vol VII: Notes
2019
Notes
Sunday 10 February 2019 - Saturday 16 February 2019
[Notebook: DB 83: Physical Theology]
[page 104]
Sunday 10 February 2019
Searching for the keystone to the divine universe story, which seems at the moment to be a combination of the initial singularity predicted by general relativity and fixed point theory predicted by topology, both products of the Gaussian approach to combining arithmetic and geometry.
[page 105]
God is a woman
An essay on the coupling between formalism and reality, ie what is philosophy, how does it work, from Parmenides via Plato to Einstein.
Let us guess that the fundamental problem in philosophy is the relationship between language and reality, and that one of the most important links between formalism and dynamism is to be found in the Shannon-Nyquist theorem. Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem - Wikipedia
Misner, Thorne and Wheeler Gravitation - 'geometrodynamics', the fundamental interaction between formal mathematics and the dynamics of the universe, and the place to look I think, for the roots of mathematical theology, which has the advantages of not being lost in translation and not attracting the attention of religious fundamentalists. Misner, Thorne and Wheeler
Monday 11 February
MTW: The fundamental symmetry: the coupling of gravitation to energy
Tuesday 12 February 2019
MTW page 43: [Einstein] ' "What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world." ' If God is consistent (= locally consistent) we say no. Spacetime is neccessary
for the existence of more than one entity, and Cantor's theorem guarantees the existence of more than one entity, a bootstrap driven by potential and consistency.
Holton, 1971 page 20: (?)
Misner, Thorne and Wheeler: Tensor is a machine, ie computer = algorithm.
Wednesday 13 February 2019
Rogan: Endless stories of god and war. The power from above works by violent kings and warlords; the power from below by logic and consistency, people and diplomats. Rogan: The Arabs: A history
page 515: ' "We are the soldiers of God and we are fond of death." ' Islamic Jihad.
Thursday 14 February 2019
Friday 15 February 2019
Where did my life go? The last 40 years have sailed by in a blur which I just began to realize when I read Rogan's history of the Arabs, a sequence of very live issues in my lifetime which began shortly before the beginning of the second world war. The principal issue identified in Rogan, and the central issue in my intellectual life, has been and remains the interplay between theocracy and democracy, and I am now hoping
[page 107]
to ice this cake with a PhD in philosophy which will solidly redirect theocracy from the worship of an imaginary and logically impossible god that promises an eternal life of bliss after death to those who become martyrs in its cause to the more realistic view that each of us enjoys a temporary existence within the divinity which can be relatively blissful if we can work together for our common good based on a scientifically realistic vision of our human condition.
Your desires are not necessarily meant for you, but they are for a future generation.
Saturday 16 February 2019
Since Hilbert championed formalism, constructing mathematical models has become easy. It was already easy for Cantor, one of the first practitioners of formalism, who found no inconsistency in imagining the set of all natural numbers, nor the set of all the mappings of the natural numbers onto themselves, nor the set of all these mappings onto themselves and so on without end. Neither he nor anyone else can write these sets out in full, but we can use various semantic and symmetry principles to argue that they involve no fundamental inconsistency. Things become more difficult when we come to think about the real world where all information
[page 108
is physical. If we want to avoid contradiction in a universe with two elements (or any number of elements greater than 1) we need a structure in which p (one element) and not-p (some other element) exist simultaneously. The answer, we say, is space. By separating distinct elements, space enables things, each of which is not the other, to exist simultaneously. Physics gives us two ways to achieve this. Different photons are differentiated by their energy or frequency even though, as bosons, any number of them with the same energy can exist in the same state. To go further we need fermions, physical particles which cannot exist in the same state, so that the axiom one particle one state is individually enforced.
Physics takes Minkowski space as given, but we want to see how it emerges from the initial singularity [via energy].
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Further readingBooks
Click on the "Amazon" link below each book entry to see details of a book (and possibly buy it!)
Butler, Samuel, The Way of All Flesh, Dover Publications 2004 'Hailed by George Bernard Shaw as "one of the summits of human achievement," Butler's autobiographical account of a harsh upbringing and troubled adulthood satirizes Victorian hypocrisy in its chronicle of the life and loves of Ernest Pontifex. Along the way, it offers a powerful indictment of 19th-century England's major institutions.'
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Carrel, Alexis, Man the Unknown, Halycon House 1938 Book description: 'One of the truly great scientists of our time reveals the mystery of Man, his mind, and body and soul. Hundreds of thousands of readers are finding in these simple, vital pages new hope, new courage, stronger spiritual belief.'
