Notes
Sunday 30 January 2022 - Saturday 5 February 2022
[Notebook: DB 87: Cognitive Cosmology]
[page 176]
Sunday 30 January 2022
Kennan: The Long Telegram and the Catholic Church [The church, like the Soviet Union, has cemented itself into defensive position seeing itself surrounded by enemies which grossly distorts its understanding of the real world. George Kennan (1947): The Long Telegram
When we examine our visual system we find that it is organized in layer after layer of processing, beginning with the sensors in the retina which convert the reception of photons into electrical signals and then the processing that occurs in the neurons of the retina before the compressed signal is passed into the optic nerves to be transported to further layers of processing that result in out conscious experience of vision and ultimately to respond to what we see by movement, the interpretation of written symbols like these and so on. Our audio and other sensory modalities have similar structures, eventually leading to adaptive behavioural outputs through muscles and hormones. Visual system - Wikipedia
The layered processing systems in our minds extract interesting information from the raw feed at various levels and dispatch it to the elements that need it. This system has been established over the long period of evolution since imaging eyes were first invented, different features of the images being used for different purposes.
[page 177]
How does this map to quantum mechanics, where we are starting at the very beginning with a one dimensional Hilbert space, the complex plane.
Monday 31 January 2022
Have come to a bit of a standstill with a good idea in mind which has yet to mature. The idea, in terms of human psychology, is that the brain is fluid and creative, full of imagined possibilities constructed from sensed elements of reality, so that having seen birds fly we imagine that we can fly but are brought down to earth by reality and it has taken a long period of development of engines and aerodynamics for us to make personal flight a reality. In the physical world we see the quantum world as it is worked out in Hilbert space as playing the role of imagination and particle physics, as we see it in Minkowski space, as the controlling reality where what can actually happen is limited by the conservation of energy and momentum, an idea partly captured by saying that spacetime is the operating system of the universe.
The idea that spacetime is made possible by the fact that the velocity of light and the associated null geodesic act to maintain causality by contact which is the basic constraint on events in Hilbert space must be in some way the key to the selective pressure that spacetime exerts on activities in Hilbert space. This link in the chain has yet to become manifest. The only thing to do is to circle around and around these ideas until the connections begin to appear, being revealed in the old Aristotle / Aquinas model by the work of the agent intellect on the imagined data, looking for an insight that explains insight and the process of quantum measurement which von Neumann sees as increasing the entropy of the world, that is the process of creation. The obvious task for the day is to examine von Neumann's work again in detail perhaps in the light of Zurek's understanding of the quantum origin of quantum leaps, parallel to the neural origin of intellectual insight which we see (hopefully) happening at all scales starting with qubits. Christopher Shields: The Active Mind of De Anima III 5
[page 178]
A clue: energy and time in Hilbert space are complex, and they only become real by the equation P = | ψ | 2 [which is in effect a purely mathematical transformation from complex to real number]. This is the point at which contact between vectors in Hilbert space generates a real element in Minkowski space.
Hilbert vs Minkowski network [two versions of the network model mirrored across the quantum - real interface].
What sort of madness would think that a god with no information carrying capacity at all would be able to micromanage every quantum of action in the universe forever, unless that god is identical to the actual universe and every quantum of action is an element of its divine life.
Aristotle's genus and difference is a forerunner of the layered network and symmetry.
Tuesday 1 February 2022
Beating my crazy head against the sky, but I have faith that a crack will appear soon [in one or the other].
Hilbert space ⇆ music, birdsong, speech, inside story; Minkowski space ⇆ geometry, spacetime, outside picture.
Gravitation appears to be a geometric feature of Minkowski space. The shell or backbone of the Universe. Einstein's mollusc refers to the soft interior of a differentiable manifold, but this mollusc may also have a hard shell that gives overall structure to the animal and grows as the anima grows. The enormous energies we see in cosmic events are in effect fixed points induced by the gravitational shell. How does this translate into the Hilbert and Minkowski transfinite networks? Einstein, Lawson & Penrose (1916, 2005): Relativity: The Special and General Theory
David Allen David Allen: ‘There’s Nothing Quite as Distressing as This Piece’
[page 179]
God is a network. Proof: God is love; love is communication and bonding; communication and bonding are described by networks. Networks are made possible by error free communication so (the long shot) we need error free communication with god, ie scientific theology.
