Notes
Sunday 19 September 2021 - Saturday 25 September 2021
[Notebook: DB 87: Cognitive Cosmology]
Sunday 19 September 2021
[page 32]
Monday 20 September 2021
E = hf, |Θ> = ei θ |Θ>
Graeme Murphy, Australian Ballet Swan Lake [again] - from music (quantum theory) to motion in spacetime (dance). Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake: Australian Ballet: Graeme Murphy
Act = {act}. This is the basic count from which all other physical measurements flow [ie in some way they can be brought back to a count of the quanta necessary to construct the action eg the mass of the electron (?)]
Tuesday 21 September 2021
Given the vacuum energy by the quantum of action, the next bifurcation, motivated by fixed point theory, is the bifurcation of energy into potential and kinetic, somehow getting us the relation S = ∫ L dt = 1 [quantum of action]. Of course I am just guessing here, but trying to keep on the straight and narrow defined by traditional theology and modern physics based on my perception that both the ancient theologians and the modern physicists are onto something.
Quantum theory envisages a half formed and unconstrained reality in perpetual motion which, like the primordial quantum of action, provides unlimited variety by superposition, a process analogous to Cantor's generation of transfinite numbers. Selection occurs by 'measurement', while quantum states communicate and define
[page 33]
one another, like the roulette wheel topping and the ball falling into a slot. Roulette - Wikipedia
The interior of the initial singularity begins as a one dimensional spectrum of energy / time whose elements are represented by orthogonal rays which are elements of a Hilbert space of countable dimension, all the orthogonalities dictated by the no-cloning theorem. It may be seen as an alphabet for music or speech which may be used to write music. No-cloning theorem - Wikipedia
Wednesday 22 September 2021
Cognitive cosmology §12 Creation: fixed points completish, now we turn to the creation of space. First principle: communication requires contact, to become principle 3 in §3. Null geodesic is necessary to maintain contact in 4-space otherwise quantum mechanics could no longer use contact to maintain unitarity. The integrity of the unitary operators is maintained because unitary evolution crosses seamlessly [and unchanged] through a null geodesic. Geodesics in general relativity - Wikipedia
How does this affect quantum field theory? If it true that all the amplitude oriented quantum mechanical stuff occurs behind spacetime then a lot of the infinities rising from mapping Hilbert space onto Minkowski space disappear. The best person to ask about this (in documents, because he is dead) is Feynman, starting with the path integral [which implies the non-existence of spatial extension in the amplitude world (?)]. Richard Feynman (2005): Feynman's Thesis: A New Approach to Quantum Mechanics, Path integral formulation - Wikipedia
In a nutshell, quantum mechanics is not constrained by special relativity, special relativity is part of the tradeoff that was necessary for the existence of spacetime so that unitary contact could be maintained by systems spatially remove from one another. [information bearing] contact is only lost when the distances between systems become space-like so the distinction between momentum and energy is lost and everything commutes in spacetime as it does in Hilbert space (?).
Streater and Wightman: PCT, Spin, Statistics and all that Streater & Wightman (2000): PCT, Spin, Statistics and All That
[page 34]
When we come to particles the first point of interest is boson & fermion — how do we accomodate the spin-statistics theorem? S&W use the velocity of light to explain spin/statistics. I would like to go the other way round and
1. use superposition to explain boson vs fermion
2. use boson / fermion to explain Minkowski space Boson - Wikipedia, Fermion - Wikipedia
But I am back up against the impenetrable crystal sphere that blocked my understanding the the Trinity for a long time.
We manipulate the particles to manipulate the quantum world and it in turn manipulates particles.
Describe an accelerator experiment (high energy, high temperature, [high momentum]) and compare it to a laboratory experiment (approaching zero energy, zero temperature) an electron in a magnetic trap. Anderson, Ensher, Matthews, Wieman & Cornell: Observation of Bose-Einstein Condensation in a Dilute Atomic Vapor
Can we say that the quantum world spans the whole universe and creates and annihilates particles locally everywhere. What does Zurek say about this? Wojciech Hubert Zurek: Quantum origin of quantum jumps: breaking of unitary symmetry induced by information transfer and the transition from quantum to classical
How do we map the pixels of spacetime onto individual quantum events? Perhaps entanglement, as Feynman thought, says that there is only one electron wavefunction for the whole universe, and the same for all other species of particle, localized in spacetime as are the processing elements of a [classical] computer network, ie billions of physically discrete but connected transistors shipping electrons around the place, a computer network is in effect a hardware guided electron network.
The music analogy: electron music plays throughout the universe on the entangled net to be localized in the pixel of spacetime where we find the electron. I am in need of a new picture to express the relationship between Hilbert snd Minkowski. The layering feel good, but how does it work? Entanglement cannot transport information without classical help.
Amplitude layer is inherently dynamic with no memory whereas the space element of spacetime contains stable structures that are in effect
[page 35]
memory. Fixed point theory explains this transition. Each fixed point corresponds to a mapping and we watch the mappings and fixed points grow within the initial singularity following the Cantor trajectory as the universe creates itself, initially at a rapid rate (the big bang) producing particles which are condensed by gravitation into stars, galaxies, supernovae etc. We need to express this very abstractly and generally so that it is both self consistent and consistent with the good bits of quantum field theory.
We are inclined to take spacetime as given and see it as somehow emerging (like a time reversed black hole?) from the initial singularity. On the other hand we are convinced that the proper eplanation of the nature of the world is quantum mechanics, so it seems reasonable to expect spacetime to be a quantum mechanical product, which is consistent with the idea that the quantum world precedes the spacetime world and is in some way the source of it. The most peculiar feature of spacetime is its metric ημν, which is diagonal 1, 1, 1, -1. This suggests that the principle of zero bifurcation is at work, so that in some sense space + time = 0, that quantum mechanics is the symmetry that is broken [applied] by spacetime and that its emergence from energy - time is accompanied by momentum - distance. The principal ingredients of the model of the emergence of spacetime are therefore symmetry, zero bifurcation and the emergence of space / momentum which seems to have something to do with the energy momentum and velocity of light, to the point where it seems that the photon is in some way the primordial particle constitutive of space-time.
Thursday 23 September 2021
I spend a lot of time in deep doubt about my attempts to elaborate my idea of bringing theology and physics into harmony, particularly when I read books like Zee and Streater and Wightman which seem to overly complicate what seems to me to be necessarily simple if it is true that the universe started (and remains) as a singularity identical to the traditional god which is the product of 5000 years of recorded thought by people no less capable than the Einsteins and Feymans of the modern era. The answer that always come when
[page 36]
I contemplate the lonely road I am following is that I have no alternative but to go on and the occasional little flashes of insight that I encounter encourage me to think that I am doing something of value to cut through the enormous confusion that currently affects physics and theology. Ultimately creation seems to be about freedom and increasing entropy which require reducing conflict by increasing space for human existence so as to eliminate as far as possible the zones of 'zero sum' activity [and or 'negative sum' activity, ie conflict]. I feel confident that the central idea of the Theory of Peace is sound and a framework to link human rights and democracy to the physical foundations of our existence. Jeffrey Nicholls (1987): A Theory f Peace
Feynman diagrams express the fact that any quantum interaction of interest lies as the centre of an expanding network of other interactions which perturb the initial interaction in varying degrees depending on the 'distance' [measured by the Hilbert inner product] from the interaction of interest. The fact that these perturbation series, like the Feynman path integral, work and give results that agree with measurement seem to confirm the idea that the quantum processes occur by superpositions that precede the emergence of spacetime.
