natural theology

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Notes

Sunday 4 December 2022 - Saturday 10 December 2022

[Notebook: DB 88: Salvation]

[page 208]

Sunday 4 December 2022

Athanasian Creed produced a definitive version of the roles of the Trinity but also introduced a sense of inconsistency [expressed in the Shield of the Trinity] which is solved by the introduction of space and the quantum notions of distinction and identify in the differentiation of fermions and bosons. Athanasian Creed - Wikipedia, Shield of the Trinity - Wikipedia, Fermion - Wikipedia, Boson - Wikipedia

[page 209]

McGreevy, title page: Catholicism is an ideology. John T. McGreevy (2022): Catholicism: A Global History from the French Revolution to Pope Francis, Ideology - Wikipedia

McGreevy page 8: Workmeister: ' "Religion . . . is . . . the essential or what makes human wiser, better and happier: the church is only something accidental and exterior".'

McGreevy is well worth the effort and will serve to add confusion and strength to my critique of the Catholic Church 230 years after the French Revolution. Reformation, Revolution, Ultramontanism, me.

The Hebrew revolution in theology was monotheism. The Christian revolution was the Trinity. We can now solve the apparent contradictions in the trinity with quantum mechanics and exploit the theoretical foundation of quantum mechanics to outline the the politics of world peace. This revolves around the subtle interplay of identity and distinction implicit in spacetime, fermions and bosons. Monotheism - Wikipedia, Trinity - Wikipedia

The ultramontaine (papal) wing of the Church fought back against the French evolution and democratic tendencies by revetting to populist devotion, rosary beads, virigin mary's and the comfort of settled dogma [the milieu]. Ultramontanism - Wikipedia

Most of my life I have been a apolitical dummling, blind to the central role that politics plays in theology and trying to be like Einstein, overcoming politics with faultlessly transparent theory, along Feynman's lines of physical understanding, which is how I want to write the Political Trinity essay after absorbing McGreevy, whose book [Catholicism] is 100% politics and 0% theology. Feynman Lectures on Physics: Chapter 2: Differential Calculus of Vector Fields

We build the economy on the economics of the living body, a living wage for every cell regardless of activity, topped up to enable whatever activity is demanded of it, distributed by a suitable signalling mechanism as we find in our bodies. The fundamental structure must be modified to deal with human freedom, aspiration and supererogation.

Monday 5 December 2022

There can be little doubt that Homo sapiens is innately religious [and this is a consequence of our conscious intelligence]. Our intelligent grasp of cause and effect suggests the existence of invisible powerful and wise beings in control of our world. As we have spread from Africa and become isolated from one another, this idea took on thousands of forms in thousands of languages and cultures. Often, as in the Ancient Greek classics attributed to Homer, there were numerous gods, each with characteristic super powers who interfered in human lives. Homer - Wikipedia

The Hebrew tribes found themselves in a milieu populated by many Gods, but took a definitive step towards monotheism attributing all divine action to one personality, often known as Yahweh. The Hebrew Bible provides

[page 210]

us with quite a detailed narrative of the interactions between Yahweh and their people. Yahweh claimed to be a loving parent, but often failed to provide for their people as their people often failed in gratitude to their God. The relationship between Yahweh and the people ends with the Book of Job where Yahweh is shown to have failed Job in their attempts to demonstrate to Satan that the love of their people [for them] is unconditional. Yahweh - Wikipedia, Jack Miles (1996); God: A Biography

The Catholic Church is very strong on natural law as fixed by God and themself, so it seems appropriate to apply natural law as it is known to physicists to theology as Augustine and Aquinas have applied their knowledge of psychology to the elucidation of the Trinity.

