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Notes DB 91: Divine_Gravitation_2024

Sunday 14 July 2024 - Saturday 20 July 2024

Sunday 14 July 2024

[page 28]

My book is a personal and political statement built around a scientific hypothesis. For academic use I need to cut the science out of the politics and present it in its objective purity and this is the task for theological studies. Aquinas states that theology is a science based on the knowledge of God and the blessed. If the Universe is divine,

[page 29]

this is simply everyday experience.

So what do I call the politics free version of cognitive cosmology, which nevertheless brings us to the conclusion that cosmogenesis works by democratic capitalism? Cognitive cosmogenesis—a theory of everything [CC_AToE] might replace the title of the book, cognitive cosmology: theology in a divine universe (which I shall reserve for Theological Studies [CC_TinaDU]). And we need a third article for the mathematical journal to win the Clay $$ for Quantum Yang-Mills Theory. So the article: Some thoughts on Quantum Yang-Mills Theory. [Duplicate Cognitive Cosmogensis site and rename is CC_AToe].

Monday 15 July 2024

So.

Proofreading of Cognitive cosmogenesis - theology in a divine world complete. Now a version with all the personal references removed, a Theory of Everything written as a PhD thesis.

Article for mathematical journal aimed at Yang-Mills Clay prize.

Article for Theological Studies condensed version of thesis.

Fix up Cognitive Cosmogenesis - theology in a divine world website. Change Physical theology website to PhD thesis website, theory of everything. What to do first? Depersonalize theology

[page 30]

in a divine world.

Weak spots in 'the book' - no detail on P vs NP; no detail on the introduction of Minkowski space and special relativity. Can I make my dream of gaining influence by pure science come true after a deep exploration of the way I was mistreated by the Catholic Church outlined in a 'systematic integration of theology and physics'?

One of my big problems has been the intrusion of Catholicism into my life which has filled my head with a lot of rubbIsh that has wasted my time in correction, but now I see that Aristotle was into cognitive cosmogenesus with no help from the Catholic god I can bypass Aquinas altogether. Michael Bordt SJ (2011): Why Aristotle's God is not the Unmoved Mover

As usual I think I am going to write all these things in a week, but it will probably take the rest of the year if I do it properly. Dream on.

Tuesday 16 July 2024

The headline story for me is the idea that quantum mechanics is a form of democratic capitalism, something to distill into an article for the NYT? Mention Piketty, a reason for hope. Is there any Hope for the United States?

Is there hope for the United States?

Australia is a constitutional democracy which remains in effect a colony of Great Britain. Although the role of King Charles III, like that of his mother Queen Elizabeth II, is said to be purely ceremonial, the laws passed by the Australian Parliament do not become effective until they receive Royal Assent from the Governor General, our resident royal representative.

The myth of constitutional independence was busted on 11 November 1975 when the Whitlam Labor Government was dismissed by the Governor General, Sir John Kerr. Kerr then commissioned Malcolm Fraser, the leader of the Opposition, as Prime Minister, the leader of the Government.

The United States, our principal ally and protector, fought King George III in the War of Independence (1775 -1783) having established itself as the United States by the Declaration of Independence on July 4 1776. It won the war of independence and survived a civil war fought over slavery from 1861 to 1865.

Now, however, the presidential candidate Donald Trump and his Conservative Party is threatening, with the help of a very conservative Supreme Court, to reestablish the monarchy with all its defects. We are worried because implicit in the conservative promise to make Americas great again is for the US to become a military dictatorship devoted to imperial hegemony like the British Empire from which it escaped.

Instead of being a citizen of the world, it wants to retreat into its shell, cleanse itself religiously and ethnically and become wealthy feeding off the rest of the world. What hope is there for the rest of us? We have seen what imperial Europe did to India, Africa and China. Will that happen to us?

Our hope for ourselves is tightly linked with our hope for the US. What does the future hold? The prerogative of royalty is to kill with impunity, a total denial of personal equality. In English speaking constitutional history this power was constrained by the Magna Carta.

In free countries we are all protected to some degree from police operating in the name of the Crown by the courts acting in the name of the Constitution. The potential new King to the US, however, has expressed a desire to destroy anybody who gets in his way and the Supreme Court seems to support him.