In the Mood for Love In the Mood for Love - Wikipedia
God is love — driven by the past, sucked toward the future
Friday 24 September 2021
Why do I do this, take an abiding interest in theology and religion which people like some members of the Rationalist Society dismiss as ancient delusions? It is because religion and theology are at the root of war. In the name of some God indiscriminate killing of 'the enemy; becomes an act of heroic virtue, whereas in the ordinary judgement of civil society it would be considered to be murder and punished as such It might be argued that the survival of the fit doctrine embedded in the theory of evolution is the economic cause of war, but the 'social licence' to execute this doctrine in war comes from religion.
[page 37]
This is obvious in all the social discourse surrounding was from the training of warriors to kill to the enormous investments in the machinery of war to the widespread construction of monuments and memorials ceremonies to those who have made the 'supreme sacrifice' and earned their eternal reward. It is illustrated equally in the sharp distinctions made between our 'freedom fighters' and their 'terrorists'. In the current world there is no greater terrorist organization than the US which places its trust in God and tries to assume the mountain of global police.
Veltman: the particle zoo — the 26-8 snippets of code (embedded in particles) which serve as the RISC of the universe. Veltman (2003): Facts and Mysteries in Elementary Particle Physics, Reduced instruction set computer - Wikipedia
The initial singularity is both eternal and fully dynamic like the traditional god, we might say eternal outside (our point of view of the traditional god since we are held to be outside) and dynamic inside (like the world we are inside). Eternal and dynamic are both forms of non-existence, one which does not act and the other which is not observable.
We build a Hilbert space inside the initial society [= singularity] by its propensity to act, our starting point being mathematical fixed point theory, the topological barrier constraining the universe being the boundary between being consistent inside and inconsistent outside.
From an abstract point of view a fixed point is the dual of the compact and convex nature of the set and we can expect to find a different fixed point corresponding to every continuous mapping of the set onto itself [ie fixed point theory is symmetrical with respect to the set of all [surjective] continuous functions]. In the case of mechanics these fixed points are the solutions to the eigenvalue equation whose existence whose existence is guaranteed by the Hermitian nature of the unitary operators in quantum mechanics. Hermitian adjoint - Wikipedia
The preoccupation of physics with nuclear weapons, which is where the money comes from, has led to us to believe that salvation lies n higher and higher energies, although it becomes obvious from the study of cosmic
[page 38]
rays that we are still orders of magnitude off the pace.The search for grand unification is still a long way off and the whole think may be a delusion if the universe started as a peaceful eternal quantum of action rather than the biggest of all bangs. Cosmic ray - Wikipedia
Renormalization has become the criterion for selecting possible theories and the current version of quantum field theory sees the renormalization of gravitation as impossible. Where does the problem lie? One of the fatures of quantum field theory that makes renormalization possible is that the coupling constants are considered to be scalar, that is dimensionless, whereas in gravitation the coupling constant [G] has dimensions of mass which seems to make renormalization impossible. In quantum mechanics, as we see it here, energy is a scalar measure of frequency so that remornalization is possible in the Hilbert domain even if it is not possible in the Minkowski domain. The idea is a long shot based on my ignorance of the details of renormalization in the space domain, but my rather scrappy intuition tell me that there may be an answer in the distinction between Hilbert and Minkowski spaces where we see the nature of gravitation being formed by the role that Minkowski space plays in selecting consistent events to become real out of the sea of possibly inconsistent events to be found in the uncontrolled superpositions of [entangled] quantum mechanics. More reading required, perhaps on Kaku. Quantum gravity - Wikipedia, Michio Kaku (1998): Introduction to Superstrings and M-Theory
These two theories, today very well empirically supported, have opened a major conceptual revolution in physics. However, they appear to be incompatible, at least at a first reading, because each of the two is formulated on the basis of principles that are are explicitly contradicted by the other theory. . . . several major advances in the history of physics have been obtained in the absence of new experiments, from the effort of merging two empirically supported but apparently contradictory theories. (Examples are Newton's merge of Kepler's and Galileo's theories, Maxwell's merge of electric and magnetic theory, or Einstein's derivation of special relativity from the apparent contradiction between electromagnetism and mechanics.) However, until genuine quantum gravitational phenomena are directly or indirectly observed, we cannot confirm or falsify any of the current tentative theories. Carlo Rovelli: Quantum Gravity
Saturday 25 September 2021
What I am looking for is an explanation of gravitation derived in some way from fixed point theory and the fact that the
[page 39]
universe at its initial stages is closed, compact and convex due to the demands of consistency so that it is in effect a set homeomorphic to mathematics with the 'topological' integrity of mathematics expressed in terms of logical continuity, that is no logical 'rips' or 'tears', but nevertheless the uncertainty necessary for evolution guaranteed by Gödel and Turing. My discussion of the link between Minkowski and Hilbert space seems to work in two dimensions. Where do the four dimensions come from? The idea that they enable logical connection without crossed wires seems sound except that I do not really know what crossed wires might mean in Hilbert or Minkowski space, but maybe something plausible will turn up to add a but more narrative continuity to my story.
Fixed point theory embraces all [surjective] continuous functions and so couples to Einstein and general relativity where the specification of continuous mappings is Einsteins field equation. The step we want now is to develop a form of fixed point theory based on logical continuity and unrestricted network connectivity to explain the large scale structure of the universe, which is imply a [conformally] scaled up version of the structure of the initial singularity when it is two layers deep, ie energy layer (quantum mechanics) + spacetime layer (gravitation). In this realm we wish to develop the old idea of the generalised geodesic in logical terms and see geodesic deviation as something like the function of intelligence where we imagine 'negative deviation' as opposed to 'positive deviation' (this should be the other way around, negative deviation = gravitational collapse).
The crossed wires thing is somehow a condition for error free communication in Minkowski space since error free communication may not have a meaning in Hilbert space (ie Alice and Bob story of why we cannot use entanglement to communicate faster than light). What do we mean by 'wire'. An uninterrupted trajectory, ie no eavesdroppers who would 'collapse' a quantum message.
Where does the curvature come from? Closure, group like structure, the
[page 40]
distribution of fixed points arising from different mappings is non-linear, ie self referential, quadratic, or at least with an exponent greater than 1 [curveballs and spin?]
