Why be green: quantum mechanics in the free world
I fought reality and reality won (anon)
After 65 years thinking about physics, theology and quantum mechanics, I have come to the following story:
Since time immemorial people have imagined that superior invisible forces manage the world. Parallel to this belief we have a class of people, priests or astrologers, who claim that contact with and inspiration from these superiors give them a mandate to tell the rest of us what to do. Not surprisingly their sense of entitlement allows them to see themselves as important and powerful people. This role can be very profitable when their followers are encouraged to pay for the divine advice they are receiving.
I write this essay as an ex-member of the Roman Catholic Church which claims descent from Jesus, the Son of its God who said “I am the Lord your God, and I will have no other Gods before me”. This god often advised the use of military force to deal with dissenters, killing those whose resistance seemed incorrigible. This divine behaviour, often disguised as patriotism, is the source of wars of history, including the legendary ones fought in the heavens.
Although wars are very real, there is very little evidence for the reality of the imaginary and invisible forces that are claimed to guide us by rent seeking clergy, politicians and their followers who claim entitlement to rule over us. We now feel that it is preferable the guided by the real physical forces embedded in our world.
The Galileo affair
A very significant and famous turn away from fantasy toward is now reality known as the Galileo Affaire. It seems very obvious that that the Sun rotates around the Earth. It rises in the East the morning, crosses the sky through the day and sets in the West in the evening. Although this picture is obvious, it is also wrong. The apparent motion of the Sun is explained by the rotation of the Earth.
Because Earth is so big and so slow, we do not notice this motion, but careful observers of the apparent motions of the stars and planets began to feel that it this the Earth that moves, nt the stars. Because the heavens so important to our lives, astrologers and astronomers devoted a lot of time and energy to watching the night sky. People like Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler and Nicolaus Copernicus used clocks and geometric instruments to measure celestial motion and slowly learnt that the Earth rotates and orbits the Sun and not vice versa.
Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642) made and used telescopes to get irrefutable evidence that this is the truth, but the Catholic Church declared his opinion heretical and threatened him with the death penalty if he did not retract. He did and saved his life, but ever since many people, particularly scientists, thought that the Church had treated Galileo unfairly.
On the centenary of Einstein’s birth on 10 November 1979 the Roman Pope, now Saint John Paul II, foreshadowed a modern study of the “Galileo Affair”. The Pope announced its conclusions in an address to a Plenary Session of the Papal Academy of Science on 31 October 1992:
4. [. . .] One might perhaps be surprised that, at the end of the Academy’s study week on the subject of the emergence of complexity in the various sciences, I am returning to the Galileo case. Has not this case long been shelved and have not the errors committed been recognised?
That is certainly true. However, the underlying problems of this case concern both the nature of science and the message of faith.
Throughout his discussion of the Church’s treatment of Galileo the Pope stuck firmly to the ecclesiastical dichotomy between revelation and science.
He explains:
[. . .] There exist two realms of knowledge, one which has its source in Revelation and one which reason can discover by its own power. To the latter belong especially the experimental sciences and philosophy. [. . .].
Humanity has before it two modes of development. The first involves culture, scientific research and technology, that is to say whatever falls within the horizontal aspect of man and creation, which is growing at an impressive rate. [. . .] The second mode of development involves what is deepest in the human being, when, transcending the world and transcending himself, man turns to the One who is the Creator of all. It is only this vertical direction which can give full meaning to man’s being and action, because it situates him in relation to his origin and his end.
So, three hundred years after Galileo the scientists asserted empirical truth against theological fantasy we reach the 21st century Roman Catholic Church that still propagates false doctrines to more tan a billion people around the world. The Church is an absolute monarchy ruled by an infallible Pope. It derives its legitimacy from an invisible imaginary God whose properties of absolute simplcity and omnipotence are mutually contradictory.
In it women are second class citizens without the spiritual qualities necessary to join the priesthood. Their bodies belong to God to create more Catholics. The children are indoctrinated from a tender age. Meanwhile clergy around the world sexually abuse children and the Church vigorously resists pressure to do anything about it.
In order to keep itself pure it promotes a doctrine of two truths, science and philosophy on one hand, divine revelation on the other, curated by its own tame theologians. The green future is built on scientific theology. Scientific theology, like the work of Galileo, is built on observing the real world. In our world, physics and theology have the same subject. All our evidence is physical. We can see and feel the real god at every moment of our lives. We are part of them.
What has reality /nature got to offer?
In a word, everything.
