natural theology

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vol VII: Notes

2018

Notes

Sunday 2 September 2018 - Saturday 8 September 2018

[Notebook: DB 82: Life and Death]

[page 270]

Sunday 2 September 2018

No difference between hardware, software and data.

Networks connect modularization (modules) and wholeness

Evolution is NP complete (?) NP-complete - Wikipedia

Emergence must be a property of a network.

The root of network intelligence lies in the boson-fermion distinction. The idea is that networks create by connecting and eliminating contradictions. In the case of fermions exclusion is achieved by the inversion of the wave function so that the probability of two fermions occupying the same state is reduced to zero. So we have to look carefully at the spin-statistics theorem.

As a child I was prone to dreaming up fantastic inventions that would change the world like

[page 271]

anti-gravity devices and sources of unlimited energy. Now seventy years later I am still dreaming trying to make theology into a science and change the world by developing a model of god that fits the universe. The idea we want to crack is how the universe can be simple, omniscient and omnipotent like the classical God.

Monday 3 September

Streater and Wightman (chapter 4) Streater & Wightman: PCT, Spin, Statistics and all That

Streater page 134: Local commutativity asserts the vanishing of commutators or anti-commutators [ψ(x), φ(y)] for all spacelike x - y.

page 146: Spin and statistics
'All experimental evidence indicates that systems with integer spin obey Bose-Einstein statistics and spin with half odd-integer spin those of Fermi-Dirac statistics . . . A natural way to describe Bose-Einstein statistics is to describe the system in question by a field which commutes for space-like separations, while the analogous way for Fermi-Dirac statistics is to use a field which anti-commutes for space-like separations . . . the spin-statistics theorem is an assertion that in quantum field theory a non-trivial integer spin field cannot have an anti-commutator vanishing for space-like separations, and a non-trivial half odd-integer spin field cannot have a commutator vanishing for space-like separations. If one puts aside the possibility of laws of statistics other than Bose-Einstein or Fermi-Dirac, the spin-statistics theorem then accounts for the experimental results.

[page 272]

Can I take myself seriously? Can I explain my origin from a structureless initial singularity? Maybe not, but I do know that it happened and if it happened it can be explained and we have lots of theoretical elements to do the explaining with, so I just just rattle on. If anybody questions me, I have a plausible story, and in a university is the ideal place to tell it, although I do feel a bit of ridicule and disbelief, but I went through that before in my monastic days and now my choices are better. I know a lot more now and my hearer's minds are more open, I hope. Can I face the fact that the world is divine? Can I explain it to anybody else? Can I use quantum mechanics to build upon what Thomas constructed? The countably infinite starting point is a separable Hilbert space of countably infinite dimension. Hilbert space - Wikipedia

Tuesday 4 September 2018
Wednesday 5 September 2018
Thursday 6 September 2018

MPhil: Hinged or unhinged: the grounding role of science in philosophy, politics and theology.

4 billion years to make a human body
100 trillion cells [per body] of 100 trillion atoms [per cell] = E28 atoms
4E9 years x 4E2 days [per year] x E5 seconds [per day] = 16E16 seconds, so we are organizing E28/E17 = E11 atoms per second [assuming that the majority of atoms in a living body are precisely placed in precise roles].

[page 273]

. . .

How damaged am I? Not, but I have spent a long time in the desert, 50 years since 1968. That time was well spent. I survived with new ideas, and now, as ever, I must work out how to put them in writing in a way that will catch a few eyes and a few minds and become a centre of condensation.

