vol VII: Notes
2015
Notes
[Sunday 9 August 2015 - Saturday 15 August 2015]
[Notebook: DB 79: Galileo Wins]
[page 39]
Sunday 9 August 2015
In modern times the requirement that we be emotionally dependent on no-one is a reprise of the monastic idea that one has a relationship with God, not with other people. This is a denial of our intensely social nature. Most people spend most of their lives conversing with other people, for business or pleasure. It is natural, so that to deny it seems unnatural. Of course, we are free to choose whether to communicate or not, but to erect silence as an ideal seems a bit weird. In my monastic days it suited me, because there was very little to talk about anyway, for me. Maybe I am a little spectral, but I can see both sides. Monasticism - Wikipedia
[page 40]
Monday 10 August 2015
Tuesday 11 August 2015
Does it matter how much greenhouse gas abatement costs? To a first approximation, the economy is a closed and conserved flow of value so that one person's cost is another person's income.
Wednesday 12 August 2015
The history of salvation begins with Almighty God feeling lonely and unloved, so I learnt in Grade 1 that God created me to know him, love him and serve him here on earth and to live happily ever after with him in heaven. Even though God has his two companions, the Son and the Spirit, the [son] being the Word of the Father and the Spirit being the love between the Father and the Word, the narcissistic love of God for his own image. Baltimore Catechism, Trinity - Wikipedia
Thursday 13 August 2015
Friday 14 August 2015
We are happy with the idea that the observable fixed points in the world are the observable points in the divine dynamic. We may assume that there is a logically continuous connection between them so that we never observe inconsistency in the Universe. We might ask how this idea might be reconciled with war and killing etc and must fall back to the idea that there can be no [in]consistency at the computable level of the Universe, but it can occur in the realms of incomputability where even god cannot guarantee consistency, since consistency requires that there be incomputability. Alan Turing: On computable numbers with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem
[page 41]
. . .
There is plenty of precedent for identifying both heven and hell with God, the creator and destroyer. Trimurti - Wikipedia
Beauty invokes lust.
Acts are bounded by times: S = ∫t1t2 L dt
Why is the Lagrangian KE - PE? Because it works! But why does it work? What is the difference between KE and PE? Motion (transformation) and stillness (invariance) [stillness carries energy like motion].
Saturday 15 August 2015
|
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!)
Genesis, and Alexander Jones (editor), in The Jerusalem Bible, Darton Longman and Todd 1966 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep, and God's spirit hovered over the water.' (I, 1-2)
Amazon
back |
Jaynes, Julian, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Mariner Books 2000 Jacket: 'At the heart of this book is the revolutionary idea that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but is a learned process brought into being out of an earlier hallucinatory mentality by cataclysm and catastrophe only 3000 years ago and still developing.'
Amazon
back |
Lewis, Clive S , The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition, Oxford UP 1979 Jacket: 'The Romance of the Rose, its ancestors and its descendants are here studied not as an obstacle to be surmounted on our way to Chaucer, but as a true expression of the ages which produced them. The allegorical form is found to be at once an imagninative bridge from mythical to reflective consciousness and a principal origin of Romanticism; ... ' 'Humanity does not pass through phases as a train passes through stations: being alive, it has the privilege of always mocing yet never leaving anything behind. What ever we may have been, in some sort we still are. Neither the form nor the sentiment of this old poetry has passed away without leaving indelible traces on our minds.
Amazon
back |
Lo, Hoi-Kwong, and Tim Spiller, Sandra Popescu, Introduction to Quantum Computation and Information, World Scientific 1998 Jacket: 'This book provides a pedagogical introduction to the subjects of quantum information and computation. Topics include non-locality of quantum mechanics, quantum computation, quantum cryptography, quantum error correction, fault tolerant quantum computation, as well as some experimental aspects of quantum computation and quantum cryptography. A knowledge of basic quantum mechanics is assumed.'