Although I have sent a lot of time thinking about a transfinite computer network, and considering it to be a central feature of my honours thesis, I see on rereading the thesis [that] I never provided a description of the construction and properties of the network and I have now found that this is also true of my essay on cognitive cosmology. A remarkable 'blind spot', as though the idea of the network was too precious to commit to writing although I thought I was using it in my thesis to prove that the physical universe is infinite enough to be god. I only found this out when I set out to plagiarize my thesis to put the classical network model in cognitive cosmology as a preliminary to describing the quantum transfinite network as the interface between physics and the mind of god. I have in effect kept this idea hidden in my head. Nevertheless I first [vaguely] described it in 2020 in e13_modelWorldNov2010. Jeffrey Nicholls (2019): A prolegomenon to scientific theology, Jeffrey Nicholls (2010): Essay 13: on modelling the world
Wednesday 2 February 2022
Revising e13_modelWorldNov2010.
As time goes by the idea of separating Hilbert and Minkowski space gathers momentum but the killer argument may not be here yet although it is pretty clear from entanglement that quantum mechanics operates in a space free zone. What I need to learn is why information can be transported at the speed of light in Minkowski space but entanglement cannot transfer information in Minkowski space because the sender does not know what she is sending until it is sent. What I want to see is the emergence of spacetime and all its associated features of energy, momentum, gravitation and potential all connected together. It seems that I need a better understanding of quantum
[page 180]
mechanics for this, moving from the dynamic superposition of music which seems to be a matter of phase at this point rather than time. We may think of phase as complex time, a relative thing. Remembering that our world is in perpetual motion [at the Hilbert level] due to the action of action, rotating with its evolving phase and angular momentum.
What I need to show, however is that the algebraic completeness of Hilbert space means that there are no dead ends and it an always create a way out of every problem it encounters. This means in fact being able to factorize, that is linearize, any polynomial it encounters, that is reduce it from a complex mess to a sequence of simple events which is the essence of insight, working out how to reverse engineer a cake back to a recipe which is a sequence of ingredients and operations. So how do we write recipe in quantum mechanics as a sequence of vectors and operators? How do we express an eggbeater in Hilbert space? Listen to Veltman. Maybe the world works across the interface of the Minkowski memory full of fixed points, and the Hilbert processor, always in motion between the fixed points [as we should expect from the layered network model, where we see the Hilbert space providing the Minkowski space with the processes it need to keep itself in existence]. Martinus Veltman (1994): Diagrammatica: The Path to the Feynman Rules
We might say that every act emitted by a quantum of action resonates at a frequency /phase rate / energy / determined by the interval since its last act, so creating a spectrum of orthogonal frequencies each characterized by a random event in the era of simplicity without control, and then control emerges by resonance and superposition.
Thursday 3 February 2022
Edging toward understanding. We begin with the principles that causality requires contact and Aristotle's idea that to understand is to know causes, that is to know the sequence of contacts that make something happen, the inner structure of an event. In the realm of speculative gossip we honour these principles by wondering why X did Y [trying to guess the contacts that motivated them]. in the realm of science and engineering we wonder about what contacts or failure of contact caused the bridge to come down or enables a virus to kill people. In
[page 181]
more detail we trace the long series of probabilistic and deterministic steps that lead to the successful reproduction.