The possibility of a zero energy universe suggests that gravitation is built on the bifurcation of potential and kinetic energy which also gave rise to massive particles like electrons, protons, etc etc, hydrogen and helium at a point where the new masses were not big enough to institute the formation of stars [or moving apart do fast after the big bang that they could not condense].
We might say gravitation in geometric, electromagnetism is logical.
We could imagine that mathematics, reflecting on itself, should be able to make all the theorems based on point set continuous topology into theorems about logical continuity which is the way I might be able to turn geometrodynamics into cognitive cosmology using the brain as a model.
Brain connection pruning in childhood and youth seems to be very like the collapse of the wavefunction, eliminating unnecessary possibilities.
Notes M09D05: What is the difference between mass and energy? Energy is the rate of action, so we understand massive particles to have internal process. Photons, on the other hand, are massless, but they do have energy but because they follow null geodesics they are in effect frozen in time, ie energy divorced from time, something like potential energy [the energy of communication?]. Maybe gravitons are also massless gauge particles, geometric rather than electromagnetic. Can we fit them into a story told in words rather than mathematics? We may understand the energy of a massive particle as a proxy for the exercise of its personality [eg the electron maintains its 'DNA' dynamically by frequent repetition]. All massive particles have rest frames and we see their true personality in their rest frames like an electron in a magnetic trap. I am still confused about the relationships of potential and kinetic energy in the zero energy universe and feel that we must seek the answer in gravitation where mass/energy speaks to mass/energy.
Gravitation is the hardest thing for both me and for quantum field
[page 41]
theory. Rovelli and many others say that physical phenomena where gravitation becomes relevant are shown by simple dimensional arguments to be at the Planck scale. [This] seems silly because gravitation is universally relevant at every scale and since it must be a quantum mechanical phenomenon the quantum mechanics of gravitation must be the simplest possible, so we should be guided by the heuristic of simplicity to see some connection between E = ℏω, E = mc2, and E = F.s, and the naked interaction between E1 and E2 which takes place throughout the universe. My guess is that in the quantized universe the Planck length 10-35 metre has no meaning.
The Planck scale: Simple dimensional arguments show that the physical phenomena where quantum gravitational effects becomes relevant as those characterized by the length scale √(ℏG/c3 ) ∼ 10−33 cm , called the "Planck length". Here ℏ is the Planck constant that governs the scale of the quantum effects, G is the Newton constant that governs the strength of the gravitational force, and c is the speed of light, that governs the scale of the relativistic effects. Rovelli, op cit
What is meaningful is the quantum mechanical coupling between energy and metric, which must be in some way mediated by the velocity of light, given that E = ℏω, E = mc2. Rattle this around for a few years and we might get something.
What I would like to do is get gravitation from the same Ansatz as the step from Hilbert to Minkowski space with curvature and the origin of massive particles all arising from the null geodesic. What we are looking at here is something like quantum tunnelling where the impossible is made possible by borrowing, a technology at the root of capitalism also found in physics where the system does not seem to charge interest. The tunnelling effect is in effect consistent with Islamic financial ethics. In the case of tunnelling, as in the case of interest free cash loans, the give and take is a scalar quantity of energy, but in the step from Hilbert space to general relativity we have a more complex transaction whose ultimate outcome, investment − return, nevertheless remains zero.
Mapping a path from music to the large scale structure of the universe. Rite of Spring. Le Sacré du Printemps. From score to music; from music to score. Igor Stravinsky
[Fundamental] particles are clones of the singularity, as are we. The world is fully quantized by images of God.
Stravinsky and Najinsky. Vaslav Nijinsky - Wikipedia
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Further readingBooks
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Boff, Clodovis, Theology and Praxis: Epistemological Foundations, Orbis 1987 Jacket: 'In this book Clodovis Boff rigorously and passionately erects the methodological scaffolding that is necessary to construct a true methodology of the political, a true theology of liberation.'
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Borg, Marcus J., The heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith, HarperOne 2004 Amazon Editorial Review From Booklist
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Cohen, Paul J, Set Theory and the Continuum Hypothesis, Benjamin/Cummings 1966-1980 Preface: 'The notes that follow are based on a course given at Harvard University, Spring 1965. The main objective was to give the proof of the independence of the continuum hypothesis [from the Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms for set theory with the axiom of choice included]. To keep the course as self contained as possible we included background materials in logic and axiomatic set theory as well as an account of Gödel's proof of the consistency of the continuum hypothesis. . . .'
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Cox, Harvey, The Future of Faith, HarperOne 2009 Amazon editorial review from Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. What shape will the Christian faith take in the 21st century? In the midst of fast-paced global changes and in the face of an apparent resurgence of fundamentalism, can Christianity survive as a living and vital faith? With his typical brilliance and lively insight, Cox explores these and other questions in a dazzling blend of memoir, church history and theological commentary. He divides Christian history into three periods: the Age of Faith, during the first Christian centuries, when the earliest followers of Jesus lived in his Spirit, embraced his hope and followed him in the work he had begun; the Age of Belief, from the Council of Nicaea to the late 20th century, during which the church replaced faith in Jesus with dogma about him; and the Age of the Spirit, in which we're now living, in which Christians are rediscovering the awe and wonder of faith in the tremendous mystery of God. According to Cox, the return to the Spirit that so enlivened the Age of Faith is now enlivening a global Christianity, through movements like Pentecostalism and liberation theology, yearning for the dawning of God's reign of shalom. Cox remains our most thoughtful commentator on the religious scene, and his spirited portrait of our religious landscape challenges us to think in new ways about faith.'
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Cox , Harvey , The Secular City: Secularisation and Urbanisation in Theological Perspective , Collier Books 1990 Amazon Customer review: A scholarly proposal for mordernizing the church., May 11, 1997
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Deutsch, David, The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes - and its Implications, Allen Lane Penguin Press 1997 Jacket: 'Quantum physics, evolution, computation and knowledge - these four strands of scientific theory and philosophy have, until now, remained incomplete explanations of the way the universe works. . . . Oxford scholar DD shows how they are so closely intertwined that we cannot properly understand any one of them without reference to the other three. . . .'
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Eco, Umberto, The Search for the Perfect Language, Wiley-Blackwell 1997 'The idea that there once existed a language which perfectly and unambiguously expressed the essence of all possible things and concepts has occupied the minds of philosophers, theologians, mystics and others for at least two millennia. This is an investigation into the history of that idea and of its profound influence on European thought, culture and history.