The Catholic Church is a direct descendant of the Roman Empire. Imperialism is a serious and lethal political mistake. It arises from the undemocratic use of military power to predate on undefended populations and enslave them to extract economic advantage. This produces a vicious circle, since the military approach exploits people to extract the resources to exploit them further. This abuse is exposed by the following theological view of physics. The situation is the result of increases in military technology that began thousands of years ago.
The initial singularity
It is now widely agreed that the source of the universe is some sort of initial singularity. This singularity must be eternal, since nothing comes from nothing. It must be omnipotent, since it has given rise to the present universe. It must be very simple, having no structure so earning the title ‘singularity’. Further, given its simplicity, our modern understanding that information is physical it must place no prior constraints on the structure of the universe. The only constraint we can imagine, consistent with omnipotence, is that it cannot establish self-contradictory situations.
Let us call this singularity naked gravitation. It carries the essence of gravitation without the space-time structure which Einstein identified in the universe. The addition of this structure by quantum mechanics is discussed below. In particular, like the universe as a whole naked gravitation has no energy.
The second law of thermodynamics
The second law of thermodynamics is a powerful physical abstraction. A colloquial expression of the law is that entropy almost always increases. This means everything trends to become more complicated , where entropy equals complication. This is creation
Since the initial singularity is absolutely simple it carries no complication so its entropy is zero. The universe we know it is infinitely complex and has enormous entropy. The second law predicts this increase in entropy, which is equivalent to creation, but it does not explain it.
Creative evolution by variation and selection
Charles Darwin explained creation in The Origin of Species. Evolution is founded on variation, the child of randomness. Random events occur when there is no reason for any particular thing to happen. When we spin a perfectly symmetrical coin, there is no reason for heads to land up rather than tails.
Traditional theology imagines a god that has providence over everything controlling every event in the universe. This god enables Laplace’s demon, an entity with the power to compute all future stats of a deterministic world from a comprehensive knowledge of the present.
A sad episode in the history of science was Einstein’s rejection of quantum mechanics because it is not deterministic. If we understand quantum mechanics as the fundamental theory of the universe, the randomness inherent in quantum mechanics is essential for the creation of the world.
Quantum mechanics in the initial singularity
The initial singularity acts because it is omnipotent, but its actions are random because, like as spinning coin it has no reason to make a particular move. Since there is no space and time at this stage all these actions are perpetual motions that occur on top of one another, what quantum mechanics calls superposition.
We know from our laboratory experiments that the mathematical structure of quantum mechanics picks particular stationary states out of chaos. We can imagine all the electrons in an atom moving everywhere at random, but all we ever see are very definite outputs from atoms, photons of light with precisely defined frequencies or colours.
Modern hylomorphism
Plato imagined that the structure of our world is controlled by a heaven of forms. His student Aristotle brought Plato’s forms down to earth to make things by attaching them to matter. Here we imagine that quantum mechanics selects forms from the primordial chaos and they are made into real particles by adding energy, the modern form of matter,
Let us imagine that the origin of this energy is the bifurcation of the zero energy naked gravitation into the potential and kinetic energy that we observe in the present universe. The kinetic energy goes to make quantum forms into real particles; the potential energy holds the particulate universe together. Gravitational potential keep our feet on the spinning earth.
Bosons, fermions and Minkowski space
Einstein’s first miracle in 1905 was to produce the special theory of relativity which unites space and time into a single space-time also known as Minkowski space. Laboratory experiments show that all elementary particle fall into two general classes.
Massless bosons that that travel at the speed of light outside space and time. The spacetime interval between the source of a photon of the cosmic background radiation which bathes the Earth and its destination on earth is zero.
The other class are massive fermions that obey the Pauli exclusion principle. The require 3D space to move freely. Let us assume that the variation and selection of cosmic evolution is the source of these two classes of particles, and that their peculiar behaviour is the source of the structure of Minkowski space. In other words special relativity is a product of quantum mechanics.
The independence of elementary particles
I like to call this approach to constructing the universe cognitive cosmogenesis. We now understand quantum mechanics as a theory of computation and communication. In effect it defines the mind of the universe. Each particles carries a mind (technically a hermitian operator) which controls its behaviour when it meets other particles just as our own minds control our behaviour when we meet one another.
Now we get to the point: symmetry with respect to complexity
The beauty of quantum mechanics is that it is symmetric with respect to complexity. The only real difference between the description of an elementary particle and the description of a universe is the size of the quantum mechanical space we work in. The same goes for elementary particles and people.
Each of us is a formal structure, which some call the soul, activated by energy. We are inherently independent. The imperial idea that some people are entitle to use others for their own benefit is not consistent with the quantum mechanical structure of our world., so, in an omnipotent word, it is doomed to failure.
The political consequences for Australians and everyone.