So e13 done back to e30, the long running saga, but perhaps every time I try it I make incremental improvements and I am hoping to make it the outline for a viable home made PhD, although I may be forever an unrecognized Quixote. Nevertheless it is worth a try: somebody, some day, will see and achieve what I am trying to create, scientific theology that unites physics to theology, god's body to god's spirit, follow Aristotle and bring God down to Earth where they can be useful rather than a political fantasy. Don Quixote - Wikipedia
My main problem is to get my good feeling about a divine universe into a coherent set of words. I have got lots of little bits and pieces which I have been repeating for about 40 years, but my picture is still a mess, and all I can do is implement the old adage, if at first you don't succeed keep trying. The e30 plan of starting from the initial singularity [via Aristotle, Aquinas and the Trinity] clarifies a lot. What I need to do is find a clear path though my mess so that a careful reader can make some sense out of the picture I am trying to paint. Now a lot of the job is polishing some of the stable pieces, but I still have to get a clear story that links the microscopic world of quantum mechanics with the macroscopic world of gravitation. All I can do is relax and work hard driven by the hope of having a book length essay by Christmas 2023. Jeffrey Nicholls (2021): Essay 30: Cognitive cosmology
The transfinite computer network is the classical vehicle to carry me from the Trinity to the Universe. That bit seems sound. Now we have to put this on a quantum mechanical foundation, a transfinite quantum network existing prior to spacetime analogous to a network of angels each of a different species, ie a different vector on a Hilbert space constrained by layer after layer of of tensor products. Zurek does the Trinity with a qubit. Now we have to take it to the Universe The problem is how do we differentiate a
[page 182]
a transfinity of points without spacetime, or do we use gravitation and spacetime as a scaffold on which to hang quantum mechanics, skeleton and flesh. Aquinas, Summa I, 50, 4: Is every angel a different species?, Wojciech Hubert Zurek (2008): Quantum origin of quantum jumps: breaking of unitary symmetry induced by information transfer and the transition from quantum to classical
The key link between Hilbert space and Minkowski space is the metric which links both through contact, the null geodesic and Shannon's theory of communication that beats error by the application of function space . . . so we have to unite these pieces through a new essay on the emergence of error free communication through quantization and the null geodesic. So the heart of the pudding first shows its footprint in sections 8 to 11 of e30, which can be developed as a new essay whose title is something like Hilbert, Minkowski and Shannon . . .. Here we set out to demonstrate how entanglement becomes capable of transmitting information via Zurek's article on the quantum origin of quantum jumps, ie how quantum mechanics embraces Shannon's mathematical theory of communication. All the pieces, I feel, are here, they just have to be put together to unite quantum mechanics and gravitation, matter, angels, god and spirit. We need a way to explain the ancient intuition that immateriality is the source of intelligence so that as Aquinas says God is maximally intelligent because they are maximally immaterial. This resolves the conundrum at the beginning of my thesis 1.4 and 1.5. I am still heading into the wilderness, but hoping to find a position fix one day. Claude Shannon (1949): Communication in the Presence of Noise, Aquinas, Summa, I, 14, 1: Is there knowledge in God?
Friday 4 February 2022
O frabjus day, calloo callay. Can I trust my feeling? For much of my life I have advocated reason over emotion and the rise of religious leaders like the very fraudulent Donald Trump, not to mention the ludicrous fantasies of the Roman Catholic Church have reinforced my position, but am I now drifting into my own senile dream? I hope not, and the fact that all my speculation points to a bottom up power to
[page 183]
people zero footprint world of democracy and human symmetry reinforces my self confidence. I look forward to the day when my metaethics of entropy rules the world I continue on my path knowing that no other makes any sense to me because I want everyone on the planet to share my relatively blissful life. Lewis Carroll: Jabberwocky, Jeffrey Nicholls (2019a): Entropy and metaethics
Saturday 5 February 2022
I woke up this morning wth a new idea which is also very old. The physical motivations for bonding are a combination of reducing energy and increasing entropy, which means in in effect reducing the energy per particle. The physical rule lay, perhaps unconsciously, behind my move from the country to the city. In the country I needed to be energetic to get the resources for life and earning a living required the physical activities of travelling and building. In the city life is easier, everything is in effect laid on. To shop I just have to walk next door, to travel I take the bus, to have company and entertainment the options are endless and in general my level of exertion is down and my freedom is up so who would not live in a city except one seeking high energy freedom, which was nevertheless my chosen option for about fifty years of my life. Why? Maybe an increase in entropy in another dimension, unconstrained thinking and having children in an unconstrained environment. Now I reflect on my younger days and wonder what happened and why and try to see it all in the light of a theology, a comprehensive theory of everything which serves as an account of my conscious actions as a particle in a complex universal environment. Here we see fixed point theory at work. I am a fixed point in a vast universe and my personal characteristics are a reflection of that universe, changing as my local environment in that universe has changed in every dimension from my relationship to gravitation to my relationships to my fellow citizens, changing positions in the universal network. So coffee and back to cognitive cosmology.
