastici eaque saltem maioris momenti, et quo ope variorim indicum quaerenti aperiantur eorum materiae.' (3) 'There is no doubt that in addition to holy Scripture, every theologian also needs a handbook which contains at least the more important edicts of the Magisterium of the Church, indexed in a way which makes them easy to find.' back

Lonergan, Bernard J F, Insight : A Study of Human Understanding (Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan : Volume 3), University of Toronto Press 1992 '. . . Bernard Lonergan's masterwork. Its aim is nothing less than insight into insight itself, an understanding of understanding'  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

Prigogine, Ilya , From Being to Becoming: Time and Complexity in the Physical Sciences, Freeman 1980 Jacket: 'How has order emerged from chaos? In this book, intended for the general reader with some background in physical chemistry and thermodynamics, Ilya Prigogine shows how systems far from equilibrium evolve elaborate structures: patterns of circulation in the atmosphere, formation and propagation of chemical waves, the aggregation of single-celled animals. In an effort to understand these phenomena, he explores the philosophical implications of the work that won him the 1977 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.'  Amazon   back

Pullar, Philipa, Consuming Passions: Being an Historical Inquiry into Certain English Appetites, Hamish Hamilton 1971 'What have the ancient Romans with their orgies, the primitive Christians with their fasts and their guilt to do with the English traditions of food? Why are oysters and celery believed to be aphrodisiacs? How is eating connected to sexual desire? In this history of the English appetite, Philippa Pullar answers these questions in an amusing manner. She draws such apparently unconnected subjects as phallic worship, cannibalism, agriculture, wet-nursing, prostitution, witchcraft, magic and aphrodisiacs into a fascinating synthesis.'  Amazon   back

Sheldrake, Rupert, A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation, Granada/Paladin 1983 'The first edition of A New Science of Life created a furor when it appeared, provoking the outrage of the old-guard scientific community and the approbation of the new. The British journal Nature called it "the best candidate for burning there has been for many years." A lively debate ensued, as researchers devised experiments testing Sheldrake's hypothesis, including some involving millions of people through the medium of television. These developments are recorded in this revised and expanded edition.'  Amazon   back

Links

Aaron J. Atsma, Theoi Greek Mythology, 'Welcome to the Theoi Project, a site exploring Greek mythology and the gods in classical literature and art. The aim of the project is to provide a comprehensive, free reference guide to the gods (theoi), spirits (daimones), fabulous creatures (theres) and heroes of ancient Greek mythology and religion.' back

Berlin Wall - Wikipedia, Berlin Wall - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer) was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) starting August 13, 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, which circumscribed a wide area (later known as the "death strip") that contained anti-vehicle trenches, "fakir beds" and other defenses. The Soviet-dominated Eastern Bloc officially claimed that the wall was erected to protect its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the "will of the people" in building a Socialist State in East Germany, however, in practice, the Wall served to prevent the massive emigration and defection that marked Germany and the communist Eastern Bloc during the post-World War II period.' back

C R Nave, Protons and Neutrons, '[The proton] has long been considered to be a stable particle, but recent developments of grand unification models have suggested that it might decay with a half-life of about 10^31 years. back

Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church, '1413 By the consecration the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ is brought about. Under the consecrated species of bread and wine Christ himself, living and glorious, is present in a true, real, and substantial manner: his Body and his Blood, with his soul and his divinity (cf. Council of Trent: DS 1640; 1651).' back

Cronus - Wikipedia, Cronus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In Greek mythology, Cronus, or Kronos (/ˈkroʊnəs/ or /ˈkroʊnɒs/ from Greek: Κρόνος, krónos), was the leader and youngest of the first generation of Titans, the divine descendants of Uranus, the sky, and Gaia, the earth. He overthrew his father and ruled during the mythological Golden Age, until he was overthrown by his own son Zeus and imprisoned in Tartarus.' back

David E. Sanger and Anne Barnard, Russia and the United States Reach New Agreement on Syria Conflict, 'GENEVA — Russia and the United States agreed early Saturday on a new plan to reduce violence in the Syrian conflict that, if successful, could lead for the first time to joint military targeting by the two powers against Islamic jihadists in Syria.' back

Emma Yung, Scientists find ice age art on the Kimberley, 'Researchers have reached a milestone in their quest to show the Kimberley's rock art is among the world's oldest, proving one work was created before the height of the last ice age 'glaciation'. The team has laboured for three years over what they call one of the globe's longest and most dramatic rock art sequences, in the region's northwest near iconic Mitchell Falls. They managed to date 13 of the works and proved that one on the ceiling of a deep cavern, a perfectly preserved yam-like figure in mulberry-coloured ochre, was a minimum 16,000 years old.' back