Tuesday 6 December 2022

McGreevy's book has provided me with a lot of insight into the history of the Church that has unfolded before and during my lifetime, but most of it is a matter of politics. The Church has stuck fast to its imaginary business plan throughout this period continuing to deceive millions of people with its theological propaganda. My perception that it needs a revolutionary overhaul in its theological foundations remains completely valid and I am strongly reassured by this book that the introduction of scientific method into theology is essential to reorient the Church toward reality. The fact that it remains substantially undemocratic and antiscientific, supporting fascism as much as democracy and mythology as much as reality means that radical change remains as necessary as ever. Furthermore, I continue to feel that my tiny contribution, finally rendered rather incoherently in Cognitive Cosmology, is on the right track, and I am justified in pursuing it for the rest of my life. I can preach these ideas with a clear conscience which was totally impossible for me when I was a member of the Order of Preachers. My world is looking good and my motivation is high given the change that I am trying for is one whole bit, from the world is NOT divine to the world IS divine, a steady drumbeat since 1967. Change of momentum = force × time, change of energy = force × distance, energy = action /time. Small boy tips over global church. Jeffrey Nicholls (1967): How Universal is the Universe?

Wednesday 7 December 2022

On getting a voice. McGreevy: John Paul II regretted that some Catholics had sought an impossible compromise between Marxism and Christianity. The deeper problem, hardly mentioned by McGreevy is the impossible compromise between Chriatianity and reality.

[page 211]

Movement is the solution to pain, replacing obsolete structures with new. A source needs both a body (mass) and a voice (participation in the system).

Probably the best thing we can say about the Catholic Church is that it is a ship of fools, clueless about navigating in the modern [scientific] world.

It requires a considerable power of abstract thought to appreciate the full implications of human symmetry and it is much easier to break up into instances of us and them, where us may be a duality, a family, a tribe, town, city, nation, religion or some other subset of the whole species. The power of the Trinity and quantum theories is that they show us the orthogonal relations between the absolute symmetry and the absolute individuality of every element in the symmetry,

McGreevey page 422: ' The ultramontane milieu constructed in the wake of the French Revolution is sliding into history beyond living memory. A Catholic baptized today is as distant from the Second Vatican Council as Joseph Ratzinger and Karl Rahner were in 1961 from the nineteenth century. Let's hope that these young Catholics will be better positioned, in the words of Francis, to be "citizens of our respective nations and of the entire word, builders of a new social bond".'

An amazing effort. A whole book about Catholicism in which the word God does not appear, and is not to be found in the index.

Now to skim through Lonergan on the Trinity.

Theology and religion are both universal human social essentials. What actually counts is their quality. Catholic theology and the Catholic religion are not good enough to unite the whole human race. Only scientific theology, feeding off the unity of the universe, can influence a successful global religion [religious symmetry].

The big religions, Christianity, Islam, Hindu, Buddhist are all descended from a mythological theology and so they all miss out, like a technology with no scientific basis. They are all descended from military theologies of murderous competition whereas the real theology, the theory of evolution, is a well balanced mixture of chance and necessity, competition and cooperation. Something like this. Get the science right and the technology will follow, optics, electronics, metallurgy, etc etc. Margaret Macmillan (2020): War: How Conflict Shaped Us

Thursday 8 December 2022

Reading my old comments on Lonergan vol 12 and pleased to see that I

[page 212]

mostly agree with them. What Lonergan writes here reminds me of myself back in the days when I was a sucker for the Catholic Church and still had not realized that their loving God is a murdering child abuser who tortured and killed his own child, which is in effect the world, which he created to fail. The Catholic Church had certainly progressed this divine agenda by its "infallible" propagation of falsehood. Bernard Lonergan (2007): The Triune God: Systematics

My most powerful trait is absolute idiosyncracy resulting from my feeling that I travel fastest when I travel alone, and only when I finally get to the destination I seek, still rather obscure, can I stop and start passing on the things that I have seen. In the past none of my three intimate partners have taken the slightest interest in my work [possibly seeing it as quixotic obsession] and all my spare energy has been devoted to their well being, remodelling and building houses, editing and producing books, helping with education and helping to bring up our children. Now that I am faced with the prospect of a fourth such relationship I have been slightly wary of losing my independence, but now that I am getting old the support of a person less than half my age seems too valuable to pass up and I feel that the boost in care and morale that I feel [now that I am on the home run] will keep my productivity going at the customary rate.

