vol VII: Notes
2017
Notes
Sunday 7 May 2017 - Saturday 13 May 2017
[Notebook: DB 81: Scientific theology]
Sunday 7 May 2017
[page 15]
Monday 8 May 2017
The basic issue is the relationship between cooperation and competition.
[page 16]
Unrestrained competition leads to monarchy achieved ultimately in trial by battle which is effectively trial by wealth measured in personnel, training, weapons, rtansport etc. We might see that unrestrained cooperation can also lead to monarchy in the sense that people become cloned processors [slaves] in very low entropy society. Somewhere between these extremes we seek an optimum We have modelled many optima in the theory of networks which can be applied to pipelines, chemical plants, and generally [to] optimizing transport or transformation from one state to another. We can also see the symbiosis between monarchy and cloning which tends to slow evolution and adaptatin to changing envisonmental interactions on a dynamic planet driven by plate tectonics and all its consequences for climate, orbital inclination and so on.
Most optimization problems quickly become incomputable, but we can deal with simpler systems that can be computed by the means available, running from pencil and paper through an effective scientific establishment to an effective parliament making decisions guided by reality, ie observation, measurement.
All physical facts are measurements, a/b, ie rational numbers (sometimes integral)
One mantra is that complexity leads to peace by distributing energy through more states, ie lowering temperature while maximizing entropy.
As a meliorist religion the ultimate aim of Christianity is to implement the Kingdom of God, ie a situation of human symmetry based n science driven power rather that power devoted mainly to self-interest, which seems to be a characteristic of the wealthy.
[page 17]
One reads various mystics telling us about various dark nights on their way to contemplative bliss. I live a lofe of comparative bliss now and I have never had any dark nights. One reason, I think, is that the mystical chain of development is based on imaginary ideas of divinity and spirituality that are out of sync with reality. This seems to be consistent with the general tendency of mystics to escape from the world into monasteries and other forms of seclusion, on the general basis that normal everyday intercourse with other people is detrimental to spiritual development. The 'counsels of perfection, poverty, chastity and obedience are further evidence for this recession from reality into fantasy. The alternative is to be fully engaged with reality and to base one;s spiritual development on the hypothesis that every experience (like the erstwhile kitchen full of screaming kids) is revelation from God and to be interpreted as such. The question is how do we respond to such revelations: by acceptance and investigation. Evangelical counsels - Wikipedia
Life and death : and annihilation: the appearance and disappearance of fixed point in the divine dynamics. Each fixed point (stationary state) has a birth and a death, like the absorption of a photon leading to the birth of an electronic tate in an atom which will die when it emits the 'same' photon. Each life is bounded by two events.
Tuesday 9 May 2017
Sitting in the sun watching smoke transition from laminar to turbulent flow. Computable to non-computable? In order to maintain stable societies we need to watch for the onset of chaos in the computable systems that maintain our existence.
Bruce Alberts Bruce Alberts
[page 18]
Wednesday 10 May 2017
One of the painful dark nights we experience is being falsely accused of crimes we did not commit. It is the role of the justice system in a community to shine light into this darkness. One of the most painful and powerful sources of pain is the Christian accusation that we are all sinners and guilty of some original sin which has made us constitutionally defective by allegedly dissociating reason and emotion. This accusation can be brought to justice by the same scientific method as we use in the courts: documenting the evidence and testing various hypothese against it. It is my faith in science (justice).Deliberately making false accusations is also a crime so I feel that I can legitimately accuse the Church of a crime against me and bring it to trial in the academic world. The Church might defend itself by saying that it truly believed the accusation of sin to be true. They might have had a case in the middle ages, but the rise of science has weakened it to the point of obliteration so that their accusation is now clearly false and culpable. A doctrinal revision is urgently needed and I have set myself the task of working on my revision and publishing my results.
What is the point of the Theological Studies essay? I think it is already there in the current version, and it is basically the story of a worm that has turned. I meekly accepted my dismissal from tje Dominicans because I felt that I had no choice. I could not demand to be made a priest when the
[page 19]
Provincial of the Order and ultimately the Pope (or one of bis bureaucrats) said I could not go on. I am glad I was dismissed but I feel that the grounds of my dismissal were in error, and I have spent the rest of my life trying to construct arguments powerful enough to show that my position is valid against the political and magisterial might of the Church whose whole raison d'etre is founded on a certain concept of God that I hold to be in error. The task therefore is to make the logical argument for identifying God and the Universe formally unassailable, and, on this basis, make the accusation that I and billions of others have suffered from this false magisterial [position].
Science can only flourish when it has the political power to attract resources to itself. In the early days it was mainly the work of the curious rich who also had political power stemming from [their] wealth. Perhaps the strongest motive for more modern societies to invest in science is its power to improve military technology, culminating in the development of nuclear weapons. Physics, particularly, has benefited from this success, but other sciences from biology to psychology also contribute to the military power of the state.
The Christian claim that we are all sinners empowers us to call each other sinners and to treat one another as such, a powerful source of disruption in the body politic.
Life requires disequilibrium, ie potential, which for us on earth is maintained by the temperature difference between the Sun and space.
Thursday 11 May
The truth is to be found mainly in the mundane, with a tiny
[page 20]
fraction in the extraordinary
Friday 12 May 2017
Wits end. I have put my laptop, the principal tool of my political trade, somewhere and I cannot find it. Has somebody taken it? Seems unlikely, the power supply is still sitting on the desk An unconscious (or at least unremembered) act. Since I cannot remember where I put it I cannot go to it but must search the house which is big and messy. I try to reconstruct what I did, but not much is there. Ephemeral past. Put it down on a horizontal surface never to be seen again. Moved by children? It is somewhere I have not looked. I have tried to be systematic, combing the place rom by room. I cannot yet afford software for my new computer and my old PPC stuff will not work on it.
Saturday 13 May 2017
The mystery deepens. Perhaps it has been stolen?
Living under indictment promotes self doubt. It was clear in the last year or so of my life in the Dominican Order that I was being considered for expulsion and I was then fighting for my life in the Order. The deal then was I have a chance if I reject my apparent contradiction of some of Pius X's 24 theses. These were probably the theses that established a philosophical foundation for the separation of God and the world. I do not remember the time well but I held fast to what was obvious to me, that the Universe fulfills all the roles traditionally assigned to God, and so may be called divine, although I don't think I used the term divine
[page 21]
universe until much later. The 24 These of Pope Pius X
Am trying to incorporate this personal drama, at least subliminally, into the Theological Studies article which revolved around the principal that all knowledge is to some degree political. So burning at the stake served to keep all except those with extreme motivation inside the magisterial corral.
