Darwin (1859), Charles, The Origin of Species: By Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, Cambridge University Press 1859, 2009 ' It's hard to talk about The Origin of Species without making statements that seem overwrought and fulsome. But it's true: this is indeed one of the most important and influential books ever written, and it is one of the very few groundbreaking works of science that is truly readable. . . . Darwin's friend and "bulldog" T.H. Huxley said upon reading the Origin, "How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that." Alfred Russel Wallace had thought of the same theory of evolution Darwin did, but it was Darwin who gathered the mass of supporting evidence—on domestic animals and plants, on variability, on sexual selection, on dispersal—that swept most scientists before it.' Mary Ellen Curtin 
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Drake (1995), Stillman, Galileo at Work: His Scientific Biography, Dover Publications 1995 Jacket: Based entirely on original sources, Professor Drake's scrupulously researched study includes translations of much correspondence and other material previously unpublished in English. The result is a volume of exceptional richness and immediacy that paints a vivid portrait of one of history's greatest minds, leaving the philosophical implications of his work aside and focussing on the enduring scientific achievements that represent Galileo's true legacy to mankind.' 
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Eliade (1981), Mircea, and Willard T. Trask (translator), A History of Religious Beliefs and Ideas Volume 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries, U of Chicago Press (1981) "No one has done so much as Mr. Eliade to inform literature students in the West about 'primitive' and Oriental religions. . . . Everyone who cares about the human adventure will find new information and new angles of vision."-Martin E. Marty, New York Times Book Review 
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Feynman (1965), Richard P, and Albert P Hibbs, Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals, McGraw Hill 1965 Preface: 'The fundamental physical and mathematical concepts which underlie the path integral approach were first developed by R P Feynman in the course of his graduate studies at Princeton, ... . These early inquiries were involved with the problem of the infinite self-energy of the electron. In working on that problem, a "least action" principle was discovered [which] could deal successfully with the infinity arising in the application of classical electrodynamics.' As described in this book. Feynman, inspired by Dirac, went on the develop this insight into a fruitful source of solutions to many quantum mechanical problems.  
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Kuhn (1996), Thomas S, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, U of Chicago Press 1962, 1970, 1996 Introduction: 'a new theory, however special its range of application, is seldom just an increment to what is already known. Its assimilation requires the reconstruction of prior theory and the re-evaluation of prior fact, an intrinsically revolutionary process that is seldom completed by a single man, and never overnight.' [p 7]  
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Lonergan (1992), Bernard J F, c(Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan : Volume 3), University of Toronto Press 1992 '. . . Bernard Lonergan's masterwork. Its aim is nothing less than insight into insight itself, an understanding of understanding' 
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Omnes (2002), Roland, and Arturo Sangalli (translator), Quantum Philosophy: Understanding and Interpreting Contemporary Science, Princeton University Press 2002 From Booklist 'Einstein and Aristotle meet and shake hands in this illuminating exposition of the unexpected return of common sense to modern science. A companion volume to Omnes' earlier Understanding Quantum Mechanics (1999), this book recounts—with mercifully little mathematical detail—how this century's pioneering researchers severed the ties that for millennia had anchored science within the bounds of clear and intuitive perceptions of the world. As an abstruse mathematical formalism replaced the visual imagination, scientists jettisoned normal understandings of cause and effect, of coherence and continuity, setting science adrift from philosophical conceptions going back as far as Democritus. But when theorists recently began to weigh the "consistent histories" of various quantum events, the furthest frontiers of science became strangely familiar, as rigorous logic revalidated much of classical physics and many of the perceptions of common sense. With a contagious sense of wonder, Omnes invites his readers, who need no expertise beyond an active curiosity, to share in the exhilarating denouement of humanity's 2,500-year quest to fathom the natural order. And in a tantalizing conclusion, he beckons readers toward the mystery that still shrouds the origins of formulas that physicists love for their beauty even before testing them for their truth. An essential acquisition for public library science collections.' Bryce Christensen 
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Popper (1972), Karl Raimund, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, Routledge and Kegan Paul 1972 Preface: 'The way in which knowledge progresses, and expecially our scientific knowledge, is by unjustified (and unjustifiable) anticipations, by guesses, by tentative solutions to our problems, by conjectures. These conjectures are controlled by criticism; that is, by attempted refutations, which include severely critical tests.' [p viii]  
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Whitehead (1979), Alfred North, Process and Reality (Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh 1927-28), Free Press 1979 'Studied this in college and was totally blown away! Process & Reality is, in a nutshell, mathematics-based, process metaphysics, with quantum mechanics thrown in for good measure. Say that 3 times fast! Given that he wrote this in 1927-28, many of the concepts he proposed were way ahead of the times. The concepts he proposed were similar to Spinoza & Meister Eckhart, although more advanced than either one. I found it fascinating! I was a Philosophy major at the time & this was one of the first texts that really ignited my passion for philosophy & quantum mechanics. I would recommend this to Philosophers, Physicists, and anyone who is just naturally inquisitive about the way the world and its parts work.' Amazon customer Just ME 
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Al Jazeera and Agencies, ' Pope says Ukraine war ‘a crime against humanity’ in annual speech', ' In his yearly address to diplomats, Pope Francis has denounced Russia’s war in Ukraine, Iran’s treatment of protesters and the damaging of government buildings in Brazil by followers of the country’s far-right ex-president. . . The pope denounced the “wake of death and destruction” caused by Russia’s nearly-year-long offensive in Ukraine, describing the war as “a crime against God and humanity”. . . . Francis condemned Tehran’s use of the death penalty against demonstrators who are demanding greater freedoms for women. . . . In a broader comment on women’s rights globally, the pope said women in many countries are still treated as “second-class citizens”. . . . Francis expressed alarm over a “weakening of democracy” in the Americas, citing the storming of government buildings in Brazil on Sunday by supporters of former populist leader Jair Bolsonaro.' back

