natural theology

We have just published a new book that summarizes the ideas of this site. Free at Scientific Theology, or, if you wish to support this project, buy at Scientific Theology: A New Vision of God

Contact us: Click to email
vol VII: Notes

2018

Notes

Sunday 8 July 2018 - Saturday 14 July 2018

[Notebook: DB 82: Life and Death]

[page 180]

Sunday 8 July 2018

Dad died peacefully. There was nothing wrong with him but age. Heading home for a few days to cut the grass and get a few more books for the second semester. Looks like I will get good results from the first semester which encourages me to go on.

Now curious about the relationship between continuity, symmetry and absolute simplicity, and the symmetry breaking effect of mapping the continuum onto the transfinite numbers (and vice versa) as an approach to the emergence of the universe [from] the continuum. How does this idea map onto the Gaussian coordinates and Hilbert space? In a way we see structure emerging from the contradictions built into the point manifold, a continuum built of discrete points whose inconsistency was first exploited (for all we know) by Zeno in the service of Parmenides. Normal coordinates - Wikipedia, Zeno's paradoxes - Wikipedia

Currently sitting at a point between West Wyalong and Forbes.

A plan might be to use the network model to reconcile the Hilbert space with the differentiable manifold by thinking of the charts of the manifold as inertial spaces in which we place the Hilbert spaces as sources and imagine the curvature of the manifold induced by the communication between inertial spaces by some wort of quantum interaction by the exchange of particles, 'gravitons' with very small coupling constant. We say no need for quantization because no information transmitted, only energy. An old idea no further forward.

[page 181]

Monday 9 July 2018

Home safely in Elands sitting in front of the fire and settling in after a long drive and a few visits. Forgot to feed the cats this afternoon but they will last until tomorrow without finding it necessary to eat any local creatures.

People write wasteful standards which encourage other people to game the system.

What we are seeking all the time is a completely invariant symmetry which allows us to derive socially relevant symmetries out of the structure of the world where symmetries = rules for reasonable conduct, something whose existence fools like Trump want to deny.

The first symmetry is quantization of communication in order to prevent error and construct substantial and durable structure.

The moment of death is no more predictable than the moment of the disintegration of a U238 nucleus, something that happens only once in 4 billion years but nevertheless it happens and has some input into the making of the world.

Everything becomes plausible when the necessary preconditions are realized, so x happens when all the conditions necessary for x are fulfilled, there is no impediment to completion.

I think you are the most gorgeous creature that ever existence and there is nothing I can do about it because nothing needs to be done, it is entelecheia. Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott

[page 182]

Physics gives numerical values to the symbols it explores.

Tuesday 10 July 2018
Wednesday 11 July 2018

The law and the lynch mob. Joe Heim: Sacred ground, now reclaimed: A Charlottesville story

Belief and the sense of entitlement that comes with the ability to kill with impunity, . . . comes with the notion of the divine right of kings exercised by Moses as Sinai and any number of other warlords / religious leaders ever since. The philosophical / judicial way is to resolve differences without bloodshed but this requires a police force in the service of the law at least as powerful as those who would ignore the law.

Boethius: De Consolatione Philosophiae Boethius

As with Socrates and Jesus, one can expect to be attacked for moving to far from the centre of gravity of social expectation, which is one reason, I think, why I am seeking institutional cover. This is a basic source of power in the world, a palace guard, a revolutionary guard, a secret service, or in fact a corporate entity which acts to bring a large number of people into a boson state. Such states, once they become established, attract more people into their state. The opposite fermionic state is a matter of individuality, occupied by one person (source) at a time [I am a fermion, hiding behind a boson state, like an electron in an atom].

If an electron is a point particle (as is a photon) it preexists space but not time [? when we observe a photon, we see that its clocks are stopped, so it may be outside time as well]. This suggests that space is a creation of electrodynamics, so where does general relativity come in? It is created by network communication.

Electrons may be pointlike, but fermions nevertheless claim some personal space, one per state, ie per orbit, spin, etc. Electron degeneracy pressure - Wikipedia

Lagrangian physics works in situations where time is reversible, ie processes working at constant entropy where past and future, potential and kinetic, have no meaning but are fundamentally equivalent?

Thursday 12 July 2018

On the utility of evil. Evil drives the good. Discuss. We are propagating new good news, the effectiveness of cybernetics applied at all scales, since every scale has causally connected features that may be exploited to remove defects in the system, like cures for cancer, but not, ultimately, from death.