Back to McGreevy and the Milieu, a massive institutional creation arising from the efforts of hundreds of millions or people for thousands of years, but strangely disconnected from reality. Our salvation will come from connecting to reality, removing the milieu to establish consistency with ort planet Earth.

Friday 9 December 2022

Lonergan vol 12 Chapter 1 pp 7-123 is fundamentally devoted to justifying Lonergan's idea that there is a real distinction between the transcendent knowledge of God embodied in scripture and Catholic interpretation of scripture which he takes to be infallibly certain dogma, and the proportionate human knowledge which uses his theological methodology to understand these dogmas. All this is written in the context of human sin which [allegedly] blinds us to reality , and supernatural grace which helps us to understand the word of god. The fundamental political aim of all this is to lend credibility to the mythological rubbish about sin and redemption. This lies at the heart of the Catholic Church's business plan, which rests on the claim that it is an infallible autocracy with a direct line to its imaginary God. Nevertheless, insofar as Aristotle and Aquinas have struck a vein of truth, I see an opening to replace Aristotle with quantum theory and give new life to the idea of god.

[page 213]

I am beginning to see an interesting parallel between the positions of Lonergan and Einstein. As McGreevy has pointed out, the Catholic Church locked itself into the ultramontane position to try to save itself from the shocks of the French Revolution and the Second Vatican Council that both had the effect of opening [the Church] up to the human desire for self control, to have a voice in their lives. The Church's attempt to force top down control over the human spirit was shattered with its crimes against humanity via clerical sexual abuse and the subsequent even more damaging attempts to cover up these egregious institutional evils. Spotlight (film) - Wikipedia, Kieran Tapsell (2014): Potiphar's Wife: The Vatican's Secret and Child Sexual Abuse

Lonergan is an ultramontanist who locked himself into a Denzinger view of Catholic dogma, attempting to put together a coherent expression of the logical contradictions inherent in the view that God is both absolutely simple and yet comprises three independent and equal personalities. Henricus Denzinger (1864 - 1997): Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarartionum de rebus fidei et morum.

Einstein locked himself into [a classical interpretation of] the principle of general covariance which works beautifully with special and general relativity, but which cannot deal with quantum mechanics. Einstein felt that the laws of nature are totally independent of observers, whereas the reality of quantum mechanics is that it is about particles observing each other and such interpersonal relationships are unpredictable because every meeting is a personal meeting whose [specific] outcome cannot be predicted. Albert Einstein (1934): On the Method of Theoretical Physics

The Church, like Einstein, postulates that God is an absolute, omniscient and omnipotent entity which stands completely above humanity. The popes have tried, like dictators the world over, to control human personal relationships which, like quantum mechanical relationships are unpredictable and interpersonal. So the variety of human experience exceeds papal control and all the attempts at control amount to an abuse of power, suppressing sexuality because they see it as the world of the devil. Albert Einstein: God does not play dice

The only way out of these dilemmas is to recognise that power comes from below, and since the entropy of the past is [generally] less than the entropy of the future, the past cannot control the future. Randomness is a consequence of interpersonal relationships and cannot be controlled by those relationships as requisite variety shows. Lonergan thinks that the dogma of the Trinity is a fixed and immutable state, but it cannot be. It is the essence of creation. There are an infinity of divine persons [sources] and Lonergan's ancient model of communication and intelligence cannot deal with the future any more than Einstein's misunderstanding of quantum mechanics. can deal with the creative power of an infinity of personal quantum particles. Here we have to abandon Lonergan's notion of transcendental determinism and open the divinity to self creation [of which the classical Trinity is but the first step]. I will struggle on reading about his Trinity, but it has no future. God creates itself, the Universe creates itself [as I describe in Cognitive Cosmology].