[page 184]
For a long time I have been a shy long term theologian hiding in the woods deterred by the hopelessness of my task surrounded by the falsehoods built into religion and the indifference of those who see theology as a lost cause. As I dig deeper, however, hope returns and the benefits of a scientific theology draw me out and I can feel a new era of advocacy dawning within me, built on the work I have built on the net. I am now motivated to finish it and begin to put it to use. So is cognitive cosmology reality or fantasy? I might call it hypothesis, descended from Aristotle, Christianity and Aquinas, the deep roots of a Church gone bad by money, dictatorship and militarism, leading to the Reformation. Science, the demystification of God and human rights. I am slowly working my way out of the blindness imposed upon me by my religious upbringing.
Renormalization works because the coupling constants in electrodynamics and the strong and weak forces are scalar. Newton's gravitation tells us that F = G (M m) / r 2 ie G = Fgravity / r2M2 = M -1 L3 T -2, far from scalar.
These dimensions apply to gravitation at the time that spacetime had come into existence, but if we go back to the beginning it is scalar, as described by the relevant Lie group maybe [and at the same time quantum mechanics is built on complex scalars, since no physical quantity can have a complex dimension except perhaps action?].
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Further readingBooks
Einstein (1916, 2005), Albert, and Robert W Lawson (translator) Roger Penrose (Introduction), Robert Geroch (Commentary), David C Cassidy (Historical Essay), Relativity: The Special and General Theory, Pi Press 1916, 2005 Preface: 'The present book is intended, as far as possible, to give an exact insight into the theory of relativity to those readers who, from a general scientific and philosophical point of view, are interested in the theory, but who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus of theoretical physics. ... The author has spared himself no pains in his endeavour to present the main ideas in the simplest and most intelligible form, and on the whole, in the sequence and connection in which they actually originated.' page 3
Amazon
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Veltman (1994), Martinus, Diagrammatica: The Path to the Feynman Rules, Cambridge University Press 1994 Jacket: 'This book provides an easily accessible introduction to quantum field theory via Feynman rules and calculations in particle physics. The aim is to make clear what the physical foundations of present-day field theory are, to clarify the physical content of Feynman rules, and to outline their domain of applicability. ... The book includes valuable appendices that review some essential mathematics, including complex spaces, matrices, the CBH equation, traces and dimensional regularization. ...'
Amazon
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Links
Al Jazeera, Israel imposing ‘apartheid’ on Palestinians: Amnesty, ' Israel is carrying out “the crime of apartheid against Palestinians” and must be held accountable for treating them as “an inferior racial group”, Amnesty International says in a new report, joining the assessment of other rights groups.
Released on Tuesday, the 280-page report [PDF] by the leading rights group details how Israeli authorities enforce a system of oppression and domination against the Palestinians.' back |
Amnesty international, Irael's Apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity, back |
Aquinas, Summa I, 50, 4, Is every angel a different species?, ' . . . such things as agree in species but differ in number, agree in form, but are distinguished materially. If, therefore, the angels be not composed of matter and form, as was said above (Article 2), it follows that it is impossible for two angels to be of one species; just as it would be impossible for there to be several whitenesses apart, or several humanities, since whitenesses are not several, except in so far as they are in several substances.' back |
Aquinas, Summa, I, 14, 8, Is the knowledge of God the cause of things?, 'Now it is manifest that God causes things by His intellect, since His being is His act of understanding; and hence His knowledge must be the cause of things, in so far as His will is joined to it. Hence the knowledge of God as the cause of things is usually called the "knowledge of approbation".' back |
Aquinas, Summa: I, 14, 1, Is there knowledge in God?, ' I answer that, In God there exists the most perfect knowledge. . . . it is clear that the immateriality of a thing is the reason why it is cognitive; and according to the mode of immateriality is the mode of knowledge. Hence it is said in De Anima ii that plants do not know, because they are wholly material. But sense is cognitive because it can receive images free from matter, and the intellect is still further cognitive, because it is more separated from matter and unmixed, as said in De Anima iii. Since therefore God is in the highest degree of immateriality as stated above (Question 7, Article 1), it follows that He occupies the highest place in knowledge.' back |
Bergman & Mazzetti, The Battle for the World’s Most Powerful Cyberweapon, ' In June 2019, three Israeli computer engineers arrived at a New Jersey building used by the F.B.I. They unpacked dozens of computer servers, arranging them on tall racks in an isolated room. . . . Then, with their equipment in place, they began testing.
