vol VII: Notes

1982

Notes

Sunday 24 October 1982 - Saturday 30 October 1982

Sunday 24 october 1982

Monday 25 October 1982

Tuesday 26 October 1982

Wednesday 27 October 1982

Thursday 28 October 1982

[notebook DREAMING DB1]

[page 90]

Friday 29 October 1982

Lots more stuff with K. Much sadness at the loss. How does one love whom one does not love. Only by conscious commitment, care and understanding. Very little, it seems, can be done about the underlying feeling despite the enormous inconvenience its non-existence can cause. There is a lot yet to be explained (maybe through sociobiology) of the deeper needs of human

[page 91]

bonding and unbonding. Some relationships (parent-child) seem inherently much more durable than others (lover-lover) etc. We have difficulty avoiding intellectualisation about our love or lack of it, and continually seek to form hypotheses, attribute guilt and blame, find historical events etc etc, most of which, in the absence of guiding theory and evidence, seems to do little but cause pain. There seems little to do but part amicably and work out the technical details of the parting in as peaceful, equitable and reasonable a manner as possible. The selective process leading to our intuitive choices and rejections of mates needs elucidation. Many years may yet elapse before any real scientific progress can be made in this area.

A soft and misty moonlit evening. Frogs quiet, a few crickets. River runs a little loud, floods only a few weeks ago. Is this all appearance? Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder. What does a frog see? Pleasure demands eternity because it is the ideal state for an animal oriented to survival. There is no future in maladaptive pleasure. Moonlight is great for mating. Q rang. What is love anyway, or music. She is beautiful (to me) and therefore to be selected.

Saturday 30 October 1982

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

Click on the "Amazon" link below each book entry to see details of a book (and possibly buy it!)

Dawkins, Richard, The Selfish Gene , Oxford UP 1976 Amazon: Editorial review: 'Inheriting the mantle of revolutionary biologist from Darwin, Watson, and Crick, Richard Dawkins forced an enormous change in the way we see ourselves and the world with the publication of The Selfish Gene. Suppose, instead of thinking about organisms using genes to reproduce themselves, as we had since Mendel's work was rediscovered, we turn it around and imagine that "our" genes build and maintain us in order to make more genes. That simple reversal seems to answer many puzzlers which had stumped scientists for years, and we haven't thought of evolution in the same way since.' Rob Lightner  Amazon   back

Lonergan, Bernard J F, and Robert M. Doran, Frederick E. Crowe (eds), Verbum : Word and Idea in Aquinas (Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan volume 2) , University of Toronto Press 1997 Jacket: 'Verbum is a product of Lonergan's eleven years of study of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. The work is considered by many to be a breakthrough in the history of Lonergan's theology ... . Here he interprets aspects in the writing of Aquinas relevant to trinitarian theory and, as in most of Lonergan's work, one of the principal aims is to assist the reader in the search to understand the workings of the human mind.'  Amazon   back

Pétrement, Simone, and Raymond Rosenthal (translator), Simone Weil: A Life, Schocken 1988 Jacket: 'A French Jew who broke with Judaism and wavered on the edge of Roman Catholicism, the daughter of a respected physician, the sister of one of the century's greatest mathematicians, Simone Weil devoted her life to the search for truth and God amid the poverty and misery of the poor. Since her death in 1943 at the age of thirty-four, Simone Weil has become a person of legend. T S Eliot, Dwight Macdonald, Leslie Fiedler and Robert Coles spoke of her as the saint of the twentieth century who lived the contradictions of our era more intensely and continuously than anyone else.'  Amazon   back

Tymoczko, Thomas, New Directions in the Philosophy of Mathematics: An Anthology, Princeton University Press 1998 Jacket: 'The traditional debate among philosophers of mathematics is whether there is an external mathematical reality, something out there to be discovered, or whether mathematics is the product of the human mind. ... By bringing together essays of leading philosophers, mathematicians, logicians and computer scientists, TT reveals an evolving effort to account for the nature of mathematics in relation to other human activities.'  Amazon   back