Eryn Grant.Nicholas Stevens and Paul Salmon, Why the 'Miracle on the Hudson' in the new movie Sully was no crash landing, 'This was not a crash, more a safe landing. In safety science, the incident represents what is known as a “near miss”. A near miss is defined as a serious error or mishap that has the potential to cause an adverse event but fails to do so because of chance or because it is intercepted. These are events where more adverse outcomes were avoided.' back

Ishaan Tharoor, Saudi ASrabia and Iran accuse eachother of not really being Muslim, 'The Middle East's two great geopolitical adversaries entered into a war of words ahead of the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, which starts this weekend. Their rivalry, shaped by sectarian Sunni-Shia divisions, can be seen in numerous bloody proxy conflicts across the region. But it also flares up in heated rhetorical broadsides.' back

Jacalyn Duffin, Pondering Miracles, Medical and Religious, 'Respect for our religious patients demands understanding and tolerance; their beliefs are as true for them as the “facts” may be for physicians. Now almost 40 years later, that mystery woman is still alive and I still cannot explain why. Along with the Vatican, she calls it a miracle. Why should my inability to offer an explanation trump her belief? However they are interpreted, miracles exist, because that is how they are lived in our world.' back

Jenna Johnson and Vanessa Williams, In a bid to soften his image, Trump makes a brief visit to a black Detroit church, “It was a very good speech. Whoever helped him did a good job on it. But I know that he wants something, so it’s hard for me to 100 percent agree.” . . . Trump praised African American churches for being “one of God’s greatest gifts to America and to its people” and “the conscience of our country,” especially in leading the civil rights movement.' back

Joseph Pohle (Catholic Encyclopedia), The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, 'In the mind of the Church, Transubstantiation has been so intimately bound up with the Real Presence, that both dogmas have been handed down together from generation to generation, though we cannot entirely ignore a dogmatico-historical development. The total conversion of the substance of bread is expressed clearly in the words of Institution: "This is my body".' back

Julian Meyrick, Why Australia needs a chief artist, 'he inspiration for the idea of a Chief Artist, or Chief Cultural Practitioner, or [insert acceptable title here] is taken in part from the role of Australia’s Chief Scientist, established by the Hawke government in 1989. The job is to: … [provide] high-level independent advice to the Prime Minister and other Ministers on matters relating to science, technology and innovation… to identify challenges and opportunities for Australia that can be addressed, in part, through science… To be a champion of science, research and the role of evidence in the community and in government. Finally, the Chief Scientist is a communicator of science to the general public, with the aim to promote understanding of, contribution to and enjoyment of science and evidence-based thinking.' back

Justin Gillis, Flooding of Coast Caused by Global Warming Has Already Begun, 'For decades, as the global warming created by human emissions caused land ice to melt and ocean water to expand, scientists warned that the accelerating rise of the sea would eventually imperil the United States’ coastline. Now, those warnings are no longer theoretical: The inundation of the coast has begun. The sea has crept up to the point that a high tide and a brisk wind are all it takes to send water pouring into streets and homes.' back

Maher Mughrabi, Dear Pauline: Is that a Koran in your handbag?, 'Islam, then, is not a static thing which we can track down in the Koran. It is a conversation that has been going on for 1400 years in a number of languages and currently involves well over a billion people. Those who seek to enter such a conversation from the outside need not only to figure out what it is they want to say, but how they decide to say it. Simply addressing Muslims as if they were a single coherent group is not going to work - because they aren't.' back

Matthew Sharpe, Indulge me this: how not to read Daniel Dennett's cliamthat philosophy is an indulgence, '“A great deal of philosophy doesn’t really deserve much of a place in the world,” leading philosopher Daniel Dennett has recently suggested in an interview at his year’s Association of the Scientific Study of Consciousness conference in Buenos Aires. “Philosophy in some quarters has become self-indulgent, clever play in a vacuum that’s not dealing of problems of any intrinsic interest.” ' back

Nicholas Kristof, What Religion Would Jesus Belong To?, 'ONE puzzle of the world is that religions often don’t resemble their founders. . . . “Our religions often stand for the very opposite of what their founders stood for,” notes Brian D. McLaren, a former pastor, in a provocative and powerful new book, “The Great Spiritual Migration.” ' back

Nicola Harrison, Remembering John Cade, the Australian doctor who tamed bipolar disorder, 'Today, DeMoore says, lithium is the gold standard treatment for severe bipolar disorder. By the early 1960s Cade's discovery was heralded as something truly triumphant. But he never considered himself a brilliant man of medicine. '[He] did something remarkable and kept it very quiet,' DeMoore says. 'He wrote a book about the history of psychiatry after he retired. There was a chapter on lithium and he didn't mention that he was the individual who discovered the miracle of lithium and how it can help people with bipolar disorder.; back