An empirical answer to this pending disaster is to be found in the work of the French economist, Thomas Piketty who is not afraid to use the word ideology. In his books Capital and Ideology and A Brief History of Equality Piketty sees that despite many ups and downs, there has been a long term movement over the course of history towards more social, economic and political equality. Our economy, Piketty observes, is not a natural fact. Markets, profits and capital are all historical constructs that depend on choices, often the choices of powerful autocrats. Thomas Piketty (2022); A Brief History of Equality, Piketty (2020): Capital and Ideology

There is, I believe, a much deeper reason for hope. It lies in physics and cosmogenesis, the evolution of our Universe from a structureless omnipotent initial singularity. This ultimate in autocratic prerogative, has developed by the peacemaking force of evolution into to our magnificent Universe. What began with cataclysmic explosions has led to the construction, over 14 billion years, of our green and organic planet bathed in the light of a relatively peaceful star, the Sun,

The key to this benevolent evolution is the physical fact that the relationship between quantum mechanics and gravitation, the two principal controllers of the development of the world, is isomorphic to to the social structure we call democratic capitalism. It requires an as yet unpublished book to explain this, but I will wave my hands in the general direction.

We begin with an initial singularity. This idea first appeared in writing about 350 bce in the twelfth book of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. He called it the unmoved mover, ὃ οὐ κινούμενον κινεi, because he was Greek. The unmoved mover is a pure mind, eternal because it is unmoved, enjoying the unlimited happiness of pure thought (1072b15 sqq).

The existence of modern version of the initial singularity is proven in Hawking and Ellis’s book The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime. They predicted the existence of black holes and postulated that the big bang which created our universe might be seen as a time reversed black hole. Black holes are invisible because they do not emit light, but their huge mass attracts everything near them, including light, so they are relatively easy to find.

A black hole occurs when the local energy density becomes so great that gravitation destroys the local structure of spacetime, leaving an isolated singularity surrounded by an event horizon. Anything inside the horizon is trapped. We can imagine the initial singularity of the Universe as naked gravitation. It has no structure (it is a singularity), it is eternal (because nothing comes from nothing) and it is omnipotent (since it made the universe).

The big bang theory imagines that the initial singularity contains all the energy of the universe. On the other hand, if we follow Richard Feynman, the total energy of the universe (and the initial singularity) is zero.

So we guess that quantum mechanics splits the zero energy of the initial singularity into negative potential energy (the sort that keeps us stuck to Earth) and the positive kinetic energy that creates all the particles from which ourselves and the universe are made.

In this picture, gravitation acts like as bank, creating positive energy (and the corresponding debt) to finance entrepreneurs (corresponding to the creative power of quantum mechanics) to bring physical particles into existence. This process, we imagine, occurs at all scales from fundamental particles to ourselves, galaxies and planets.

Quantum mechanics is similar to democratic politics. We can represent every person in a body politic as a vector with a certain direction in quantum mechanical (political) space. These vectors can be added to one another by voting (the quantum mechanics call it superposition, a linear process) to make new vectors whose direction is the sum of the directions of all their constituent vectors. A democratic election gives power to the direction of the vector with the most constituents. The resulting government uses money derived from banks supported by taxation to implement the policies that (hopefully) move society in the winning direction.

The Universe, it seems, works in the same way. The result is magnificently beautiful and complex structure of our planet. We just have to be careful lest by destroying this democratic mechanism in favour of uncontrolled autocratic political power we ruin the planet that supports us.

[page 31]

Cognitive cosmogenesis: 'Introducing the divinity of the Universe to pave the way for scientifically credible theology'.

Plan Z: Redo the cognitive cosmogenesis website as pure theology with no mention of myself, which I will leave to the book. This will be fully referenced like the original cognitive cosmology website and when complete can be published as a printed book. Jeffrey Nicholls (2020): Cognitive cosmology

Now we come to the preface of the website and have to decide exactly what the website is about. Basically peace, working by analogy with multicellular bodies, that is systems built from independent parts, finding the balance between independence and control to keep the parts feeling that they are better off in the body than out of it. Think brexit, wars of independence, wars of colonization, and we want to take this right through the system by the principle of symmetry with respect to complexity. We may see it, as we did in 1987, as a question of space which is a question of freedom. The difficult idea it that by joining together we paradoxically get more space. Jeffrey Nicholls (1987): A theory of peace

Wednesday 17 July 2024

Preface:

[page 32]

Getting in the groove with Theological Studies. Beginning from an initial singularity identical to the omnino simplex god of Aquinas aided by Hawking and Ellis naked gravitation.