[page 214]

The Case of the Three Sided Dream. Rahsaan Roman Kirk. 'Sound was his life. "You can make music with anything. If they ain't got a piano, they get a phone book".' This, formally, is the versatility of Hilbert space. ' You could move the air with sound. You can move people with sound. Sound was his life'. "Rahsaan who did things that have never been done before. A man who had an agenda. "Adam Kahan (Director): The Case of the Three Sided Dream

'His religion was the religion of dreams.'

'He mainly wanted to be felt. Sound, ie time division multiplexing, comes first.

Joining energy, synchronization.

The root of theology is music. The [mathematical] root of music is Hilbert space, the full tonal gamut is 0 frequencies (energies) which may be superposed in any of a continuum of phase relationships.

A road is a symmetry

I feel that I am slowly getting closer to my Einstein moment when I can connect the doctrine of the Trinity to the creation of the world.

Saturday 10 December 2022

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Further reading

Books

Lonergan (2007), Bernard J F, and Michael G Shields (translator), Robert M Doran & H Daniel Monsour (editors), The Triune God: Systematics (Collected Works, volume 12>, University of Toronto press 2007 De Deo trino, or The Triune God, is the third great instalment on one particular strand in trinitarian theology, namely, the tradition that appeals to a psychological analogy for understanding trinitarian processions and relations. The analogy dates back to St Augustine but was significantly developed by St Thomas Aquinas. Lonergan advances it to a new level of sophistication by rooting it in his own highly nuanced cognitional theory and in his early position on decision and love. . . . This is truly one of the great masterpieces in the history of systematic theology, perhaps even the greatest of all time.' 
Amazon
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Macmillan (2020), Margaret, War: How Conflict Shaped Us, Profile Books 2020 ' In War, Professor Margaret MacMillan explores the deep links between society and war and the questions they raise. We learn when war began - whether among early homo sapiens or later, as we began to organise ourselves into tribes and settle in communities. We see the ways in which war reflects changing societies and how war has brought change - for better and worse. Economies, science, technology, medicine, culture: all are instrumental in war and have been shaped by it - without conflict it we might not have had penicillin, female emancipation, radar or rockets. Throughout history, writers, artists, film-makers, playwrights, and composers have been inspired by war - whether to condemn, exalt or simply puzzle about it. If we are never to be rid of war, how should we think about it and what does that mean for peace?'  
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McGreevy (2022), John T., Catholicism: A Global History from the French Revolution to Pope Francis , W W Norton 2022 ' A gripping story of how one of the world's most important institutions has evolved over the past two centuries. McGreevy spans the globe, from the Philippines to Indonesia to Canada, providing welcome polyphony to a story that can often feel hermetically European. We hear the voices of those who dedicated their lives to the poor; we hear the voices, too, of those who suffered at the hands of the Church. This is, by far, the best single-volume history of the modern Church currently available.--James Chappel "Commonweal" This is an excellent book that thoroughly lives up to its ambitions. Given the hyper-specialization of so much academic history these days, the accomplishment here is even more notable: a readable, thorough and judicious treatment of a global institution over more than two centuries.--Michael Sean Winters "National Catholic Reporter" ' 
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Miles (1996), Jack, God: A Biography, Vintage Books 1996 Jacket: 'Jack Miles's remarkable work examines the hero of the Old Testament . . . from his first appearance as Creator to his last as Ancient of Days. . . . We see God torn by conflicting urges. To his own sorrow, he is by turns destructive and creative, vain and modest, subtle and naive, ruthless and tender, lawful and lawless, powerful yet powerless, omniscient and blind.' 
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Tapsell (2014), Kieran, Potiphar's Wife: The Vatican's Secret and Child Sexual Abuse, ATF Press 2014 Back cover: 'For 1500 years the Catholic Church accepted that clergy who sexually abused children deserved to be stripped of their status as priests and then imprisoned. . . . That all changed in 1922 when Pope Pius XI issues his decree Crimen Sollicitationis that created a de facto 'privilege of clergy' by imposing the 'secret of the Holy Ofice' on all information obtained through the Church's canonical investigations. If the State did not know about these crimes, then there would be no State trials, and the matter could be treated as a purely canonical crime to be dealt with in secret in the Church courts.' 
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Links