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Einstein, Albert, and Leopold Infeld, The Evolution of Physics: The growth of ideas from the Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta, Simon and Schuster 1967 Preface: 'Our intention [is] to sketch in broad outline the attempts of the human mind to find a connection between the world of ideas and the world of phenomena. We have tried to show the active forces which compel science to invent ideas corresponding to the reality of our world.' Albert Einstein, Leopold Infeld
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Feynman (2005), Richard Phillips, Feynman's Thesis: A New Approach to Quantum Mechanics, World Scientific Publishing Company 2005 Amazon editorial review: 'Editorial Reviews
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Jaspers, Karl, and (Translated from the German by E B Ashton), Philosophical Faith and Revelation, Harper and Row 1967 Jacket: 'The importance of this book can hardly be overrated. It is the onluy authentic philosophy of religion written in the twentieth century, and it appears at the very moment when the modern crisis of bnelief in revelation and hence of Vhjristian theology has come to a head. . . . ' Hannah Arendtback |
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Moltmann, Jurgen, The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribuition to Messianic Ecclesiology, Fortress Press 1993 Amazon Product Description
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Moulakis, Anathasios, Simone Weil and the Politics of Self-Denial, University of Missouri 1998 Amazon Product Description
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Simone Weil—philosopher, activist, mystic—unites a profound reflection on the human condition with a consistent and courageous existential and intellectual honesty manifest in the moving testimony of her life and her death. Moulakis examines Weil's political thought as an integral part of a lived philosophy, in which analysis and doctrine are inseparable from the articulation of an intensely personal, ultimately religious experience.
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Otto, Rudolf, and John W Harvey (translator), The idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non Rational Factor in the idea of the Divine (1926), Kessinger Publishing 2004 Foreword by the Author: 'In this book i have ventured to write of that which may be called 'non-rational' or 'supra-rational' in the depths of the divine nature. I do not therefore want to promote in any way the tendency of our time towards an extravagant and fantastic 'irrationalism;, but rather to join issue with it in its morbid form. The 'irrational' is today a favourite theme of all which are too lazy to think or are too ready to evade the arduous duty of clarifying their ideas and grounding their convictions on a basis of coherent thought. This book, recognizing the profound import of the non-rational fro metaphysics, makes a serious attempt to analyze all the more exactly the feeling which remains where the concept fails, and to introduce a terminology which is not any the more loose or indeterminate for having necessarily to make use of symbols.
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Reid, John, Man without God: An introduction to unbelief, Corpus 1971 'Jacket: Man Without God examines the historical and philosophical bases and forms of atheism with the object of opening the way to dialogue with the unbeliever. Such a dialogue brings out the essence of Christian commitment and also points clearly to the task that Chrisians of the twentieth century have to face. The world is gradually being divided into those who have faith in God and those who reject that faith. Father Reid does not give any facile theological answers, but throws new light on one of the most fundamental issues of our day.'
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Streater (2000), Raymond F, and Arthur S Wightman, PCT, Spin, Statistics and All That, Princeton University Press 2000 Amazon product description: 'PCT, Spin and Statistics, and All That is the classic summary of and introduction to the achievements of Axiomatic Quantum Field Theory. This theory gives precise mathematical responses to questions like: What is a quantized field? What are the physically indispensable attributes of a quantized field? Furthermore, Axiomatic Field Theory shows that a number of physically important predictions of quantum field theory are mathematical consequences of the axioms. Here Raymond Streater and Arthur Wightman treat only results that can be rigorously proved, and these are presented in an elegant style that makes them available to a broad range of physics and theoretical mathematics.'
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Unamuno, Miguel de, and Paul Burns (translator), Salvador Ortiz-Carboneres (translator), Unamuno: Saint Manuel Buena, Aris & Phillips 2009 Amazon Product Description
'Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo was born in Bilbao on 29th September 1864. He wrote novels, essays, poems and plays, and in addition to these he played an important part in the political and intellectual life of Spain - an involvement that led to his exile to Fuerteventura in 1924. San Manuel Bueno, matir (1930) was his last novel before his death in 1936. It tells the story of a heroic priest who has lost his faith in immortality, a theme that had interested Unamuno for many years. The setting of the novel is atmospheric and significant, the characters shadowy and symbolic. The book overall is a synthesis of Unamuno's philiosophy.'
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Veltman (2003), Martinus, Facts and Mysteries in Elementary Particle Physics, World Scientific 2003 'Introduction: The twentieth century has seen an enormous progress in physics. The fundamental physics of the first half of the century was dominated by the theory of relativity, Einstein's theory of gravitation and the theory of quantum mechanics. The second half of the century saw the rise of elementary particle physics. . . . Through this development there has been a subtle change in point of view. In Einstein's theory space and time play an overwhelming dominant role. . . . The view that we would like to defend can perhaps best be explaned by an analogy. To us, space-time and the laws of quantum mechanics are like the decor, the setting of a play. The elementary articles are the actors, and physics is what they do. . . . Thus in this book the elementary particles are the central objects.'
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Walker, Geoffrey de Q, The Rule of Law: Foundations of Constitutional Democracy, Melbourne University Press 1988 Jacket: 'The author argues that the survival of any useful rule of law model is currently threatened by distortions in the adjudication process, by perversion of law enforcement (by fabrication of evidence and other means), by the excessive production of new legislation with its degrading effect on long-term legal certainty and on long-standing safeguards, and by legal theories that are hostile to the very concept of rule of law. In practice these trends have produced a great number of legal failures from which we must learn.'
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Weil, Simone, Oppression and Liberty, Routledge 2001 Amazon Product Description
'The remarkable French thinker Simone Weil is one of the leading intellectual and spiritual figures of the twentieth century. A legendary essayist, political philosopher and member of the French resistance, her literary output belied her tragically short life. Most of her work was published posthumously, to widespread acclaim. Always concerned with the nature of individual freedom, Weil explores inOppression and Liberty its political and social implications. Analysing the causes of oppression, its mechanisms and forms, she questions revolutionary responsesand presents a prophetic view of a way forward. If, as she noted elsewhere, 'the future is made of the same stuff as the present', then there will always be a need to continue to listen to Simone Weil.'
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Weyl, Hermann, and translated by H P Robertson, The Theory of Groups and Quantum Mechanics, Dover 1950 Jacket: 'This book is devoted to the consistent and systematic application of group theory to quantum mechanics. Beginning with a detailed introduction to the classical theory of groups, Dr Weyl continues with an account of the fundamental results of quantum physics. There follows a rigorous investigation of the relations holding between the mathematical and physical theories.'
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Zwicky, Fritz, Discovery, Invention, Research Through the Morphological Approach, The Macmillan Company 1969 back |
Links
Akshat Rathi, This Might Be the Biggest Win for Upcoming Global Climate Talks, Then, on Friday, the U.S. and European Union launched the Global Methane Pledge that targets a voluntary 30% reduction by the end of the decade, relative to 2020 levels. . . .
“The starting gun just went off,” said Sarah Smith, program director at Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit that advocates for methane reductions. “We are optimistic that many more countries will join ahead of COP26.”
It’s no small feat. Methane is a super-warming gas that traps as much as 80 times the heat of carbon dioxide in the first two decades. But that also means cutting methane emissions can deliver the quickest climate win and give the world the kind of breathing room it needs to stave off the worst impacts of climate change.' back |
Alex Lo, Some China experts do get things right, ' “Thucydides had grasped that vital historical insight that groups of people behave differently and have different motivations from individual human beings,” he wrote in A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, “and that they often behave far more discreditably than individuals.”
