vol VII: Notes

2017

Notes

Sunday 30 April 2017 - Saturday 6 May 2017

[Notebook: DB 81: Scientific theology]

[page 10]

Sunday 30 April 2017

Democracy and demonstration: feedback to government between votes and surveys motivated by those who feel error in government policy or procedures. Fandos Nicholas Fandos

[page 11]

Maybe Trump's denialism will become a positive for those interested in observation, evaluation and action, since it exposes very clearly the failure of the business as usual 'denialist' approach which may be motivated by sheer inertia and nostalgia for sunk capital.

Evil : corruption = non-orthogonality.

Quantum mechanics tells us that the distinct observable states are orthogonal, which is a statement of the separation of powers, like the separation of spectral lines.

Monday 1 May 2017

Beginning of human_network mention Maxwell's eternal atoms in perpetual motion, moving unworn with logical precision. James Clerk Maxwell: Molecules

We may imagine that quantum mechanics describes the life god, the pure dynamic process that underlies the fixed points of the universe and the logical sequence of generation and corruption is the (integral) number which we call time: numerus motus secundum prius et posterius. The continuous part of quantum mechanics is the underlying invisible divinity, with no observable marks, and the 'collaps' of this non-existent continuum yields the particles (fixed points) that we observe. Thus do we conceive quantum mechanics as the foundation of theology. Catholic Apologetics Information

The zero of entropy is deterministic mechanical (computable) process, the process going on in a goas under isolated conditions. The molecular motion never ceases but accommodates itself to changes in pressure, volume and temperature, a threesome bound together by Boltzmanns constant, PV = RT. Ideal gas law - Wikipedia

[page 12]

Our first step is a network description of a gas.

We are made of time / energy, a set of actions.

Tuesday 2 May 2017

Wednesday 3 May 2017

The transitory nature of thought can be frustrating. All our searches for lost objects are ultimately based on the principle of conservation of matter which says that if a screwdriver existed once it still exists and all I have to do is find where I put it last time I used it (or perhaps someone else has moved it or it has been destroyed). Is this true of ideas in my mind? Are they stored somewhere in a durable material form, or are they created and destroyed on a rather random basis like the fundamental particles studied by physicists?

To become conscious an idea might need to be, as Descartes noted, a definite and separate thing: a tautology, since one cannot be definite without being separate. A border creates both conditions.

Thursday 4 May 2017

The political features of the network model.

We begin with the assumption that politics is the key to survival for communities or somewhat autonomous organisms ie organisms constrained buy their physical layer (foundations). We can go for some time ignoring the physical layer of a community but we will be corrected in the end: Diamond Guns, germs and steel. Diamond

[page 13]

So first requirement is prudent management of the foundations of our lives, ie the Earth / Sun system upon which we rely for all our material inputs, ie energy and forms established by lower layers (from our point of view). Ordering of layers is local in space and time.

Other parallel step : maximize entropy / maximizing processing by educating for cooperation = parallel processing. This is the function [of exploiting the layering of the system to efficiently produce the systems we want].

Dionne: 'The concerns that bind left, centre and right must stay at the forefront of the administration's abuses, even as those of us who are progressive will challenge the reactionary tax, health and regulatory policies that Trump will use to buy off the Republican leaders. E. J. Dionne Jr.: The issues all Trumps foes agree on

In order to work in parallel, a population needs to be guided by a set of values [implemented as protocols] which serve to generate decisions about action, The fundamental value in this set was identified by the authors of the Hebrew Bibe and emphasized by Jesus of Nazareth: love God, love one another. The foundation of this love is the fact that we are one species sharing all the desires of our species for food, shelter, growth and reproduction, all these desiderata being achieve with minimum risk, [environmental footprint] and effort. [The outcome of this love is a shared sense of meaning, worth and security].

What guidance does the network give to these goals:

. We need to share communication protocols
. We need security against error and deceit.

Why have I stopped work on scientific-theology? Partly because I have completed a draft of the five theological chapters and am thinking through the and reorganizing the religious section particularly to develop the relationships between religion, politics

[page 14]

and the entropy / information structure of the transfinite computer network. This requires ore work on the relationship between psychology and physics, that is abstract and concrete representation and processing of information. A computation involves both a pipeline or chain of algorithms that controls the process, and the flow of information that is being processes. These to streams of information meet in physical environments like photons and electrons. This is very import because it shows how abstract control of information relates to real life events, like the relationship between health care legislation and the actual health care experience by the population. The Catholic Church and related intellectual traditions make a clear dichotomy between matter and form that probably emerged in Parmenides time and has dominated theology and philosophy ever since. Here we see matter and form as duals, related representations of the same process, the divine life, a dynamic system with fixed points, process and algorithm.

Boil it down to one phrase : entropy, driven by the symmetry implicit in Cantor's theorem, never decreases. Attempts like monarchy aimed at reducing the entropy of a society are doomed to fail. This is mostly repetition. Want something new and juicy.