Then we do an Augustine moving from superposition in the brain to superposition in the singularity which is intellectual entelecheia.cThen we explain the musical source of fixed points in brains and singularities, explaining how superposition of frequencies produces musical tones and fixed points through periodicity via de Broglie and the extraction of energy to make real particles, which are material representation of information. Explain that this is a cutdown version of QFT. Then explain the computational power of both brains and operators in linear superposition to create bosons and fermions which create Minkowski space which adds a new layer of selectivity, and general relativity. Then we go back over this story and fit it to Lonergan's Insight and metaphysics, introducing symmetry with respect to complexity. Then evolution in Minkowski space and the role of randomness and uncertainty, the source of evil and predation, so universal basic income, justice, sharing and tax the shit out of the rich since they accumulate their wealth in increments from the little people.

[pagw 33]

Thursday 18 July 2024

The most salient feature of the physical world is the passage of time.

Friday 19 July 2024

Exciting times. Have I got anything relevant to say? Waiting for inspiration, just like any would be prophet.

Paul Tillich: "In true faith the ultimate concern is a concern about the truly ultimate, while in idolatrous faith preliminary finite realities are elevated to the rank of ultimacy. The inescapable consequence of adulterous faith is "existential disappointment", a disappointment that penetrates into the very existence of man. What happens after the religious fervour dissipates into disconnected ravings? What do you leave the room with?

So to the preface: we have come to where we are by evolution which has its upside and its downside and our task is to avoid the downside by intelligent providence while investing in the upside.

Saturday 20 July 2024
We were created by evolution and we have evolutionary ethics built into us. Every day a new idea as I try to evolve myself toward a consistent view of myself and the world. Bellah and gossip. Calypso is 29. Robert Bellah (2011): Religion in Human Evolution

[page 34]

Why do we love facebook? It was started to stalk women and the boundless human appetite for gossip has made it the most powerful website in the world.

Slowly the second part of the Summa is emerging in the divine universe with a comprehensive theodicy and a theory to deal with it based around the physiology of multicellular organisms and the principle of scale invariance.

Consciousness raising: seeing the unseen. I am trying to make the weird hypotheses of organized religion visible with cognitive cosmogenesis creating the cosmos through understanding [and so providing an alternative story].

The local nature of traditional gossip enables error correction. Websites that broaden the circulation of erroneous gossip make error correction more difficult. Van Badham (2024_07_19): Gossip, my friends, is both a moral mission and a pleasure. It’s also something those in power can’t control

Brain and quantum mechanics.We can imagine a neuron with a dynamic complex multidimensional input vector which will responds with a signal in its output axon when the probability calculated from the square of the inner product of the input vector with itself is 1, ie the square of the probability amplitude reaches a stare of certainty. We can then make a brain by hooking a lot of

[page 35]

these up as we see in a space of elementary particles populated with fermions whose probability of interaction with themselves i 0 and bosons which connect the fermions through null geodesics at greater than zero so we can look at a space of elementary particles as so,thing like a mind.

Descartes might say that Minkowski space is a clear and distinct idea revealed in a space of particles acting like as brain by communicating with one another through null geodesics in an epoch before the actual mergence of space [-time] and the persistence of Minkowski space is a consequences of this particulate brain always getting the same clear and distinct idea and repeating it endlessly. Manley, D. B., & Taylor, C. S. (1996): Descartes Meditations: Trilingual Edition

Bellah page xiv: From Geertz: 'religion is a system of symbols that, when enacted by human beings, establishes powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods snd motivations that make sense in terms of an idea of a general order of existence.'

page xvii: 'How religion creates those other worlds and how these worlds interact with the world of daily life is the subject of this book.'

Beliefs are cultural genes.How does this apply in the firsts elementary stages of evolution - maybe by the demand for a group, a closed set of actions which can be a subset of a larger closed set - a bigger group.