Friday 7 September 2018

In a bogged down period, nevertheless. The first shine of my academic career is a little bit dulled. Perhaps mainly because I think much of the reading I am being offered is old and a bit parochial, argumentative in the traditional philosophical way, and not particularly open to the scientific approach to things. My challenge, of course, is to do better by building on the literature we have been offered, so the essays must all have the same form: this is what has been said, this is where I disagree, this is where I think we should go: ie refutation and conjecture, opening the door to the next round of refutation and conjecture. It is one thing to feel that I can do something, a necessary preliminary to trying, the emotional side of the conjecture to drive the performance. Such psychological considerations are in effect the microcosmic implementation of the passion that drives the big bang. Aristotle and others believed in final causes. The modern version is potential, a space that is attractive probabilistically because it is larger than the actual space. I am always trying to expand. Popper: Conjectures and Refutations

[page 274]

So the story goes: 1) fixed points; 2) quantum mechanics - eigenvectors; 3) eigenvalues = messages / products = structures (variation) = selection from products = stable [closed] structures (groups).

The big issue for naturalizing morality is the relationship between our emotional / histrionic side and our rational side, both sources of our beliefs and consequent action.

Saturday 8 September 2018

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Further reading

Books

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

Feynman, Richard, Feynman Lectures on Computation, Perseus Publishing 2007 Amazon Editorial Reviews Book Description 'The famous physicist's timeless lectures on the promise and limitations of computers When, in 1984-86, Richard P. Feynman gave his famous course on computation at the California Institute of Technology, he asked Tony Hey to adapt his lecture notes into a book. Although led by Feynman, the course also featured, as occasional guest speakers, some of the most brilliant men in science at that time, including Marvin Minsky, Charles Bennett, and John Hopfield. Although the lectures are now thirteen years old, most of the material is timeless and presents a "Feynmanesque" overview of many standard and some not-so-standard topics in computer science such as reversible logic gates and quantum computers.'  
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Isaiah, and (Alexander Jones, Editor), in The Jerusalem Bible, Darton Longman and Todd 1966 Introduction to the Prophets: 'The prophet Isaiah was born about 756 B.C. In the year of king Uzziah's death, 740, he received his prophetic vision while in the Temple of Jerusalem. His mission was to proclaim the fall of Israel and Judah, the punishment of the nation's infidelity. ... The prominent part played by Isaiah in his country's affairs made him a national figure, but he was also a poet of genius. Brilliance of style and freshness of imagery make his work pre-eminent in the literature of the Bible; he wrote a conciae, majestic and harmonious prose unsurpassed by any of the biblical writers who were to follow him.' 
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James, P D, Innocent Blood, Touchstone; 1st Scribner Paperback Fiction edition 2001 Amazon Product Description 'Adopted as a child into a privileged family, Philippa Palfrey fantasizes that she is the daughter of an aristocrat and a parlor maid. The terrifying truth about her parents and a long-ago murder is only the first in a series of shocking betrayals. Philippa quickly learns that those who delve into the secrets of the past must be on guard when long-buried horrors begin to stir.' 
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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' 
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Popper, Karl Raimund, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, Routledge and Kegan Paul 1972 Preface: 'The way in which knowledge progresses, and expecially our scientific knowledge, is by unjustified (and unjustifiable) anticipations, by guesses, by tentative solutions to our problems, by conjectures. These conjectures are controlled by criticism; that is, by attempted refutations, which include severely critical tests.' [p viii]  
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Roll-Hansen, Nils, The Lysenko Effect: The Politics of Science, Humanity Books 2004 Jacket review: 'This is a superb account of Lysenko's rise to power and the circumstances that led to the destruction of classical genetics in the USSR. Roll-Hansen brilliiiantly leads the reader through the step-by-step process by which personal ambition, state ideology, legitimate scientific division, appeasement, and a curious mixture of legitimate and bogus science could get out of hand. Roll-Hansen's marshalling of evidence is magnificent and scholarly. He discusses the science at issue and the quality of experimentation as well as the toxic effects of ideological thinking on both sides of the debate in its earlier phases. This fresh look at a tormented event in the history of science is free of the Cold War perspectives that have dominated earlier studies of Lysenkoism. This is a major contribution to the history of science.' Elof Axel Carson 
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Soyfer, Valery N, and Leo Gruliow (Translator) and Rebecca Gruliow (Translator) , Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science , Rutgers University Press 1994 Hardcover - 379 pages (August 1994) Rutgers Univ Press; ISBN: 0813520878 ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.26 x 9.34 x 6.33  
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Streater, Raymond F, and Arthur S Wightman, PCT, Spin, Statistics and All That, Princeton University Press 2000 Amazon product description: 'PCT, Spin and Statistics, and All That is the classic summary of and introduction to the achievements of Axiomatic Quantum Field Theory. This theory gives precise mathematical responses to questions like: What is a quantized field? What are the physically indispensable attributes of a quantized field? Furthermore, Axiomatic Field Theory shows that a number of physically important predictions of quantum field theory are mathematical consequences of the axioms. Here Raymond Streater and Arthur Wightman treat only results that can be rigorously proved, and these are presented in an elegant style that makes them available to a broad range of physics and theoretical mathematics.' 
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Papers