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Further readingBooks
Augustine (419, 1991), Aurelius, and Edmond Hill (Introduction, translation and notes), and John E Rotelle (editor), The Trinity, New City Press 399-419, 1991 Written 399 - 419: De Trinitate is a radical restatement, defence and development of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Augustine's book has served as a foundation for most subsequent work, particularly that of Thomas Aquinas.
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Feynman (2002), Richard, Feynman Lectures on Gravitation, Westview Press 2002 ' The Feynman Lectures on Gravitation are based on notes prepared during a course on gravitational physics that Richard Feynman taught at Caltech during the 1962-63 academic year. For several years prior to these lectures, Feynman thought long and hard about the fundamental problems in gravitational physics, yet he published very little. These lectures represent a useful record of his viewpoints and some of his insights into gravity and its application to cosmology, superstars, wormholes, and gravitational waves at that particular time. The lectures also contain a number of fascinating digressions and asides on the foundations of physics and other issues.' [zero-energy universe, pp 9 - 10]
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Goddard (1998), Peter , and Stephen Hawking, Abraham Pais, Maurice Jacob, David Olive, and Michael Atiyah, Paul Dirac, The Man and His Work, Cambridge University Press 1998 Jacket: Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac was one of the founders of quantum theory and the aithor of many of its most important subsequent developments. He is numbered alongside Newton, Maxwell, Einstein and Rutherford as one of the greatest physicists of all time.
This volume contains four lectures celebrating Dirac's life and work and the text of an address given by Stephen Hawking, which were given on 13 November 1995 on the occasion of the dedication of a plaque to him in Westminster Abbey. In the first lecture, Abraham Pais describes from personal knowledge Dirac's character and his approach to his work. In the second lecture, Maurice Jacob explains not only how and why Dirac was led to introduce the concept of antimatter, but also its central role in modern particle physics and cosmology. In the third lecture, David Olive gives an account of Dirac's work on magnetic monopoles and shows how it has had a profound influence in the development of fundamental physics down to the present day. In the fourth lecture, Sir Michael Atiyah explains the widespread significance of the Dirac equation in mathematics, its roots in algebra and its implications for geometry and topology.'
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Hawking (1975), Steven W, and G F R Ellis, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, Cambridge UP 1975 Preface: Einstein's General Theory of Relativity . . . leads to two remarkable predictions about the universe: first that the final fate of massive stars is to collapse behind an event horizon to form a 'black hole' which will contain a singularity; and secondly that there is a singularity in our past which constitutes, in some sense, a beginning to our universe. Our discussion is principally aimed at developing these two results.'
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Hobson (2006), M. P., and G. P. Efstathiou, A. N. Lasenby, General Relativity: An Introduction for Physicists, Cambridge University Press 2006 '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.'
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Jaeger (1997), Werner Wilhelm, Aristotle: Fundamentals of the history of his development, Oxford University Press 1997 Jacket: '"Aristotle was the first thinker to set up along with his philosophy a conception of his own position in history; he thereby created a new kind of philosophical consciousness, more responsible and inwardly complex. He was the inventor of the notion of intellectual development in time . . . ." In this classic study, Professor Jaeger profoundly altered the general view of Aristotle among philosophers and classical scholars. He showed that Aristotle was not uncompromisingly opposed to Plato, that he developed gradually, applying step by step his particular genius to the problems of his age.'
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Kolmogorov (1956), Andrey Nikolaevich, and Nathan Morrison (Translator) (With an added bibliography by A T Bharucha-Reid), Foundations of the Theory of Probability, Chelsea 1956 Preface: 'The purpose of this monograph is to give an axiomatic foundation for the theory of probability. . . . This task would have been a rather hopeless one before the introduction of Lebesgue's theories of measure and integration. However, after Lebesgue's publication of his investigations, the analogies between measure of a set and mathematical expectation of a random variable became apparent. These analogies allowed of further extensions; thus, for example, various properties of independent random variables were seen to be in complete analogy with the corresponding properties of orthogonal functions . . .'
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Nielsen (2016), Michael A., and Isaac L Chuang, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information, Cambridge University Press 2016 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.
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Sacks (2015), Jonathan, Not in God's Name: Confronting Religious Violence, Schocken Books Inc 2015 ' In his remarkable book, Sacks argues that believers must face the painful facts. He is careful to document that wars of religion are not unique to Islam. He believes that to persuade religious people of the Abrahamic faiths, arguments against religious violence must be rooted in theology, not in secular ideas alone.