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Christie, Agatha, The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1981 Amazon Book Description
'First came a sinister warning to Poirot not to eat any plum pudding . . . then the discovery of corpse in chest . . . next, an overheard quarrel that led to murder...the strange case of the of the dead man who altered his eating habits . . . and the puzzle of the victim who dreamt his own suicide. What links these six baffling cases? The distinctive hand of the queen of crime fiction.'
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Elliott, Mary, and (Foreword by Paul Ehrlich), Ground for Concern, Penguin Books 1977 Preface: 'This book is neither a political manifesto nor a textbook on nuclear power. It is a reasoned statement of the concern that Australians, and people throughout the world, feel about the prospects of a nuclear future. The authors have tried to grapple honestly with the problems of the atomic age, which is our age. They have tried to speak about complex matters in plain language.'
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Everett III, Hugh, and Bryce S Dewitt, Neill Graham (editors), The Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Princeton University Press 1973 Jacket: 'A novel interpretation of quantum mechanics, first proposed in brief form by Hugh Everett in 1957, forms the nucleus around which this book has developed. The volume contains Dr Everett's short paper from 1957, "'Relative State' formulation of quantum mechanics" and a far longer exposition of his interpretation entitled "The Theory of the Universal Wave Function" never before published. In addition other papers by Wheeler, DeWitt, Graham, Cooper and van Vechten provide further discussion of the same theme. Together they constitute virtually the entire world output of scholarly commentary on the Everett interpretation.'
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Feynman, Richard P, and Robert B Leighton, Matthew Sands, The Feynman Lectures on Physics (volume 3) : Quantum Mechanics, Addison Wesley 1970 Foreword: 'This set of lectures tries to elucidate from the beginning those features of quantum mechanics which are the most basic and the most general. . . . In each instance the ideas are introduced together with a detailed discussion of some specific examples - to try to make the physical ideas as real as possible.' Matthew Sands
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Friedenthal, Richard, Luther, Weidenfeld and Nicholson 1970 Jacket: At midday on 21 October 1517, Luther launched the Reformation by nailing his 'ninety-five theses' against Papal indulgences to the door of the Schlosskirche at Wittenberg. The world has yet to come to terms with the issues he raised. . . . In this new biography Richard Friedenthal portrays the living human figure behind the accretions of pious and hostile legend. . . . Interwoven with the story of Luther's life is an intricate picture of Europe as a whole undergoing the agony of the Reformation, with centuries old beliefs and customs being turned upside-down in a chaos of furious religious controversy, social upheaval and constant clashes between bishops and princelings, imperial troops and mercenaries. . . .'
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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 . . .'
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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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Nostra Aetate, in Walter M Abbott and Joseph Gallagher (translation editor) The Documents of Vatican II: Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Geoffrey Chapman 1972 'Men look to the various religions for answers to those profound mysteries of the human condition which, today even as in olden times, deeply stir the human heart: what is man? What is the meaning and purpose of our life? What is goodness and what is sin? What gives rise to our sorrows and to what intent? What is the truth about death, judgement and retribution beyond the grave? What, finally, is that ultimate and unutterable mystery which engulfs our being, and whence we take our rise, and whither our journey leads us?' Article 1, page 661.
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Nostra Aetate, in Walter M Abbott and Joseph Gallagher (translation editor) The Documents of Vatican II: Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Geoffrey Chapman 1972 'Men look to the various religions for answers to those profound mysteries of the human condition which, today even as in olden times, deeply stir the human heart: what is man? What is the meaning and purpose of our life? What is goodness and what is sin? What gives rise to our sorrows and to what intent? What is the truth about death, judgement and retribution beyond the grave? What, finally, is that ultimate and unutterable mystery which engulfs our being, and whence we take our rise, and whither our journey leads us?' Article 1, page 661.
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Pickthall, Mohammed Marmaduke, The Meaning of the Glorious Qur'an, Tahrike Tarsile Qur'an 1999 Translator's Foreword: 'The aim of this work is to present to English readers what Muslims the world over hold to be the meaning of the words of the Qur'an, and the nature of the book, in not unworthy language and concisely, with a view to the requirements of English Muslims. It may reasonably be claimed that no Holy Scripture can be fairly presented by one who disbelieves its inspiration and message; and this is the first English translation of the Qur'an by an Englsihman who is a Muslim. ...