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

Szilard, Leo, "On the decrease of entropy in a thermodynamic system by the intervention of intelligent beings", Behavioural Science, 9, 4, October 1964, page . 'In memory of Leo Szilard ... we present an English translation of his classial paper Uber die Entropieverminderung in einem thermodynamischen System bei Eingriffen intelligenter Wesen which appeared inthe Zeitschrift fur Physic 1929, 53, 840-56. This is one of the earliest, if not the earliest paper, in which the relations of physical entropy to information (in the sense of modern mathematical theory of communication) were rigorously demonstrated and in which Maxwell's famous demon was successfully exorcised: a milestone in the integration of physical and cognitive concepts. ' Reprinted in Feld, Bernard T, The Collected Works of Leo Szilard: Scientific Papers, The MIT Press 1972 Amazon  back . back

Links

Aaron Hanlon, Postmodernism didn't cause Trump. It explains him, ' Ironically, the urge to blame postmodernism for Trump-era politics blinds us to the explanatory value postmodernism holds for what’s happening today. . . . it’s clear that the real enemy of truth is not postmodernism but propaganda, the active distortion of truth for political purposes. Trumpism practices this form of distortion on a daily basis. The postmodernist theorists we vilify did not cause this; they’ve actually given us a framework to understand precisely how falsehood can masquerade as truth.' back

Aquinas 261, Whether an angel is altogether incorporeal, 'I answer that, There must be some incorporeal creatures. For what is principally intended by God in creatures is good, and this consists in assimilation to God Himself. And the perfect assimilation of an effect to a cause is accomplished when the effect imitates the cause according to that whereby the cause produces the effect; as heat makes heat. Now, God produces the creature by His intellect and will (14, 8; 19, 4 ). Hence the perfection of the universe requires that there should be intellectual creatures. Now intelligence cannot be the action of a body, nor of any corporeal faculty; for every body is limited to "here" and "now." Hence the perfection of the universe requires the existence of an incorporeal creature.' back

Barack Obama, Transcript: Former President Obama's speech at the University of Illinois, 'The biggest threat to our democracy is indifference. The biggest threat is cynicism. A cynicism led too many people to turn away from politics and stay home on Election Day. To all the young people who are here today, there are now more eligible voters in your generation than in any other. Which means your generation now has more power than anybody to change things. If you want it, you can make sure America gets out of its current funk. If you actually care about it, you have the power to make sure we seize a brighter future. But to exercise that clout, to exercise that power, you have to show up.' back

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 'The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists informs the public about threats to the survival and development of humanity from nuclear weapons, climate change, and emerging technologies in the life sciences. Through an award-winning magazine, our online presence, and the Doomsday Clock, we reach policy leaders and audiences around the world with information and analysis about efforts to address the dangers and prevent catastrophe. With fellowships for students and awards to young journalists, we help educate the next generation.' back