Unlike people, nations are trapped forever in a Hobbesian state of nature. China and the US are no different; and life there is nasty, brutish, though not necessarily short. back |
Alex Lo, China a godsend for the US arms industry, ' “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” - President Dwight D. Eisenhower, farewell address, 1961
The “potential” of the military-industrial complex for mischief that Eisenhower warned against in his famous speech is now actual; indeed, it has been for some time now. Much of the “war on terror”, including the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, have been a gravy train for private contractors and arms makers.' back |
Alex Lo, Americans distrust each other more than Chinese, ' Meanwhile, writing in Foreign Policy, Monica Duffy Toft, a professor of international politics and the director of the Centre for Strategic Studies at Tufts University’s Fletcher School, makes the following observation.
“The United States now displays all three core elements that can lead to civil breakdown,” she wrote.
“If one described them – fractured elites with competing narratives, deep-seated identity cleavages, and a politically polarised citizenry – without identifying the United States by name, most scholars of civil war would say, ‘Hey, that country is on the brink of a civil war’ ”.' back |
Anderson, Ensher, Matthews, Wieman & Cornell, Observation of Bose-Einstein Condensation in a Dilute Atomic Vapor, ' A Bose-Einstein condensate was produced in a vapor of rubidium-87 atoms that was confined by magnetic fields and evaporatively cooled. The condensate fraction first appeared near a temperature of 170 nanokelvin and a number density of 2.5 x 1012 per cubic centimeter and could be preserved for more than 15 seconds. Three primary signatures of Bose-Einstein condensation were seen. (i) On top of a broad thermal velocity distribution, a narrow peak appeared that was centered at zero velocity. (ii) The fraction of the atoms that were in this low-velocity peak increased abruptly as the sample temperature was lowered. (iii) The peak exhibited a nonthermal, anisotropic velocity distribution expected of the minimum-energy quantum state of the magnetic trap in contrast to the isotropic, thermal velocity distribution observed in the broad uncondensed fraction. back |
Andrew J. Bacevich, The Forever War Continues, ' On that score, the forever war actually dates not from September 2001 but from January 1980. That’s when President Jimmy Carter used his State of the Union Address to issue a manifesto of sorts. Henceforth, Carter announced, any “attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America.” Lest anyone misunderstand his meaning, he vowed that “such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” ' back |
Arwa Ibrahim, Inside the intellectual hub where Baghdad's spirit thrives, 'For several years now, al-Qishla, an Ottoman military barracks-turned-cultural-hub in the heart of Baghdad, has become a space where intellectuals, poets and artists come together to exchange ideas and discuss current affairs.' back |
Basil Fernando, Asian Human Rights Commission, Vatican: Excommunication of Fr. Tissa Balasuriya Lifted, 'Vatican: The Excommunication of Fr. Tissa Balasuriya Lifted
AHRC UA980117 Vatican 17 January 1998
ASIAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION URGENT APPEAL [PRESS RELEASE]
The Excommunication of Fr. Tissa Balasuriya Is Lifted
A Farce Ends as a Farce
A Statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission
The excommunication of Fr. Tissa Balasuriya in January 1997 was one of the biggest farces of the Vatican - perhaps ever in its not so glorious history. There was no reason at all for this excommunication, and this has been the position of the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) and thousands of others, including, priests, nuns and lay people.' 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 |
Bruce Fein, The Doomsday Clock on Trump's presidency leaps forward, ' The imponderables that will determine how quickly the Doomsday Clock for the Trump presidency strikes midnight are threefold: the credibility of Mr Cohen as a witness under klieg lights; the speed with which Congress begins televised hearings into President Trump's wrongdoing; and, the timing of subpoenas for Mr Trump's testimony from the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York and special counsel Mueller.
President Trump's ouster from the White House is no longer a question of if but when.' back |
Cantor's theorem - Wikipedia, Cantor's theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In elementary set theory, Cantor's theorem is a fundamental result which states that, for any set A, the set of all subsets of A (the power set of A, denoted by P(A) ) has a strictly greater cardinality than A itself. For finite sets, Cantor's theorem can be seen to be true by simple enumeration of the number of subsets. Counting the empty set as a subset, a set with n members has a total of 2n subsets, so that if card (A) = n, then card (P(A)) = 2n, and the theorem holds because 2n > n for all non-negative integers.' back |
Carlo Rovelli, Quantum gravity, ' Quantum Gravity is the name given to any theory that describes gravity in the regimes where quantum effects cannot be disregarded. At present, there is no such a theory which is universally accepted and confirmed by experience. Therefore the term "Quantum Gravity" indicates more an open problem than a specific theory. . . . The quest for the good quantum theory of gravity bears on a number of fundamental issues and it is sometimes presented as the most important open problem in fundamental physics: the "Holy Grail" of contemporary theoretical physics. back |
Cosmic ray - Wikipedia, Cosmic ray - ikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Cosmic rays are high-energy protons and atomic nuclei that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the Solar System in our own galaxy, and from distant galaxies. Upon impact with Earth's atmosphere, cosmic rays produce showers of secondary particles, some of which reach the surface; although the bulk is intercepted by the magnetosphere or the heliosphere.' back |
Didascalia Apostolorum - Wikipedia, Didascalia Apostolorum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Didascalia Apostolorum (or just Didascalia) is a Christian treatise which belongs to genre of the Church Orders. It presents itself as being written by the Twelve Apostles at the time of the Council of Jerusalem, however, scholars agree that it was actually a composition of the 3rd century CE, perhaps around 230 CE.
The Didascalia was clearly modeled on the earlier Didache. The author is unknown, but he was probably a bishop. The provenience is usually regarded as Northern Syria, possibly near Antioch.' back |
Emerging church - Wikipedia, Emerging church - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The emerging church (sometimes referred to as the emergent movement or emergent conversation) is a Christian movement of the late 20th and early 21st century that crosses a number of theological boundaries: participants can be described as evangelical, protestant, roman catholic[1], post-evangelical, anabaptist, adventist[2], liberal, post-liberal, reformed, charismatic, neocharismatic, post-charismatic, conservative, and post-conservative. Proponents, however, believe the movement transcends such "modernist" labels of "conservative" and "liberal," calling the movement a "conversation" to emphasize its developing and decentralized nature, its vast range of standpoints, and its commitment to dialogue. Participants seek to live their faith in what they believe to be a "postmodern" society. What those involved in the conversation mostly agree on is their disillusionment with the organized and institutional church and their support for the deconstruction of modern Christian worship, modern evangelism, and the nature of modern Christian community.' back |
Encyclopedia Britannica, Mikhail Aleksandrovitch Bakunin, 'Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin, (born May 30 [May 18, Old Style], 1814, Premukhino, Russia—died July 1 [June 19], 1876, Bern, Switzerland), chief propagator of 19th-century anarchism, a prominent Russian revolutionary agitator, and a prolific political writer. His quarrel with Karl Marx split the anarchist and Marxist wings of the revolutionary socialist movement for many years after their deaths.' back |
Ernst Bloch - Wikipedia, Ernst Bloch - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Ernst Simon Bloch, (July 8, 1885 – August 4, 1977) was a German Marxist philosopher.' 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 |
Fourier analysis - Wikipedia, Fourier analysis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In mathematics, Fourier analysis (English: /ˈfʊərieɪ/) is the study of the way general functions may be represented or approximated by sums of simpler trigonometric functions. Fourier analysis grew from the study of Fourier series, and is named after Joseph Fourier, who showed that representing a function as a sum of trigonometric functions greatly simplifies the study of heat transfer.
