vol VII: Notes
2019
Notes
Sunday 7 July 2019 - Saturday 13 July 2019
[Notebook: DB 83: Physical Theology]
[page 266]
Sunday 7 July 2019
It seems to be a common fault for intellectuals to overintellectualize by all getting attracted to one point of view and working it to death, a manifestation of the bosonic aspect of humanity, rather more weakly opposed by the fermionic desire for freedom and independence. The theological bosons of the mediterranean all flocked to Christianity, just as the physical bosons of the twentieth century flocked to nuclear physics. Both these nucleations paid off, of course. Christianity has become an imperial power and physics now dominates the military industrial
[page 267]
complex, yielding profit for all its practitioners and death to the enemies of whatever country or client country they are working for. This [?tendency?] is very hard to combat and it is hard to imagine either religious fanaticism or military adventurism dying out any time soon, but nothing will happen unless we try.
All this digital physics business is just a fairy tale until I can find a way to do calculations that yield results that coincide with observation. The first point of contact is the quantum of action and we can assume that every quantum event involves an integral number of quanta of action The next step is to find a way to get from this integer to integer spatial or temporal frequencies so we can work out the spectrum of the atom from the fact that each of the transitions behind the spectra involve a quantum of action, or in the case of multiple observations, a superposition of single quantum events. Noyes & van den Berg: Bit String Physics
Iris Murdoch / Len Deighton / Faith: "There is no such thing as decision making, that's just a gimmick that the Gods provide to refine and add to the torment." Deighton: Faith
The simplest relationship between action and energy is to be found in photons, where E = hf. The next most complex relationships are to be found in the electronic orbits of atoms, where every orbit has angular momentum corresponding to some nh and a level of energy determined in the first instance by the electrical forces between nucleus and electrons. Maybe this is a higher level of complexity, and the next general thing after photons is a quantum harmonic oscillator. Quantum harmonic oscillator - Wikipedia
[page 268]
Monday 8 July 2019
The core of quantum mechanical modelling is to construct structures coupling energy and momentum to action, that is angular momentum. Every quantum event involves 1 ≤ n ≤ ∞ quanta of action, and we have the S matrix to code the structure that converts the incoming particles into the outgoing particles. S Matrix - Wikipedia
The real trouble with the cosmological constant lies in the quantum harmonic oscillator and zero point energy. Why do we have zero point energy? Is it because we treat uncertainty measured by the quantum of action as a dynamic rather than a formal entity? It may be that the quantum of action is so fundamental that has not yet bifurcated into kinetic and potential energy, in other words that it is in effect a purely formal eternal thing, so that there is no energy in the zero point. Something like this which has been in the back of my mind for ages but needs careful exposition. Zero-point energy - Wikipedia
Most self control is unconscious but a little bit spills over into consciousness at the top level where we also find ourselves feeling the love we are being led into by the deep unconscious processes of the mating game.
So is the simple harmonic oscillator conscious that it is self interacting, which we can see as the interplay of potential and actuality, the pendulum or more generally the oscillator being the harmonic paradigm of the universe, but we want to
[page 270]
digitize it, using creation and annihilation as the paradigm? Here we can look back to Aristotle's matter and form: matter being the 'symmetry' which binds a sequence of forms. 'Prime matter' however is a symmetry very close to nothing, nec quid, nec quale, nec quantum nec aliquid eorum quibus ens determinatur. Somehow this relates to the symmetry of action, which is a very indeterminate something that carries us from p to not-p by annihilating p and creating not-p, the binary pendulum which we model with the circle group.
There are two classes of gods, observable and invisible, but think about Einstein's quote, 1910: Nature only shows us the tail of the lion. But I do not doubt the lion belongs to it even though he cannot at once reveal himself because of his enormous size. Pais 1982 page 235. Pais: 'Subtle is the Lord...': The Science and Life of Albert Einstein
Tuesday 9 July 2019
The news: the usual collection of conflicts between individuals and the community, working out the contradictions inherent in the role of a politician, promoting oneself and promoting policy, all within the context of maximizing human entropy.
The entropy [/ information] of a state is the entropy of the space from which it is chosen so my entropy / information is the entropy of the 'gas' of fundamental particles from which I am formed. Does this explain how we come to see the Cantor universe as a hierarchy of entropy / information?
