natural theology
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Further reading
Books
Click on the "Amazon" link below each book entry to see details of a book (and possibly buy it!)
Kawabata, Yasunari, and Edward G Seidensticker (translator), Master of Go, Vintage (May 28, 1996)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0679761063
ISBN-13: 978-0679761068
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Sacks, Oliver, Seeing Voices: A Journey into the world of the Deaf, University of California Press 1989 Jacket: '... begins with a history of deaf people in the United States, the often outrageous ways in which they have been treated in the past, and their continuing struggle for acceptance in the hearing world. And it examines the amazing and beautiful visual language of the deaf - Sign - which has only in the past decade been recognised fully as a language - linguistically complete, rich and as expressive as any spoken language. ...'
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Sacks, Oliver, Migraine: Understanding a Common Disorder, University of California Press 1985 Amazon book description: 'The many manifestations of migraine can vary dramatically from one patient to another, even within the same patient at different times. Among the most compelling and perplexing of these symptoms are the strange visual hallucinations and distortions of space, time, and body image which migraineurs sometimes experience. Portrayals of these uncanny states have found their way into many works of art, from the heavenly visions of Hildegard von Bingen to Alice in Wonderland. Dr. Oliver Sacks argues that migraine cannot be understood simply as an illness, but must be viewed as a complex condition with a unique role to play in each individual's life.'
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Sacks, Oliver, An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales, Vintage 1996 Jacket: 'Sacks is a sympathetic clinician who uses his patients' problems as a launch pad for wider speculations about the nature of the mind . . . Sacks' descriptions of cases are both medical and literary. He writes with a moving directness and simplicity, his obvious sympathy acquitting him of any charge that he might be exploiting the misfortunes of others . . . The final effect is wonder at the infinite variety of the human mind and experience.' The Times
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Sacks, Oliver, and Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, , Knopf978-1400040810 2007 Jacket: 'Oliver Sacks' compassionate, compelling tales of people struggling to adapt to different neurological conditions have fundamentally changed the way we think about our own brains. and the human experience. In Musicophilia he examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians and everyday people - from a man who is struck by lightning and suddenly inspired to become a pianist at the age of forty-two, to an entire group of children with Williams syndrome who are hypermusical from birth.'
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Veltman, Martinus, Diagrammatica: The Path to the Feynman Rules, Cambridge University Press 1994 Jacket: 'This book provides an easily accessible introduction to quantum field theory via Feynman rules and calculations in particle physics. The aim is to make clear what the physical foundations of present-day field theory are, to clarify the physical content of Feynman rules, and to outline their domain of applicability. ... The book includes valuable appendices that review some essential mathematics, including complex spaces, matrices, the CBH equation, traces and dimensional regularization. ...'
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Waugh, Evelyn, The Life of the Right Reverend Ronald Knox Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford and Protonotary Apostolic to His Holiness Pope Pius XII, Chapman & Hall 1959 Preface: 'This book, I surmise, will prove to be the forerunner of many weightier studies of [Ronald Knox]. Its primary puspose is to tell the story of his exterior life, not to give a conspectus of his thought; still less to measure his spiritual achievements. His published works provide abundant material for research and criticism by specialists in many subjects. Here I have attempted to give the essential biolgraphical facts that they will need.'
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West, Morris, The Clowns of God, Toby Press 2003 Book Description
Publication Date: September 2003
'What would happen, if the members of the Roman Curia discovered that the Pope was about to publicly state that he had received a private revelation that the world was about to end? Pope Gregory XVII claims to have received a private revelation of the end of the world - an apocalypse coming not in some distant future but at any moment. Is he a madman, as his cardinals suspect, a mystic, or a fanatic grasping for an unholy power?'
