Davis, Martin, Computability and Unsolvability, Dover 1982 Preface: 'This book is an introduction to the theory of computability and non-computability ususally referred to as the theory of recursive functions. The subject is concerned with the existence of purely mechanical procedures for solving problems. . . . The existence of absolutely unsolvable problems and the Goedel incompleteness theorem are among the results in the theory of computability that have philosophical significance.' 
Amazon   back

Einstein, Albert, and translated by Alan Harris , Einstein's Essays in Science, Philosophical Library / Dover 1934, 2009 'His name is synonymous with "genius," but these essays by the renowned physicist and scholar are accessible to any reader. In addition to outlining the core of relativity theory in everyday language, Albert Einstein presents fascinating discussions of other scientific fields to which he made significant contributions. The Nobel Laureate also profiles some of history's most influential physicists, upon whose studies his own work was based. Assembled during Einstein's lifetime from his speeches and essays, this book marks the first presentation to the wider world of the scientist's accomplishments in the field of abstract physics. Along with relativity theory, these articles examine the methods of theoretical physics, principles of research, and the concept of scientific truth. Einstein's speeches to audiences at Columbia University and the Prussian Academy of Science appear here, along with his insightful observations on such giants of science as Johannes Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Niels Bohr, Max Planck, and others.' 
Amazon   back

Finke, Roger, and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America 1776 - 2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy, Rutgers University Press 2005 Amazon book description: 'In The Churching of America, 1776 — 2005, Roger Finke and Rodney Stark once again revolutionize the way we think about religion. Extending the argument that the nation's religious environment acts as a free market economy, this extensively revised and expanded edition offers new research, statistics, and stories that document increased participation in religious groups from Independence through the twenty-first century. Adding to the thorough coverage of "mainline" religious groups, new sections chart the remarkable development and growth of African American churches from the early nineteenth century forward. Finke and Stark show how, like other "upstart sects," these churches competed for adherents and demonstrate how American norms of religious freedom allowed African American churches to construct organizational havens with little outside intervention. This edition also includes new sections on the ethnic religious communities of recent immigrants &mdash stories that echo those told of ethnic religious enclaves in the nineteenth century.' 
Amazon   back

Kiralfy, A K R (ed), Potters Historical Introduction to English Law and its Institutions , Sweet and Maxwell 1958 back

Kleinert, Sylvia, and Margo Neil (editors), The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Arts and Culture, Oxford University Press 2000  
Amazon   back

Kolmogorov, A N, 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 . . .' 
Amazon   back

Lonergan, Bernard J F, and (edited by Frederick E Crowe and Robert M Doran, Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St Thomas Aquinas, Jacket: "Grace and Freedom represents Lonergan's entry into subject matter that would occupy him throughout his lifetime. At the same time it is a manifestation of the thinking that has made him one of the world's foremost Thomist scholars. . . . Lonergan's thesis is that from the sixteenth century onwards, commentators on Thomas Aquinas lacked historical consciousness, raised questions that Thomas had never considered, and obfuscated the issues. Lonergan's achievement consists in having retrieved the actual postion by adopting a historical approach that has reconstructed [Thomas's] intellectual development on grace. . . . What Lonergan also adds is a unique diagnosis of the mistakes made by the modern scholastic authors in their treatment of grace. Throughout this work, Lonergan discovers in Thomas a mind in constant development, displaying radical shifts on fundamental questions. . . . ' 
Amazon   back

Lonergan, Bernard J, and Michael G Shields, Frederick E Crow (Editors), The Ontological and Psychological Constitution of Christ, University of Toronto 2002 Amazon Book Description 'Bernard Lonergan's De constitutione Christi was written to accompany a course being taught in Latin at the Gregorian University, Rome during the 1950s and 60s. This little-known treatise, volume seven in the series, is presented in English translation, accompanied by the original Latin text. Here, Lonergan tackles the metaphysical and psychological questions raised by the unique makeup of Christ, who is both fully human and fully divine, according to traditional Christian theology. His analysis falls into two parts: ontological and psychological. In dealing with the ontology of the incarnate Word, Lonergan explores the notion of person, and in doing so provides an interesting treatment of the existential question of personal authenticity raised by Kierkegaard and treated by Lonergan under the heading of Existez. Moving into his psychological analysis, he argues that consciousness is not a matter of introspection, a perception of oneself as object, but rather an awareness of oneself as subject. He then applies this understanding to the self-awareness of Christ, with particular reference to the question of Christ's knowledge of himself as both human and divine. This book is a foundational text in critical areas of contemporary theology; however, it was never widely circulated and has remained effectively unknown to contemporary scholars. With this translation the work will finally be made accessible' 
Amazon   back