The Qur'an cannot be translated. That is the belief of the old fashioned Sheykhs and the view of the present writer. The Book here is rendered almost literally and every effort has been made to choose befitting language. But the result is not the Glorious Qur'an, than inimitable symphony, the very sounds of which move men to tears and ecstasy. '
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Rogan, Eugene, The Arabs: A history, Basic Books 2011 ' In this definitive history of the modern Arab world, award-winning historian Eugene Rogan draws extensively on Arab sources and texts to place the Arab experience in its crucial historical context for the first time. Tracing five centuries of Arab history, Rogan reveals that there was an age when the Arabs set the rules for the rest of the world. Today, however, the Arab world’s sense of subjection to external powers carries vast consequences for both the region and Westerners who attempt to control it.'
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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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Seymour-Smith, Martin, Robert Graves: His Life and Work, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC 1995 Introduction: 'Robert graves is unique in English letters: in his paradoxical versatility -- as brilliantly successful popular historical novelist, eccentric but erudite mythographer, translator, pungent and outspoken critic, and as arrogant poet oblivious to pubic opinion -- and in his lifelong refusal to conform. It is of course as a poet that he will be chiefly remembered, and by general readers as well as by critics, who are certain to accord him major status (a phrase he hates). But he will be remembered too as a man, as a personality and perhaps as a kind of prophet of 'the Return of the Goddess'.'
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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
Alexis Carrel - Wikipedia, Alexis Carrel - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia, 'Alexis Carrel (June 28, 1873 - November 5, 1944) was a French surgeon, biologist and eugenicist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1912. He was also a member of Jacques Doriot's Parti Populaire Francais (PPF), the most collaborationist party during Vichy France.' back |
Christianity - Wikipedia, Christianity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Christianity (from the Ancient Greek word Χριστός, Khristos, "Christ", literally "anointed one") is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings. Adherents of the Christian faith are known as Christians.' back |
David Chater, Rescue ship named for drowned Syrian child refugee, ' A rescue ship operating in the Mediterranean has been renamed Alan Kurdi, after the Syrian toddler who died trying to reach Europe in 2015.
The image of the three-year-old's body washed up on a Turkish beach sparked global outrage and came to epitomise the plight of those fleeing war.' back |
First Council of Nicea - Wikipedia, First Council of Nicea - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The First Council of Nicaea was a council of Christian bishops convened in Nicaea in Bithynia (present-day İznik in Turkey) by the Roman Emperor Constantine I in A.D. 325. The Council was the first effort to attain consensus in the church through an assembly representing all of Christendom.' back |
Genesis 1, Genesis, chapter 1, '28: God blessed them and God said to them: Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it.* Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that crawl on the earth.' back |
Louise Pryke, Hidden Women of History: Enheduannah, princess, priestess and the world's first known author, ' The world’s first known author is widely considered to be Enheduanna, a woman who lived in the 23rd century BCE in ancient Mesopotamia (approximately 2285 – 2250 BCE). . . .
The third millennium BCE was a time of upheaval in Mesopotamia. The conquest of Sargon the Great saw the development of the world’s first great empire.. . .
In this extraordinary historical setting, we find the fascinating character of Enheduanna, Sargon’s daughter. She worked as the high priestess of the moon deity Nanna-Suen at his temple in Ur (in modern-day Southern Iraq). The celestial nature of her occupation is reflected in her name, meaning “Ornament of Heaven”.
Enheduanna composed several works of literature, including two hymns to the Mesopotamian love goddess Inanna (Semitic Ishtar). She wrote the myth of Inanna and Ebih, and a collection of 42 temple hymns. . . . ' back |
Mary Crock and Daniel Ghezelbash, Its high time we stopped playing politcs with migration laws, ' . . . the Government is highly selective in the information that it releases on asylum seekers.
For example, while we are told that they have "stopped the boats", little has been said about the record 27,000 on-shore asylum applications in 2018. Most claimants have come by plane from Malaysia and China. back |
Melvine P. Ouyo, I've witnessed the devastating effects of Trump's gpba; gag rule. Congress must act, ' . . . two years ago, newly elected President Trump signed the global gag rule, which requires organizations abroad, such as mine, that received U.S. aid to sign a statement indicating they will not mention abortion to clients, provide abortions or refer clients to legal abortion services. . . . Signing this policy would have been a violation of our ethical duty to do no harm, protect our patients’ safety and save lives. We declined. As a result, we lost about $2.2 million in funding. In the two years following our decision, Family Health Options Kenya has been forced to close clinics in poor areas and terminate free services and mobile outreach that provided care for more than 76,000 people annually.' back |
Naomi Klein, The Battle Lines Have Been Drawn on the Green New Deal, ' “I really don’t like their policies of taking away your car, taking away your airplane flights, of ‘let’s hop a train to California,’ or ‘you’re not allowed to own cows anymore!'”