Centre for Process Studies, Mission and History, ' Influenced by the work of Alfred North Whitehead and John B. Cobb, Jr., CPS is dedicated to the expansive exploration of ever-new sectors of academia and society through the transformative and ever-transforming tradition of process thinking. Process thinkers engage many different religious traditions and non-religious worldviews, working to both create positive social change and protect the natural environment. Among the Center’s publications are: Process Studies, the leading refereed journal in the field; Process Perspectives, a popular newsmagazine; and multiple series of books and publications stemming from its various projects.; back

Codec - Wikipedia, Codec - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'A codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding or decoding a digital data stream or signal. Codec is a portmanteau of coder-decoder or, less commonly, compressor-decompressor.' back

Damian Thompson (23_01_11), Cardinal Pell’s righteous fury at the Vatican’s theological direction, back

Feynman, Leighton & Sands: FLP I:22, The Feynman Lectures on Physics: I:22 Algebra , ' In our study of oscillating systems we shall have occasion to use one of the most remarkable, almost astounding, formulas in all of mathematics. From the physicist’s point of view we could bring forth this formula in two minutes or so, and be done with it. But science is as much for intellectual enjoyment as for practical utility, so instead of just spending a few minutes on this amazing jewel, we shall surround the jewel by its proper setting in the grand design of that branch of mathematics which is called elementary algebra.' back

George Pell, The Catholic Church must free itself from this ‘toxic nightmare’, 'Shortly before he died on Tuesday, Cardinal George Pell wrote the following article for The Spectator in which he denounced the Vatican’s plans for its forthcoming ‘Synod on Synodality’ as a ‘toxic nightmare’. The booklet produced by the Synod, to be held in two sessions this year and next year, is ‘one of the most incoherent documents ever sent out from Rome’, says Pell. Not only is it ‘couched in neo-Marxist jargon’, but it is ‘hostile to the apostolic tradition’ and ignores such fundamental Christian tenets as belief in divine judgment, heaven and hell. [Damian Thompson] back

George Scialabba, What Were We Thinking: The intolerable inquities we take for granted, ' Unless we have reached the end point of humankind’s moral development, it is pretty certain that the average educated human of the twenty-third century will look back at the average educated human of the twenty-first century and ask incredulously about a considerable number of our most cherished moral and political axioms, “How could they have believed that?” . . . So let’s interrogate some of our beliefs about political morality with the eyes of our descendants. Two four-letter words lie at the heart of contemporary America’s public morality: “free” and “fair.” . . . Our twenty-third-century descendants may ask—they will ask—how we could have tolerated such unfairness; but they won’t ask how we could have believed such inequalities to be fair, because we don’t, most of us, believe them to be fair. Let’s instead consider a different question: whether our present-day ideals of fairness and freedom, even if we lived up to them, would satisfy our descendants.' back

Graham Readfearn, George Pell saw climate science as a dangerous religious dogma – in the end his hardline stance held the church back, 'The late Cardinal George Pell left a legacy of climate science denial which – in his later years – became ever more distanced from reality and the position of the Catholic church. For decades in newspaper columns and speeches, Pell popularised climate denial talking points to dismiss the science of global heating and to brand environmentalists as hysterical and in the grip of a pseudo-religion. In one 2011 interview with Catholic media, Pell said: “In the past, pagans sacrificed animals and even humans in vain attempts to placate capricious and cruel gods. Today, they demand a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions". back