Mehra, Jagdish, The Beat of a Different Drum: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, Oxford University Press 1994 Amazon Customer Review: By David Keirsey 'There are two type of reviews of this book. Those who were interested in the man from a personal, non science perspective and those who know science, are interested and can read and understand Feynman's scientific work. Those who interested in the more entertaining books on Feynman, e.g., Gleick, and some of Feynman's own books should tread on this book lightly for it includes mathematical and scientific analysis you cannot get from the other books. On the other hand, Jagdish Medra does an excellent job in reciting some of the personal stuff between him and his father, which were crucial in forming both Feynman's personal and scientific personality. This is the only book you will get that. Mehra did not include some of the more interesting andecotes that are in Feynman's books, so it is not a complete biography despite its length and breath. If you are interested in some of Feynman's reasons for his ideas and the context of those ideas, then you must read this book. If you are not interested, for example, in Maupertuis, Lagrange, Hamilton ideas on minimum action -- you might have to skip large parts of the book because Mehra recounts Feynman's ideas in detail (including all his equations). . . . ' 
Amazon   back

Pinker, Steven, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Viking Adult 2011 Amazon book description: 'A provocative history of violence—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Stuff of Thought and The Blank Slate Believe it or not, today we may be living in the most peaceful moment in our species' existence. In his gripping and controversial new work, New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows that despite the ceaseless news about war, crime, and terrorism, violence has actually been in decline over long stretches of history. Exploding myths about humankind's inherent violence and the curse of modernity, this ambitious book continues Pinker's exploration of the essence of human nature, mixing psychology and history to provide a remarkable picture of an increasingly enlightened world.' 
Amazon   back

Zee, Anthony, Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell, Princeton University Press 2003 Amazon book description: 'An esteemed researcher and acclaimed popular author takes up the challenge of providing a clear, relatively brief, and fully up-to-date introduction to one of the most vital but notoriously difficult subjects in theoretical physics. A quantum field theory text for the twenty-first century, this book makes the essential tool of modern theoretical physics available to any student who has completed a course on quantum mechanics and is eager to go on. Quantum field theory was invented to deal simultaneously with special relativity and quantum mechanics, the two greatest discoveries of early twentieth-century physics, but it has become increasingly important to many areas of physics. These days, physicists turn to quantum field theory to describe a multitude of phenomena. Stressing critical ideas and insights, Zee uses numerous examples to lead students to a true conceptual understanding of quantum field theory--what it means and what it can do. He covers an unusually diverse range of topics, including various contemporary developments,while guiding readers through thoughtfully designed problems. In contrast to previous texts, Zee incorporates gravity from the outset and discusses the innovative use of quantum field theory in modern condensed matter theory. Without a solid understanding of quantum field theory, no student can claim to have mastered contemporary theoretical physics. Offering a remarkably accessible conceptual introduction, this text will be widely welcomed and used.  
Amazon   back

Albert Einstein, Origins of the General Relativity Theory, 'Finally Einstein “returned penitentially to the Riemann curvature”. “Our final results appear almost self-evident … but the years of searching in the dark for a truth that one feels but cannot express; the intense desire, and the alternations of confidence and misgiving, until one breaks through to clarity and understanding, are only known to him who has himself experienced it.” ' back

Concordat Watch, Concordat Watch, "A concordat is a pact between the Vatican and a nation-state whereby the Vatican gains certain political and financial benefits in return for support of a policy or arm of the national government. Such a concordat in a nation with numerous Catholics is also helpful in getting their allegiance or in curbing opposition to the government."Prof. John M. Swomley, St. Paul School of Theology, Kansas City, Missouri: back

Edward Fredkin and Tommaso Toffoli, Conservative Logic, 'Conservative logic is a comprehensive model of computation which explicitly reflects a number of fundamental principles of physics, such as the reversibility of the dynamical laws and the conservation of certain additive quantities (among which energy plays a distinguished role). Because it more closely mirrors physics than traditional models of computation, conservative logic is in a better position to provide indications concerning the realization of high-performance computing systems, i.e., of systems that make very efficient use of the "computing resources" actually offered by nature. In particular, conservative logic shows that it is ideally possible to build sequential circuits with zero internal power dissipation. After establishing a general framework, we discuss two specific models of computation. The first uses binary variables and is the conservative-logic counterpart of switching theory; this model proves that universal computing capabilities are compatible with the reversibility and conservation constraints. The second model, which is a refinement of the first, constitutes a substantial breakthrough in establishing a correspondence between computation and physics. In fact, this model is based on elastic collisions of identical "balls," and thus is formally identical with the atomic model that underlies the (classical) kinetic theory of perfect gases. Quite literally, the functional behavior of a general-purpose digital computer can be reproduced by a perfect gas placed in a suitably shaped container and given appropriate initial conditions.' back

Fredkin gate - Wikipedia, Fredkin gate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Fredkin gate (also CSWAP gate) is a computational circuit suitable for reversible computing, invented by Ed Fredkin. It is universal, which means that any logical or arithmetic operation can be constructed entirely of Fredkin gates. The Fredkin gate is the three-bit gate that swaps the last two bits if the first bit is 1.' . . . It has the useful property that the numbers of 0s and 1s are conserved throughout, which in the billiard ball model means the same number of balls are output as input. This corresponds nicely to the conservation of mass in physics, and helps to show that the model is not wasteful.' back

