"natural theology > notes > 1999

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Camus, Albert, and Justin O'Brien (translator, James Wood (Introduction), The Myth of Sisyphus, Penguin Classics 2000 Amazon Product Description 'In this profound and moving philosophical statement, Camus poses the fundamental question: is life worth living? If human existence holds no significance, what can keep us from suicide? As Camus argues, if there is no God to give meaning to our lives, humans must take on that purpose themselves. This is our absurd task, like Sisyphus forever rolling his rock up a hill, as the inevitability of death constantly overshadows us. Written during the bleakest days of the Second World War, "The Myth of Sisyphus" argues for an acceptance of reality that encompasses revolt, passion and, above all, liberty. This volume contains several other essays, including lyrical evocations of the sunlit cities of Algiers and Oran, and the settings of his great novels "The Outsider" and "The Plague". About the Author Albert Camus is the author of a number of best-selling and highly influential works, all of which are published by Penguin. They include THE FALL, THE OUTSIDER and THE FIRST MAN. He is remembered as one of the few writers to have shaped the intellectual climate of post-war France, but beyond that, his fame has been international. Translated by Justin O'Brien With an Introduction by James Wood.'
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Coleridge, Nicholas, Paper Tigers: Latest greatest Newspaper Tycoons and How They Won the World, Mandarin 1994 Amazon Product Description 'Nicholas Coleridge interviewed more than 800 people to research this investigation into the power of newspaper proprietors. He reveals the complex web of rivalries, jealousies, alliances and obsessions of the press tycoons as they feud for territory and prestige around the world. He shows how, as they become fewer in number, the influence of the world's top 25 owners is dramatically increasing. From Rupert Murdoch to Conrad Black and Lord Rothermere, from the great American owners such as the Grahams of Washington and the Sulzbergers of New York, to the vast family fiefdoms emerging across Asia and the Far East, and the break-up of the global newspaper empires of Robert Maxwell and of the Fairfaxes in Australia, Coleridge discloses their foibles, their political manoeuvring and their eccentricities.'
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Davis, Martin, Computability and Unsolvability, Dover 1982 Preface: 'This book is an introduction to the theory of computability and non-computability ususally referred to as the theory of recursive functions. The subject is concerned with the existence of purely mechanical procedures for solving problems. . . . The existence of absolutely unsolvable problems and the Goedel incompleteness theorem are among the results in the theory of computability that have philosophical significance.'
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Lonergan, Bernard J F, Insight : A Study of Human Understanding (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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Lonergan, Bernard J F, Method in Theology, University of Toronto Press for Lonergan Research Institute 1996 Introduction: 'A theology mediates between a cultural matrix and the signifcance and role of religion in that matrix. ... When the classicist notion of culture prevails, theology is conceived as a permanent achievement, and then one discourses on its nature. When culture is conceived empirically, theology is known to be an ongoing process, and then one writes on its method. Method ... is a framework for collaborative creativity.'
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Melville, Herman, Pierre or the Ambiguities, Kessinger Publishing 2010 Amazon customer review: Bad, Bizarre and Brilliant, This review is from: Pierre, or The Ambiguities: Volume Seven, Scholarly Edition (Melville) (Paperback) 'Pierre is perhaps the strangest novel of all time: bizarre, to say the least, but brilliant in its extravagence. At a minimum, it is one of Melville's central novels that deconstructs the entire myth of pre-war American society in its explorations of incest, patricide and psychosis. It is almost inconceivable that Melivlle really believed that it would be popular (which he did), for it shows the impossibility of writing as an American author, the impossibility of originality, and the impossibility of self-reliance. Beware: it is not for the faint of heart. It is demanding, relentlessly challenging, and very rewarding. February 17, 2000 By A Customer
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Stowe, Harriet Beecher, Uncle Tom's Cabin: Or Life Among the Lowly, Penguin Classics 1981 Amazon product description: 'Published in 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel was a powerful indictment of slavery in America. Describing the many trials and eventual escape to freedom of the long-suffering, good-hearted slave Uncle Tom, it aimed to show how Christian love can overcome any human cruelty. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" has remained controversial to this day, seen as either a vital milestone in the anti-slavery cause or as a patronising stereotype of African-Americans, yet it played a crucial role in the eventual abolition of slavery and remains one of the most important American novels ever written.'
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Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, The Future of Man (translated by Norman Denny) , Borgo Press 1994 Amazon product description: 'Pierre Teilhard De Chardin was one of the most distinguished thinkers and scientists of our time. He fits into no familiar category for he was at once a biologist and a paleontologist of world renown, and also a Jesuit priest. He applied his whole life, his tremendous intellect and his great spiritual faith to building a philosophy that would reconcile Christian theology with the scientific theory of evolution, to relate the facts of religious experience to those of natural science. The Phenomenon of Man, the first of his writings to appear in America, Pierre Teilhard's most important book and contains the quintessence of his thought. When published in France it was the best-selling nonfiction book of the year.'
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Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, The Phenomenon of Man, Collins 1965 Sir Julian Huxley, Introduction: 'We, mankind, contain the possibilities of the earth's immense future, and can realise more and more of them on condition that we increase our knowledge and our love. That, it seems to me, is the distillation of the Phenomenon of Man.'
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Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, The Divine Milieu, Harper Collins 1989 Jacket: 'Not a single thought in these pages is the result of computation; everything that is expressed is the fruit of the writer's inner life. In fact this extraordinary book can be read on different levels. There is here, as in all the writings of Father Teillhard, the expression of a scientist who takes delight in the descriptive method and the ultimate meaning of all physical exploration.' Karl Stern
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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.'
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Veltman, Martinus, Diagrammatica: The Path to the Feynman Rules, Cambridge University Press 1994 Jacket: 'This book provides an easily accessible introduction to quantum field theory via Feynman rules and calculations in particle physics. The aim is to make clear what the physical foundations of present-day field theory are, to clarify the physical content of Feynman rules, and to outline their domain of applicability. ... The book includes valuable appendices that review some essential mathematics, including complex spaces, matrices, the CBH equation, traces and dimensional regularization. ...'
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Links