Today, the subject of Fourier analysis encompasses a vast spectrum of mathematics. In the sciences and engineering, the process of decomposing a function into oscillatory components is often called Fourier analysis, while the operation of rebuilding the function from these pieces is known as Fourier synthesis.' back |
Francis Bacon - Wikiquote, Francis Bacon - Wikiquote, 'Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.' back |
Francis: Pray for Me - Wikipedia, Francis: Pray for Me - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Francis: Pray for me is a 2015 Argentine film, starring Darío Grandinetti as Pope Francis. The film is based on the book, Pope Francis: Life and Revolution, which was written by Francis' close friend Elisabetta Piqué who is also a correspondent for the Argentine newspaper, La Nación in Italy and the Vatican since 1999.' back |
Gareth Evans, The Real Risks of Australia's Submarine Deal, back |
Geodesics in general relativity - Wikipedia, Geodesics in general relativity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In general relativity, a geodesic generalizes the notion of a "straight line" to curved spacetime. Importantly, the world line of a particle free from all external, non-gravitational force, is a particular type of geodesic. In other words, a freely moving or falling particle always moves along a geodesic.' back |
Harry Emerson Fosdick - Wikipedia, Harry Emerson Fosdick - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Harry Emerson Fosdick (May 24, 1878-October 5, 1969) was an American clergyman.
Fosdick became a central figure in the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy within American Protestantism in the 1920s and 1930s. While at First Presbyterian Church, on May 21, 1922, he delivered his famous sermon “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”, in which he defended the modernist position. In that sermon, he presented the Bible as a record of the unfolding of God’s will, not as the literal Word of God. He saw the history of Christianity as one of development, progress, and gradual change. To the fundamentalists, this was rank apostasy, and the battle lines were drawn.' back |
Hermitian adjoint - Wikipedia, Hermitian adjoint - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Hermitian operators: A bounded operator A : H → H is called Hermitian or self-adjoint if
A = A*
which is equivalent to
⟨ Ax , y ⟩ = ⟨ x, A y ⟩ for all x , y ∈ H.
In some sense, these operators play the role of the real numbers (being equal to their own "complex conjugate") and form a real vector space. They serve as the model of real-valued observables in quantum mechanics. See the article on self-adjoint operators for a full treatment.' back |
History of East Timor - Wikipedia, History of East Timor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'East Timor declared itself independent from Portugal on 28 November 1975, but was invaded by neighboring Indonesia nine days later. The country was later incorporated as the province of Indonesia afterwards. During the subsequent two-decade occupation, a campaign of pacification ensued. Although Indonesia did make substantial investment in infrastructures during its occupation in East Timor, the dissatisfaction remain widespread. Between 1975 and 1999, there were an estimated about 102,800 conflict-related deaths (approximately 18,600 killings and 84,200 'excess' deaths from hunger and illness), the majority of which occurred during the Indonesian occupation.' back |
Igor Stravinsky, Le Sacre du printemps / The Rite of Spring - Ballets Russes, ' could you imagine having to dance to this with the audience booing and hissing so loudly that you can't hear the orchestra? that's how much outrage there was over this at the time of the premier. like, you're expecting the nutcracker, and you get a ton of pagan ritual dances and a virgin sacrifice. this is incredibly difficult to perform as is, but even more so under those circumstances.' back |
In the Mood for Love - Wikipedia, In the Mood for Love - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In the Mood for Love is a 2000 Hong Kong romantic drama film written, produced, and directed by Wong Kar-wai. Its original Chinese title means "Flowery Years". It tells the story of a man (played by Tony Leung) and a woman (Maggie Cheung) whose spouses have an affair together and who slowly develop feelings for each other.
. . . It is frequently listed as one of the greatest films of all time and one of the major works of Asian cinema. In a 2016 survey by the BBC, it was voted the second-best film of the 21st century by 177 film critics from around the world.
The movie forms the second part of an informal trilogy, alongside Days of Being Wild (1990) and 2046 (2004).' back |
James Purtill, The world is hungry for solar panels. Why did we stop making them?, ' Over 20 years ago, the Harbour City was preparing to host the Olympic Games and the BP Solar factory was in full swing, making solar cells that were assembled into panels and then installed at the athletes' village, promoted as one of the largest solar suburbs in the world.
Here was a trumpeted example of Australian ingenuity; the technology had been developed in consultation with the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and its photovoltaics research team, which was famous for breaking record after record for solar cell efficiency. . . . But less than a decade after the 2000 Olympic Games, the factory closed. Many of the leading lights of the UNSW research team moved to China, where they set up the country's first solar PV factories. From a standing start at the turn of the century, China now accounts for about 70 per cent of global solar panel production. Australia accounts for about a third of 1 per cent.' back |
Jeffrey Nicholls (1987), A theory of Peace, ' The argument: I began to think about peace in a very practical way during the Viet Nam war. I was the right age to be called up. I was exempted because I was a clergyman, but despite the terrors that war held for me, I think I would have gone. It was my first whiff of the force of patriotism. To my amazement, it was strong enough to make even me face death.
In the Church, I became embroiled in a deeper war. Not a war between goodies and baddies, but the war between good and evil that lies at the heart of all human consciousness. Existence is a struggle. We need all the help we can get. Religion is part of that help.' back |
Joachim of Fiore - Wikipedia, Joachim of Fiore - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Blessed Joachim of Fiore, also known as Joachim of Flora and in Italian Gioacchino da Fiore (c. 1135 – March 30, 1202), was the founder of the monastic order of San Giovanni in Fiore (now Jure Vetere). He was a mystic, a theologian and an esoterist. His followers are called Joachimites.' back |
Left Behind - Wikipedia, Left Behind - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Left Behind is a series of 16 best-selling novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, dealing with Christian dispensationalist End Times: pretribulation, premillennial, Christian eschatological viewpoint of the end of the world. The primary conflict of the series is the members of the Tribulation Force against the Global Community and its leader Nicolae Carpathia—the Antichrist. Left Behind is also the title of the first book in the series. The series was first published 1995-2007 by Tyndale House, a firm with a history of interest in dispensationalism.' back |
Leon Trotsky - Wikipedia, Leon Trotsky - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Leon Trotsky 7 November [O.S. 26 October] 1879 – 21 August 1940), born Lev Davidovich Bronstein was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist.