Gary Greenberg, What if the Placebo Effect Isn't a Trick?, ' . . . as ubiquitous as the phenomenon is, and as plentiful the studies that demonstrate it, the placebo effect has yet to become part of the doctor’s standard armamentarium — and not only because it has a reputation as “fake medicine” doled out by the unscrupulous to the credulous. It also has, so far, resisted a full understanding, its mechanisms shrouded in mystery. Without a clear knowledge of how it works, doctors can’t know when to deploy it, or how.' back

Intelligent design - Wikipedia, Intelligent design - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins". Proponents claim that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." ID is a form of creationism that lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable hypotheses, so it is not science.' back

Jane Herbert, There's a reason your child wants to read the same book over and over agan, ' We often hear about the benefits of reading storybooks at bedtime for promoting vocabulary, early literacy skills, and a good relationship with your child. But the experts haven’t been in your home, and your child requests the same book every single night, sometimes multiple times a night. You both know all the words off by heart. Given activities occurring just before sleep are particularly well-remembered by young children, you might wonder if all this repetition is beneficial. The answer is yes.' back

Matthew 13:12, , '12 Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.' back

Melanie Mitchell, Artificial Intelligence Hits the Barrier of Meaning, 'As someone who has worked in A.I. for decades, I’ve witnessed the failure of similar predictions of imminent human-level A.I., and I’m certain these latest forecasts will fall short as well. The challenge of creating humanlike intelligence in machines remains greatly underestimated. Today’s A.I. systems sorely lack the essence of human intelligence: understanding the situations we experience, being able to grasp their meaning. The mathematician and philosopher Gian-Carlo Rota famously asked, “I wonder whether or when A.I. will ever crash the barrier of meaning.” To me, this is still the most important question.' back

Mike Duncan, This is how republics end, ' . . . seeds of American decline were sown not in the past 15 years of war and recession but in the 1970s, when economic inequality began to rise, a process that has only accelerated in recent years. As the decline of the Roman Republic shows, sharp inequality, left unaddressed, can be catastrophic, unleashing political and social consequences that can bring even a centuries-old republic to its end.' back

Neela Banerjee, Lisa Song & David Hasameyer, Exxon: The Road Not Taken, ' Exxon's ambitious program included both empirical CO2 sampling and rigorous climate modeling. It assembled a brain trust that would spend more than a decade deepening the company's understanding of an environmental problem that posed an existential threat to the oil business. Then, toward the end of the 1980s, Exxon curtailed its carbon dioxide research. In the decades that followed, Exxon worked instead at the forefront of climate denial. It put its muscle behind efforts to manufacture doubt about the reality of global warming its own scientists had once confirmed. It lobbied to block federal and international action to control greenhouse gas emissions. It helped to erect a vast edifice of misinformation that stands to this day.' back

Netta Ahituv, 'I Didn't Report My Rape Because I was 7. I Could Be Nurdered fir This, but I Can't Stay Silent', ' When she wrote poems against the occupation, she paid with her freedom. Now that Palestinian-Israeli Dareen Tatour has chosen to speak out about the rapes she was subjected to as a child, she fears she could pay with her life ' back

Paul Bloom, The War on Reason, 'Part of the attack comes from neuroscience. Pretty, multicolored fMRI maps make clear that our mental lives can be observed in the activity of our neurons, and we’ve made considerable progress in reading someone’s thoughts by looking at those maps. It’s clear, too, that damage to the brain can impair the most-intimate aspects of ourselves, such as the capacity to make moral judgments or to inhibit bad actions. To some scholars, the neural basis of mental life suggests that rational deliberation and free choice are illusions. Because our thoughts and actions are the products of our brains, and because what our brains do is determined by the physical state of the world and the laws of physics—perhaps with a dash of quantum randomness in the mix—there seems to be no room for choice. As the author and neuroscientist Sam Harris has put it, we are “biochemical puppets.” ' back

Rebecca Solnit, The American civil war didn't end. And Trump is a Confederate president, ' In the 158th year of the American civil war, also known as 2018, the Confederacy continues its recent resurgence. Its victims include black people, of course, but also immigrants, Jews, Muslims, Latinos, trans people, gay people and women who want to exercise jurisdiction over their bodies. The Confederacy battles in favour of uncontrolled guns and poisons, including toxins in streams, mercury from coal plants, carbon emissions into the upper atmosphere, and oil exploitation in previously protected lands and waters.' back

Standard model - Wikipedia, Standard model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Standard Model of particle physics is a theory that describes three of the four known fundamental interactions between the elementary particles that make up all matter. It is a quantum field theory developed between 1970 and 1973 which is consistent with both quantum mechanics and special relativity. To date, almost all experimental tests of the three forces described by the Standard Model have agreed with its predictions. However, the Standard Model falls short of being a complete theory of fundamental interactions, primarily because of its lack of inclusion of gravity, the fourth known fundamental interaction, but also because of the large number of numerical parameters (such as masses and coupling constants) that must be put "by hand" into the theory (rather than being derived from first principles) . . . ' back

Superposition principle - Wikipedia, Superposition principle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The superposition principle,[1] also known as superposition property, states that, for all linear systems, the net response caused by two or more stimuli is the sum of the responses that would have been caused by each stimulus individually. So that if input A produces response X and input B produces response Y then input (A + B) produces response (X + Y).' back