Baby politics - getting the parents / guardians to look after me when I am newborn and helpless - triggering the instinct to care for one's child [which is necessary for successful reproduction and survival of the species]

Friday 5 May 2017

So back to the Theological Studies article.

. Science and politics
. Divine universe hypothesis: abstracting from politics and history.

[page 15]

This article assumes the credibility of the theory of evolution. This is well attested . . . by cosmological, paleontological and archeological evidence. We have also got come documentary evidence of the ideas people developed when they first became conscious of their existence on the world. The essential of survival for humans is cooperation and learning. These features enable each newborn to adapt to the environment into which it is born, The language and culture thus acquired is often very local, and it is not surprising that locally developed world views experience tension when they come into contact with the ways of of more distant neighbours. One outcome of this tension is war. The opposite outcomes is dialogue and observation designed to arrive at a view acceptable to all parties. This is the way of science. Evolution - Wikipedia

Science is based on the observation that since we are all one species living on one plantet in one solar system in one universe, there exists a foundation for universal agreement for our place in the world, and agreement on prudent means to use this knowledge to ensure our own health and safety.

We may date the explosion in science and technology which has brought us to our current situation to the conflict between truth and politics that came so a head in Galileo's time. Galileo Galilei - Wikipedia

Saturday 6 May 2017

Lyndal Roper : Martin Luther Roper

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!)

Diamond, Jared, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, W W Norton and Co 1997 'Diamond's book is complex and a bit overwhelming. But the thesis he methodically puts forth—examining the "positive feedback loop" of farming, then domestication, then population density, then innovation, and on and on—makes sense. Written without favor, Guns, Germs, and Steel is good global history.' Amazon.com  Amazon   back

Feynman, Richard P, and Robert B Leighton, Matthew Sands, The Feynman Lectures on Physics (volume 3) : Quantum Mechanics, Addison Wesley 1970 Foreword: 'This set of lectures tries to elucidate from the beginning those features of quantum mechanics which are the most basic and the most general. . . . In each instance the ideas are introduced together with a detailed discussion of some specific examples - to try to make the physical ideas as real as possible.' Matthew Sands  Amazon   back

Huxley, Aldous, The Perennial Philosophy, HarperCollins 1990 Introduction: Philosophia Perennis -- the phrase was coined by Leibniz: but the thing -- the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychlogy that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man's final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being -- the thing is immemorial and universal. Rudiments of the Perennial Philosophy may be found among the traditionary lore of primitive (sic) people in every region of the world, and in its fully developed form it has a place in every one of the higher religions.'  Amazon   back

Lo, Hoi-Kwong, and Tim Spiller, Sandra Popescu, Introduction to Quantum Computation and Information, World Scientific 1998 Jacket: 'This book provides a pedagogical introduction to the subjects of quantum information and computation. Topics include non-locality of quantum mechanics, quantum computation, quantum cryptography, quantum error correction, fault tolerant quantum computation, as well as some experimental aspects of quantum computation and quantum cryptography. A knowledge of basic quantum mechanics is assumed.'  Amazon   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

Misner, Charles W, and Kip S Thorne, John Archibald Wheeler, Gravitation, Freeman 1973 Jacket: 'Einstein's description of gravitation as curvature of spacetime led directly to that greatest of all predictions of his theory, that the universe itself is dynamic. Physics still has far to go to come to terms with this amazing fact and what it means for man and his relation to the universe. John Archibald Wheeler. . . . this is a book on Einstein's theory of gravity. . . . '  Amazon   back

Nielsen, Michael A, and Isaac L Chuang, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information, Cambridge University Press 2000 Review: A rigorous, comprehensive text on quantum information is timely. The study of quantum information and computation represents a particularly direct route to understanding quantum mechanics. Unlike the traditional route to quantum mechanics via Schroedinger's equation and the hydrogen atom, the study of quantum information requires no calculus, merely a knowledge of complex numbers and matrix multiplication. In addition, quantum information processing gives direct access to the traditionally advanced topics of measurement of quantum systems and decoherence.' Seth Lloyd, Department of Quantum Mechanical Engineering, MIT, Nature 6876: vol 416 page 19, 7 March 2002.  Amazon   back

Roper, Lyndal, Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet, The Bodly Head 2016 'In this first historical geography for many years, distinguished historial Lyndal Roper gives us a flesh-and-blood figure, warts and all. She reveals the often contradictory psychological forces that drove Luther forward - insecurity and self-righteousness, anger and humility - and the dynamics they unleashed which turned a small act of protest into battle against the power of the Church.'   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

Papers

Chaitin, Gregory J, "Randomness and Mathematical Proof", Scientific American, 232, 5, May 1975, page 47-52. 'Although randomness can be precisely defined and can even be measured, a given number cannot be proved random. This enigma establishes a limit in what is possible in mathematics'. back