He was one of the leaders of the Russian October Revolution, second only to Vladimir Lenin. During the early days of the Soviet Union, he served first as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and later as the founder and commander of the Red Army and People's Commissar of War. He was also among the first members of the Politburo. back |
Meister Eckhart - Wikipedia, Meister Eckhart - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Eckhart von Hochheim O.P. (c. 1260 – c. 1328[, commonly known as Meister Eckhart, was a German theologian, philosopher and mystic, born near Gotha, in the Landgraviate of Thuringia in the Holy Roman Empire.
Eckhart came into prominence during the Avignon Papacy, at a time of increased tensions between monastic orders, diocesan clergy, the Franciscan Order, and Eckhart's Dominican Order of Preachers. In later life, he was accused of heresy and brought up before the local Franciscan-led Inquisition, and tried as a heretic by Pope John XXII. He seems to have died before his verdict was received.' back |
No-cloning theorem - Wikipedia, No-cloning theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In physics, the no-cloning theorem states that it is impossible to create an independent and identical copy of an arbitrary unknown quantum state, a statement which has profound implications in the field of quantum computing among others. The theorem is an evolution of the 1970 no-go theorem authored by James Park, in which he demonstrates that a non-disturbing measurement scheme which is both simple and perfect cannot exist . . .. The aforementioned theorems do not preclude the state of one system becoming entangled with the state of another as cloning specifically refers to the creation of a separable state with identical factors.' back |
Odysseus - Wikipedia, Odysseus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Odysseus (Greek: Ὀδυσσεύς ), also known by the Roman name Ulysses (Latin: Ulyssēs, Ulixēs), was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and a hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in that same Epic Cycle.
Husband of Penelope, father of Telemachus, and son of Laërtes and Anticlea, Odysseus is renowned for his brilliance, guile, and versatility (polytropos), and is hence known by the epithet Odysseus the Cunning (mētis, or "cunning intelligence"). He is most famous for the ten eventful years he took to return home after the decade-long Trojan War.' back |
Path integral formulation - Wikipedia, Path integral formulation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The path integral formulation of quantum mechanics is a description of quantum theory which generalizes the action principle of classical mechanics. It replaces the classical notion of a single, unique trajectory for a system with a sum, or functional integral, over an infinity of possible trajectories to compute a quantum amplitude. . . . This formulation has proved crucial to the subsequent development of theoretical physics, since it provided the basis for the grand synthesis of the 1970s which unified quantum field theory with statistical mechanics. . . . ' back |
Paul Monk, Removing Xi is how to play it, ' Xi’s crushing of the Uighurs, suppression of democratic dissent in Hong Kong, threats to Taiwan, militarisation of the South China Sea and economic warfare against us all demonstrate what Chinese hegemony looks like. For the common good, this must stop. To that end, Xi needs to be removed from power and a broad path to democratic reform opened up at long last in China. The Communist Party must make the shift to democratic rule that Taiwan and South Korea made from the late 1980s. The Quad should openly call for such a transition.' back |
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin - Wikipedia, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ (1 May 1881 – 10 April 1955) was a French idealist philosopher and Jesuit priest who trained as a paleontologist and geologist and took part in the discovery of Peking Man. He conceived the idea of the Omega Point (a maximum level of complexity and consciousness towards which he believed the universe was evolving) and developed Vladimir Vernadsky's concept of noosphere.' back |
Pontifical Council for Culture, Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Jeus Christ the bearer of the Water of Life - A Christian reflection on the New Age, 'The study is a provisional report. It is the fruit of the common reflection of the Working Group on New Religious Movements, composed of staff members of different dicasteries of the Holy See: the Pontifical Councils for Culture and for Interreligious Dialogue (which are the principal redactors for this project), the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.' back |
Priscillian - Wikipedia, Priscillian - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Priscillian (died 385) was bishop of Ávila and a theologian from Roman Gallaecia (in the Iberian Peninsula), the first person in the history of Christianity to be executed for heresy (though the civil charges were for the practice of magic). He founded an ascetic group that, in spite of persecution, continued to subsist in Hispania and Gaul until the later 6th century. Tractates by Priscillian and close followers, which had seemed certainly lost, were recovered in 1885 and published in 1889.' back |
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Swan Lake: Australian Ballet: Graeme Murphy, ' Graeme Murphy’s modern-day classic is a Swan Lake for the 21st century, charged with sensuality and heartbreak. The Australian Ballet’s most performed and most successful work has swept the world before it, reaping standing ovations and storms of tears in London, Paris, Tokyo and New York.
The romance of Princess Odette and Prince Siegfried is updated (and complicated) to a contemporary love triangle with the addition of the Baroness von Rothbart, a slinky mistress who has no intention of releasing her freshly married lover. Murphy’s breathtaking pas de deux and massed swans are framed by legendary designer Kristian Fredrikson’s darkly sparkling lake, contrasted with the glittering magnificence of regal weddings and ballrooms. This is Swan Lake as you’ve never seen it before. back |
Quantum gravity - Wikipedia, Quantum gravity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Quantum gravity (QG) is a field of theoretical physics that seeks to describe gravity according to the principles of quantum mechanics, and where quantum effects cannot be ignored, such as in the vicinity of black holes or similar compact astrophysical objects where the effects of gravity are strong, such as neutron stars.' back |
Quantum mind - Wikipedia, Quantum mind - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The quantum mind or quantum consciousness group of hypotheses propose that classical mechanics cannot explain consciousness. It posits that quantum mechanical phenomena, such as quantum entanglement and superposition, may play an important part in the brain's function and could contribute to form the basis of an explanation of consciousness. . . . Eugene Wigner developed the idea that quantum mechanics has something to do with the workings of the mind. He proposed that the wave function collapses due to its interaction with consciousness. Freeman Dyson argued that "mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every electron." ' back |
Redox - Wikipedia, Redox - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Redox (shorthand for reduction-oxidation) reactions describe all chemical reactions in which atoms have their oxidation number (oxidation state) changed. This can be either a simple redox process, such as the oxidation of carbon to yield carbon dioxide (CO2) or the reduction of carbon by hydrogen to yield methane (CH4), or a complex process such as the oxidation of sugar(C6H12O6) in the human body through a series of complex electron transfer processes.' back |
Reduced instruction set computer - Wikipedia, Reduced instruction set computer - Wikipedia, the free enecylopedia, ' A reduced instruction set computer, or RISC is a computer with a small, highly optimized set of instructions, rather than the more specialized set often found in other types of architecture, such as in a complex instruction set computer (CISC).The main distinguishing feature of RISC architecture is that the instruction set is optimized with a large number of registers and a highly regular instruction pipeline, allowing a low number of clock cycles per instruction (CPI). ' back |
Reinhold Niebuhr - Wikipedia, Reinhold Niebuhr - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr (/ˈraɪnhoʊld ˈniːbʊər/; June 21, 1892 – June 1, 1971) was an American theologian, ethicist, public intellectual, commentator on politics and public affairs, and professor at Union Theological Seminary for more than 30 years. Also known for authoring the Serenity Prayer,[1] Niebuhr received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964.[2] Among his most influential books are Moral Man and Immoral Society and The Nature and Destiny of Man, the latter of which was written as the result of Niebuhr's delivery of the Gifford Lectures. back |
Roulette - Wikipedia, Roulette - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Roulette is a casino game named after the French word meaning little wheel which was likely developed from the Italian game Biribi. In the game, players may choose to place bets on either a single number, various groupings of numbers, . . .