From force to logic. Force makes things happen. How does logic make thing happen? How does speech create force [rhetoric]? How do we
[page 270]
formulate psychodynamics so that we can describe the universe in logical and psychological terms? The answer, it may be, lies in a logical interpretation of potential, since we understand the source of force to be the gradient of a potential. When we come to study the quantum mechanics of potential wells like atoms, the quantity of interest here is energy. The link would seem to be action. So we try to build panpsychism on a foundation of action.
Feeling, value, potential. How does logic establish potential? We may measure potential by probability and we compute probabilities by considering the number of paths to each outcome, ie throwing two dice, we can compute the probabilities of outcomes of 2 . . . 12.
Our bodies work logically, except at the transducers, eg muscle cells or olfactory bulbs. Synapses, like logic gates, are physical implementations of logic. At the lowest level, is logic physically implemented or is it pure, ie formal with no physics? If this is so it may be an answer to the zero point / cosmological constant problem. As with this sentence (above) everything depends on getting the right circumstances [context] in place for the final move, like preparing a play for a goal at soccer. We see the same structure in scientific hypotheses, which, if successful, set up a structure which leads logically to the computation of a result in line with reality. Setting up a joke [an algorithm].
What we want to do is a Wittgenstein on physics.
What we really want to know is the logic of space-time [where we might see that Newton's first law says that if nothing happens nothing happens, ie a body in motion continues its motion on a right line unless acted on by a force, ie unless it receives some information, just like an electron in an atom goes on as it is until it emits or absorbs a photon and gets a kick out of it].
[page 271]
Wednesday 10 July 2019
What is the relationship between the quantum harmonic oscillator and space-time? The quantum harmonic oscillator relates fermions and bosons which have a specifically different relationship to spatial states marked by boson condensation vs Pauli exclusion. Does the QHO create the boson / fermion dichotomy and so create space-time? Do both spring into reality at the same time? We draw inspiration again from the Trinity. Space-time grows from nothing, starting with actus purus. The first increase in entropy occurs when god splits in two to create Father and Son, [a particle and an anti-particle joined by a boson, the Holy Spirit]. We can describe this with the Dirac equation and create the "diron" which may then begin to oscillate to give us the black body spectrum of the quantum harmonic oscillator. This looks good as a sort of theological / philosophical position but how does it go in terms of quantum field theory? Another day, another song. Boson - Wikipedia, Fermion - Wikipedia, Pauli exclusion principle - Wikipedia, Trinity - Wikipedia
Brain cells work very much like quantum mechanics, integrating excitatory or inhibitory input to decide whether to fire based on a threshold decided by [some sort of "training"]. We can apply some version of the Born rule to nerves and we can see it in statistical terms, each synapse somewhere on the circle group / complex number from excitation to inhibition which the neural network people call synaptic weight. Born rule - Wikipedia
Thursday 11 July 2019
Violence, particularly domestic violence, is a consequence of lack of diplomacy [that is honest and exhaustive discussion of the issues currently fracturing domestic harmony].
[page 272]
Friday 12 July 2019
The universe begins with one act and continues to a countable infinity [of acts], each inherently identical (symmetrical) but defined by its context just as a logical act in a machine [eg nand] is identical to all the other acts but nevertheless defined by its place in the process. Each of these acts is identical to the classical god, essence and existence identified by absolute simplicity. Aquinas, Summa, I, 3, 4: Are essence and existence the same in God?, Sheffer stroke - Wikipedia
What we are saying here is that there is no content in the act, that t has no direction in itself, simply that it annihilates one thing and creates another. The other must be a possibility available to it as an outcome defined by what? We see the outcome in the Born rule, overlap integral. How does this relate to the squared amplitude [maybe something to do with the interaction of two ethereal systems, ie represented by complex numbers]? What is the mechanism here [obviously, from my point of view, a sequence of logical operations]?
Act ≡ not, the structure comes from the essence.
This sort of abstract discussion must be the foundation for what turns out to be the theory of everything.
Saturday 13 July June 2019
Theology: what is it good for? Michelle Goldberg: Acosta Resigned. The Caligula Administration Lives On.