Scientific theology begets scientific religion begets scientific politics, the evidence based control of chaos, at all scales. Cybernetics.

Theology is political philosophy, looking for fixed points in human behaviour which are across scales of complexity analogous from level to level, ie symmetries. A symmetry begins as a point but is spread into a line (a whole spectrum, not one point on a spectrum) by its application in the next layer higher up and its dimension increases as it rises through subsequent layers of application of application . . . and so on.

Fixed point maximum entropy [stable]. What is maximum human entropy and how do we measure? Every increase in entropy means a creative breaking away against the status quo insofar as that is self-sufficient, that is self sustaining by profiting from the services of the lower layer.

Trump is the leader of a lynch mob. The practical output of political philosophy is the detection, correction and prevention of lynch mobs. What is a lynch mob? A group of persons of murderous intent who feel empowered to take the law into their own hands. The definition of a lynch mob in a given human environment thus depends on the laws that are operating and the status of the lynch mob in the eyes of this law.

. . .

Once we get a definition of a lynch mob as a subset of mobs, we can begin more surely to identify the lynch mobs in our own midst. One line of variation lines in the definition of murderous, ie causing physical death or death of livelihood, relationship, contract, civility and so on.

Friday 13 July 2018
Saturday 14 July 2018

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!)

Ashby, W Ross, An Introduction to Cybernetics, Methuen 1964 'This book is intended to provide [an introduction to cybernetics]. It starts from common-place and well understood concepts, and proceeds step by step to show how these concepts can be made exact, and how they can be developed until they lead into such subjects as feedback, stability, regulation, ultrastability, information, coding, noise and other cybernetic topics.' 
Amazon
  back

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

Cartan, Elie, The Theory of Spinors, Dover Publications 1981 Book description: 'Describes orthgonal and related Lie groups, using real or complex parameters and indefinite metrics. Develops theory of spinors by giving a purely geometric definition of these mathematical entities. Covers generalities on the group of rotations in n-dimensional space, the theory of spinors in spaces of any number of dimensions and much more.' 
Amazon
  back

Dennett, Daniel C, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Penguin Viking 2006 Jacket: 'In this daring and important new book, DCD seeks to uncover the origins of this remarkable family of phenomena that means so much to so many people, and to discuss why--and how--they have commanded allegiance, become so potent and shaped so many lives so strongly. What are the psychological dnd cultural soils in which religion first took root? Is it an addiction or a genuine need that we should try to perserve at any cost? Is it the product of blind evolutionary instinct or rational choice? Do those who believe in God have good resons for doing so? Are people right to say that the best way to live the good life is through religion. In a spirited argument that ranges through biology, history, and psychology, D explores how religion evolved from folk beliefs anbd how these early "wild" strains of religion were then carefully and consciously domesticated. At the motives pf religion's stewards entered this process, such features as secrecy, and systematic invulnberability to disproof emerged. D contends that this protective veneer of mystery needs to be removed so that religions can be better understood, and--more important--he argues that the widespread assumption that they are the necessary foundation of morality can no longer be supported. ... ' 
Amazon
  back

Einstein, Albert, and Robert W Lawson (translator) Roger Penrose (Introduction), Robert Geroch (Commentary), David C Cassidy (Historical Essay) , Relativity: The Special and General Theory, Pi Press 2005 Preface: 'The present book is intended, as far as possible, to give an exact insight into the theory of relativity to those readers who, from a general scientific and philosophical point of view, are interested in the theory, but who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus of theoretical physics. ... The author has spared himself no pains in his endeavour to present the main ideas in the simplest and most intelligible form, and on the whole, in the sequence and connection in which they actually originated.' page 3  
Amazon
  back

Greene, Graham, Brighton Rock, Penguin Classics 2004 'Graham Greene's chilling exposé of violence and gang warfare in the pre-war underworld is a classic of its kind. Pinkie, the teenage gangster, is devoid of compassion or human feeling, despising weakness of the spirit or of the flesh. Responsible for the razor slashes that killed Kite and also for the death of Hale, he is the embodiment of calculated evil. As a Catholic, however, he is convinced that his retribution does not lie in human hands. He is therefore not prepared for Ida Arnold, Hale's avenging angel. Ida, whose allegiance is with life, the here and now, has her own ideas about the circumstances surrounding Hale's death. For the sheer joy of it she takes up the challenge of bringing the infernal Pinkie to an earthly kind of justice.' 
Amazon
  back