E. J. Dionne Jr. "The Washington Post
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Streater (2000), 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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Weinberg (1995), Steven, The Quantum Theory of Fields Volume I: Foundations , Cambridge University Press 1995 Jacket: 'After a brief historical outline, the book begins anew with the principles about which we are most certain, relativity and quantum mechanics, and then the properties of particles that follow from these principles. Quantum field theory then emerges from this as a natural consequence. The classic calculations of quantum electrodynamics are presented in a thoroughly modern way, showing the use of path integrals and dimensional regularization. The account of renormalization theory reflects the changes in our view of quantum field theory since the advent of effective field theories. The book's scope extends beyond quantum elelctrodynamics to elementary partricle physics and nuclear physics. It contains much original material, and is peppered with examples and insights drawn from the author's experience as a leader of elementary particle research. Problems are included at the end of each chapter. '
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Links
Albert Einstein (1905), On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, An english translation of the paper that founded Special relativity. 'Examples of this sort, [in the contemporary application of Maxwell's electrodynamics to moving bodies] together with the unsuccessful attempts to discover any motion of the earth relatively to the ``light medium,'' suggest that the phenomena of electrodynamics as well as of mechanics possess no properties corresponding to the idea of absolute rest. They suggest rather that, as has already been shown to the first order of small quantities, the same laws of electrodynamics and optics will be valid for all frames of reference for which the equations of mechanics hold good.' back |
Aquinas, Summa I, 25, 3, Is God omnipotent?, '. . . God is called omnipotent because He can do all things that are possible absolutely; which is the second way of saying a thing is possible. For a thing is said to be possible or impossible absolutely, according to the relation in which the very terms stand to one another, possible if the predicate is not incompatible with the subject, as that Socrates sits; and absolutely impossible when the predicate is altogether incompatible with the subject, as, for instance, that a man is a donkey.' back |
Aquinas, Summa, I, 10, 2, Is God eternal?, 'I answer that, The idea of eternity follows immutability, as the idea of time follows movement, as appears from the preceding article. Hence, as God is supremely immutable, it supremely belongs to Him to be eternal. Nor is He eternal only; but He is His own eternity; whereas, no other being is its own duration, as no other is its own being. Now God is His own uniform being; and hence as He is His own essence, so He is His own eternity.' back |
Aquinas, Summa, I, 3, 7, Is God 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 |
Aquinas, Summa: I, 14, 1, Is there knowledge in God?, ' I answer that, In God there exists the most perfect knowledge. . . . it is clear that the immateriality of a thing is the reason why it is cognitive; and according to the mode of immateriality is the mode of knowledge. Hence it is said in De Anima ii that plants do not know, because they are wholly material. But sense is cognitive because it can receive images free from matter, and the intellect is still further cognitive, because it is more separated from matter and unmixed, as said in De Anima iii. Since therefore God is in the highest degree of immateriality as stated above (Question 7, Article 1), it follows that He occupies the highest place in knowledge.' back |
Aquinas, Summa: I, 2, 3, Does God exist?, 'I answer that, The existence of God can be proved in five ways. The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. . . . ' back |
Brouwer fixed point theorem - Wikipedia, Brouwer fixed point theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Among hundreds of fixed-point theorems] Brouwer's is particularly well known, due in part to its use across numerous fields of mathematics. In its original field, this result is one of the key theorems characterizing the topology of Euclidean spaces, along with the Jordan curve theorem, the hairy ball theorem, the invariance of dimension and the Borsuk–Ulam theorem. This gives it a place among the fundamental theorems of topology.' back |
Catholic Catechism, §213 God alone IS, ' The revelation of the ineffable name "I AM WHO AM" contains then the truth that God alone IS. The Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, and following it the Church's Tradition, understood the divine name in this sense: God is the fullness of Being and of every perfection, without origin and without end. All creatures receive all that they are and have from him; but he alone is his very being, and he is of himself everything that he is.' back |
Christopher Shields (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy b), The Active Mind of De Anima III 5 , ' After characterizingnous the mind (nous) and its activities in De Animaiii 4, Aristotle takes a surprising turn. In De Anima iii 5, he introduces an obscure and hotly disputed subject: the active mind or active intellect (nous poiêtikos). Controversy surrounds almost every aspect of De Anima iii 5, not least because in it Aristotle characterizes the active mind—a topic mentioned nowhere else in his entire corpus—as ‘separate and unaffected and unmixed, being in its essence actuality’ (chôristos kai apathês kai amigês, tê ousia energeia; DA iii 5, 430a17–18) and then also as ‘deathless and everlasting’ (athanaton kai aidion; DA iii 5, 430a23). This comes as no small surprise to readers of De Anima, because Aristotle had earlier in the same work treated the mind (nous) as but one faculty (dunamis) of the soul (psuchê), and he had contended that the soul as a whole is not separable from the body (DA ii 1, 413a3–5). back |
David Hilbert (1925), On the Infinite, ' We encounter a completely different and quite unique conception of the notion of infinity in the important and fruitful method of ideal elements. The method of ideal elements is used even in elementary plane geometry. The points and straight lines of the plane originally are real, actually existent objects. One of the axioms that hold for them is the axiom of connection: one and only one straight line passes through two points. It follows from this axiom that two straight lines intersect at most at one point. There is no theorem that two straight lines always intersect at some point, however, for the two straight lines might well be parallel. Still we know that by introducing ideal elements, viz., infinitely long lines and points at infinity, we can make the theorem that two straight lines always intersect at one and only one point come out universally true. These ideal "infinite" elements have the advantage of making the system of connection laws as simple and perspicuous as possible.
