vol VII: Notes
2015
Notes
[Sunday 15 March 2015 - Saturday 21 March 2015]
[Notebook: DB 78: Catholicism 2.0]
Sunday 15 March 2015
Monday 16 March 2015
Tuesday 17 March 2015
Wednesday 18 March 2015
Thursday 19 March 2015
Friday 20 March 2015
[page 112]
Saturday 21 March 2015
Have produced a new corrected version of Natural Theology: A Synopsis over the last two weeks. A slow business correcting typos and 1250 links.
A new idea has slowly sculpted itself in my mind, connecting formalism to reality through the realization that fixed points 'contain' potential energy, and so can drive the dynamics of the Universe and store energy derived from the dynamics. This is not so new, since the fixed points in a pendulum store the energy lost on the upswing and realised on the downswing, but I feel
[page 113]
more concretely about that now whereas once it was merely one aspect of the formalism. Quantum mechanics bridges the gap between motions and stationary states and so I feel in a position to give a slightly different feel to the sections on fixed point theory and quantum mechanics in the appendix to Letters to Francis.
A blurb." A work of genius. Although often obscure, imprecise and possibly wrong, this work gives us the first glimpses of new theological possibilities never before dreamt of. From this humble beginning it is possible to envisage a theological and religious revolution that will put the legacy of Jesus of Nazareth in the shade and open to us all the perspective of spiritual growth for billions of years until the evolution of the Sun renders the Earth uninhabitable. This is truly a work of divinity." Genius - Wikipedia
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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!)
Crombie, A C, The History of Science from Augustine to Galileo, Dover Publications 1996 Amazon customer review: 'This is a very widely encompassing account of the evolution and development of science through history. The considerations of the sociopolitical and philosophical climates pertaining to the times gives the reader a basis of understanding why science progressed as it did. The account is very well organised and lucid, although it fails in some aspects to consider the contributions of the Far Eastern civilizations. It makes a very valuable contribution to help appreciate acutely the value of those who contributed to science's development.' A Customer
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Feynman, Richard P et al, The Feynman Lectures on Physics (volume 2) , Addison Wesley 1964
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Hawking, 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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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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Misner, Charles W, and Kip S Thorne, John Archibald Wheeler, Gravitation, Freeman 1973 Jacket: 'Einstein's description of gravitation as curvature of spacetime led directly to that greatest of all predictions of his theory, that the universe itself is dynamic. Physics still has far to go to come to terms with this amazing fact and what it means for man and his relation to the universe. John Archibald Wheeler. . . . this is a book on Einstein's theory of gravity. . . . '
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Streater, Raymond F, and Arthur S Wightman, PCT, Spin, Statistics and All That, Princeton University Press 2005 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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Wigner, Eugene, Symmetries and Reflections: Scientific Essays , MIT Press 1970 Jacket: 'This volume contains some of Professor Wigner's more popular papers which, in their diversity of subject and clarity of style, reflect the author's deep analytical powers and the remarkable scope of his interests. Included are articles on the nature of physical symmetry, invariance and conservation principles, the structure of solid bodies and of the compound nucleus, the theory of nuclear fission, the effects of radiation on solids, and the epistemological problems of quantum mechanics. Other articles deal with the story of the first man-made nuclear chain reaction, the long term prospects of nuclear energy, the problems of Big Science, and the role of mathematics in the natural sciences. In addition, the book contains statements of Wigner's convictions and beliefs as well as memoirs of his friends Enrico Fermi and John von Neumann.
Eugene P. Wigner is one of the architects of the atomic age. He worked with Enrco Fermi at the Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago at the beginning of the Manhattan Project, and he has gone on to receive the highest honours that science and his country can bestow, including the Nobel Prize for physics, the Max Planck Medal, the Enrico Fermi Award and the Atoms for Peace Award. '.
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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 161, Whether any procession in God can be called generation?, 'I answer that, The procession of the Word in God is called generation. . . . the procession of the Word in God is generation; for He proceeds by way of intelligible action, which is a vital operation:--from a conjoined principle (as above described):--by way of similitude, inasmuch as the concept of the intellect is a likeness of the object conceived:--and exists in the same nature, because in God the act of understanding and His existence are the same, as shown above (14, 4). Hence the procession of the Word in God is called generation; and the Word Himself proceeding is called the Son.' back |
| Electromagnetic force - Wikipedia, Electromagnetic force - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In physics, the electromagnetic force is the force that the electromagnetic field exerts on electrically charged particles. It is the electromagnetic force that holds electrons and protons together in atoms, and which hold atoms together to make molecules. The electromagnetic force operates via the exchange of messenger particles called photons and virtual photons. The exchange of messenger particles between bodies acts to create the perceptual force whereby instead of just pushing or pulling particles apart, the exchange changes the character of the particles that swap them.' back |
| Freeman Dyson - Wikipedia, Freeman Dyson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Freeman John Dyson FRS (born December 15, 1923) is a British-born American theoretical physicist and mathematician, famous for his work in quantum field theory, solid-state physics, and nuclear engineering. He is a practising Christian, as well as a lifelong opponent of nationalism and a proponent of nuclear disarmament and international cooperation. Dyson is a member of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.' back |
| Genius - Wikipedia, Genius - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'A genius is a person who displays exceptional superior intellectual ability, creativity, or originality, typically to a degree that is associated with the achievement of new advances in a domain of knowledge. A scholar in many subjects or a scholar in a single subject may be referred to as a genius. There is no scientifically precise definition of genius, and the question of whether the notion itself has any real meaning has long been a subject of debate, although psychologists are converging on a definition that emphasizes creativity and eminent achievement.' back |
| Gluon - Wikipedia, Gluon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Gluons (glue and the suffix -on) are elementary particles that cause quarks to interact, and are indirectly responsible for the binding of protons and neutrons together in atomic nuclei.