David Rousseau and Julie Rousseau, Is There "Ultimate Stuff" and Are There "Ultimate Reasons"?, 'In this essay, we reflect on two fundamental assumptions, the one philosophical and the other scientific. The first has been called the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR). This encapsulates the idea that there is (at least in principle) a complete explanation for everything that exists or happens. We argue that recent attempts in philosophy to undermine the PSR should be rejected on a combination of philosophical and scientific grounds, and PSR should be upheld. Secondly, we argue, from the assumption that PSR is true, that the quantum vacuum (QV) is not the most fundamental stuff that exists, and moreover that we can say something positive about the nature of the “more fundamental” stuff. We argue that these conclusions follow from the implications that PSR carries for the nature of scientific explanations applied within the framework of the model of Nature indicated by Systems Philosophy. We show that under PSR the indicated substance underlying the QV has promise for developing solutions to certain fundamental empirical puzzles in science such as the nature of dark energy and the foundations of consciousness.' back

Faisal Devji, Will Saudi Arabia Cease to Be the Center of Islam?, ' Mecca and Medina will still receive their pilgrims, but Islam may finally assume a truly global form and dispense with a colonial cartography in which the Middle East enjoys pride of place despite containing a small minority of the world’s Muslims. Islam would inevitably find itself at home in Asia, where by far the largest number of its followers live, and toward which global wealth and power are increasingly shifting.' back

Frank Jotzo and Salim Mazouz, Coal does not have an economic future n Australia, 'Renewables are stealing the march over coal in Australia, and the international outlook is for lower coal demand. Today the international Coal Transitions project released its findings, based on global coal scenarios and detailed case studies by teams in China, India, South Africa, Australia, Poland and Germany.' back

Gideon Levy, BDS Success Stories, 'More than Lana Del Rey canceling her visit, more than SodaStream moving its factory from the West Bank to the Negev and more than the achievements of the economic, academic and cultural boycott, BDS has succeeded in a different area, effortlessly and perhaps unintentionally. It has undermined the greatest asset of Israeli public diplomacy: Israel’s liberal and democratic image in the world.' back

Heather Hendershot, How 'Fake News' Was Born at the 1968 DNC, ' In the weeks leading up to the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley turned his town into a fortress. He sealed the manhole covers with tar, so protesters couldn’t hide in the sewers. He installed a fence topped with barbed wire around the Chicago International Amphitheater. He put the entire police force of 12,000 men on 12-hour shifts and called in over 5,000 National Guardsmen. About 1,000 Secret Service and FBI agents were also on duty, as the city braced for the 10,000 protesters who would soon arrive, wound up by a year of political assassinations, urban riots and the raging Vietnam War. What could possibly go wrong? ' back

Hilbert space - Wikipedia, Hilbert space - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The mathematical concept of a Hilbert space, named after David Hilbert, generalizes the notion of Euclidean space. It extends the methods of vector algebra and calculus from the two-dimensional Euclidean plane and three-dimensional space to spaces with any finite or infinite number of dimensions. A Hilbert space is an abstract vector space possessing the structure of an inner product that allows length and angle to be measured. Furthermore, Hilbert spaces are complete: there are enough limits in the space to allow the techniques of calculus to be used.' back

Julian Barbour, Reductionist Doubts, 'According to reductionism, every complex phenomenon can and should be explained in terms of the simplest possible entities and mechanisms. The parts determine the whole. This approach has been an outstanding success in science, but this essay will point out ways in which it could nevertheless be giving us wrong ideas and holding back progress. For example, it may be impossible to understand key features of the universe such as its pervasive arrow of time and remarkably high degree of isotropy and homogeneity unless we study it holistically -- as a true whole. A satisfactory interpretation of quantum mechanics is also likely to be profoundly holistic, involving the entire universe. The phenomenon of entanglement already hints at such a possibility.' back