The F.B.I. had bought a version of Pegasus, NSO’s premier spying tool. For nearly a decade, the Israeli firm had been selling its surveillance software on a subscription basis to law-enforcement and intelligence agencies around the world, promising that it could do what no one else — not a private company, not even a state intelligence service — could do: consistently and reliably crack the encrypted communications of any iPhone or Android smartphone.' back |
Cannon, Piovesan & Munne-Bosch, Old and ancient trees are life history lottery winners and vital evolutionary resources for long-term adaptive capacity, Trees can live for many centuries with sustained fecundity and death is largely stochastic. We use a neutral stochastic model to examine tree demographic patterns that emerge over time, across a range of population sizes and empirically observed mortality rates. A small proportion of trees (~1% at 1.5% mortality) are life-history ‘lottery winners’, achieving ages >10–20× the median age. Maximum age increases with bigger populations and lower mortality rates. One-quarter of trees (~24%) achieve ages that are three to four times greater than the median age. Three age classes (mature, old and ancient) contribute unique evolutionary diversity across complex environmental cycles. Ancient trees are an emergent property of forests that requires many centuries to generate. They radically change variance in generation time and population fitness, bridging centennial environmental cycles. These life-history ‘lottery’ winners are vital to long-term forest adaptive capacity and provide invaluable data about environmental history and individual longevity. Old and ancient trees cannot be replaced through restoration or regeneration for many centuries. They must be protected to preserve their invaluable diversity. back |
Christopher Shields (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), The Active Mind of De Anima III 5 , ' After characterizing the mind (nous) and its activities in De Animaiii 4, Aristotle takes a surprising turn. In De Anima iii 5, he introduces an obscure and hotly disputed subject: the active mind or active intellect (nous poiêtikos). Controversy surrounds almost every aspect of De Anima iii 5, not least because in it Aristotle characterizes the active mind—a topic mentioned nowhere else in his entire corpus—as ‘separate and unaffected and unmixed, being in its essence actuality’ (chôristos kai apathês kai amigês, tê ousia energeia; DA iii 5, 430a17–18) and then also as ‘deathless and everlasting’ (athanaton kai aidion; DA iii 5, 430a23). This comes as no small surprise to readers of De Anima, because Aristotle had earlier in the same work treated the mind (nous) as but one faculty (dunamis) of the soul (psuchê), and he had contended that the soul as a whole is not separable from the body (DA ii 1, 413a3–5). back |
Claude Shannon (1949), Communication in the Presence of Noise, 'A method is developed for representing any communication system geometrically. Messages and the corresponding signals are points in two “function spaces,” and the modulation process is a mapping of one space into the other. Using this representation, a number of results in communication theory are deduced concerning expansion and compression of bandwidth and the threshold effect. Formulas are found for the maximum rate of transmission of binary digits over a system when the signal is perturbed by various types of noise. Some of the properties of “ideal” systems which transmit at this maximum rate are discussed. The equivalent number of binary digits per second for certain information sources is calculated.' [C. E. Shannon , “Communication in the presence of noise,” Proc. IRE,
vol. 37, pp. 10–21, Jan. 1949.] back |
David Allen, ‘There’s Nothing Quite as Distressing as This Piece’, ' But his most recent album takes us to the end of the 19th century — indeed, to music that in its aphoristic brevity and experimental chromaticism anticipates the innovations of the 20th: the four groups of short pieces, Op. 116-119, that Brahms wrote in 1892 and 1893, not long before his death in 1897. These works of desperate sadness distill Brahms’s typical ambiguity into the most concentrated of forms. They also have an unsparing emotional directness — albeit one that Brahms reveals with characteristic, uneasy ambivalence.' back |
David Gibson, ' Pope Benedict faulted over sex abuse claims: New report is just one chapter in his – and Catholic Church’s – fraught record , back |
Don Quixote - Wikipedia, Don Quixote - Wikipedia, the dree encyclopedia, ' Don Quixote . . . is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Its full title is The Ingenious Gentleman Sir Quixote of La Mancha . . ..