Adam Kahan (Director), The Case of the Three Sided Dream, ' An exploration of the phenomenal life of multi-instrumentalist Rahsaan Roland Kirk, who went from blind infant, to child prodigy, to adult visionary, to political activist, and showman.' back

Albert Einstein, God does not play dice, ' Die Quantenmechanik ist sehr achtung-gebietend. Aber eine innere Stimme sagt mir, daß das doch nicht der wahre Jakob ist. Die Theorie liefert viel, aber dem Geheimnis des Alten bringt sie uns kaum näher. Jedenfalls bin ich überzeugt, daß der nicht würfelt. Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the "old one." I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.' back

Albert Einstein (1934), On the Method of Theoretical Physics, ' If you wish to learn from the theoretical physicist anything about the methods which he uses. I would give you the following piece of advice: Don't listen to his words, examine his achievements. For to a discoverer in that field, the constructs of his imagination appear so necessary and so natural that he is apt to treat them not as creations of his thoughts but as given realities.' back

Alex Lo, Even the West no longer thinks Western values are universal, ' The universality of triumph has been replaced by the defensive particularity of insecurity. Instead of spreading the Gospels, the most you can do is to defend them. But when you feel insecure, having 1,000 military bases worldwide and all the nukes in the world won’t help. back

Alexandra Witze (2022_11_02), JWST’s best images: spectacular stars and spiralling galaxies, Nature’s pick of the sharpest science shots this month is dedicated to the James Webb Space Telescope, which began peering into the Universe earlier this year. back

Amudalat Ajasa, No snowflakes are the same. These stunning close-up photos are proof, ' With every hearty snowfall that strikes Colorado, Persoff adds to his growing collection of over 100 stunning snowflake images. “They’re these transient structures made out of water vapor and dust, and they’re ethereal. They’re here for a short period of time and then they’re gone,” said Persoff, who has been taking pictures of snowflakes for six years. . . . Kenneth Libbrecht, a physics professor at the California Institute of Technology, said capturing beautiful crystals can be challenging because the average crystal is, “small … beat up, asymmetrical, [and] not branched. . . . Once an individual water droplet freezes, the tiny piece of ice acts like a sponge absorbing more water vapor from the air, causing the ice to grow. Other unfrozen water droplets in clouds evaporate and condense onto the ice. “The liquid first evaporates and then the vapor deposits on the snowflakes,” Libbrecht said. “It takes about 100,000 droplets to make a snowflake because the droplets are very small.” It takes just over a half an hour before a crystal grows to a few millimeters in size. Once the crystals are heavy enough, they fall.' back

Athanasian Creed - Wikipedia, Athanasian Creed - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Athanasian Creed, also called the Pseudo-Athanasian Creed and sometimes known as Quicunque Vult (or Quicumque Vult), which is both its Latin name and its opening words, meaning "Whosoever wishes", is a Christian statement of belief focused on Trinitarian doctrine and Christology. Used by Christian churches since the sixth century, it was the first creed to explicitly state the equality of the three hypostases of the Trinity.' 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

Charlie Wood & Merrill Sherman, Inside the Proton, the ‘Most Complicated Thing You Could Possibly Imagine’, ' The proton is a quantum mechanical object that exists as a haze of probabilities until an experiment forces it to take a concrete form. And its forms differ drastically depending on how researchers set up their experiment. Connecting the particle’s many faces has been the work of generations. “We’re kind of just starting to understand this system in a complete way,” said Richard Milner, a nuclear physicist at MIT. . . . Recently, Milner, together with Rolf Ent at Jefferson Lab, MIT filmmakers Chris Boebel and Joe McMaster, and animator James LaPlante, set out to transform a set of arcane plots that compile the results of hundreds of experiments into a series of animations of the shape-shifting proton. We’ve incorporated their animations into our own attempt to unveil its secrets.' back