Comment on the Goldberg article"
Hi Michelle,
Your last few sentences are very depressing, but the world is turning. In broad terms, the major world religions have all treated women as chattels. I was brought up Catholic, and I see the fundamental error of Christianity right there in the beginning of the Bible. There the woman is blamed for succumbing to the temptations of Satan and motivating a vicious male God (a sensitive and totally narcissistic creature just like Trump: "I am the Lord your God . . . ") to bring all manner of evil upon humanity. The Catholic Church, a remnant of imperial Rome, still treats women as underpeople. The solution to this evil is clear, built into the theory of evolution, which is why male supremacists fear it. We are not the product of a Trumplike divinity, but of an enormous and majestic universe that works by one rule: entropy, that is creativity, tends to a maximum. Human entropy is maximised by equality, so the key to human progress is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that demands that we all treat each other as equals. This Declaration is violated by all forms of supremacy, sexism, racism, the obscene power arising from wealth and the long traditions of inequality fostered by evil imperial hangovers like the Catholic Church. Trump and the old Republican Party are the last gasp of a dying tradition, to be terminated by the cardinal virtues of faith in the real world, hope that we can make things better and the love that makes the world turn.
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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!)
Deighton, Len, Faith, HarperCollins 1994 Amazon Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Deighton's beleaguered British spy, Bernard Samson, returns to kick off the third trilogy in the outstanding series that has run from 1984's Berlin Game through 1990's Spy Sinker. Taking up where Sinker left off, in the fall of 1987 (thus making Deighton perhaps the only major thriller author who's still writing about the Cold War), this rich entry finds Samson leaving California to pick up VERDI, code name for a high-ranking East German Stasi officer who may be defecting to Britain's SIS. The operation goes disastrously wrong during a shoot-out in East Germany, but Samson manages to get back to London, where he encounters real danger and fighting: the take-no-prisoners politicking within the SIS, involving Samson, his duplicitous wife and a slew of internal enemies and possible friends.'
Amazon
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Khinchin, Aleksandr Yakovlevich, Mathematical Foundations of Information Theory (translated by P A Silvermann and M D Friedman), Dover 1957 Jacket: 'The first comprehensive introduction to information theory, this book places the work begun by Shannon and continued by McMillan, Feinstein and Khinchin on a rigorous mathematical basis. For the first time, mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, cyberneticists and communications engineers are offered a lucid, comprehensive introduction to this rapidly growing field.'
Amazon
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Nicolis, Gregoire, and Ilya Prigogine, Exploring Complexity: An Introduction, W H Freeman 1989 Jacket: 'This provocative book surveys the wide range of complex phenomena arising in the framework of physico-chemical and biological systems and in the global environment, defining the elements of a new scientific vocabulary - the vocabulary of complexity- and elaborating the tools for analyzing these problems efficiently. It breaks disciplinary barriers to consider issues beyond the realm of traditional physical science, including the dynamics of climatic change and the behaviour of social insects and human populations. Exploring Complexity incorporates many new discussions on topics such as chaos, attractors, and fractals. The authors offer innovative views on recent reseach into non-linear systems, complexity and chaos that might further challenge the laws of science.
Amazon
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Noyes, H. Pierre, and J. C. van den Berg, Bit-String Physics: A Finite and Discrete Approach to Natural Philosophy, World Scientific 2001 'We could be on the threshold of a scientific revolution. Quantum mechanics is based on unique, finite, and discrete events. General relativity assumes a continuous, curved space-time. Reconciling the two remains the most fundamental unsolved scientific problem left over from the last century. The papers of H Pierre Noyes collected in this volume reflect one attempt to achieve that unification by replacing the continuum with the bit-string events of computer science. Three principles are used: physics can determine whether two quantities are the same or different; measurement can tell something from nothing; this structure (modeled by binary addition and multiplication) can leave a historical record consisting of a growing universe of bit-strings. This book is specifically addressed to those interested in the foundations of particle physics, relativity, quantum mechanics, physical cosmology and the philosophy of science
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Pais, Abraham, 'Subtle is the Lord...': The Science and Life of Albert Einstein, Oxford UP 1982 Jacket: In this . . . major work Abraham Pais, himself an eminent physicist who worked alongside Einstein in the post-war years, traces the development of Einstein's entire ouvre. . . . Running through the book is a completely non-scientific biography . . . including many letters which appear in English for the first time, as well as other information not published before.'