Huygens-Fresnel principle - Wikipedia, Huygens-Fresnel principle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Huygens–Fresnel principle (named after Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens and French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel) states that every point on a wavefront is itself the source of spherical wavelets, and the secondary wavelets emanating from different points mutually interfere. The sum of these spherical wavelets forms a new wavefront. As such, the Huygens-Fresnel principle is a method of analysis applied to problems of luminous wave propagation both in the far-field limit and in near-field diffraction as well as reflection. ' back

Janusz Bugajski, The benefits of Russia’s coming disintegration, ' We are currently witnessing an unfolding revolution in global security that Western policy makers are clearly unprepared for — the impending collapse of the Russian Federation. Instead of planning contingencies for external spillovers and capitalizing on Russia’s de-imperialization, however, Western officials appear to be stuck in a bygone era, believing they can return to the post-Cold War status quo, with some even offering Moscow security guarantees to keep the country intact. But Russia is a failed state. It’s been unable to transform itself into a nation-state, a civic state or even a stable imperial state. It is a federation in name only, as the central government pursues a policy of ethnic and linguistic homogenization and denies any powers to the country’s 83 republics and regions. . . . ' back

Jeffrey Nicholls (2017), Computing power of a grain of sand: the calculation, Quantum theory has taught us that there is more computing power in a grain of sand than all the computers on the planet. Here is the calculation. We let our grain of sand weigh a microgram. Einstein's formula E = mc² tells us that this is [equivalent to] (10^-9 kilograms) × (3E8 metres per second)² = 9 ×10⁷ Joules, say 100 million. The Planck-Einstein formula f = E/h relates frequency to energy. Filling in the numbers, f = 10⁸ Joule / (6.63×10^-34 Joule-seconds) = ≈ 10⁴¹ cycles per second, that is computations per second. If every one of us, about 10 billion, or 10¹⁰ has a teraflop computer capable of performing 10¹² operations per second the total power is 10²² computations per second, ie about 10¹⁹ times slower than the grain of sand. back

Jenny Hocking (23_01_13), When family and firm collide: escaping a royal horror story, ' This relationship and its devastating impact is the focus of the Netflix series, and it makes harrowing viewing. No-one can survive unscathed from such an endless denunciation of their very essence, their character, motivations, and life’s ambitions, as Meghan Markle faced over the last 6 years. It was unrelentingly brutal, a campaign ‘of inarguable racism, sexism and sheer hatefulness’, and the more they kicked back the harder the ‘royal rota’ came. ‘Constantly just picked at by these vultures’ as Diana, whose presence haunts every page of Spare, described it.' back

Laplace's demon - Wikipedia, Laplace's demon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.' A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, Essai philosophique dur les probabilites introduction to the second edition of Theorie analytique des probabilites based on a lecture given in 1794. back

Lara Feigel, After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz review – in praise of visionary women, ' A lot of feminist novelists are looking backwards right now: think of Lauren Groff’s Matrix, set in a 12th-century convent. It’s as if, as women lose their freedoms and their voice in the present, and we face the growing knowledge that things may never truly change, we need to pause to take stock and learn what we can from our ancestors; understanding, as Woolf did, which of our instincts were theirs. In the Sappho-Cassandra dialectic Schwartz brings something new and necessary to the dance across time, and it’s a dialectic in which our embodied lives are central. At once breathlessly, carnally beautiful and doomed to assault by medical neglect and male power, the female body emerges here prepared to fight for itself in endlessly flexible, sensual forms of collectivity. back

Maeve McGregor, https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/01/09/zali-steggall-indigenous-voice-advertising-laws/, ' “I look at the January 6 insurrection as an absolute warning sign to all liberal democracies around the power of misinformation and disinformation,” independent MP Zali Steggall told Crikey.. The Warringah MP said it was largely against this backdrop that she reintroduced a tweaked version of her “Stop the Lies” bill in the final sitting week of Parliament last year. . . . \ “We’re at a really crucial juncture in Australian history and Indigenous reconciliation,” she said of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum. “But many people don’t realise that, unlike in business and commerce, where consumers are protected against misleading and deceptive advertising, it’s perfectly legal to lie in political advertising. It’s just a free-for-all.' back

Matthew Walther, Pope Benedict Wasn’t Conservative. He Was Something Much More Surprising., back