Massimo Faggioli, Trent's Long Shadow: The Abuse Crisis and Seminaries, Dioceses and the Laity, 'Tackling the failures that made the sex-abuse crisis possible will involve many changes—changes to the church’s relationship with civil authorities and criminal justice, cultural and spiritual changes, but also changes in the structure of the institution itself. It is finally time to revisit the basic models of ecclesial organization that the Council of Trent imposed on the Catholic Church.' back

Nature, Nature Physics Portal, 'The Nature physics portal is a one-stop resource for physicists, providing highlights of the latest research in Nature and elsewhere.' back

Nick Evershed, Lorea Allam, and Calla Wahlquist, Calls intensify for government to act of Indigenous deaths in custody, ' The Australian government is reviewing the implementation of the 27-year-old royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody as part of a push to reduce Indigenous incarceration rates. Indigenous affairs minister Nigel Scullion told Guardian Australia he had ordered the review in 2017 to ensure that all levels of government were held accountable for implementing the royal commission’s 338 recommendations, most of which, according to a 2015 review by Change the Record, have not been fully implemented.' back

Nicole-Ann Lobo, An Introduction to 'Commonweal' and Liberation Theology, ' On August 24, 1968, Pope Paul VI opened the second conference of the Latin American Episcopal Council (CELAM) in Medellín. The first time Latin America had ever been visited by a reigning pope, CELAM II is famous for its indictment of structural injustice throughout Latin America and for igniting a debate about how the church should address growing inequality and corruption in the region. The phrase found in the conference’s final document—“ver, juzgar, y actuar” or “see, judge, and act”—urged members of the clergy to address this inequality through both their actions and words.' back

Noel Debien, The Catholic church must reform canon law in wake of child sexual abuse royal commission, ' Globally, the church has no separation of powers. The Pope really is an absolute monarch. He is the supreme legislator of canon law. There is no Catholic parliament to create and develop canon law, and no Catholic judiciary with power separate from the Pope. . . . In Australia, the law of the land has stepped into the Catholic jurisdictional void in the form of the royal commission. . . . Without significant reform of canon law, pretty much no-one except the Pope and bishops have jurisdiction for bringing about genuine reform. . . . Reform of canon law needs to be high on the church's agenda, or it will become "business as usual" again.' back

NP-complete - Wikipedia, NP-complete - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In complexity theory, the NP-complete problems are the most difficult problems in NP ("non-deterministic polynomial time") in the sense that they are the smallest subclass of NP that could conceivably remain outside of P, the class of deterministic polynomial-time problems. The reason is that a deterministic, polynomial-time solution to any NP-complete problem would also be a solution to every other problem in NP. The complexity class consisting of all NP-complete problems is sometimes referred to as NP-C.' back

Raquel O'Brien with Georgina Savage, 'Almost like I was possesses': Raquel O;Brien's rage grew from her family's dark past, 'If you met me a year ago, you'd never guess that I was physically abusive to my partner. But the truth is, I was. When we were alone I'd attack him, I'd claw and punch, unleashing all the rage and pain that I otherwise held within me. He was my only outlet. Four years into our relationship, I realised I was continuing a cycle of abuse. I am a survivor of family sexual abuse who was raised by a child molester, and I was releasing my rage on the closest person to me.' back

Sabine Hosenfelder, Gravity Can Be Neither Classical nor Quantized, 'I argue that it is possible for a theory to be neither quantized nor classical. We should therefore give up the assumption that the fundamental theory which describes gravity at shortest distances must either be quantized, or quantization must emerge from a fundamentally classical theory. To illustrate my point I will discuss an example for a theory that is neither classical nor quantized, and argue that it has the potential to resolve the tensions between the quantum field theories of the standard model and general relativity.' back

Scientific American Inc, Science and Technology at Scientific American.com ..., 'Scientific American, the oldest continuously published magazine in the U.S., has been bringing its readers unique insights about developments in science and technology for more than 150 years.' back

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