Hobson, M P, and G. P. Efstathiou, A. N. Lasenby, General Relativity: An Introduction for Physicists, Cambridge University Press 2006 Amazon Editorial Reviews Book Description 'After reviewing the basic concept of general relativity, this introduction discusses its mathematical background, including the necessary tools of tensor calculus and differential geometry. These tools are used to develop the topic of special relativity and to discuss electromagnetism in Minkowski spacetime. Gravitation as spacetime curvature is introduced and the field equations of general relativity derived. After applying the theory to a wide range of physical situations, the book concludes with a brief discussion of classical field theory and the derivation of general relativity from a variational principle.'  
Amazon
  back

Khinchin, Aleksandr Yakovlevich, Mathematical Foundations of Information Theory (translated by P A Silvermann and M D Friedman), Dover 1957 Jacket: 'The first comprehensive introduction to information theory, this book places the work begun by Shannon and continued by McMillan, Feinstein and Khinchin on a rigorous mathematical basis. For the first time, mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, cyberneticists and communications engineers are offered a lucid, comprehensive introduction to this rapidly growing field.' 
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

Links

Aquinas 113, Summa I, 18, 3: Is life properly attributed to God?, Life is in the highest degree properly in God. In proof of which it must be considered that since a thing is said to live in so far as it operates of itself and not as moved by another, the more perfectly this power is found in anything, the more perfect is the life of that thing. ' back

Aquinas 160, Summa: I 27 1 Is there procession in God?, 'Our Lord says, "From God I proceeded" (Jn. 8:42).' back

Aquinas 20, Summa I, 3, 7: Whether God is altogether simple? , 'I answer that, The absolute simplicity of God may be shown in many ways. First, from the previous articles of this question. For there is neither composition of quantitative parts in God, since He is not a body; nor composition of matter and form; nor does His nature differ from His "suppositum"; nor His essence from His existence; neither is there in Him composition of genus and difference, nor of subject and accident. Therefore, it is clear that God is nowise composite, but is altogether simple. . . . ' back

Aristotle - Wikipedia, Aristotle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Aristotle (Ancient Greek: Ἀριστοτέλης, Aristotélēs) (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. Aristotle's writings were the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality, aesthetics, logic, science, politics, and metaphysics.' back

Bernard Lonergan - Wikipedia, Bernard Lonergan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Bernard J.F. Lonergan, SJ, CC (17 December 1904 – 26 November 1984) was a Canadian Jesuit priest, philosopher, and theologian regarded by some as one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century.[1] Lonergan's works include Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957) and Method in Theology (1972), as well as two studies of Thomas Aquinas, several theological textbooks, and numerous essays, including two posthumously published essays on macroeconomics. A projected 25-volume Collected Works is underway with the University of Toronto Press. He held appointments at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Regis College, Toronto, as Distinguished Visiting Professor at Boston College, and as Stillman Professor of Divinity at Harvard University. back

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius - Free Ebook, 'The book called 'The Consolation of Philosophy' was throughout the Middle Ages, and down to the beginnings of the modern epoch in the sixteenth century, the scholar's familiar companion. Few books have exercised a wider influence in their time. It has been translated into every European tongue, and into English nearly a dozen times, from King Alfred's paraphrase to the translations of Lord Preston, Causton, Ridpath, and Duncan, in the eighteenth century.' back

Born rule - Wikipedia, Born rule - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Born rule (also called the Born law, Born's rule, or Born's law) is a law of quantum mechanics which gives the probability that a measurement on a quantum system will yield a given result. It is named after its originator, the physicist Max Born. The Born rule is one of the key principles of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. There have been many attempts to derive the Born rule from the other assumptions of quantum mechanics, with inconclusive results. . . . The Born rule states that if an observable corresponding to a Hermitian operator A with discrete spectrum is measured in a system with normalized wave function (see bra-ket notation), then the measured result will be one of the eigenvalues λ of A, and the probability of measuring a given eigenvalue λi will equal <ψ|Pi|ψ> where Pi is the projection onto the eigenspace of A corresponding to λi'. back