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Wkipedia, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Wikipedia, the free encylopedia, ' Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (born 15 September 1977) is a Nigerian writer whose works include novels, short stories and nonfiction. She was described in The Times Literary Supplement as "the most prominent" of a "procession of critically acclaimed young anglophone authors [which] is succeeding in attracting a new generation of readers to African literature" particularly in her second home, the United States.' back

Daniela Kaleva, 'A state of aesthetic pleasure and satisfaction’: Pinchgut Opera’s Médée demands to be heard, ' Médée, by Thomas Corneille and Marc-Antoine Charpentier, is a masterpiece of French baroque opera, first performed in 1693 at the Académie Royale de Musique. The story explores themes of justice, loyalty, migration and family annihilation with pertinent relevance for an audience of the 21st century still suffering the consequences of the COVID pandemic. Knowing that her husband, the power-thirsty and spineless Jason (Michael Petruccelli), will betray her, Médée (Catherine Carby) attempts diplomacy. She is forced to enact justice by usurping her status and breaching the constricting social and political norms. In doing so, she breaks one of society’s greatest taboos: she kills her children.. 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

Feynman, Leighton and Sands FLP II_02, Chapter 2: Differential Calculus of Vector Fields, ' What it means really to understand an equation—that is, in more than a strictly mathematical sense—was described by Dirac. He said: “I understand what an equation means if I have a way of figuring out the characteristics of its solution without actually solving it.” So if we have a way of knowing what should happen in given circumstances without actually solving the equations, then we “understand” the equations, as applied to these circumstances. A physical understanding is a completely unmathematical, imprecise, and inexact thing, but absolutely necessary for a physicist. ' back

Global Religion Journalism Initiative, Whether to include or exclude LGBTQ people roils religions around world , ' Kalpana Jain, Senior Religion and Ethics Editor, The Conversation U.S. Editor's note: Despite many changes over the years in laws regarding the rights of LGBTQ people, the issue of their inclusion remains a thorny area for religious denominations around the world. Differences over whether to recognize same-sex marriage or ordain LGBTQ people as clergy are even leading to divisions within some faith groups. This week, The Associated Press, Religion News Service and The Conversation have teamed up to produce a series of reported stories and scholar commentary showing the institutional change in some denominations  – and also the resistance to it.' back

Henricus Denzinger (1864 - 1997), Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarartionum de rebus fidei et morum., ' With its unique wealth of official church documents and sources, it is an essential resource for theological work. Since its first edition in 1854, Denzinger has become a standard work and an indispensable tool for serious theological work. It faithfully reflects the history of the Church's faith and its development over the centuries. Indeed, its reference system has become an established part of citing important theological sources.' back

Homer - Wikipedia, Homer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In the Western classical tradition, Homer (. . . Ancient Greek: Ὅμηρος Hómēros) is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest of ancient Greek epic poets. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature. When he lived is unknown. Herodotus estimates that Homer lived 400 years before his own time, which would place him at around 850 BC, while other ancient sources claim that he lived much nearer to the supposed time of the Trojan War, in the early 12th century BC. Modern researchers appear to place Homer in the 7th or 8th centuries BC.' back

Ideology - Wikipedia, Ideology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones.] Formerly applied primarily to economic, political, or religious theories and policies, in a tradition going back to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, more recent use the term as mainly condemnatory. The term was coined by Antoine Destutt de Tracy, a French Enlightenment aristocrat and philosopher, who conceived it in 1796 as the "science of ideas" to develop a rational system of ideas to oppose the irrational impulses of the mob. In political science, the term is used in a descriptive sense to refer to political belief systems.' back