In technical terms, they are vector gauge bosons that mediate strong color charge interactions of quarks in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Unlike the electric charge neutral photon of quantum electrodynamics (QED), gluons themselves carry color charge and therefore participate in the strong interaction in addition to mediating it. The gluon has the ability to do this as it carries the color charge and so interacts with itself, making QCD significantly harder to analyze than QED.' back |
| Julian Schwinger - Wikipedia, Julian Schwinger - Wikipedia, 'Julian Seymour Schwinger (February 12, 1918 – July 16, 1994) was an American theoretical physicist. He is best known for his work on the theory of quantum electrodynamics, in particular for developing a relativistically invariant perturbation theory, and for renormalizing QED to one loop order.' back |
| Newtons Laws of Motion - Wikipedia, Newton's Laws of Motion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Newton's laws of motion are three physical laws that together laid the foundation for classical mechanics. They describe the relationship between a body and the forces acting upon it, and its motion in response to said forces. . . . The three laws of motion were first compiled by Isaac Newton in his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), first published in 1687' back |
| Noether's theorem - Wikipedia, Noether's theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Noether's (first) theorem states that any differentiable symmetry of the action of a physical system has a corresponding conservation law. The theorem was proved by German mathematician Emmy Noether in 1915 and published in 1918.[1] The action of a physical system is the integral over time of a Lagrangian function (which may or may not be an integral over space of a Lagrangian density function), from which the system's behavior can be determined by the principle of least action.' back |
| Particle Data Group. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, The Particle Adventure, 'The Particle Data Group of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory presents an award winning tour of quarks, neutrinos, antimatter, extra dimensions, dark matter, accelerators and particle detectors.' back |
| Quark - Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark, the free encyclopedia, 'Quarks . . . are a type of elementary particle and major constituents of matter. They combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most well-known of which are protons and neutrons. They are the only particles in the Standard Model to experience the strong force, and thereby the only particles to experience all four fundamental forces, which are also known as fundamental interactions.' back |
| Richard Feynman - Wikipedia, Richard Feynman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Richard Phillips Feynman (IPA: /?fa?nm?n/; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American physicist known for the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as work in particle physics (he proposed the parton model). For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman was a joint recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965, together with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga.' back |
| Sin-Itiro Tomonaga - Wikipedia, Sin-Itiro Tomonaga - Wikipedia, 'Sin-Itiro Tomonaga or Shin'ichir? Tomonaga (íTomonaga Shin'ichir, March 31, 1906 – July 8, 1979) was a Japanese physicist, influential in the development of quantum electrodynamics, work for which he was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 along with Richard Feynman and Julian Schwinger. back |
| Stress-energy tensor - Wikipedia, Stress-energy tensor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The stress-energy tensor (sometimes stress-energy-momentum tensor) is a tensor quantity in physics that describes the density and flux of energy and momentum in spacetime, generalizing the stress tensor of Newtonian physics. It is an attribute of matter, radiation, and non-gravitational force fields. The stress-energy tensor is the source of the gravitational field in the Einstein field equations of general relativity, just as mass is the source of such a field in Newtonian gravity.' back |
| Strong interaction - Wikipedia, Strong interaction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In particle physics, the strong interaction (also called the strong force, strong nuclear force, or color force) is one of the four fundamental interactions of nature, the others being electromagnetism, the weak interaction and gravitation. As with the other fundamental interactions, it is a non-contact force. At atomic scale, it is about 100 times stronger than electromagnetism, which in turn is orders of magnitude stronger than the weak force interaction and gravitation.
' back |
| Unmoved mover - Wikipedia, Unmoved mover - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The unmoved mover (ού κινούμενον κινεῖ oú kinoúmenon kineῖ) is a philosophical concept described by Aristotle as a primary cause or "mover" of all the motion in the universe. As is implicit in the name, the "unmoved mover" is not 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: itself contemplating. 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 |
| Ward-Takahashi Identity - Wikipedia, Ward-Takahashi Identity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In quantum field theory, a Ward-Takahashi identity is an identity between correlation functions that follows from the global or gauged symmetries of the theory, and which remains valid after renormalization.
. . .
The Ward-Takahashi identity is a quantum version of the classical Noether's theorem, and any symmetries in a quantum field theory can lead to an equation of motion for correlation functions.' back |
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