C W F Everitt, B Muhlfelder, C M Will & A S Silbergleit (editors), Classical and Quantum Gravity: Focus Issue: Gravity Probe B, 'On 4 May 2011, NASA announced the long-awaited results of Gravity Probe B (GP-B) [1], and a month later the results appeared in Phys. Rev. Lett. [2]. After more than 47 years and 750 million dollars, GP-B had succeeded in measuring the general relativistic geodetic and frame-dragging effects on orbiting gyroscopes. In this focus issue, CQG publishes a set of refereed papers that provide the complete details of the experiment, from design of the spacecraft to the final data analysis, thus bringing to a close an extraordinary chapter in experimental gravitation.' back

Charles Darwin - Wikipedia, Charles Darwin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Charles Robert Darwin FRS (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.' back

Chernobyl disaster - Wikipedia, Chernobyl disaster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Chernobyl disaster (locally Ukrainian: Чорнобильська катастрофа, Chornobylska Katastrofa – Chornobyl Catastrophe) was a catastrophic nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine (then officially Ukrainian SSR), which was under the direct jurisdiction of the central authorities of the Soviet Union.' back

Classical and Quantum Gravity - Wikipedia, Classical and Quantum Gravity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Classical and Quantum Gravity is a peer-reviewed journal that covers all aspects of gravitational physics and the theory of spacetime. Its scope includes: Classical general relativity Applications of relativity Experimental gravitation Cosmology and the early universe Quantum gravity Supergravity, superstrings and supersymmetry Mathematical physics relevant to gravitation' back

CQG+, Classical and Quantum Gravity Plus, 'CQG+ is the companion blog to Classical and Quantum Gravity(CQG): the world’s leading gravitational physics journal. While CQG, the journal, is focused on science, CQG+ is about the people that make it happen. On this site, you will find informal posts from your peers written for the gravitational physics community. Authors are invited to write CQG+ posts after receiving high quality ratings (or referee comments) during peer review.' back

Electron degeneracy pressure - Wikipedia, Electron degeneracy pressure - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Electron degeneracy pressure is a particular manifestation of the more general phenomenon of quantum degeneracy pressure. The Pauli exclusion principle disallows two identical half-integer spin particles (electrons and all other fermions) from simultaneously occupying the same quantum state. The result is an emergent pressure against compression of matter into smaller volumes of space.' back

Eric Lichtblau, More Demands on Cell Carriers in Surveillance, 'WASHINGTON — In the first public accounting of its kind, cellphone carriers reported that they responded to a startling 1.3 million demands for subscriber information last year from law enforcement agencies seeking text messages, caller locations and other information in the course of investigations.' back

Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster - Wikipedia, Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster . . . is a series of equipment failures, nuclear meltdowns, and releases of radioactive materials at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, followed by the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011. It is the largest nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl disaster of 1986. back

General covariance - Wikipedia, General covariance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, In theoretical physics, general covariance (also known as diffeomorphism covariance or general invariance) is the invariance of the form of physical laws under arbitrary differentiable coordinate transformations. The essential idea is that coordinates do not exist a priori in nature, but are only artifices used in describing nature, and hence should play no role in the formulation of fundamental physical laws.' back

General Scholium - Wikipedia, General Scholium - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The General Scholium is an essay written by Isaac Newton, appended to his work of Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, known as the Principia. General Scholium was first published with the second (1713) edition of the Principia and reappeared with some additions and modifications on the third (1726) edition.[1] It is best known for the "Hypotheses non fingo" ("I do not frame hypotheses") expression, which Newton used as a response to some of the criticism received after the release of the first edition (1687). In the essay Newton not only counters the natural philosophy of René Descartes and Gottfried Leibniz, but also addresses scientific methodology, theological and metaphysical issues.' back

Gravity Probe B - Wikipedia, Gravity Probe B - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Gravity Probe B (GP-B) was a satellite-based mission which launched on 20 April 2004 on a Delta II rocket.[4] The spaceflight phase lasted until 2005;[5] its aim was to measure spacetime curvature near Earth, and thereby the stress–energy tensor (which is related to the distribution and the motion of matter in space) in and near Earth. This provided a test of general relativity, gravitomagnetism and related models. The principal investigator was Francis Everitt.' back