Another example of the use of ideal elements are the familiar complex-imaginary magnitudes of algebra which serve to simplify theorems about the existence and number of the roots of an equation.' back |
Elementary particle - Wikipedia, Elementary particle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In particle physics, an elementary particle or fundamental particle is a subatomic particle that is not composed of other particles. Particles currently thought to be elementary include the fundamental fermions (quarks, leptons, antiquarks, and antileptons), which generally are "matter particles" and "antimatter particles", as well as the fundamental bosons (gauge bosons and the Higgs boson), which generally are "force particles" that mediate interactions among fermions. A particle containing two or more elementary particles is a composite particle.' back |
Feynman, Leighton and Sands FLP II_02, Chapter 2: Differential Calculus of Vector Fields, ' Ideas such as the field lines, capacitance, resistance, and inductance are, for such purposes, very useful. So we will spend much of our time analyzing them. In this way we will get a feel as to what should happen in different electromagnetic situations. On the other hand, none of the heuristic models, such as field lines, is really adequate and accurate for all situations. There is only one precise way of presenting the laws, and that is by means of differential equations. They have the advantage of being fundamental and, so far as we know, precise. If you have learned the differential equations you can always go back to them. There is nothing to unlearn.' back |
Hermann Minkowski (1908), Hermann Minkowski, Wikiquote, ' The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. They are radical. Henceforth, space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.'
Address to the 80th Assembly of German Natural Scientists and Physicians, (Sep 21, 1908) back |
Hermitian matrix - Wikipedia, Hermitian matrix - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In mathematics, a Hermitian matrix (or self-adjoint matrix) is a complex square matrix that is equal to its own conjugate transpose—that is, the element in the i-th row and j-th column is equal to the complex conjugate of the element in the j-th row and i-th column, for all indices i and j . . ..
Hermitian matrices can be understood as the complex extension of real symmetric matrices. . ..
Hermitian matrices are named after Charles Hermite, who demonstrated in 1855 that matrices of this form share a property with real symmetric matrices of always having real eigenvalues. Other, equivalent notations in common use are A = AH = A∗ = A† although in quantum mechanics A∗typically means the complex conjugate only, and not the conjugate transpose.'
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Hilbert's program - Wikipedia, Hilbert's program - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In mathematics, Hilbert's program, formulated by German mathematician David Hilbert, was a proposed solution to the foundational crisis of mathematics, when early attempts to clarify the foundations of mathematics were found to suffer from paradoxes and inconsistencies. As a solution, Hilbert proposed to ground all existing theories to a finite, complete set of axioms, and provide a proof that these axioms were consistent. Hilbert proposed that the consistency of more complicated systems, such as real analysis, could be proven in terms of simpler systems. Ultimately, the consistency of all of mathematics could be reduced to basic arithmetic.' back |
Ian Duck and E.C.G. Sudarshan (1998), Toward an understanding of the spin-statistics theorem, 'We respond to a request from Neuenschwander for an elementary proof of the Spin-Statistics Theorem. First . . . Then we discuss an argument suggested by Sudarshan, which proves the theorem with a minimal set of requirements. . . . Motivated by our particular use of Lorentz invariance, if we are permitted to elevate the conclusion of flavour symmetry (which we explain in the text) to the status of a postulate, one could recast the proof without any relativistic assumptions, and this make it applicable even in the nonrelativistic context. . . . Finally, an argument starting with ordinary number-valued (nonmmuting), and with Grassman valued (anticommuting) operators, shows in a natural way that these relativitcally embed into Klein-Gordon spin-0 and Dirac spin-½ fields, respectively. In this way the Spin Statistics theorem is understood at the expense of admitting the existence of the simplest Grassman-valued field.' back |
John J. Hopfield (2024_12_08), Nobel Lecture: Physics is a point of view, ' John J. Hopfield delivered his Nobel Prize lecture "Physics is a point of view" on 8 December 2024 at the Aula Magna, Stockholm University. He was introduced by Professor Ellen Moons, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics. … back |
John von Neumann (2014), Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, ' Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics by John von Neumann translated from the German by Robert T. Beyer (New Edition) edited by Nicholas A. Wheeler. Princeton UP Princeton & Oxford.