Amazon
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Wiener, Norbert, The Human Use of Human Being: Cybernetics and Society, Da Capo Press 1988 Amazon Book Description: 'Only a few books stand as landmarks in social and scientific upheaval. Norbert Wiener's classic is one in that small company. Founder of the science of cybernetics—the study of the relationship between computers and the human nervous system—Wiener was widely misunderstood as one who advocated the automation of human life. As this book reveals, his vision was much more complex and interesting. He hoped that machines would release people from relentless and repetitive drudgery in order to achieve more creative pursuits. At the same time he realized the danger of dehumanizing and displacement. His book examines the implications of cybernetics for education, law, language, science, technology, as he anticipates the enormous impact—in effect, a third industrial revolution—that the computer has had on our lives.'
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Links
2017 National Constitutional Convention, The Uluru Statement from the Heart, ' Our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribes were the first sovereign Nations of the Australian continent and its adjacent islands, and possessed it under our own laws and customs.. . .
This sovereignty is a spiritual notion: the ancestral tie between the land, or ‘mother nature’, and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who were born therefrom, remain attached thereto, and must one day return thither to be united with our ancestors. This link is the basis of the ownership of the soil, or better, of sovereignty. It has never been ceded or extinguished, and co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown. . . . In 1967 we were counted, in 2017 we seek to be heard. We leave base camp and start our trek across this vast country. We invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.' back |
Alan Turing, On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem, 'The “computable” numbers may be described briefly as the real numbers whose expression: s as a decimal are calculable by 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 or a real or computable variable, computable predicates, and so forth. The fundamental problems involved are, however, the same in each case, and I have chosen the computable numbers for explicit treatment as involving the least cumbrous technique.' back |
Alan Weedon, Canada acknowledges 'colonial genocide', but will it set a precedent in the Commonwealth?, ' Last month, Canada became the latest country to admit to "race-based genocide" against its Indigenous peoples.
Twitter embed
Twitter: Twitter: Trudau acknowledges genocide
View on Twitter
The acknowledgement was made in a wide-ranging report of a three-year national inquiry into more than 4,000 missing and murdered Canadian Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA (two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and asexual people), otherwise known as the MMIWG report.
Two-spirit is a term that describes Canadian Indigenous people who "assume cross- or multiple-gender roles, attributes, dress and attitudes for personal, spiritual, cultural, ceremonial or social reasons".
In a supplementary report explaining its rationale for the genocide ruling, MMIWG commissioners noted Canada had "displayed a continuous policy … to destroy Indigenous peoples physically, biologically, and as social units".' back |
Aquinas, Summa, I, 3, 4, Are essence and existence the same in God?, 'I answer that, God is not only His own essence, as shown in the preceding article, but also His own existence. This may be shown in several ways.
First, whatever a thing has besides its essence must be caused either by the constituent principles of that essence (like a property that necessarily accompanies the species--as the faculty of laughing is proper to a man--and is caused by the constituent principles of the species), or by some exterior agent--as heat is caused in water by fire. Therefore, if the existence of a thing differs from its essence, this existence must be caused either by some exterior agent or by its essential principles. Now it is impossible for a thing's existence to be caused by its essential constituent principles, for nothing can be the sufficient cause of its own existence, if its existence is caused. Therefore that thing, whose existence differs from its essence, must have its existence caused by another. But this cannot be true of God; because we call God the first efficient cause. Therefore it is impossible that in God His existence should differ from His essence.' back |
Baker's map - Wikipedia, Baker's map - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, In dynamical systems theory, the baker's map is a chaotic map from the unit square into itself. It is named after a kneading operation that bakers apply to dough: the dough is cut in half, and the two halves are stacked on one another, and compressed. back |
Bilal Yousef, Going against the grain, 'Gideon Levy is someone who evokes strong emotions from fellow Israelis.
The writer and journalist has made weekly visits, over the past three decades, to the occupied Palestinian territories, describing what he sees - plainly and without propaganda.