[page 36]

The big issue in cognitive cosmogenesis is the relationship between the problem of evil and evolution and an essay on what we can do to reduce the evil that is blocking us from paradise. In the old religion the gates of paradise were opened by Jesus of Nazareth accepting a painful execution to satisfy his Father, Yahweh, who created the world, who had been insulted by the first humans who disobeyed them and at the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil at the instigation of Satan, a fallen angel who had also acted against Yahweh and been dismissed to Hell, where they and there followers conducted a campaign against Yahweh. The last episode pf this campaign is recorded in the Book of Job, where Yahweh was shown to be an unjust god. Satan appears in the NT Mt 4:3: ' The tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread. Jesus answered: ''It is written: "Man shall not live by breaad lone, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God".' Also 2 Cor 4:4, 1 John 5:18, and 1 Peter 5:8. This time Satan lost, as is appropriate in competition with the redeemer, who succeeded where Yahweh failed when taken on by Job. Jack Miles (1996): God: A Biography, Chapter 10

The Introduction then summarizes the story and we revise and shorten all the synopses.

[page 37]

So the Introduction is in effect the annotated table of contents, rather like the Synopsis in naturaltheology.net which will need revising.

Copyright:

You may copy this material freely provided only that you quote fairly and provide a link (or reference) to your source.

Further reading

Books

Bellah (2011), Robert N., Religion in Human Evolution, Harvard University Press 2011 'Religion in Human Evolution is a work of extraordinary ambition—a wide-ranging, nuanced probing of our biological past to discover the kinds of lives that human beings have most often imagined were worth living. It offers what is frequently seen as a forbidden theory of the origin of religion that goes deep into evolution, especially but not exclusively cultural evolution. How did our early ancestors transcend the quotidian demands of everyday existence to embrace an alternative reality that called into question the very meaning of their daily struggle? Robert Bellah, one of the leading sociologists of our time, identifies a range of cultural capacities, such as communal dancing, storytelling, and theorizing, whose emergence made this religious development possible.' 
Amazon
  back

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.' 
Amazon
  back

Piketty (2020), Thomas, Capital and Ideology, Harvard University Press 2020 x politics of identity. Once we understand this, we can begin to envision a more balanced approach to economics and politics. Piketty argues for a new "participatory" socialism, a system founded on an ideology of equality, social property, education, and the sharing of knowledge and power. Capital and Ideology is destined to be one of the indispensable books of our time, a work that will not only help us understand the world, but that will change it. 
Amazon
  back

Piketty (2022), Thomas, A Brief History of Equality, Harvard UP 2022 ' The world's leading economist of inequality presents a short but sweeping and surprisingly optimistic history of human progress toward equality despite crises, disasters, and backsliding. A perfect introduction to the ideas developed in his monumental earlier books.It's easy to be pessimistic about inequality. We know it has increased dramatically in many parts of the world over the past two generations.' 
Amazon
  back

Links

Anita Wahid, Journalists in Indonesia are being killed, threatened and jailed. A new draft law could make things even worse, ' At dawn on June 27, a journalist for Indonesia’s Tribrata TV, Rico Sempurna Pasaribu, was killed in a suspected arson attack at his home, along with his wife, son and grandchild. Before his death, Rico investigated and reported on a gambling business in North Sumatra, which he alleged was backed by a member of the military. The police have arrested two suspects. The incident is not the first suspected arson involving journalists in North Sumatra. On March 21, the house of Junaidi Marpaung, a journalist from Utama News, was also burned down by unknown individuals. Junaidi and his family narrowly escaped. The attack happened after Junaidi reported on drug trafficking in the region and received several threats via social media. Press freedom is increasingly under attack in Indonesia. The Indonesian Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) has recorded more than 1,000 cases of violence against journalists since 2006, with the single highest year coming in 2023 (87 incidents).' back

Boucher, Baird, Arrowe & Reynolds, Friday essay: public ‘pash ons’ and angry dads – personal politics started with consciousness-raising feminists. Now, everyone’s doing it, ' On March 17–18 1973, more than 600 women gathered in Sydney for a “Women’s Commission”. Speaking to broad themes such as motherhood, work and sexism, dozens of women recounted their struggles: to obtain contraception, or a decent education, to complain about the chauvinistic men in their workplaces. Women shared personal stories they had never told in public before, building trust, forging sisterhood. While most of the media were excluded from the gathering, a journalist from the Australian Women’s Weekly was permitted to attend. She explained to her readers this was not just a chance to complain, but “out of a mass of personal testimony, the nature and extent of the problems facing Australian women were gradually revealed”. The event’s goal was to transform personal stories into shared knowledge and ballast for political action. It was emblematic of the new politics of gender and sexuality in the 1970s, and it would go on to produce enormous transformations in the lives of women and sexual minorities. Thanks to “personal politics”, the everyday lives of Australians have been transformed in areas like no-fault divorce, providing safe abortions, decriminalising homosexuality, and introducing health and welfare programs tailored to women and LGBTIQ+ people. Political change continues to be driven by personal stories.' back