Preface: ' This book is the realization of my long-held intention to someday use the resources of TEX to produce a more easily read version of Robert T. Beyer’s authorized English translation (Princeton University Press, 1955) of John von Neumann’s classic Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik (Springer, 1932).'This content downloaded from 129.127.145.240 on Sat, 30 May 2020 22:38:31 UTC
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John Willinsky (U of Chicago Press, 2018), The Intellectual Properties of Learning: A Prehistory from Saint Jerome to John Locke (Chapter 7), ' Chapter 7 The Medieval Universities of Oxford and Paris
A new educational entity for advanced studies, known as the studium generale, emerged in Europe during the twelfth century. It initially arose out of the congregation of masters and scholars to be found in such centers of learning as Bologna, Paris, and Oxford. These prototypes of the medieval university formed through such an unremarkable series of
steps that little or no record was left behind. As if by spontaneous generation, masters and scholars began to organize themselves, outside of episcopal schools, monasteries, and private tutoring arrangements. By the early years of the thirteenth century, these masters were operating within what could be identified as faculties of arts, law, medicine, and theology. The studium generale was attracting considerable attention. One after another of these new institutions was formed in Cambridge, Salamanca, Siena, Naples, and elsewhere during the thirteenth century.' back |
Joshua 10:12-13, Sun, stand still at Gibeon (USCCB), 'It was then, when the LORD delivered up the Amorites to the Israelites, that Joshua prayed to the LORD, and said in the presence of Israel:
Sun, stand still at Gibeon,
Moon, in the valley of Aijalon!
The sun stood still,
the moon stayed,
while the nation took vengeance on its foes.
This is recorded in the Book of Jashar. The sun halted halfway across the heavens; not for an entire day did it press on. back |
Mario Baghos, The Historical Context of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, ' This paper gives a brief outline of the historical context within which the Nicene- Constantinopolitan Creed was formulated. It will begin by giving a background to the first ecumenical council held at Nicaea in 325 AD, which will include an assessment of the theological dimension to Christian councils, beginning with the Apostolic council of Jerusalem which became a paradigm for the synods held before the council of Nicaea. This latter council was marked by an important change in format, namely that it was convoked by a Roman emperor, Constantine the Great (r. 306-337), which means that part two of this paper will analyse the historical circumstances that influenced an emperor of Rome – which had up to this point in time persecuted Christians – to convoke a Church council. ' back |
Michael Bordt (2011), Why Aristotle's God is not the Unmoved Mover, ' The aim of this essay is to show that the view—popular among
certain philosophers and theologians—that Aristotle’s God is the
unmoved mover is incorrect, or at least leads to serious misunderstanding. In a nutshell: among other things, the project of the twelfth book of the Metaphysics is to determine what the first ousia is. This first ousia is not identified with God in so far as it is an unmoved mover, but in so far as it is the actual activity (energeia) of thinking. To put matters differently, the actual activity of the first ousia does not consist in moving anything. Its activity rather consists in the exercise of reason, in thinking. Since, however, thinking is without qualification the best activity, and since God is that being who just does engage in the best activity, the first ousia, in so far as it is the same as the activity of thinking, must be God. Thus we perhaps expect that, at the summit of ontology, God himself will be the object of this first philosophy. Metaphysics Λ meets such an expectation only in a very limited way.
The limitation is the following: that which, so to speak, stands at
the summit of metaphysics is not God, but the activity of reason.
While this activity is identified with God, it is not so identified directly or immediately, but only as mediated by way of the conception of the best possible life. The twelfth book of the Metaphysics thus provides to an even lesser extent than is usually assumed the outlines of a theology. By way of recompense, however, Aristotle offers us a truly breathtaking metaphysics.' back |
Øystein Linnebo (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Platonism in the Philosophy of Mathematics, ' Platonism about mathematics (or mathematical platonism) is the metaphysical view that there are abstract mathematical objects whose existence is independent of us and our language, thought, and practices. Just as electrons and planets exist independently of us, so do numbers and sets. And just as statements about electrons and planets are made true or false by the objects with which they are concerned and these objects’ perfectly objective properties, so are statements about numbers and sets. Mathematical truths are therefore discovered, not invented.' back |
Peter Osper (1957), Review: Albert Szent-Györgyi (1957): Bioenergetics, ' Everyone who is interested in biological chemistry will want to read and reread this book, and then design some experiments to prove Szent-Györgyi: right or wrong. One gets the impression that Szent-Györgyi will not be too unhappy to be proved wrong. . . .'