For some Israelis, he is seen as a brave disseminator of the truth. But many others condemn him as a propagandist for Hamas. And his columns for the Tel Aviv-based Haaretz newspaper have made him, arguably, one of the most hated men in Israel.' back |
Bob Marley, War, 'The lyrics are an exact repetition of a speech in the UN by the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie (Wikipedia, War (Bob Marley Song)) back |
Born rule - Wikipedia, Born rule - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Born rule (also called the Born law, Born's rule, or Born's law) is a law of quantum mechanics which gives the probability that a measurement on a quantum system will yield a given result. It is named after its originator, the physicist Max Born. The Born rule is one of the key principles of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. There have been many attempts to derive the Born rule from the other assumptions of quantum mechanics, with inconclusive results. . . . The Born rule states that if an observable corresponding to a Hermitian operator A with discrete spectrum is measured in a system with normalized wave function (see bra-ket notation), then
the measured result will be one of the eigenvalues λ of A, and
the probability of measuring a given eigenvalue λi will equal <ψ|Pi|ψ> where Pi is the projection onto the eigenspace of A corresponding to λi'. back |
Boson - Wikipedia, Boson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In particle physics, bosons are particles with an integer spin, as opposed to fermions which have half-integer spin. From a behaviour point of view, fermions are particles that obey the Fermi-Dirac statistics while bosons are particles that obey the Bose-Einstein statistics. They may be either elementary, like the photon, or composite, as mesons. All force carrier particles are bosons. They are named after Satyendra Nath Bose. In contrast to fermions, several bosons can occupy the same quantum state. Thus, bosons with the same energy can occupy the same place in space.' back |
Carl Zimmer, Oldest Fossils of Homa Sapiens Found in Morocco Altering History of Our Species, '“We did not evolve from a single ‘cradle of mankind’ somewhere in East Africa,” said Philipp Gunz, a paleoanthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and a co-author of two new studies on the fossils, published in the journal Nature. “We evolved on the African continent.” ' back |
Carnot heat engine - Wikipedia, Carnot heat engine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'A Carnot heat engine is a hypothetical engine that operates on the reversible Carnot cycle. The basic model for this engine was developed by Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot in 1824. The Carnot engine model was graphically expanded upon by Benoît Paul Émile Clapeyron in 1834 and mathematically elaborated upon by Rudolf Clausius in the 1850s and 60s from which the concept of entropy emerged.' back |
Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, A Lauded Satirist of the Weimar Republic who Anticipated th Brutality of the Third Reich, ' '“Germany is an anatomical oddity,” Kurt Tucholsky once wrote. “It writes with its left hand and acts with its right.” He would have known. As the most prominent columnist of the Weimar Republic, he skewered the fashions and follies of the newly ascendant right wing in reams of satirical essays, poems and cabaret songs under five different bylines. In his day, he was as famous as the kings of American late-night comedy are now — and just as powerless to affect elections.' back |
Dan Condon, The writing, the impact and the legacy of Yothu Yindi's 'Treaty', ; For all the amazing songs they produced in their two decades as a band, one has a legacy that is unrivalled by any other song in Australian history.
'Treaty' was released in 1991 and it remains as exciting, powerful and thought provoking as ever. Written by Yothu Yindi and Paul Kelly, the song catapulted the band to new commercial heights both here and overseas.
In doing so, it brought Australian Indigenous issues to thousands of people who'd never been aware of them before.
Here is the story of 'Treaty'. One of the best Australian songs of all time.' back |
Dan Condon, Yothu Yndi's 'Treaty', ' The treaty never came, but Yothu Yindi frontman and Yolngu man Dr Yunupingu didn't want Australia to forget about the promise. When his friend and collaborator Paul Kelly came to visit, Dr Yunupingu told him his plan.
"Prime Minister Bob Hawke visited Northern Territory in '88 and he said there shall be some treaty between black and white Australia. That struck me," Dr Yunupingu told triple j's Richard Kingsmill in 1997.
"The following year, everything seemed to have died down. So when Paul Kelly visited me we talked about this issue. I said 'I want to write a song that is centred on treaty'. So we started playing around with some lyrics. My lyrics at that time were that I'd heard it on the radio and I saw it on the television, but where is it? Where is the treaty?" ' back |
Daniel Browning, The J Files celebrates Yothu Yindi's 'Treaty', ' The legacy of Yothu Yindi's 1991 hit song 'Treaty' is pretty much unrivalled.
It's 25-years-old but it remains one of the most groundbreaking, thought-provoking songs in our music history.