Weil, Simone, On Science, Necessity and the Love of God, Oxford University Press 1968   Amazon   back

Links

ABC, Australian Broadcasting Commission , 'Australia's leading source of information and entertainment' back

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius - Free Ebook, 'The book called 'The Consolation of Philosophy' was throughout the Middle Ages, and down to the beginnings of the modern epoch in the sixteenth century, the scholar's familiar companion. Few books have exercised a wider influence in their time. It has been translated into every European tongue, and into English nearly a dozen times, from King Alfred's paraphrase to the translations of Lord Preston, Causton, Ridpath, and Duncan, in the eighteenth century.' back

Cosmic microwave background radiation - Wikipedia, Cosmic microwave background radiation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'With a traditional optical telescope, the space between stars and galaxies (the background) is completely dark. However, a sufficiently sensitive radio telescope shows a faint background glow, almost exactly the same in all directions, that is not associated with any star, galaxy, or other object. This glow is strongest in the microwave region of the radio spectrum. The CMB's serendipitous discovery in 1964 by American radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson was the culmination of work initiated in the 1940s, and earned them the 1978 Nobel Prize.' back

Covenant Productions, A Ripple of Hope, 'Advised against appearing before an inner city crowd in Indianapolis the Night Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, Robert Kennedy delivered an extemporaneous speech that brought a sense of peace to the city. This film weaves together first person accounts of that tumultuous day in 1968.' back

D. T. Suzuki - Wikipedia, D. T. Suzuki - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki (鈴木 大拙 貞太郎 Suzuki Daisetsu Teitarō, October 18, 1870 – July 12, 1966) was a Japanese author of books and essays on Buddhism, Zen and Shin that were instrumental in spreading interest in both Zen and Shin (and Far Eastern philosophy in general) to the West. Suzuki was also a prolific translator of Chinese, Japanese, and Sanskrit literature. Suzuki spent several lengthy stretches teaching or lecturing at Western universities, and devoted many years to a professorship at Otani University, a Japanese Buddhist school.' back

Droop speed control - Wikiedia, Droop speed control - Wikiedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In electrical power generation, Droop Speed Control is a speed control mode of a prime mover driving a synchronous generator connected to an electrical grid. This mode allows synchronous generators to run in parallel, so that loads are shared among generators in proportion to their power rating.' back

Frederick Winslow Taylor - Wikipedia, Frederick Winslow Taylor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Frederick Winslow Taylor (March 20, 1856–March 21, 1915), widely known as F. W. Taylor, was an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. He is regarded as the father of scientific management and was one of the first management consultants.' back

Konrad Lorenz - Wikipedia, Konrad Lorenz - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (7 November 1903 – 27 February 1989) was an Austrian zoologist, ethologist, and ornithologist. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch. He is often regarded as one of the founders of modern ethology, developing an approach that began with an earlier generation, including his teacher Oskar Heinroth. Lorenz studied instinctive behavior in animals, especially in greylag geese and jackdaws. Working with geese, he investigated the principle of imprinting, the process by which some nidifugous birds (i.e. birds that leave their nest early), bond with the first moving object that they saw within the first hours of hatching.' back

Second Vatican Council: Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis humanae, 'First, the council professes its belief that God Himself has made known to mankind the way in which men are to serve Him, and thus be saved in Christ and come to blessedness. We believe that this one true religion subsists in the Catholic and Apostolic Church, to which the Lord Jesus committed the duty of spreading it abroad among all men. Thus He spoke to the Apostles: "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have enjoined upon you" (Matt. 28: 19-20). On their part, all men are bound to seek the truth, especially in what concerns God and His Church, and to embrace the truth they come to know, and to hold fast to it.' 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,[2] 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". In this context, a "nature" is what one is, while a "person" is who one is.' back