In 1957 the scientist Albert Szent-Györgyi released this book which contained a part titled “Biological Structures and Functions”. The following statement without attribution was employed as an epigraph for this part (page 56): https://archive.org/details/bioenergetics00szen/page/57/mode/1up
“Research is to see what everybody has seen and think what nobody has thought.”
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Peter Osper (1957), Review: Albert Szent-Györgyi (1957): Bioenergetics, ' Everyone who is interested in biological chemistry will want to read and reread this book, and then design some experiments to prove Szent-Györgyi: right or wrong. One gets the impression that Szent-Györgyi will not be too unhappy to be proved wrong. . . .'
In 1957 the scientist Albert Szent-Györgyi released this book which contained a part titled “Biological Structures and Functions”. The following statement without attribution was employed as an epigraph for this part (page 56): https://archive.org/details/bioenergetics00szen/page/57/mode/1up
“Research is to see what everybody has seen and think what nobody has thought.”
back |
Proton decay - Wikipedia, Proton decay - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In particle physics, proton decay is a hypothetical form of particle decay in which the proton decays into lighter subatomic particles, such as a neutral pion and a positron. The proton decay hypothesis was first formulated by Andrei Sakharov in 1967. Despite significant experimental effort, proton decay has never been observed. If it does decay via a positron, the proton's half-life is constrained to be at least 1.67×1034 years.' back |
Richard Zach (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Hilbert's Program, 'In the early 1920s, the German mathematician David Hilbert (1862–1943) put forward a new proposal for the foundation of classical mathematics which has come to be known as Hilbert's Program. It calls for a formalization of all of mathematics in axiomatic form, together with a proof that this axiomatization of mathematics is consistent. The consistency proof itself was to be carried out using only what Hilbert called “finitary” methods. The special epistemological character of finitary reasoning then yields the required justification of classical mathematics.' back |
Roger Penrose (2020), Nobel lecture 2020: Black Holes, Cosmology and Space-Time Singularities, Roger Penrose delivered his Nobel Lecture on Tuesday 8 December 2020. He was introduced by Professor Ariel Gobar. back |
Rolf Landauer (1999), Information is a Physical Entity, 'Abstract: 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 |
Saint John Paul II (1992_10_31), x, ' However, the underlying problems of [the Galileo] case concern both the nature of science and the message of faith. It is therefore not to be excluded that one day we shall find ourselves in a similar situation, one which will require both sides to have an informed awareness of the field and of the limits of their own competencies. The approach provided by the theme of complexity could provide an illustration of this.
5. A twofold question is at the heart of the debate of which Galileo was the centre.
The first is of the epistemological order and concerns biblical hermeneutics. In this regard, two points must again be raised. In the first place, like most of his adversaries, Galileo made no distinction between the scientific approach to natural phenomena and a reflection on nature, of the philosophical order, which that approach generally calls for. . . .
Secondly, the geocentric representation of the world was commonly admitted in the culture of the time as fully agreeing with the teaching of the Bible, of which certain expressions, taken literally, seemed to affirm geocentrism. The problem posed by theologians of that age was, therefore, that of the compatibility between heliocentrism and Scripture.
6. From this we can now draw our first conclusion. The birth of a new way of approaching the study of natural phenomena demands a clarification on the part of all disciplines of knowledge. . . .
9. . . . The majority of theologians did not recognise the formal distinction between Sacred Scripture and its interpretation, and this led them unduly to transpose into the realm of the doctrine of the faith a question which in fact pertained to scientific investigation. . . .
12. . . .There exist two realms of knowledge, one which has its source in Revelation and one which reason can discover by its own power. To the latter belong especially the experimental sciences and philosophy. The distinction between the two realms of knowledge ought not to be understood as opposition. The two realms are not altogether foreign to each other; they have points of contact. The methodologies proper to each make it possible to bring out different aspects of reality. . .
14. Humanity has before it two modes of development. The first involves culture, scientific research and technology, that is to say whatever falls within the horizontal aspect of man and creation, which is growing at an impressive rate. In order that this progress should not remain completely external to man, it presupposes a simultaneous raising of conscience, as well as its actuation. The second mode of development involves what is deepest in the human being, when, transcending the world and transcending himself, man turns to the One who is the Creator of all. It is only this vertical direction which can give full meaning to man’s being and action, because it situates him in relation to his origin and his end. In this twofold direction, horizontal and vertical, man realises himself fully as a spiritual being and as homo sapiens. But we see that development is not uniform and linear, and that progress is not always well ordered. This reveals the disorder which affects the human condition. The scientist who is conscious of this twofold development and takes it into account contributes to the restoration of harmony.