Daniel Browning, presenter of RN's Awaye program, shares some of the highlights of 'The J Files' tribute to the song. back |
David Fickling, Australian Thermal Coal Leaves Investors Cold, ' Back in 2016, coal was still the lowest-cost way of delivering new generation in most major markets. The slumping price of wind and solar generation since then has changed the game. Thermal coal will fall to 11% of U.S. generation by 2030 from the mid-20s at present, S&P Global Ratings wrote in a report Wednesday; outside of Spain and Germany, most European coal-fired plants will be retired by 2025.' back |
Fermion - Wikipedia, Fermion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In particle physics, fermions are particles with a half-integer spin, such as protons and electrons. They obey the Fermi-Dirac statistics and are named after Enrico Fermi. In the Standard Model there are two types of elementary fermions: quarks and leptons. . . .
In contrast to bosons, only one fermion can occupy a quantum state at a given time (they obey the Pauli Exclusion Principle). Thus, if more than one fermion occupies the same place in space, the properties of each fermion (e.g. its spin) must be different from the rest. Therefore fermions are usually related with matter while bosons are related with radiation, though the separation between the two is not clear in quantum physics. back |
Hagar Shefaz, Burying the Nabka: How Israel Systematically Hides Evidence of 1948 Expulsion of Arabs, ' Four years ago, historian Tamar Novick was jolted by a document she found in the file of Yosef Vashitz, from the Arab Department of the left-wing Mapam Party, in the Yad Yaari archive at Givat Haviva. The document, which seemed to describe events that took place during the 1948 war, began:
“Safsaf [former Palestinian village near Safed] – 52 men were caught, tied them to one another, dug a pit and shot them. 10 were still twitching. Women came, begged for mercy. Found bodies of 6 elderly men. There were 61 bodies. 3 cases of rape, one east of from Safed, girl of 14, 4 men shot and killed. From one they cut off his fingers with a knife to take the ring.”
The writer goes on to describe additional massacres, looting and abuse perpetrated by Israeli forces in Israel’s War of Independence. . . . ' back |
Layrissa Christensen, Nadine McKillop, & Susan Rayment-McHugh, Jeffrey Epstein's arrest is the tip of the iceberg: human trafficking is the world's fastest growing crime, ' Child sex trafficking is a critical issue affecting more than one million children worldwide, many of whom are left to suffer in silence.
Some consider human trafficking as the world’s fastest-growing crime. Worldwide, about 20% of trafficking victims are children, with up to 100% in some regions.
Sex trafficking is the most common form of human trafficking. Globally, an estimated 4.8 million people are forced into sexual exploitation.
And this industry produces $99 billion in profits a year for traffickers.' back |
Leo XIII, Aeterni Partis:: Encyclical on the restoration of Christian philosophy, ' To the Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, and
Bishops of the Catholic World in Grace and
Communion with the Apostolic See.
The only-begotten Son of the Eternal Father, who came on earth to bring salvation and the light of divine wisdom to men, conferred a great and wonderful blessing on the world when, about to ascend again into heaven, He commanded the Apostles to go and teach all nations, and left the Church which He had founded to be the common and supreme teacher of the peoples. . . . 17. Among the Scholastic Doctors, the chief and master of all towers Thomas Aquinas, who, as Cajetan observes, because "he most venerated the ancient doctors of the Church, in a certain way seems to have inherited the intellect of all."(34) The doctrines of those illustrious men, like the scattered members of a body, Thomas collected together and cemented, distributed in wonderful order, and so increased with important additions that he is rightly and deservedly esteemed the special bulwark and glory of the Catholic faith.' back |
Liouville's theorem (Hamiltonian) - Wikipedia, Liouville's theorem (Hamiltonian) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In physics, Liouville's theorem, named after the French mathematician Joseph Liouville, is a key theorem in classical statistical and Hamiltonian mechanics. It asserts that the phase-space distribution function is constant along the trajectories of the system — that is that the density of system points in the vicinity of a given system point travelling through phase-space is constant with time.'
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Markov chain - Wikipedia, Markov chain - Wikipedia,. the free encyclopedia, 'A Markov chain (discrete-time Markov chain or DTMC[1]) named after Andrey Markov, is a mathematical system that undergoes transitions from one state to another, between a finite or countable number of possible states. It is a random process usually characterized as memoryless: the next state depends only on the current state and not on the sequence of events that preceded it. This specific kind of "memorylessness" is called the Markov property. Markov chains have many applications as statistical models of real-world processes.' back |
Max Fisher, Full text of Snowden's new statement: i had 'the power to change people's fates', 'Below is the transcript, via WikiLeaks, of NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s statement on Friday at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport.