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Papers
Chaitin, Gregory J, "Randomness and Mathematical Proof", Scientific American, 232, 5, May 1975, page 47-52. 'Although randomness can be precisely defined and can even be measured, a given number cannot be proved random. This enigma establishes a limit in what is possible in mathematics'. back |
Einstein, Albert, B. Podolsky, and N. Rosen,, "Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?", Phys. Rev., 47, , 1935, page 777-780. Abstract: 'In a complete theory there is an element corresponding to each element of reality. A sufficient condition for the reality of a physical quantity is the possibility of predicting it with certainty, without disturbing the system. In quantum mechanics in the case of two physical quantities described by non-commuting operators, the knowledge of one precludes the knowledge of the other. Then either (1) the description of reality given by the wave function is not complete or (2) these two quantities cannot have simultaneous reality. Consideration of the problem of making predictions concerning a system on the basis of measurements made on another system that has previously interacted with it leads to the result that if (1) is false then (2) is also false. One thus is led to conclude that the description of reality as given by a wave function is not complete.'. back |
Herzfeld, Charles, "How the change agent has changed", Nature, 451, 7177, 24 January 2008, page 403-404. 'As the US military research arm turns fifty -- and other branches of government seek to adopt its famously nimble approach -- a former director reflects on what worked and what didn't.' Herzfeld. back |
Nature editorial, , "A little less Disneyland: DARPA should focus on its founding values", Nature, 451, 7177, 24 January 2008, page 374. 'Today some of DARPA's activities remain firmly rooted in its cold-war research past . . . But, as was on show in a California Disneyland hotel last year, the agency's director, Anthony Tether, has also tried jazzing things up a bit, by sponsoring competitions such as the $2-million 'grand challenge' robot car race. . . . Such approaches may be useful in helping the government think outside the box, but DARPA must be careful not to stray too far down that path. . . . The agency's next director must take the agency back to basics, or risk losing the edge that comes from the inspired patronage of risky research. Above all, DARPA needs to concentrate more on projects that could lead to long-term payoffs in the fight against terrorism, in ways we cannot yet imagine.' Editorial. back |
Weinberger, Sharon, "Still in the lead?", Nature, 451, 7177, 24 January 2008, page 390-393. 'Half a century after its creation, the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is considered a paragon of government innovation. But some question whether it is still relevant.'. back |
Links
Gram-Schmidt process - Wikipedia, Gram-Schmidt process - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In mathematics, particularly linear algebra and numerical analysis, the Gram–Schmidt process is a method for orthogonalizing a set of vectors in an inner product space, most commonly the Euclidean space Rn. The Gram–Schmidt process takes a finite, linearly independent set S = \{v1, …, vn\} and generates an orthogonal set S' = \{u1, …, un\} that spans the same subspace as S. The method is named for Jørgen Pedersen Gram and Erhard Schmidt but it appeared earlier in the work of Laplace and Cauchy. ' back |
Jason Alexandra, Murray-Darling Basin damage done, we must now restore trust in its management, ' Among the more sensational findings of the Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission was that the authority responsible for administering the plan acted unlawfully and failed to use the best available science, including climate science. The inquiry's report, handed down this week, marked an extraordinary chapter in the Murray-Darling Basin's controversial and contested reforms, and revealed much about the messy way in which water and climate law, science and politics interact. Restoring public trust in the governance of the basin is increasingly urgent. . . . I was the only former MDBA senior executive to provide evidence to the royal commission, while the Commonwealth refused participation in the inquiry, and blocked current MDBA staff from attending.' back |
Najah Al-Otaibi, The Pope's visit to the UAE today is the first step in undoing the damage casued by his predecessor, ' . . . Pope Francis’s visit, which comes appropriately enough at the start of the UAE’s Year of Tolerance, is a significant step for both sides. Pope Francis is keen to protect the region’s Christian population, but he is also keen to undo the damage caused by his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, who not only equated Islam with violence but also quoted from a medieval text declaring Prophet Muhammad “evil and inhuman.” back |
Parousia - Wikipedia, Parousia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Parousia (Greek: Παρουσία) is an ancient Greek word meaning presence, arrival, or official visit.' back |
S Matrix - Wikipedia, S Matrix - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In physics, the Scattering matrix (S-matrix) relates the initial state and the final state for an interaction of particles. It is used in quantum mechanics, scattering theory and quantum field theory.' back |
Self-adjoint operator, Self-adjoint operator, 'In mathematics, a self-adjoint operator on a complex vector space V with inner product ⟨ ⋅ , ⋅ ⟩ . . . is a linear map A (from V to itself) that is its own adjoint: ⟨ A v , w ⟩ = ⟨ v , A w ⟩ . . . If V is finite-dimensional with a given orthonormal basis, this is equivalent to the condition that the matrix of A is Hermitian, i.e., equal to its conjugate transpose A*. By the finite-dimensional spectral theorem, V has an orthonormal basis such that the matrix of A relative to this basis is a diagonal matrix with entries in the real numbers. In this article, we consider generalizations of this concept to operators on Hilbert spaces of arbitrary dimension.' back |