Amazon
back |
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'
Amazon
back |
Peskin, Michael E, and Dan V Schroeder, An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory, Westview Press 1995 Amazon Product Description
'This book is a clear and comprehensive introduction to quantum field theory, one that develops the subject systematically from its beginnings. The book builds on calculation techniques toward an explanation of the physics of renormalization.'
Amazon
back |
The Trinity, Saint, and Edmond Hill (Introduction, translation and notes), and John E Rotelle (editor), The Trinity, New City Press 1991 Written 399 - 419: De Trinitate is a radical restatement, defence and development of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Augistine's book has served as a foundation for most subsequent work, particularly that of Thomas Aquinas.
Amazon
back |
Ungerer, Tomi, Moon Man, Phaidon Press 1966, 2009 'TU's re-released Moon Man is a welcome reminder of this veteran writer and illustrator's distinctive brand of arch mischief, telling the story of the man in the moon hitching a ride on a comet to earth, with disappointing results. . . . With Ungerer's hilarious pageants of onlookers, firemen, ice-cream vendors, this is a wildly original and imaginative tale told with deep humour and not a word to spare. Introducing the phases of the moon in an abstract way will stretch children's conceptual abilities, while the story will both thoroughly entertain and raise questions about the fate of innocence in a world that is boldly marching upwards.'
Amazon
back |
Papers
| Zurek, Wojciech Hubert, "Quantum origin of quantum jumps: Breaking of unitary symmetry induced by information transfer in the transition from quantum to classical", Physical Review A, 76, 5, 16 November 2007, page . Abstract: '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 a framework for 'wave-packet collapse', designating terminal points of quantum jumps and defining the measured observable by specifying its eigenstates. In quantum Darwinism, they are the progenitors of multiple copies spread throughout the environment &mdash the fittest quantum states that not only survive decoherence, but subvert the environment into carrying information about them &mdash into becoming a witness.'. back |
Links
| 29 Scientists, Scientist's letter to Obama on iran Nuclear Deal, 'Dear
Mr.
President,
As
scientists
and
engineers
with
understanding
of
the
physics
and
technology
of
nuclear
power
and
of
nuclear
weapons,
we
congratulate
you
and
your
team
on
the
successful
completion
of
the
negotiations
in
Vienna.
We
consider
that
the
Joint
Comprehensive
Plan
of
Action
(JCP
O
A)
the
United
States
and
its
p
artners
negotiated
with
Iran
will
advance
the
cause
of
peace
and
security
in
the
Middle
East
and
can
serve
as
a
guidepost
for
future
non
-‐
proliferation
agreement back |
| Alan Turing, On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem, 'The "computable" numbers may be described briefly as the real numbers whose expressions as a decimal are calculable by some finite means. Although the subject of this paper is ostensibly the computable numbers, it is almost equally easy to define and investigate computable functions of an integral variable of a real or computable variable, computable predicates and so forth. . . . ' back |
| Assumption of Mary - Wikipedia, Assumption of Mary - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Assumption of Mary is the traditional belief held by Christians of the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodoxy, some Protestant churches (including Lutherans and Anglo-Catholics), that the Virgin Mary at the end of her life was physically taken up into heaven.' back |
| Evangelism - Wikipedia, Evangelism - Wikipedia, 'Evangelism is the practice of attempting to convert people to a religion. The term is used most often in reference to Christianity and Islam, since those two religions mandate that their followers make efforts to recruit as many people as possible into their faith.' back |
| Evolution - Wikipedia, Evolution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, '. . . Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace were the first to formulate a scientific argument for the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. Evolution by natural selection is a process that is inferred from three facts about populations: 1) more offspring are produced than can possibly survive, 2) traits vary among individuals, leading to different rates of survival and reproduction, and 3) trait differences are heritable. . . . ' back |
| Greg Steinmetz, The Richest Man Who Ever Lived: The life and Times of Jacob Fugger, 'Jacob Fugger, a Renaissance-era banker and industrialist from the German city of Augsburg, was “the most influential businessman of all time,” Steinmetz declares early in his new book, which does a decent job of backing the claim. Fugger (rhymes with “cougar”) parlayed his family’s textile business into an astonishing banking and mining fortune, which at the time of his death in 1525 equaled nearly 2 percent of Europe’s total economy.' back |
| Haaretz, 29 Leading U.S. Nuclear Scientists Praise 'unprecedented' Iran Deal, 'Twenty-nine top U.S. nuclear scientists - including five Nobel laureates - sent a letter to President Barack Obama on Saturday praising the nuclear deal reached between world powers and Iran in July.