Snowden reiterated his view that U.S. cyber programs are “illegal” and “immoral,” framing his leaks as a “moral decision.” He also assailed U.S. efforts to extradite him, arguing that the Obama administration was seeking to “make an example” of him and that he was wanted for political speech rather than for any violations of law.' back |
Michelle Goldberg, Acosta Resigned. The Caligula Administration Lives On., ' Since Epstein’s arrest, many people have wondered how he was able to get away with his alleged crimes for so long, given all that’s publicly known about him. But we also know that the president boasts about sexually assaulting women, that over a dozen have accused him of various sorts of sexual misconduct, and one of them has accused him of rape. We know it, and we know we can’t do anything about it, so we live with it and grow numb. Maybe someday justice will come and a new generation will wonder how we tolerated behavior that was always right out in the open.' back |
Mitch Goodwin, Space Oddity at 50: the 'novelty song' that became a cultural touchstone, 'The Earthrise image was still resonating in the public’s imagination when Bowie retreated to his room in Clareville Grove, London to write his space cabaret. Composing on a 12-string Hagstrom guitar with a little sonic weirdness from a Stylophone given to him by Marc Bolan, he came up with Space Oddity.
A blatant commercial object, a “pragmatic” turn by a fledgling artist, the song would become an anthem for space exploration for decades (and for TV news obituaries on the occasion of Bowie’s death in 2016). back |
Nick Kilvert, Arctic lead deposits trace European history from the Roman Empire to modern day, ' Since humans developed industry in Europe, prevailing winds have carried fine deposits of lead to the frozen Arctic, where they've been laid down like annual signatures in the permafrost.
In simplest terms, the more industry in Europe, the more lead has been deposited each year in the ice.
Now scientists have found frozen ice cores taken from the Arctic read like a European history book stretching back 2,200 years.
While they were expecting some correlation between lead levels and historic events, even the researchers were surprised by what they found, according to Joseph McConnell of the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada.' back |
Nuremberg principles - Wikipedia, Nuremberg principles - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Nuremberg principles were a set of guidelines for determining what constitutes a war crime. The document was created by the International Law Commission of the United Nations to codify the legal principles underlying the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi party members following World War II.' back |
Paul Bhatti, Pakistan's religious divide, 'Talk to Al Jazeera sat down with the former minister for national harmony and minority affairs in Pakistan, Paul Bhatti, to discuss religious divisions in today's Pakistan, issues facing religious minorities, and the impact of the country's blasphemy laws.' back |
Pauli exclusion principle - Wikipedia, Pauli exclusion principle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Pauli exclusion principle is the quantum mechanical principle that no two identical fermions (particles with half-integer spin) may occupy the same quantum state simultaneously. A more rigorous statement is that the total wave function for two identical fermions is anti-symmetric with respect to exchange of the particles. The principle was formulated by Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli in 1925.' back |
Quantum harmonic oscillator - Wikipedia, Quantum harmonic oscillator - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The quantum harmonic oscillator is the quantum-mechanical analog of the classical harmonic oscillator. Because an arbitrary potential can usually be approximated as a harmonic potential at the vicinity of a stable equilibrium point, it is one of the most important model systems in quantum mechanics. Furthermore, it is one of the few quantum-mechanical systems for which an exact, analytical solution is known.' back |
Richard Ackland, Lawyer are now free to cherrypick defamatory Facebook commentd, looking for nuggets of gold, The ramifications of Justice Stephen Rothman’s decision in the Dylan Voller case haven’t filtered downstream. Media organisations now are on notice as to their hip-pocket liability for the mean, ignorant, beastly, defamatory muck that is frequently peddled by readers in response to story items posted on their associated Facebook pages. . . .
The threshold issue for the court was whether the media companies really are the publishers of these third-party comments. The usual rule had been that liability was mitigated if content had been removed after being given notice.
Justice Rothman turned that on its head, finding that even without notice or awareness of the content from the commenting public, the owners and managers of these Facebook pages were the primary publishers of their readers’ handiwork.' back |
Richard Falk, What am I missing in the Snowden affair?, 'The US government's dogmatic pursuit for Snowden is both counter-productive and hypocritical, writes scholar.' 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 |
Shahram Akbarzadeh, Iran's leader is losing his grasp on power. Does this mean diplomacy is doomed?, ' Iran had warned Europe that it would start dismantling the nuclear accord if the promised economic benefits of the agreement did not materialise. A year after the US withdrew from the nuclear deal, otherwise known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, and imposed very strict sanctions on Iran, the Iranian leadership appears ready to give up on finding a diplomatic solution to this deadlock.