Jacob Madsen & Peter Robertson, Labour’s share of national income has been remarkably consistent since the 1860s, ' To get a perspective on this, we looked at how the labour share has evolved in Australia since the 1860s. Our results show labour’s share of national income has indeed declined since the 1970s, but there is no sense of any permanent trend. Over the past 160 years, despite massive growth and social change, labour’s share seems to have been remarkably resilient. . . . Email Twitter2 Facebook15 LinkedIn Print Inflation and sluggish wage growth have raised concerns that wages and salaries are becoming an increasing smaller share of national income. Australian Council of Trade Unions head Sally McManus has said labour’s share of income is at its lowest point since 1960 – “a shameful situation for us to be in as a country”. Read more: There's an obvious reason wages aren't growing, but you won't hear it from Treasury or the Reserve Bank To get a perspective on this, we looked at how the labour share has evolved in Australia since the 1860s. The Conversation needs 400 more donors. Help us by becoming one today. Our results show labour’s share of national income has indeed declined since the 1970s, but there is no sense of any permanent trend. Over the past 160 years, despite massive growth and social change, labour’s share seems to have been remarkably resilient. How we calculated labour’s share In 1860 the Australian economy revolved mainly around the production wool, wheat and gold. In the 1850s, Victoria produced more than a third of the world’s gold. So our data effectively covers the entire history of Australia since the birth of modern manufacturing. Our graph shows labour income divided by national income, which we refer to as “labour’s share of income”. Labour income is defined as employee compensation and imputed wages of the self-employed. National income is defined as gross domestic product minus capital depreciation, indirect taxes and imputed income from owner-occupied housing. The ratio of these two values is the proportion of income being paid to labour, with the remainder being earned by land rents and returns to capital, such as retained profits or dividends.' back

Jeffrey Nicholls (1967), How universal is the universe?, ' 61 The future is beyond our comprehension, but we can get an idea of it and speed its coming by studying what we already have. Contemplating the size and wonder of the universe as it stands in the light of its openness to the future must surely be a powerful incentive to men to love God. We have come a long way since the little world of St Thomas. Ours is open to all things, even participating in god. This is what I mean by universal. ' back

Jordana Siverstein, Like Primo Levi at Auschwitz, Behrouz Boochani testifies for the people who lived and died in a prison camp, ' Primo Levi, an Italian Jewish Holocaust survivor, famously wrote in his autobiography Survival in Auschwitz of the need for another language to articulate the feelings that people in the camps felt, given that just as our hunger is not that feeling of missing a meal, so our way of being cold has need of a new word. We say “hunger”, we say “tiredness”, “fear”, “pain”, we say “winter” and they are different things. They are free words, created and used by free men. Only a new language that could account for this radical difference could properly articulate what happened in the camps. . . . . In February 2016, Boochani began his piece, This is Manus Island. My prison. My torture. My humiliation, with the words: Twenty-eight months ago, with a shattered body which was ravenously hungry and deeply wounded, with bare feet and exhausted soul, I made the trip to the soil of free territory, to Australia. It was four days after the announcing the 19th of July law. Because of the law, I was exiled to Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, in the heart of the Pacific Ocean; and according to this law, it has been 28 months that I am being under pressure and tortured. In this short paragraph, these three precise sentences, Boochani testifies to his readers of the physicality, the embodied nature, of trauma. Of the ways that Australian policy tries to dictate peoples’ lives.' back

Matthew Sussex, What legacy will Vladimir Putin leave Russia?, ' Ultimately, Putin’s bequest to his people is grimness, not greatness. The next generation of Russians will be untrusted and unwanted in many of the world’s most prosperous and welcoming nations. Those who remain will be isolated, increasingly poor, and unable to shape their own destinies. For all the suffering Putin and his people have inflicted on others, we should not be triumphant about that. On the contrary, we should lament it.' back

Max G. Levy, Watch: New laser experiment reveals how high poop particles may blast after we flush, 'What happened next silenced the researchers. “We were all just stunned,” recalls Crimaldi. “We saw this incredibly energetic jet of particles shooting up towards the ceiling.” Their laser caught a cloud, or plume, of particles flying into the air — then lingering there. “People just started laughing. They were like, ‘Oh, my God, you've got to be kidding me. That's what happens when you flush the toilet? ” ' back