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English lexicon: ἐντελέχ-εια, 'A.full, complete reality, opp. “δύναμις, ψυχή ἐστιν ἐ. ἡ πρώτη σώματος φυσικοῦ δυνάμει ζωὴν ἔχοντος” Arist. de An.412a27; “ὑπὸ τοῦ ἐντελεχεία ὄντος τὸ δυνάμει ὂν γίνεται” Id.GA734a30; distd. fr. ἐνέργεια, actuality, opp. activity, Id.Metaph.1050a23, Ph.257b8, cf. Ph.1.625 (ἐνδ- codd.), Plot.4.7.8; later, “τὸ ᾠὸν κατὰ δύναμιν μέν ἐστι νεοσσός, κατ᾽ ἐντελέχειαν δὲ οὐκ ἔοτιν” S.E.M.10.340, cf. Theo Sm.p.37 H.' back

Heraclitus - Wikipedia, Heraclitus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Heraclitus of Ephesus (Greek: Ἡράκλειτος ὁ Ἐφέσιος—Hērákleitos ho Ephésios; c. 535 – c. 475 BCE) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. . . . Heraclitus is famous for his insistence on ever-present change in the universe, as stated in his famous saying, "No man ever steps in the same river twice" (see panta rhei, below). He believed in the unity of opposites, stating that "the path up and down are one and the same", all existing entities being characterized by pairs of contrary properties. His cryptic utterance that "all entities come to be in accordance with this Logos" (literally, "word", "reason", or "account") has been the subject of numerous interpretations.' ' back

Holy See - Wikipedia, Holy See - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Holy See (Latin: Sancta Sedes, Italian: Santa Sede) is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome. The primacy of Rome makes its bishop the worldwide leader of the church, commonly known as the Pope. Since Rome is the preeminent episcopal see of the church, it contains the central government of the church, including various agencies essential to administration. As such, diplomatically, the Holy See acts and speaks for the whole Catholic Church. It is also recognized by other subjects of international law as a sovereign entity, headed by the Pope, with which diplomatic relations can be maintained.' back

Information theory and measure theory - Wikipedia, Information theory and measure theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Many of the formulas in information theory have separate versions for continuous and discrete cases, i.e. integrals for the continuous case and sums for the discrete case. These versions can often be generalized using measure theory. For discrete random variables, probability mass functions can be considered density functions with respect to the counting measure, thus requiring only basic discrete mathematics for what can be considered, in a measure theory context, integration. Because the same integration expression is used for the continuous case, which uses basic calculus, the same concepts and expressions can be used for both discrete and continuous cases.' back

Jay Michaelson, The Secrets of Leonard Leo, the Man Behind Trump's Supreme Court Pick, 'When President Donald Trump nominates a justice to the Supreme Court on Monday night, he will be carrying out the agenda of a small, secretive network of extremely conservative Catholic activists already responsible for placing three justices (Alito, Roberts, and Gorsuch) on the high court.' back

Joe Heim, Sacred ground, now reclaimed: A Charlottesville story, 'CHARLOTTESVILLE — The soil came up easily at the lynching site. Scoop after scoop of deep brown earth dug carefully with a trowel and then gently poured into gallon-size glass jars etched with a name — John Henry James — and a date — July 12, 1898. Sacred ground, once forgotten, now reclaimed.' back

Joel Lovell, Can the A.C.L.U. Become the N.R.A for the Left?, 'On the morning of Friday, June 22, the American Civil Liberties Union won a major Supreme Court decision in Carpenter v. United States, which was possibly, at least in terms of pure jurisprudence, the most important case argued before the court this past session. It was a landmark ruling that changed the future of digital privacy in America, but news of the win was only the second most important thing happening at the A.C.L.U. offices that day. At 3 p.m., a conference call was scheduled to discuss the more than 2,000 children whose fates were tied to another A.C.L.U. suit against the government.' back

John Palmer - Parmenides, Parmenides (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), First published Fri Feb 8, 2008 'Immediately after welcoming Parmenides to her abode, the goddess describes as follows the content of the revelation he is about to receive:
You must needs learn all things,/ both the unshaken heart of well-rounded reality/ and the notions of mortals, in which there is no genuine trustworthiness./ Nonetheless these things too will you learn, how what they resolved/ had actually to be, all through all pervading. (Fr. 1.28b-32) ' back

Julian Jaynes - Wikipedia, Julian Jaynes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Julian Jaynes (February 27, 1920 – November 21, 1997) was an American psychologist, best known for his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976), in which he argued that ancient peoples were not conscious.' back