Landauer, Rolf, "Information is a physical entity", Physica A, 263, 1, 1 February 1999, page 63-7. 'This paper, associated with a broader conference talk on the fundamental physical limits of information handling, emphasizes the aspects still least appreciated. Information is not an abstract entity but exists only through a physical representation, thus tying it to all the restrictions and possibilities of our real physical universe. The mathematician's vision of an unlimited sequence of totally reliable operations is unlikely to be implementable in this real universe. Speculative remarks about the possible impact of that, on the ultimate nature of the laws of physics are included.'. back

Landauer, Rolf, "The Physical Nature of Information", Physica A, 217, 4-5, 15 July 1996, page 188-93. 'Information is inevitably tied to a physical representation and therefore to restrictions and possibilities related to the laws of physics and the parts available in the universe. Quantum mechanical superpositions of information bearing states can be used, and the real utility of that needs to be understood. Quantum parallelism in computation is one possibility and will be assessed pessimistically. The energy dissipation requirements of computation, of measurement and of the communications link are discussed. The insights gained from the analysis of computation has caused a reappraisal of the perceived wisdom in the other two fields. A concluding section speculates about the nature of the laws of physics, which are algorithms for the handling of information, and must be executable in our real physical universe.'. back

Schneidman, Elad, Michael J Berry II, Ronen Segev and Wiliam Bialek, "Weak pairwise correlations imply strongly correlated network states in a neural population", Nature, 440, 7087, 20 April 2006, page 1007-1012. 'Biological networks have so many states that exhaustive sampling is impossible. Successful analysis depends on simplifying hypotheses, but experiments on many systems hint that complicated, higher-order interactions among large groups of elements have an important role. Here we show, in the vertebrate retina, that weak correlation between pairs of neurons coexists with strongly collective behaviour in the responses of ten or more neurons. We find that this collective behaviour is described quantitatively by models that capture the observd pairwise correlations but assume no higher-order interactions. These maximum entropy models are equivalent to Ising models, and predict that larger networks are completely dominated by correlation effects. This suggests that the neural code has associative or error-correcting properties, and we provide preliminary evidence for such behaviour. As a first test for the generality of these ideas, we show that similar results are obtained from networks of cultured cortical neurons.' . back

Links

Catholic Apologetics Information, A Scholastic List of Definitions for Philosophical Terms , '117. Tempus = numerus motus secundum prius et posterius.' back

E. J. Dionne Jr., The issues all Trump foes agree on, '. . . standing up for humane principles that Trump is threatening: democracy over authoritarian nationalism; religious pluralism over bigotry; clarity of thought, speech and action over a self-involved indiscipline; civil rights and civil liberties over their unchecked abuse; and a basic decency toward each other over a political approach devoted to disparaging and bullying adversaries. The democratic left and the democratic right will continue to disagree on many things. But these commitments should transcend all of our divides.' back

Evolution - Wikipedia, Evolution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, '. . . Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace were the first to formulate a scientific argument for the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. Evolution by natural selection is a process that is inferred from three facts about populations: 1) more offspring are produced than can possibly survive, 2) traits vary among individuals, leading to different rates of survival and reproduction, and 3) trait differences are heritable. . . . ' back

Galileo Galilei - Wikipedia, Galileo Galilei - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Galileo Galilei (. . . 15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642), commonly known as Galileo, was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations and support for Copernicanism. Galileo has been called the "father of modern observational astronomy", the "father of modern physics", the "father of science", and "the Father of Modern Science".' back

Ideal gas law - Wikipedia, Ideal gas law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The ideal gas law is the equation of state of a hypothetical ideal gas. It is a good approximation of the behavior of many gases under many conditions, although it has several limitations. It was first stated by Émile Clapeyron in 1834 as a combination of the empirical Boyle's law, Charles's law and Avogadro's Law. The ideal gas law is often written as P V = n R T where: P is the pressure of the gas, V is the volume of the gas, n is the amount of substance of gas (in moles), R is the ideal, or universal, gas constant, equal to the product of the Boltzmann constant and the Avogadro constant, T is the absolute temperature of the gas.' back

James Clerk Maxwell, Maxwell, 'Molecules', 'But though in the course of ages catastrophes have occurred and may yet occur in the heavens, though ancient systems may be dissolved and new systems evolved out of their ruins, the molecules out of which these systems are built — the foundation stones of the material universe — remain unbroken and unworn. They continue this day as they were created, perfect in number and measure and weight, and from the ineffaceable characters impressed on them we may learn that those aspirations after accuracy in measurement, truth in statement, and justice in action, which we reckon among our noblest attributes as men, are ours because they are essential constituents of the image of Him Who in the beginning created, not only the heaven and the earth, but the materials of which heaven and earth consist.' back

Nicholas Fandos, Climate March Draws Thousands of Protesters Alarmed by Trump's Environmental Agenda, 'WASHINGTON — Tens of thousands of demonstrators, alarmed at what they see as a dangerous assault on the environment by the Trump administration, poured into the streets here on Saturday to sound warnings both planetary and political about the Earth’s warming climate.' back