To determine the winning number, a croupier spins a wheel in one direction, then spins a ball in the opposite direction around a tilted circular track running around the outer edge of the wheel. The ball eventually loses momentum, passes through an area of deflectors, and falls onto the wheel and into one of [the] colored and numbered pockets on the wheel.' back |
Saddleback Church - Wikipedia, Saddleback Church - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Saddleback Church is an evangelical Christian megachurch located in Lake Forest, California, situated in southern Orange County, affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. The church was founded in 1980 by pastor Rick Warren. Weekly church attendance averages nearly 20,000, currently making it the eighth-largest church in the United States (this ranking includes multi-site churches).' back |
Scott Shane, Global Forecast by American Intelligence Expects Al Qaeda's Appeal to Falter, 'Published: November 20, 2008
WASHINGTON — A new study of the global future by American intelligence agencies suggests that Al Qaeda could soon be on the decline, having alienated Muslim supporters with indiscriminate killing and inattention to the practical problems of poverty, unemployment and education.' back |
Soka Gakkai - Wikipedia, Soka Gakkai - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Sōka Gakkai (創価学会?) (literally, "Value-Creation Society") is a lay Nichiren Buddhist organization based in Japan.[1] There are more than 23 million members of Sōka Gakkai International in 192 countries and territories.It is also a non-profitable organization promoting the values of peace,culture and education.' back |
Tissa Balasuriya - Wikipedia, Tissa Balasuriya - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Tissa Balasuriya (born 1924) is a Sri Lankan Roman Catholic priest and theologian.' back |
Turing test - Wikipedia, Turing test - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. In the original illustrative example, a human judge engages in natural language conversations with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. All participants are separated from one another. If the judge cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test. ' back |
Unitary group - Wikipedia, Unitary group - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In mathematics, the unitary group of degree n, denoted U(n), is the group of n×n unitary matrices, with the group operation that of matrix multiplication. The unitary group is a subgroup of the general linear group GL(n, C). . . .
In the simple case n = 1, the group U(1) corresponds to the circle group, consisting of all complex numbers with absolute value 1 under multiplication. All the unitary groups contain copies of this group.' back |
Unitary group - Wikipedia, Unitary group - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In mathematics, the unitary group of degree n, denoted U(n), is the group of n×n unitary matrices, with the group operation that of matrix multiplication. The unitary group is a subgroup of the general linear group GL(n, C). . . .
In the simple case n = 1, the group U(1) corresponds to the circle group, consisting of all complex numbers with absolute value 1 under multiplication. All the unitary groups contain copies of this group.' back |
Universal Church of the Kingdom of God - Wikipedia, Universal Church of the Kingdom of God - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG, from Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus, also known as UCKG HelpCentre) is a Pentecostal Christian organisation established in Brazil on July 9, 1977, with a presence in many countries. According to a major Christian newspaper the UCKG has 13 million members worldwide and in Brazil alone has reached 5000 temples and 15.000 pastors.' back |
Vaslav Nijinsky - Wikipedia, Vaslav Nijinsky - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Vaslav (or Vatslav) Nijinsky (12 March 1889 – 8 April 1950) was a ballet dancer and choreographer cited as the greatest male dancer of the early 20th century. Born in Kiev to Polish parents, Nijinsky grew up in Imperial Russia but considered himself to be Polish. He was celebrated for his virtuosity and for the depth and intensity of his characterizations. He could dance en pointe, a rare skill among male dancers at the time, and was admired for his seemingly gravity-defying leaps.' back |
Venn diagram - Wikipedia, Venn diagram - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'A Venn diagram or set diagram is a diagram that shows all possible logical relations between a finite collection of different sets. Venn diagrams were conceived around 1880 by John Venn. They are used to teach elementary set theory, as well as illustrate simple set relationships in probability, logic, statistics, linguistics and computer science.' back |
Washington Post: Editorial Board, Opinion: Apple and Google are showing Putin just how much he can get away with, ' This weekend, Russia goes to the polls. Yet voters who hope to register their resistance to the ruling party, amid its efforts to restrict who can appear on the ballot, have been deprived of a crucial tool — because Apple and Google gave in to the bullies. . . .
The [Russian] government’s campaign has escalated bit by bit from ludicrous trademark complaint to threats to arrest the firms’ employees. The Financial Times reports that armed men showed up at Google’s Moscow offices on Thursday. . . .
The silent capitulation by some of the United States’ most prominent businesses sends a message to authoritarians: You can get away with this, in Russia and anywhere else politicians are worried about the people having too much information — and too much sway.' back |
Will Oremus, Facebook keeps researching its own harms — and burying the findings, ' [Facebook] knew that a 2018 change to its news feed software, intended to promote “meaningful interactions,” ended up promoting outrageous and divisive political content.
Facebook knew all of those things because they were findings from its own internal research teams. . . .
This week, each of those revelations was the subject of a story in the Wall Street Journal, part of an ongoing investigative series that it’s calling the Facebook Files. . . .
While the stories are noteworthy in themselves, their provenance points to a deeper issue at Facebook. It is that the world’s largest social network employs teams of people to study its own ugly underbelly, only to ignore, downplay and suppress the results of their research when it proves awkward or troubling.' back |
Willow Creek Community Church - Wikipedia, Willow Creek Community Church - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Willow Creek Community Church (or simply Willow Creek Church) is a non-denominational, multi-generational Evangelical Christian megachurch located in the Chicago suburb of South Barrington, Illinois. It was founded on October 12, 1975 by Bill Hybels, who is currently the Senior Pastor. The church has three weekend services averaging 24,000 attendees, making it the third-largest church in the United States (this ranking includes multi-site churches). The church has been listed as the most influential church in America the last several years in a national poll of pastors.' back |
Wojciech Hubert Zurek, Quantum origin of quantum jumps: breaking of unitary symmetry induced by information transfer and the transition from quantum to classical, 'Submitted on 17 Mar 2007 (v1), last revised 18 Mar 2008 (this version, v3))
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 framework
for the “wavepacket collapse”, designating terminal points of quantum jumps, and defining the
measured observable by specifying its eigenstates.' back |
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