"natural theology > notes > 2017

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Aristotle, and (translated by P H Wickstead and F M Cornford), Physics books I-IV, Harvard University Press, William Heinemann 1980 Introduction: 'The title "Physics" is misleading. .. "Lectures on Nature" the alternative title found in editions of the Greek text, is more enlightening. ... The realm of Nature, for Aristotle, includes all things that move and change ... . Thus the ultimate "matter" which, according to Aristotle, underlies all the elementary substances must be studied, in its changes at least, by the Natural Philosopher. And so must the eternal heavenly spheres of the Aristotelean philosophy, insofar as they themselves move of are the cause of motion in the sublunary world.'
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Bastin, Ted, and C W Kilmister, Combinatorial Physics, World Scientific 1995 About this book (World Scientific) 'The authors aim to reinstate a spirit of philosophical enquiry in physics. They abandon the intuitive continuum concepts and build up constructively a combinatorial mathematics of process. This radical change alone makes it possible to calculate the coupling constants of the fundamental fields which — via high energy scattering — are the bridge from the combinatorial world into dynamics. The untenable distinction between what is ‘observed’, or measured, and what is not, upon which current quantum theory is based, is not needed. If we are to speak of mind, this has to be present — albeit in primitive form — at the most basic level, and not to be dragged in at one arbitrary point to avoid the difficulties about quantum observation. There is a growing literature on information-theoretic models for physics, but hitherto the two disciplines have gone in parallel. In this book they interact vitally.'
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Bellah, Robert N., Religion in Human Evolution, Harvard University Press 2011 'Religion in Human Evolution is a work of extraordinary ambition—a wide-ranging, nuanced probing of our biological past to discover the kinds of lives that human beings have most often imagined were worth living. It offers what is frequently seen as a forbidden theory of the origin of religion that goes deep into evolution, especially but not exclusively cultural evolution. How did our early ancestors transcend the quotidian demands of everyday existence to embrace an alternative reality that called into question the very meaning of their daily struggle? Robert Bellah, one of the leading sociologists of our time, identifies a range of cultural capacities, such as communal dancing, storytelling, and theorizing, whose emergence made this religious development possible.'
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Burghardt, Gordon M, The Genesis of Animal Play, MIT Press 2005 'In The Genesis of Animal Play, Gordon Burghardt examines the origins and evolution of play in humans and animals. He asks what play might mean in our understanding of evolution, the brain, behavioral organization, and psychology. Is play essential to development? Is it the driving force behind human and animal behavior? What is the proper place for the study of play in the cognitive, behavioral, and biological sciences?'
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Chaisson, Eric J., Cosmic Evolution: The Rise of Complexity in Nsture, Harvard University Press 2002 'In Cosmic Evolution Chaisson addresses some of the most basic issues we can contemplate: the origin of matter and the origin of life, and the ways matter, life, and radiation interact and change with time. Guided by notions of beauty and symmetry, by the search for simplicity and elegance, by the ambition to explain the widest range of phenomena with the fewest possible principles, Chaisson designs for us an expansive yet intricate model depicting the origin and evolution of all material structures. He shows us that neither new science nor appeals to nonscience are needed to understand the impressive hierarchy of the cosmic evolutionary story, from quark to quasar, from microbe to mind.'
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Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Iraneus, Love and Hate: The Natural History of Behaviour Patterns, Routledge 1997 'Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt is an ethologist who spent several years doing research in the South Pacific, Asia, France, and Africa. He is the author of Love and Hate, Land of a Thousand Atolls, and Galapagos. He has also been awarded many prestigious awards for his research and contributions to the study of human behavior.
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Einstein, Albert, and Robert W Lawson (translator) Roger Penrose (Introduction), Robert Geroch (Commentary), David C Cassidy (Historical Essay) , Relativity: The Special and General Theory, Pi Press 2005 Preface: 'The present book is intended, as far as possible, to give an exact insight into the theory of relativity to those readers who, from a general scientific and philosophical point of view, are interested in the theory, but who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus of theoretical physics. ... The author has spared himself no pains in his endeavour to present the main ideas in the simplest and most intelligible form, and on the whole, in the sequence and connection in which they actually originated.' page 3
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Holland, Peter R, The Quantum Theory of Motion: An Account of the de Broglie-Bohm Causal Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Cambridge University Press 1993 Jacket: 'This book presents the first comprehensive exposition of the interpretation of quantum mechanics pioneered by Louis de Broglie and David Bohm. . . . Developing the theme that a material system such as an electron is guided by a surrounding quantum wave, a detailed examination of the classic phenomena of quantum theory is presented . . . The theory provides a novel and satisfactory framework for analysing the classical limit of quantum mechanics and Heisenberg's relations, and implies a theory of measurement without wavefunction collapse. It also suggests a strikingly novel view of relativistic quantum theory, including the Dirac equation, quantum field theory and the wavefunction of the universe.'
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Hughes, Robert, The Fatal Shore: A History of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia, 1787-1868, Knopf 1987 Jacket: 'An epic description of the brutal transportation of men, women and children out of Georgian Britain into a horrific penal system which was to be the precursor of the Gulag and was the origin of Australia. The Fatal Shore is the prize-winning, scholarly, brilliantly entertaining narrative that has given its true history to Australia.'
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Hughes, Robert, The Fatal Shore: A History of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia, 1787-1868, Knopf 1987 Jacket: 'An epic description fo the brutal transportation of men, women and children out of Georgian Britain into a horrific penal system which was to be the precursor of the Gulag and was the origin of Australia. The Fatal Shore is the prize-winning, scholarly, brilliantly entertaining narrative that has given its true history to Australia.'
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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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Whitehead, Alfred North, Adventures of Ideas, Simon & Schuster: Free Press 1947, 1967 Cover: 'The title of this book, Adventures of Ideas, bears two meanings, both applicable to the subject-matter. One meaning is the effect of certain ideas in promoting the slow drift of mankind towards civilization. This is the Adventure of Ideas in the history of mankind. The other meaning is the author's adventure in framing a speculative scheme of ideas which shall be explanatory of the historical adventure. '
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Aquinas 14 (Introduction), Summa: I 3: Via Negativa, 'I answer that, It is absolutely true that God is not a body; and this can be shown in three ways. First, because no body is in motion unless it be put in motion, as is evident from induction. Now it has been already proved (2, 3), that God is the First Mover, and is Himself unmoved. Therefore it is clear that God is not a body. .. .' back