NYT Editorial Board, Punishing Dissent in Bahrain, 'On Monday, prosecutors in Bahrain announced that Mr. Rajab had been charged with “deliberate dissemination of false news and spreading tendentious rumors that undermine the prestige of the state.” His supposed offense? Writing an op-ed article, titled “Letter From a Bahraini Jail,” which was published Sunday in The Times. Describing himself as one of roughly 4,000 political prisoners in Bahrain, Mr. Rajab, who has been in custody since June, wrote that “no one has been properly held to account for systematic abuses that have affected thousands” in the Shiite-majority nation, which is ruled by a Sunni monarchy.' back

Paul Farrell, Nauru fiasco serves to confirm Danish group's suspicions od Australian tactics, '“If one thing positive came out of this trip”, Danish MP Johanne Schmidt-Nielsen said in the final hours of her visit to Australia to learn about the country’s immigration detention system, “it was that again the world can see that in a country where critical eyes and ears are not allowed, it’s obvious that something is being hidden”.' . . “The government of Nauru actually said directly to the Danish embassy and also to the chairman of the Danish People’s party that we couldn’t go there because we had been saying critical things about what was going on,” Schmidt-Nielsen said. “They didn’t want that in Nauru.” ' back

Peter Christoff, US-China ratification of Paris Agreement ramps up the pressure on Australia, ' . . . ratification is only the beginning. Australia will then be required to revise and toughen its targets for 2030 and beyond. Its weak 2030 mitigation target is accompanied by policies inadequate to meet this goal. The Paris Agreement, once in force, will require a more robust Australian target to be announced by 2023 at the latest. This in turn will further highlight the gap between current and sufficient implementation measures. The US-China ratification announcement is the next step along a path that must see Australia climb – or be dragged – out of its current climate policy torpor.' back

Pope Pius X, Lamentabili Sane, The Syllabus of Errors (Condemning the Errors of the Modernists) Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office July 3, 1907 'WITH TRULY LAMENTABLE RESULTS, our age, casting aside all restraint in its search for the ultimate causes of things, frequently pursues novelties so ardently that it rejects the legacy of the human race. Thus it falls into very serious errors, which are even more serious when they concern sacred authority, the interpretation of Sacred Scripture, and the principal mysteries of Faith. The fact that many Catholic writers also go beyond the limits determined by the Fathers and the Church herself is extremely regrettable. In the name of higher knowledge and historical research, (they say), they are looking for that progress of dogmas which is, in reality, nothing but the corruption of dogmas. ... ' back

Robert A. Burton, A Life of Meaning (Reason Not Required), 'It is hard to imagine what would happen to modern thought if we abandoned the notion of rationality. Scientific method might partly fill the void. With quantum physics, scientists have been able to validate counterintuitive theories. But empirical methods can’t help us with abstract, non-measurable, linguistically ambiguous concepts such as purpose and meaning. It’s no wonder that pre-eminent scientists like Stephen Hawking have gleefully declared, “Philosophy is dead.” ' back

Robert H. Frank, Take Back the House, Democrats. Please., 'The candidacy of Donald Trump offers a unique opportunity. If Mrs. Clinton made the case clearly in these terms, many donors would step up. Democrats could compete for every vulnerable Republican seat without diverting a single dollar from the Electoral College battle. Some argue that money in politics doesn’t matter. That’s true in the sense that when both sides spend equally, their efforts tend to be mutually offsetting. But that’s why the current opportunity is unique. Democratic donors, who have already been giving generously, have both the means and the inclination to pay for an advertising blitz that Republicans probably cannot match this time around.' back

Sarah L. Kaufman, Can dancing make you a better person? Study suggests link between ballet and sensitivity to others, back

Sia, The Greatest, back

Zitterbewegung - Wikipedia, Zitterbewegung - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Zitterbewegung (English: "trembling motion", from German) is a theoretical rapid motion of elementary particles, in particular electrons, that obey the Dirac equation. The existence of such motion was first proposed by Erwin Schrödinger in 1930 as a result of his analysis of the wave packet solutions of the Dirac equation for relativistic electrons in free space, in which an interference between positive and negative energy states produces what appears to be a fluctuation (at the speed of light) of the position of an electron around the median, with an angular frequency of , or approximately 1.6×1021 radians per second. A re-examination of Dirac theory, however, shows that interference between positive and negative energy states may not be a necessary criterion for observing zitterbewegung.' back