According to the New York Times, the letter used the terms "innovative" and "stringent" more than half-a-dozen times, saying the deal can serve "as a guidepost for future nonproliferation agreements."' back |
| John Paul II, Fides et Ratio: On the relationship between faith and reason. , para 2: 'The Church is no stranger to this journey of discovery, nor could she ever be. From the moment when, through the Paschal Mystery, she received the gift of the ultimate truth about human life, the Church has made her pilgrim way along the paths of the world to proclaim that Jesus Christ is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6).' back |
| Melissa Lozada-Oliva, A light-skinned Latina like me will never be able to live in the land of whiteness, 'I don’t have an answer for how I became a certain color or where I’m really from. Colonialism made sure that I would never understand my history. I’m this color because of a history that decided white was the most beautiful; because of destroyed indigenous temples I’ve never heard of; the rape and slaughter of my ancestors that was ripped out of history books; the brujas and the brown hands that loved too hard to die and survived the destruction. I am this color because of love and because of rage and the undefinable colors that exist between them.' back |
| Monasticism - Wikipedia, Monasticism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Monasticism (from Greek μοναχός, monachos, derived from μόνος, monos, "alone") or monkhood is a religious way of life in which one renounces worldly pursuits to devote oneself fully to spiritual work. Monastic life plays an important role in many Christian churches, especially in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions. Similar forms of religious life also exist in other faiths, most notably in Buddhism, but also in Hinduism and Jainism, although the expressions differ considerably.[1] By contrast, in other religions monasticism is criticized and not practiced, as in Islam and Zoroastrianism, or plays a marginal role, as in Judaism.' back |
| Paul Krugman, From Trump on Down, the Republicans Can't be Serious, 'For while it’s true that Mr. Trump is, fundamentally, an absurd figure, so are his rivals. If you pay attention to what any one of them is actually saying, as opposed to how he says it, you discover incoherence and extremism every bit as bad as anything Mr. Trump has to offer. And that’s not an accident: Talking nonsense is what you have to do to get anywhere in today’s Republican Party.' back |
| Peter Moore, The Great Victorian Weather Wars, 'Tyndall had news. He revealed that for two years he had been studying the heat-absorbing properties of gases. He realized that for the earth’s atmosphere to maintain its steady temperature, certain gases must be capable of trapping radiant heat. This inquiry, he said, was “perfectly unbroken ground.”
His experiments had shown that gases like oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen retained very little heat. But others, particularly carbon dioxide, absorbed surprising amounts of radiation — “nearly 100 times as much as oxygen,” he said.' back |
| Pope - Wikipedia, Pope - Wikipedia, 'The pope . . . is leader of the worldwide Catholic Church (that is, all Roman Catholic and Eastern Catholic churches which are in full communion with the Roman Pontiff). . . . Gradually forced to give up secular power, popes have come to focus almost exclusively on spiritual matters. Over the centuries, popes' claims of spiritual authority have been ever more clearly expressed, culminating in the proclamation of the dogma of papal infallibility for rare occasions when the pope speaks ex cathedra (literally "from the chair (of Peter)") to issue a solemn definition of faith or morals.[1] The last such occasion was in 1950, with the definition of the dogma of the Assumption of Mary. back |
| Principle of least action - Wikipedia, Principle of least action - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, In physics, the principle of least action or more accurately principle of stationary action is a variational principle which, when applied to the action of a mechanical system, can be used to obtain the equations of motion for that system. The principle led to the development of the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations of classical mechanics.