This bodes ill for the future of President Hassan Rouhani and regional security. A weakened Rouhani will find it difficult to fend off his hard-line critics in Iran and keep the nuclear deal alive.' back |
Sheffer stroke - Wikipedia, Sheffer stroke - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In Boolean functions and propositional calculus, the Sheffer stroke, named after Henry M. Sheffer, written "|" . . . denotes a logical operation that is equivalent to the negation of the conjunction operation, expressed in ordinary language as "not both". It is also called nand ("not and") or the alternative denial, since it says in effect that at least one of its operands is false.' back |
Sinead O'Connor, Faith and Courage / The Healing Room, back |
Symbolic dynamics - Wikipedia, Symbolic dynamics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In mathematics, symbolic dynamics is the practice of modeling a topological or smooth dynamical system by a discrete space consisting of infinite sequences of abstract symbols, each of which corresponds to a state of the system, with the dynamics (evolution) given by the shift operator. Formally, a Markov partition is used to provide a finite cover for the smooth system; each set of the cover is associated with a single symbol, and the sequences of symbols result as a trajectory of the system moves from one covering set to another.' back |
The Human Use of Human Beings - Wikipedia, The Human Use of Human Beings - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The word cybernetics refers to the theory of message transmission among people and machines. The book's thesis:
"It is the thesis of this book that society can only be understood through a study of the messages and the communication facilities which belong to it; and that in the future development of these messages and communication facilities, messages between man and machines, between machines and man, and between machine and machine, are destined to play an ever-increasing part." (p. 16)' back |
Trinity - Wikipedia, Trinity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Christian doctrine of the Trinity (from Latin trinitas "triad", from trinus "threefold") defines God as three consubstantial persons, expressions, or hypostases: the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit; "one God in three persons". The three persons are distinct, yet are one "substance, essence or nature" homoousios). In this context, a "nature" is what one is, while a "person" is who one is.' back |
Unitary operator - Wikipedia, Unitary operator - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In functional analysis, a branch of mathematics, a unitary operator . . . is a bounded linear operator U : H → H on a Hilbert space H satisfying UU* = U*U = I where U* is the adjoint of U, and I : H → H is the identity operator. This property is equivalent to the following:
1. U preserves the inner product ( , ) of the Hilbert space, i.e., for all vectors x and y in the Hilbert space, (Ux, Uy) = (x, y) and
2. U is surjective.'
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Walid Mahmoud & Muhammad Shehada, How Israel returned a Gaza fishing boat back to its owner , ' Zakaria Bakr, head of Gaza's Fishermen Union, told Al Jazeera that maritime harassment seems to be "the new normal under Israel's blockade".
"Al-Habil's tragedy is the rule not the exception in Gaza," Bakr said. "Almost every day some Gazan fishermen suddenly get harassed, shot at or arrested by Israel's navy for no reason. It's become very systematic and arbitrary. We feel that we're being collectively punished for only being Gazans." ' back |
Yoana Gonen, 'I Only Love the fairer Sex': The Wild World of the 'First Modern Lesbian', ' When Helena Whitbread entered the public library in the West Yorkshire town of Halifax, in 1983, she had no idea that she was about to discover what author Emma Donoghue was to describe as “the Dead Sea Scrolls of lesbian history.” ' back |
Zero-point energy - Wikipedia, Zero-point energy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In physics, the zero-point energy is the lowest possible energy that a quantum mechanical physical system may possess and is the energy of the ground state of the system. The concept was first proposed by Albert Einstein and Otto Stern in 1913. The term "zero-point energy" is a translation of the German Nullpunktsenergie. All quantum mechanical systems have a zero point energy. The term arises commonly in reference to the ground state of the quantum harmonic oscillator and its null oscillations. In quantum field theory, it is a synonym for the vacuum energy, an amount of energy associated with the vacuum of empty space. In cosmology, the vacuum energy is taken to be the origin of the cosmological constant. Experimentally, the zero-point energy of the vacuum leads directly to the Casimir effect, and is directly observable in nanoscale devices.' back |
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