Médée (Charpentier) - Wikipedia, Médée (Charpentier) - Wikipedia, th free encyclopedia, ' Médée is a tragédie mise en musique in five acts and a prologue by Marc-Antoine Charpentier to a French libretto by Thomas Corneille. It was premiered at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris on December 4, 1693. Médée is the only opera Charpentier wrote for the Académie Royale de Musique. The opera was well reviewed by contemporary critics and commentators, including Sébastien de Brossard and Évrard Titon du Tillet, as well as Louis XIV whose brother attended several performances, as did his son; however, the opera only ran until March 15, 1694, although it was later revived at Lille.' back

Monotheism - Wikipedia, Monotheism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Monotheism (from Greek μόνος, monos, "single", and θεός, theos, "god") is the belief in the existence of one and only one god. Monotheism is characteristic of the Baha'i Faith, Christianity, Druzism, Hinduism Islam, Judaism, Samaritanism, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism.' back

Nature Editorial, To get serious on the circular economy, upend how global business works, ' Last but not least, basic science has a part to play. As the father of the circular-economy idea, Walter Stahel, wrote in Nature in 2016, “Excellence in metallurgical and chemical sciences is a precondition for a circular economy to succeed” (W. R. Stahel Nature 531, 435–438; 2016). Ultimate recyclability lies in learning how to disassemble materials at the atomic level, splitting up molecules to recycle atoms. Funding agencies should be scanning the horizon for promising approaches, in areas from metal alloys to plastics.' back

Shield of the Trinity - Wikipedia, Shield of the Trinity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Shield of the Trinity or Scutum Fidei is a traditional Christian visual symbol which expresses many aspects of the doctrine of the Trinity, summarizing the first part of the Athanasian Creed in a compact diagram. In late medieval England and France, this emblem was considered to be the heraldic arms of God (and of the Trinity).' back

Spotlight (film) - Wikipedia, Spotlight (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Spotlight is a 2015 American biographical drama film directed by Tom McCarthy and written by McCarthy and Josh Singer. The film follows The Boston Globe's "Spotlight" team, the oldest continuously operating newspaper investigative journalist unit in the United States, and its investigation into cases of widespread and systemic child sex abuse in the Boston area by numerous Roman Catholic priests.' back

Trinity - Wikipedia, Trinity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Christian doctrine of the Trinity (from Latin trinitas "triad", from trinus "threefold") defines God as three consubstantial persons, expressions, or hypostases: the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit; "one God in three persons". The three persons are distinct, yet are one "substance, essence or nature" homoousios). In this context, a "nature" is what one is, while a "person" is who one is.' back

Ultramontanism - Wikipedia, Ultramontanism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Ultramontanism is a clerical political conception within the Catholic Church that places strong emphasis on the prerogatives and powers of the Pope. It contrasts with Gallicanism, the belief that popular civil authority—often represented by the monarch's or state's authority—over the Church is comparable to that of the Pope.' . . . The term descends from the Middle Ages, when a non-Italian pope was said to be papa ultramontano – a pope from beyond the mountains (the Alps).. . . After the Protestant Reformation in France, the concept was revived but with its directionality reversed to indicate the man "beyond the mountains" in Italy: the Pope. The term ultramontain was used to refer to Catholics who supported papal authority in French affairs . . .. From the 17th century, ultramontanism became closely associated with the Jesuits.' back

Yahweh - Wikipedia, Yahweh - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Yahweh[a] was the national god of ancient Israel and Judah.[3The origins of his worship reach at least to the early Iron Age, and likely to the Late Bronze Age if not somewhat earlier. In the oldest biblical literature he possesses attributes typically ascribed to weather and war deities, fructifying the land and leading the heavenly army against Israel's enemies.[ Most scholars are of the view that at that time the Israelites were polytheistic and worshipped him alongside a variety of Canaanite gods and goddesses, including El, Asherah and Baal.' back

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