It was originally published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615. A founding work of Western literature, it is often labeled as the first modern novel and is considered one of the greatest works ever written. . . ..
The plot revolves around the adventures of a member of the very lowest nobility or hidalgo ("Son of Someone") from La Mancha named Alonso Quixano, who reads so many chivalric romances that he either loses or pretends to have lost his mind in order to become a knight-errant (caballero andante) to revive chivalry and serve his nation, under the name Don Quixote de la Mancha.' back |
George F. Kennan (1987), Containment: 40 Years Later, back |
George Kennan (1947), The Long Telegram, ' ' Answer to Dept’s 284, Feb. 3,11 involves questions so intricate, so delicate, so strange to our form of thought, and so important to analysis of our international environment that I cannot compress answers into single brief message without yielding to what I feel would be dangerous degree of oversimplification. I hope, therefore, Dept will bear with me if I submit in answer to this question five parts, subjects of which will be roughly as follows:
(1) Basic features of postwar Soviet outlook.
(2) Background of this outlook.
(3) Its projection in practical policy on official level.
(4) Its projection on unofficial level.
(5) Practical deductions from standpoint of US policy.
I apologize in advance for this burdening of telegraphic channel; but questions involved are of such urgent importance, particularly in view of recent events, that our answers to them, if they deserve attention at all, seem to me to deserve it at once.' back |
Google Earth engine, How Google is helping fight climate change, illegal logging, flooding in Africa and a lot more with a service you haven’t heard of, ' Google Earth Engine offers its trove of satellite imagery and analysis tools for free, helping groups around the world monitor changes in the environment. back |
Google Earth Engine, A planetary-scale platform for Earth science data & analysis, ' Google Earth Engine combines a multi-petabyte catalog of satellite imagery and geospatial datasets with planetary-scale analysis capabilities. Scientists, researchers, and developers use Earth Engine to detect changes, map trends, and quantify differences on the Earth's surface. Earth Engine is now available for commercial use, and remains free for academic and research use. back |
Grenville Cross, Judges handling national security cases in Hong Kong remain true to their judicial oath, defying critics, ' As the national security law incorporates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, with its basic protections, and recognises the rights of suspects, its drafters obviously envisaged that criminal proceedings brought under it would be no less fair than any other trials.
This should more than satisfy objective observers, as also should Cheung’s assurance that the Hong Kong judiciary is “fully committed to maintaining an independent, impartial and efficient judicial system which upholds the rule of law”.' back |
Gretchen Vogel, Malaria-preventing bed nets save children’s lives—with impacts that can last for decades, ' Since the 1990s, bed nets impregnated with insecticides have been an invaluable tool for malaria prevention. Babies and young children who sleep under them are far less likely to die of the disease. But some scientists have worried this might increase the risk of contracting malaria later in life by preventing development of the immunity that protects older children and adults in areas where malaria is common. Now, an ambitious new study allays those fears. Thousands of people who slept under bed nets as youngsters in the late 1990s and early 2000s in Tanzania still have a significant survival advantage through young adulthood over peers who did not.' back |
Jack Schafer, Opinion | The Dangerous Appeal of Neil Young’s Righteous Censorship , ' The thing about bunk is that often it’s a demand-side phenomenon, not just a supply-side one. The standard human appetite for convenient, reductionist theories tends to soar during times of crisis as people seek easy explanations for the hard problems. Why anybody at this late date would still reject the vaccine is beyond me, but vaccine resistance would persist even if Rogan vanished.' back |
James Martin, How Do You Respond When an Anti-Vaxxer Dies of Covid?, ' When it comes to schadenfreude, a line from Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited” is apposite. The dotty father of Charles Ryder, the protagonist, is hosting a meal at home. The father mentions someone whose business has failed, and another guest chuckles.
