Notes
[Notebook: DB 58 Bringing god home]
[Sunday 7 May 2006 - Saturday 13 May 2006]
[page 117]
Sunday 7 May 2006
I have many pieces now, letters of an alphabet or parts of a puzzle which I am trying to put together to get a picture. The parts, like the picture, are plastic, and help me search the vast space of possible pictures to find the one I am looking for, the recursive algorithm that leads to world and personal peace and harmony, or as near as one can get, because as long as the sun shines the surface of the earth will always be out of equilibrium.
There is a tension to finish, set up by the potential benefit of the result to myself, my children and the world.
As we keep saying TEXT <--> POTENTIAL in some way related to homeostasis, in that text is a
[page 118]
fixed point [line?] in four space, indifferent to the passage of time, ie symmetrical with respect to time.
Monday 8 May 2006
Frustrated, a combination of the circumstances of my life and the thing I am trying to capture here. I have come to see the reality of the unconscious processes within me, and to realize that they work in their own time and they do their work thoroughly. I have noticed in this rather random log that sometimes I come back after day of silence and continue where I left off. The question to me now is what triggers the appearance of a symbol in my consciousness, something that I can, with sufficient care, capture in words. The hypothesis is that this is rather like the 'collapse of the wavefunction; imagined in quantum theory and the operation of an 'oracle' machine that stops every now and then to ask for advice, ie correlate itself with other elements of its network. COMMUNICATION = {QUESTION, ANSWER}
We often ask questions that are unanswered or answer question that have not been asked.
The insight recorded above is reducing my tension. I have seen a clear way to imagine quantum mechanics as a network. A prepared mind, like a prepared quantum system, has a certain number of processes available to it, resulting in different action, ie in the emission of certain messages. This analogy, we postulate is an isomorphism.
This work begins from Bernard Lonergan's Insight. Lonergan This we write to Theological Studies. My interpretation of Lonergan, Aquinas, quantum mechanics and relativistic mechanics may not be yours, but follow me for a while at least.
[page 119]
From Schneidman we learn that even a small amount of communication (correlation) in a network is enough to produce strongly correlated network states. Schneidman The strength of this correlation in the Universe is measured by the gravitational constant, this level of correlation being sufficient to give us the large scale structure of the Universe and the fundamental conditions into which the Universe has subsequently differentiated. The general theory of relativity maps the energy distribution of the Universe onto the network geometry of the Universe. In other words, we postulate that gravitation helps to create the alphabet of quantum mechanics.
Insofar as theology is the theory of everything and for science, the Universe is everything, the basic problem for theology is the same as the basic problem for cosmology, that is to unify the classical and quantum world views. The large scale structure of the Universe is described by the classical theory of gravitation. The connection between classical and quantum theory is the theory of measurement. Classical theory assumes that allowing for errors, measurement and consistent theory can be placed into a one to one correspondence. Quantum theory, on the other hand, predicts a spectrum of possible measurements arising from a given state of the world.
Advancing slowly on a wide front, Nature, Theological Studies, Sydney Morning Herald, Internet (4 site). But it all feels complementary, finding different expressions of the same idea encoded for different audiences.
Playing music (in the classical sense) means using an instrument to transduce a written score into a space-time volume of sound which can be represented as a superposition of 'samples' of the sound-space.
All possible symmetries are represented by the nested structure of the transfinite permutation groups.
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CARDINAL = SIZE (order does not matter)
ORDER = STRUCTURAL (size does not matter).
So to describe both size and structure we need {cardinal, ordinal}.
Corporate ethics: a search for the balance between marketing and product reality. Does the product deliver value for money, or have they been hoodwinked into paying for something worthless.
Bix: Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. Bix
Hirohito is a fair analogue of the Pope : A sovereign who truly believes he rules by divine right and is able to maintain the fiction with its subjects.
Every moment has a fan in, an incoming light cone, and a fan out, an outgoing light cone. If we call an event a node, the same situation holds when we equate EVENT = NODE (where EVENT is a set of EVENTS, stable over a certain lifetime.) The longer an event lives, the bigger its incoming and outgoing cones, and we can assign cones at other than the physical.
Theological Studies: Here I propose to construct and motivate a model of god I call the transfinite network. Cantor . . .
Start with a model of god. The first way is model dependent. Aquinas 13
Potential energy enters into both quantum and classical energy functions ('Hamiltonians') on exactly the same footing. Potential is not subservient to actual as in the Aristotelian model.
Theological Studies: Although this is intended to be a scientific paper, it must begin with a personal narrative because the specific data of theology are individual experiences
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of life. . . .
Bix, page 91: '"Extremist thought" may be read as a metaphor for ideas of democracy, antimilitarism, socialism and communist revolution that had swept over Japan and the world following World War I.'
page 92: Hirohito: 'Without military preparedness, profitable diplomatic relations will be difficult. . . . '
Tuesday 9 May 2006
Bix page 120: '[Hirohito's] pragmatic voluntary subordination of his own mind to the precepts of the imperial system forecast his (and his entourage's) active acceptance of the heightened cult of emperor worship that arose as a destroyer of careers in the mid- and late 1930s. The public actions of this prince would never be governed by his own private standards of goodness, morality and integrity.'
A state split by a strong potential, a potential arising from the internal inconsistencies and weaknesses of the imperial system.
Each potential moves the world so as to reduce its magnitude toward zero. As in an earthquake, society proceeds by a stick/slip, ie digital, mode, nothing punctuated by events whose frequency and magnitude are a function of the rate of buildup of stress and strain. Other potentials are kept near zero by fluid motion, which begins when we are deep enough for the temperature to keep the rock soft.
Bix page 122: By the time Hirohito became emperor, he had grasped
[page 122]
the utilitarian value of myths and clung to them as to the notions of statecraft. Whenever convenient, he used such myths to rationalize his own behaviour to buttress the power of the imperial court vis-a-vis other entities in the ruling bloc, and to position himself outside political and secular responsibility. At the same time. the more Hirohito lived the role of 'sacred and direct' monarch the more he came top rely on religious belief as a mechanism of power as well as a source of strength under trying conditions.
Wednesday 10 May 2006
Thursday 11 May 2006
. . .
The essence of science is that it is recursive, ie evolutionary, ie repeating the same thing with variations many times. The church's view, on the other hand, is that we live in a one time world with a history of salvation behind us and heaven in front of us,
My ideas fly in the face of accepted Catholic dogma, but one must hope that by now the church is both mature and sure enough of its position to examine questionings of its doctrine dispassionately on their merits rather than reaching for the faggots, ie bringing in the secular arm.
Friday 12 May 2006
Bix page 195: 'And if the dogma of the divine emperor required that limits be set on rational thought
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and debate about the monarchy, then let the limits be set by policies repressing 'unhealthy thought" (that is political dissent} and heightening martial spirit . . . The "thought police" pressed ahead with their work of arresting communists and other dissidents.'
page 198: 'Precisely this combination of secret political maneuvering and public deception, authoritarianism and lack of consciousness of personal responsibility became hallmarks of the Showa emperor and the men of 'moderation' who served him at court.
. . .