Nicole Lee & Suzanne Nielsen, How does methadone work as a heroin-replacement therapy? And what about the longer-acting buprenorphine?, ' Around one in three people who try heroin become dependent, and around one in five people who use opioids long-term for pain become dependent. Research shows the most effective treatment for heroin dependence is to replace it with a similar but longer-acting opioid – such as methadone – in a controlled dose to reduce the need to use heroin. This is called “opioid agonist treatment”.' . . . Heroin dependence is a health condition and there is very good evidence that receiving any form of opioid agonist treatment saves lives, so it is critical that people can access it when they need it.' back

Noether's theorem - Wikipedia, Noether's theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Noether's (first) theorem states that any differentiable symmetry of the action of a physical system has a corresponding conservation law. The theorem was proved by German mathematician Emmy Noether in 1915 and published in 1918. The action of a physical system is the integral over time of a Lagrangian function (which may or may not be an integral over space of a Lagrangian density function), from which the system's behavior can be determined by the principle of least action.' back

P. A. M. Dirac (1933), The Lagrangian in Quantum Mechanics, ' . . . there is an alternative formulation [to the Hamiltonian] in classical dynamics, provided by the Lagrangian. This requires one to work in terms of coordinates and velocities instead of coordinates and momenta. The two formulation are closely related but there are reasons for believing that the Lagrangian one is more fundamental. . . . Secondly the lagrangian method can easily be expressed relativistically, on account of the action function being a relativistic invariant; . . .. ' [This article was first published in Physikalische Zeitschrift der Sowjetunion, Band 3, Heft 1 (1933), pp. 64–72.] back

Paul E. Smaldino & Richard McElreath, The natural selection of bad science, ' Abstract Poor research design and data analysis encourage false-positive findings. Such poor methods persist despite perennial calls for improvement, suggesting that they result from something more than just misunderstanding. The persistence of poor methods results partly from incentives that favour them, leading to the natural selection of bad science. This dynamic requires no conscious strategizing—no deliberate cheating nor loafing—by scientists, only that publication is a principal factor for career advancement. Some normative methods of analysis have almost certainly been selected to further publication instead of discovery. In order to improve the culture of science, a shift must be made away from correcting misunderstandings and towards rewarding understanding. We support this argument with empirical evidence and computational modelling. We first present a 60-year meta-analysis of statistical power in the behavioural sciences and show that power has not improved despite repeated demonstrations of the necessity of increasing power. To demonstrate the logical consequences of structural incentives, we then present a dynamic model of scientific communities in which competing laboratories investigate novel or previously published hypotheses using culturally transmitted research methods. As in the real world, successful labs produce more ‘progeny,’ such that their methods are more often copied and their students are more likely to start labs of their own. Selection for high output leads to poorer methods and increasingly high false discovery rates. We additionally show that replication slows but does not stop the process of methodological deterioration. Improving the quality of research requires change at the institutional level.' back

Ronald Desmet (Stanford Ecyclopedia of Philosophy), Alfred North Whitehead, ' Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) was a British mathematician and philosopher best known for his work in mathematical logic and the philosophy of science. In collaboration with Bertrand Russell, he co-authored the landmark three-volume Principia Mathematica (1910, 1912, 1913). Later, he was instrumental in pioneering the approach to metaphysics now known as process philosophy.' back

Slut-shaming - Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slut-shaming, the free encyclopedia, ' Slut-shaming is the practice of criticizing people, especially women and girls, who are perceived to violate expectations of behavior and appearance regarding issues related to sexuality. The term is used to reclaim the word slut and empower women and girls to have agency over their own sexuality. It may also be used in reference to gay men, who may face disapproval for promiscuous sexual behaviors. Slut-shaming rarely happens to heterosexual men. Examples of slut-shaming include being criticized or punished for: violating dress code policies by dressing in sexually provocative ways; requesting access to birth control; having premarital, extramarital, casual, or promiscuous sex; or engaging in prostitution. It can also include being victim-blamed for being raped or otherwise sexually assaulted.' back

Wigner's theorem - Wikipedia, Wigner's theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Wigner's theorem, proved by Eugene Wigner in 1931, is a cornerstone of the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics. . . . Ray space, in mathematics known as projective Hilbert space, is the space of all unit vectors in Hilbert space up to the equivalence relation of differing by a phase factor. By Wigner's theorem, any transformation of ray space that preserves the absolute value of the inner products can be represented by a unitary or antiunitary transformation of Hilbert space, which is unique up to a phase factor. As a consequence, the representation of a symmetry group on ray space can be lifted to a projective representation or sometimes even an ordinary representation on Hilbert space.' back