Le Bo, Steffen Bohm and Noelia Sarah-Reynolds, Organizing the Envrionmental Governance of the Rare-Earth Industry: China's passive revolution, 'The rare-earth industry is of strategic importance for China and many ‘clean’ technologies worldwide. Yet the processes of mining, smelting and separating rare-earth ores are heavily polluting. Using a neo-Gramscian perspective in the context of organization studies, this article analyses the dynamic interactions between government agencies, business and civil society in the development of the environmental governance of China’s rare-earth industry over the past 30 years, with a particular focus on China’s ‘top-down’ passive revolution.' back

Measure (mathematics) - Wikipedia, Measure (mathematics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In mathematical analysis, a measure on a set is a systematic way to assign a number to each suitable subset of that set, intuitively interpreted as its size. In this sense, a measure is a generalization of the concepts of length, area, and volume. A particularly important example is the Lebesgue measure on a Euclidean space, which assigns the conventional length, area, and volume of Euclidean geometry to suitable subsets of the n-dimensional Euclidean space Rn. For instance, the Lebesgue measure of the interval [0, 1] in the real numbers is its length in the everyday sense of the word, specifically 1.' back

NASA, Gravity Probe B: The Relativity Mission, back

Normal coordinates - Wikipedia, Normal coordinates - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In differential geometry, normal coordinates at a point p in a differentiable manifold equipped with a symmetric affine connection are a local coordinate system in a neighborhood of p obtained by applying the exponential map to the tangent space at p. In a normal coordinate system, the Christoffel symbols of the connection vanish at the point p, thus often simplifying local calculations. In normal coordinates associated to the Levi-Civita connection of a Riemannian manifold, one can additionally arrange that the metric tensor is the Kronecker delta at the pointp, and that the first partial derivatives of the metric at p vanish.' back

Stanford University, Gravity Probe B Mission - Overview, 'Gravity Probe B (GP-B) is a NASA physics mission to experimentally investigate Albert Einstein's 1916 general theory of relativity—his theory of gravity. GB-B used four spherical gyroscopes and a telescope, housed in a satellite orbiting 642 km . . . above the Earth, to measure in a new way, and with unprecedented accuracy, two extraordinary effects predicted by the general theory of relativity (the second effect having never before been directly measured): 1. The geodetic effect—the amount by which the Earth warps the local spacetime in which it resides. 2. The frame-dragging effect—the amount by which the rotating Earth drags its local spacetime around with it.' back

Stephen David Snobelen, Isaac Newton Theology, Prophecy, Science and Religion, 'At the end of the seventeenth century, Isaac Newton (1642-1727) initiated a revolution in science. At the end of the twentieth century, scholars began a revolution in the understanding of Newton. As Newton's long-concealed private papers on theology become increasingly accessible, students of Newton's thought are coming to see Newton as more than a scientist. The author of the Principia mathematica was a true Renaissance man who spent decades delving in the secrets of alchemy and even longer studying the Bible, theology and church history. Leaving behind four million words on theology, Newton was one of the greatest lay theologians of his age. A study of Newton's theology and prophetic views illuminates the life of this great thinker and helps us understand his science.' back

Taliban - Wikipedia, Taliban - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'After the attacks of September 11, 2001 the Taliban were overthrown by the American-led invasion of Afghanistan. Later it regrouped as an insurgency movement to fight the American-backed Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (established in late 2001) and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). The Taliban have been accused of using terrorism as a specific tactic to further their ideological and political goals. According to the United Nations, the Taliban and their allies were responsible for 75% of Afghan civilian casualties in 2010 and 80% in 2011. Today the Taliban operate in Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan. It is believed one of their current major headquarters is near Quetta in Pakistan. back

Venn diagram - Wikipedia, Venn diagram - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'A Venn diagram or set diagram is a diagram that shows all possible logical relations between a finite collection of different sets. Venn diagrams were conceived around 1880 by John Venn. They are used to teach elementary set theory, as well as illustrate simple set relationships in probability, logic, statistics, linguistics and computer science.' back

Zeno's paradoxes - Wikipedia, Zeno's paradoxes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Zeno's paradoxes are a set of problems generally thought to have been devised by Zeno of Elea to support Parmenides's doctrine that "all is one" and that, contrary to the evidence of our senses, the belief in plurality and change is mistaken, and in particular that motion is nothing but an illusion.' back

www.naturaltheology.net is maintained by The Theology Company Proprietary Limited ACN 097 887 075 ABN 74 097 887 075 Copyright 2000-2020 © Jeffrey Nicholls