The principle remains central in modern physics and mathematics, being applied in the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, and a focus of modern mathematical investigation in Morse theory. This article deals primarily with the historical development of the idea; a treatment of the mathematical description and derivation can be found in the article on the action. The chief examples of the principle of stationary action are Maupertuis' principle and Hamilton's principle.' back |
| Rebecca Hiscock, Celebrity activists get it wrong on Amnest International's sex work policy, 'Research has consistently shown that the greatest harms experienced by sex workers occur through, and because of, criminalisation. Criminalising sex work makes sex workers more vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. It also makes it difficult for them to leave the industry, if they so wish.
Research also demonstrates that the criminalisation of any aspect of consensual sex work – including through the Nordic Model – increases sex work stigma. This contributes to a cycle of abuse and discrimination against sex workers.' back |
| Roman legion - Wikipedia, Roman legion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Roman legion (from Latin legio "military levy, conscription," from legere — "to choose") is a term that can apply both as a translation of legio ("conscription" or "army") to the entire Roman army and also, more narrowly (and more commonly), to the heavy infantry that was the basic military unit of the ancient Roman army in the period of the late Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. In this latter meaning, it consisted of several cohorts of heavy infantry known as legionaries. It was almost always accompanied by one or more attached units of auxiliaries, who were not Roman citizens and provided cavalry, ranged troops and skirmishers to complement the legion's heavy infantry.' back |
| Rukmini Callimachi, ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape, 'The systematic rape of women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority has become deeply enmeshed in the organization and the radical theology of the Islamic State in the year since the group announced it was reviving slavery as an institution. Interviews with 21 women and girls who recently escaped the Islamic State, as well as an examination of the group’s official communications, illuminate how the practice has been enshrined in the group’s core tenets.' back |
| Rust Never Sleeps - Wikipedia, Rust Never Sleeps - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Rust Never Sleeps is an album by Neil Young and Crazy Horse released in 1979. The bulk of the album was recorded live at San Francisco's Cow Palace, with overdubs added. Audience noise is removed as much as possible, although they are clearly audible at certain points, most noticeably on the opening and closing songs. The album is half acoustic and half electric, opening and closing with different versions of the same song.' back |
| Simon Chapman, Infrasound phobia spreads . . . to solar energy cells1 What next?, 'In Australia, we have just seen the publication of a Senate Committee report on wind turbines . . .
The report is laughably inept, . . . It contains not a single mention of the largest and most important study of wind farms and annoyance and health, recently conducted by Health Canada. . . . the Committee has recommended that the National Health and Medical Research Council be bypassed in yet another review by an “independent” committee.
This slur on our peak expert body in health and medicine has all the class of a perennially losing D-grade cricket team trying to oust the entire national system of umpire training and accreditation to get the results they just know they deserve.' back |
| Trimurti - Wikipedia, Trimurti - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Trimurti (English: ‘three forms’; Sanskrit: त्रिमूर्ति trimūrti) is a concept in Hinduism "in which the cosmic functions of creation, maintenance, and destruction are personified by the forms of Brahmā the creator, Vishnu the maintainer or preserver, and Śhiva the destroyer or transformer," These three deities have been called "the Hindu triad" or the "Great Trinity", often addressed as "Brahma-Vishnu-Maheshwara."' back |
| William J Broad, 29 U.S. Scientists Praise Iran Nuclear Deal, 'The two-page letter may give the White House arguments a boost after the blow Mr. Obama suffered on Thursday when Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, a Democrat and among the most influential Jewish voices in Congress, announced he would oppose the deal, which calls for Iran to curb its nuclear program and allow inspections in return for an end to international oil and financial sanctions.
The first signature on the letter is from Richard L. Garwin, a physicist who helped design the world’s first hydrogen bomb and has long advised Washington on nuclear weapons and arms control. He is among the last living physicists who helped usher in the nuclear age.' back |
|