Aquinas 14: Is God a body?, Summa: I 3 1: Is God a body? , 'I answer that, It is absolutely true that God is not a body; and this can be shown in three ways. First, because no body is in motion unless it be put in motion, as is evident from induction. Now it has been already proved (2, 3), that God is the First Mover, and is Himself unmoved. Therefore it is clear that God is not a body. .. .' back

Glenn Ellis and Viktoryia Kolchyna, Putin and the 'triumph of Christianity' in Russia, 'This now routine use of law enforcement muscle to bolster the status and privileges of the Orthodox Church struck us as deeply ironic, given that only a few decades ago the communists used the same brutal measures to suppress organised religion. In those days, this maxim from the founder of the Soviet state, VI Lenin, would have been at the heart of the state's view of religion: "Religion is the opium of the people … All modern religions and churches, all and every kind of religious organisations are always considered by Marxism as the organs of bourgeois reaction, used for the protection of the exploitation and the stupefaction of the working class." ' back

John Laugh, Orysian Lutsevych, James Nixey, James Sherr, Kataryna Wolczuk, Timothy Ash and Janet Gunn, The Struggle for Ukraine, 'The report, which includes policy recommendations, assesses Ukraine’s position and prospects, and examines its double existential threat: resisting Russian interference, and the fierce internal contest to determine its own political, institutional and civic future. It states it is an illusion to believe diplomatic formulas alone will diminish Russia’s determination to dominate Ukraine, suggesting the West must work inside and outside international negotiation frameworks, the Normandy Format and Minsk process, to resolve the war between Ukraine and Russia and strengthen European security.‪ ' back

Jon Henley, Daphne Caruana Galizia: Establishment was out to get her, says family, 'So their mother’s death, say her sons, was not an isolated attack on freedom of expression, but a symptom of something else: a system. “These things don’t happen by accident,” says Andrew. “This state of affairs was cultivated. If a journalist dies, it’s because people are not doing the job they’re supposed to do.” back

Lucretius - Wikipedia, Lucretius - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Titus Lucretius Carus c. 15 October 99 BC – c. 55 BC) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the didactic philosophical poem De rerum natura about the tenets and philosophy of Epicureanism, and which is usually translated into English as On the Nature of Things. back

Paul Daley, Its hard to imagine the family of a white artist being treated like Albert Namatjira's, ' . . . the copyright to Namatjira’s works has finally transferred to his grandchildren. It followed a long battle between, on the one side, the family and their pro-bono legal representatives Arnold Bloch Leibler, the social change organisation BIGhArt and leading cultural institutions and, on the other, Legend Press, a non-Indigenous Sydney art publisher that has enjoyed majority or full control of Namatjira’s copyright for six decades.' back

Peter van Inwagen & Meghan Sullivan, Metaphysics (Standfprd Encyclopedia of Philosophy), 'The word ‘metaphysics’ is derived from a collective title of the fourteen books by Aristotle that we currently think of as making up Aristotle's Metaphysics. Aristotle himself did not know the word. (He had four names for the branch of philosophy that is the subject-matter of Metaphysics: ‘first philosophy’, ‘first science’, ‘wisdom’, and ‘theology’.) At least one hundred years after Aristotle's death, an editor of his works (in all probability, Andronicus of Rhodes) titled those fourteen books “Ta meta ta phusika”—“the after the physicals” or “the ones after the physical ones”—the “physical ones” being the books contained in what we now call Aristotle's Physics.' back

Roy Eidelson, Psychologists are facing consequences for helping with torture. Its not enough, 'That’s why psychologists’ complicity, whether through active participation or silent acquiescence, is so egregious. It’s also why we (and other health professionals) must make sure our gruesome past doesn’t reappear as a ghastly future. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Torture’s corrosive effects are an assault on human dignity — and that ultimately endangers and diminishes us all.' back

susan B.Glasser, 'China is Laughing About This Situation', 'Ai Weiwei is making a strong case for himself as America’s leading dissident of the Trump era. Never mind that he’s Chinese, or that he lives in Berlin in de facto exile these days. The legendary artist, who has long embraced political themes in his work, has gone full-out activist in a new feature-length documentary film about the global refugee crisis, called Human Flow and released in theaters across the U.S. Friday, and in a new, New York City-wide public art exhibit of 300 works in dozens of locations called “Good Walls Make Good Neighbors.” ' back

vol VII: Notes

2017

Notes

Sunday 15 October 2017

Monday 16 October 2017

Tuesday 17 October 2017

Wednesday 18 October 2017

Thursday 19 October 2017

Friday 20 October 2017

Saturday 21 October 2017

Further reading

Books

Links