Those who engage in scientific and technological research admit, as the premise of its progress, that the world is not a chaos but a ‘cosmos’; that is to say, that there exist order and natural laws which can be grasped and examined, and which, for this reason, have a certain affinity with the spirit. Einstein used to say: ‘What is eternally incomprehensible in the world is that it is comprehensible’.9 This intelligibility, attested to by the marvellous discoveries of science and technology, leads us, in the last analysis, to that transcendent and primordial Thought imprinted on all things.' back |
Septuagint - Wikipedia, Septuagint - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Greek Old Testament, or Septuagint is the earliest extant Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible. It includes several books beyond those contained in the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible as canonically used in the tradition of mainstream Rabbinical Judaism. The additional books were composed in Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic, but in most cases, only the Greek version has survived to the present. It is the oldest and most important complete translation of the Hebrew Bible made by the Jews.' back |
Stephen Cook (2006), The P Versus NP Problem, ' The P versus NP problem is to determine whether every language accepted by some nondeterministic algorithm in polynomial time is also accepted by some (deterministic) algorithm in polynomial time. To define the problem precisely it is necessary to give a formal model of a computer. The standard computer model in computability theory is the Turing machine, introduced by Alan Turing in 1936 . Although the model was introduced before physical computers were built, it nevertheless continues to be accepted as the proper computer model for the purpose of defining the notion of computable function. back |
Steven Weinberg (2000), The Cosmological Constant Problems, 'Abstract. The old cosmological constant problem is to understand why the vacuum energy is so small; the new problem is to understand why it is comparable to the present mass density. Several approaches to these problems are reviewed. Quintessence does not help with either; anthropic considerations offer a possibility of solving both. In theories with a scalar field that takes random initial values, the anthropic principle may apply to the cosmological constant, but probably to nothing else.' back |
Unmoved mover - Wikipedia, Unmoved mover - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The unmoved mover (Ancient Greek: ὃ οὐ κινούμενον κινεῖ, lit. 'that which moves without being moved' or prime mover (Latin: primum movens) is a concept advanced by Aristotle as a primary cause (or first uncaused cause) or "mover" of all the motion in the universe. As is implicit in the name, the unmoved mover moves other things, but is not itself moved by any prior action. In Book 12 (Greek: Λ) of his Metaphysics, Aristotle describes the unmoved mover as being perfectly beautiful, indivisible, and contemplating only the perfect contemplation: self-contemplation. He equates this concept also with the active intellect. This Aristotelian concept had its roots in cosmological speculations of the earliest Greek pre-Socratic philosophers and became highly influential and widely drawn upon in medieval philosophy and theology. St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, elaborated on the unmoved mover in the Quinque viae. ' back |
Whitehead and Russell (1910), Principia Mathematica, Jacket: 'Principia Mathematica was first published in 1910-1913; this is the fifth impression of the second edition of 1925-7.
The Principia has long been recognized as one of the intellectual landmarks of the century. It was the first book to show clearly the close relationship between mathematics and formal logic. Starting with a minimal number of axioms, Whitehead and Russell display the structure of both kinds of thought. No other book has had such an influence on the subsequent history of mathematical philosophy .' back |
William Bialek & Allan Schweitzer (1985), Quantum Noise and the Threshold of Hearing, ' We argue that the sensitivity of the ear reaches a limit imposed by the uncertainty principle. This is possible only if the receptor holds the detector elements in a special nonequilibirium state which has the same noise characteristics as a ground (T = 0 K) state. To accomplish this "active cooling" the molecular dynamics of the system must maintain quantum mechanical coherence over the time scale of the measurement.' back |
Wojciech Hubert Zurek (2008), Quantum origin of quantum jumps: breaking of unitary symmetry induced by information transfer and the transition from quantum to classical, 'Submitted on 17 Mar 2007 (v1), last revised 18 Mar 2008 (this version, v3))
Measurements transfer information about a system to the apparatus, and then further on – to
observers and (often inadvertently) to the environment. I show that even imperfect copying essential in such situations restricts possible unperturbed outcomes to an orthogonal subset of all possible states of the system, thus breaking the unitary symmetry of its Hilbert space implied by the quantum superposition principle. Preferred outcome states emerge as a result. They provide framework
for the “wavepacket collapse”, designating terminal points of quantum jumps, and defining the
measured observable by specifying its eigenstates.' back |
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