“You find his misfortune the subject of mirth?” Charles’s father retorts.
It’s a lighthearted scene, probably not meant to carry as much weight as other scenes in Waugh’s novel about moral choices. But it has always stuck with me. Don’t find another person’s misery the subject of mirth, glee or satisfaction. Doing so is mean. It’s immoral. And one day you may be the unfortunate one.' back |
Jeffrey Nicholls (2010), Essay 13: On modelling the world, ' Over the last few centuries, science has provided us with a quite comprehensive picture of our habitat that begins with the initial singularity predicted by general relativity and traces the evolution of the Universe to its present state.
To physicists, this work is an approach to a ‘theory of everything’. It provides a good foundation for practical technologies like computers, power grids, space vehicles and medicine, but has little to say about human spiritual issues. The purpose of this article is to extend the physical model into the spiritual realm, rather as Aristotle generated metaphysics out of physics.
Traditionally the majority of philosophers and theologians have postulated a very real and sharp distinction between such categories of being as spiritual and material, living and non-living, intelligent and not-intelligent, eternal and ephemeral and so on.
Here I propose a model that embraces these and all other distinctions in the world in a single consistent picture.' back |
Jeffrey Nicholls (2019), A prolegomenon to scientific theology, ' This thesis is an attempt to carry speculative theology beyond the apogee it reached in the medieval work of Thomas Aquinas into the world of empirical science. Since the time of Aquinas, our understanding of the Universe has increased enormously. The ancient theologians not only conceived a perfect
God, but they also saw the world as a very imperfect place. Their reaction was to place God outside the world.
I will argue that we live in a Universe which approaches infinity in size and complexity, is as perfect as can be, and fulfils all the roles traditionally attributed to God, creator, lawmaker and judge.' back |
Jeffrey Nicholls (2019a), Entropy and Metaethics, ' If we reject divine revelation as the foundation for morality we must find our grounds within the universe, which is tantamount to the naturalization of morality. So the question becomes 'how does nature embrace spirit as the sovereign ground for moral value?' . . . I propose an answer in terms of what Einstein considered to be the most fundamental and irrefutable law of nature, the second law of thermodynamics, which expresses the fact that entropy almost never decreases. In a more morally relevant frame, this law expresses the fact that the universe is inherently creative. Human spirituality, whatever it may be, has emerged from the natural world.' back |
Jeffrey Nicholls (2021), Essay 30: Cognitive cosmology, ' A path to cognitive cosmology is relatively clear: we begin with the initial singularity and identify it as the primordial quantum of action, identical to the traditional God described by Aristotle and Aquinas. We then examine the ancient Christian theological and psychological doctrine of the Trinity devised by Augustine and Aquinas to explain how one God can become three. The next step is to identify the features of this theological structure that we find in the universe back near the very beginning when energy, quantum mechanics, spacetime and gravitation first emerged within the initial singularity.' back |
Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky, ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
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Matt Johnson, Opinion | Forget NATO: Ukraine's Problem Is Russian Imperialism , ' Moscow refuses to accept Ukrainian independence today for a simple reason: because Vladimir Putin believes the two countries should be one.
This is why Russia has positioned more than 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border and demanded that NATO formally declare it will never allow Kyiv to join the alliance – the most brazen act of imperial coercion this century.
Don’t blame NATO expansion for this pointless and terrifying crisis. Don’t blame the post-Cold War hubris of the West. Blame Russian imperialism and the monumental sense of historical grievance that animates every decision the Kremlin makes.' back |
Visual system - Wikipedia, Visual system - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The visual system is the part of the central nervous system which gives organisms the ability to process visual detail, as well as enabling the formation of several non-image photo response functions. It detects and interprets information from visible light to build a representation of the surrounding environment.' back |
Wojciech Hubert Zurek (2008), 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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