So bellowed President Donald Trump in El Paso, Texas, his first campaign-style salvo against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey.' back |
Naser Ghobadzadeh, Forty years on from the Iranian Revolution, could the country be at risk of another one, ' Iran’s ruling clergy are celebrating the 40th anniversary of the 1979 revolution, during which Shi'ite Islamists, led by religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini, toppled Mohammad Reza Shah’s secular monarchy.
The linchpin of the Islamic Republic’s political system is Ayatollah Khomeini’s doctrine of Wilayat-i Faqih, or guardianship of the jurist, which makes a Shia religious jurist the head of state. The jurist’s legitimacy to hold the most powerful position in the state is claimed to be based on divine sovereignty.' back |
Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem - Wikipedia, Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In the field of digital signal processing, the sampling theorem is a fundamental bridge between continuous-time signals (often called "analog signals") and discrete-time signals (often called "digital signals"). It establishes a sufficient condition for a sample rate that permits a discrete sequence of samples to capture all the information from a continuous-time signal of finite bandwidth.' back |
Political views of Samuel Johnson - Wikipedia, Political views of Samuel Johnson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In 1774, he printed The Patriot, a critique of what he viewed as false patriotism. On the evening of 7 April 1775, he made the famous statement, "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." This line was not, as is widely believed, about patriotism in general, but the false use of the term "patriotism" by William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (the patriot-minister) and his supporters. Johnson opposed "self-professed patriots" in general, but valued what he considered "true" self-professed patriotism.' back |
Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Home page of the Pontifical Academy of Scences, 'Founded in Rome on 17 August 1603 as the first exclusively scientific academy in the world by Federico Cesi, Giovanni Heck, Francesco Stelluti and Anastasio de Filiis with the name Linceorum Academia, to which Galileo Galilei was appointed member on 25 August 1610, it was reestablished in 1847 by Pius IX with the name Pontificia Accademia dei Nuovi Lincei. It was moved to its current headquarters in the Casina Pio IV in the Vatican Gardens in 1922, and given its current name and statutes by Pius XI in 1936.Its mission is to honour pure science wherever it may be found, ensure its freedom and encourage research for the progress of science.' back |
Pontifical Academy of Sciences: Disciplines, Home Page of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, back |
Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke, Duino Elegies, ' The First Elegy
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angelic
Orders? And even if one were to suddenly
take me to its heart, I would vanish into its
stronger existence. For beauty is nothing but
the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear,
and we revere it so, because it calmly disdains
to destroy us. Every Angel is terror.
And so I hold myself back and swallow the cry
of a darkened sobbing. Ah, who then can
we make use of? . . . ' back |
Referendum Council, Final Report of the Referendum Council, back |
Ryszard Kuklinski - Wikipedia, Ryszard Kuklinski - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Ryszard Jerzy Kukliński (June 13, 1930 – February 11, 2004) was a Polish colonel and Cold War spy for NATO. He passed top secret Warsaw Pact documents to the CIA between 1972 and 1981. The former United States National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzeziński described him as "the first Polish officer in NATO." ' back |
Simon Speakman Cordal, Alleged rape victim imprisoned for engaging in homoexual acts by Tunisian Court, ' An alleged rape victim who tried to report his assault to police was sentenced to eight months imprisonment by a Tunisian court for engaging in homosexual acts.
The man, known as "Anas" attended a police station in the coastal city of Sfax on 2 January, where he reported that he had been raped and robbed by two men, according to Shams, a leading gay rights group in the north African nation.
Following initial questioning, Anas was accused of homosexuality and subjected to an enforced anal examination . . .
Following his examination, Anas was remanded in custody until his trial this week.
A court has now ordered Anas to serve six months in custody for homosexuality and a further two months for having lodged a false allegation after he was judged to have consented to sex.' back |
Smadar Reisfeld, People Aren't Altruistic. Its the Bacteria They Carry, Israeli Scientists Suggests, ' Let’s look at the example closest to us, of parents caring for their offspring. That’s the most easily explained altruism, because of the genetic proximity: Each offspring carries half the genes of each parent, and therefore the genetic interest of the parent is to tend to his or offspring, even to take risks for them, so that the shared genes will be passed on to coming generations.
“But if we introduce the microbiome as well, we see that there is an even greater evolutionary interest in looking after offspring. We say that, in terms of the parent’s genome, looking after the offspring contributes to the survival of 50 percent of the parent’s genes. When it comes to the genome of the bacteria, parental care allows the transmission of a far higher percentage of genes to the offspring, even 100 percent. Hence, a parent that looks after its offspring cultivates its genes but also those of its microbiome. So it’s beneficial for the microbes to cause the parent to continue investing in the offspring.” ' back |
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