Jeffrey Nicholls (1987), A theory of Peace, ' The argument: I began to think about peace in a very practical way during the Viet Nam war. I was the right age to be called up. I was exempted because I was a clergyman, but despite the terrors that war held for me, I think I might have gone. It was my first whiff of the force of patriotism. To my amazement, it was strong enough to make even me face death.
In the Church, I became embroiled in a deeper war. Not a war between goodies and baddies, but the war between good and evil that lies at the heart of all human consciousness. Existence is a struggle. We need all the help we can get. Religion is part of that help and theology is the scientific foundation of religion.' back

Jeffrey Nicholls (2020), Cognitive cosmology, ' The idea here is to lay the foundation for a world order based on a theology that identifies god and the universe. If the Universe is divine, all our experience is experience of god so theology can become a real evidence based science. Since there is but one universe, science will unify theology, as it has unified other disciplines like physics and biology. The unification of theology is a step toward the unification of religion. The unification religion is a step toward the unification of humanity. Finally, the unification of humanity is a step toward respecting and sharing Earth as our true home. With current scientific knowledge and adequate political motivation we have shown that we can, at least locally, radically improve both our condition and the condition of the planet. The principal evils standing in the way of global improvement are ignorance and the greed of those who work purely for profit.' back

Manley, D. B., & Taylor, C. S. (1996), Descartes Meditations - Trilingual Edition, ' The publication of this English-Latin-French edition of Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy is quite simply an experiment in electronic scholarship. We decided to make this edition available and to encourage its free distribution for scholarly purposes. The idea behind the experiment is to see how others involved in electronic scholarship might put these texts to use. We have no predetermined ideas of what such use may be when transformed from this origin. The texts have no hypertext annotations except for those used for navigation. We invite others to download this edition and to create their own hypertext annotated editions and then to publish those additions on their own Web servers for everyone to use.' back

Michael Bordt SJ (2011), Why Aristotle's God is not the Unmoved Mover, ' The aim of this essay is to show that the view—popular among certain philosophers and theologians—that Aristotle’s God is the unmoved mover is incorrect, or at least leads to serious misunderstanding. In a nutshell: among other things, the project of the twelfth book of the Metaphysics is to determine what the first ousia is. This first ousia is not identified with God in so far as it is an unmoved mover, but in so far as it is the actual activity (energeia) of thinking. To put matters differently, the actual activity of the first ousia does not consist in moving anything. Its activity rather consists in the exercise of reason, in thinking. Since, however, thinking is without qualification the best activity, and since God is that being who just does engage in the best activity, the first ousia, in so far as it is the same as the activity of thinking, must be God. Thus we perhaps expect that, at the summit of ontology, God himself will be the object of this first philosophy. Metaphysics Λ meets such an expectation only in a very limited way. The limitation is the following: that which, so to speak, stands at the summit of metaphysics is not God, but the activity of reason. While this activity is identified with God, it is not so identified directly or immediately, but only as mediated by way of the conception of the best possible life. The twelfth book of the Metaphysics thus provides to an even lesser extent than is usually assumed the outlines of a theology. By way of recompense, however, Aristotle offers us a truly breathtaking metaphysics.' back

Van Badham (2024_07_19), Gossip, my friends, is both a moral mission and a pleasure. It’s also something those in power can’t control, ' Word about town is that gossips are more trusted to help organise social events but less likely to be consulted for their ethics. By “word”, I mean “a workplace study from the University of Leeds business school”, and “about town” means “reported in the Times”. Gossips unethical? For shame! The insights of this particular study I shall personally table for moral judgment at the next convergence of my neighbourhood girl gang. Gossip, friends, is both a moral mission and our pleasure on the fortnightly-or-so mornings we – 30s to 50s, a rainbow of sexualities and various household compositions – convene at the local cafe, eat toast and information-share.' back

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