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet - Wikipedia, A rose by any other name would smell as sweet - Wikipedia, the free encyhclopedia, '"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" is a quote by William Shakespeare from his play Romeo and Juliet meant to say that the names of things do not matter, only what things are.' back

Bella Counihan, The Atheism Factor, 'The Atheism factor Bella Counihan August 17, 2010 "We don't want a godless Prime Minister!" called the pastor on a rumbling truck atop of Canberra's Mount Ainslie to his congregation. There they were, Catch the Fire ministry, massed on a cold Saturday morning to engage in "spiritual warfare" to see "ungodly forces" removed from parliament. But as Goanna stood there observing the scene of Nalliah devotees (who are also naturally voters in this election), the question did arise, Julia's atheism is going to be a divisive issue for some, but in 2010, is it really going to affect the way people vote?' back

Compromise of 1850 - Wikipedia, Compromise of 1850 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Compromise of 1850 was an intricate package of five bills, passed in September 1850, defusing a four year confrontation between the slave states of the South and the free states of the North that arose from expectation of territorial expansion of the United States with the Texas Annexation (December 29, 1845) and the following Mexican-American War (1846–1848). It avoided secession or civil war at the time and quieted sectional conflict for four years until the divisive Kansas–Nebraska Act.' back

Dies Irae - Wikipedia, Dies Irae - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Dies Irae (Day of Wrath) is a famous thirteenth century Latin hymn thought to be written by Thomas of Celano.[1] It is a medieval Latin poem characterized by its accentual stress and its rhymed lines. The metre is trochaic. The poem describes the day of judgment, the last trumpet summoning souls before the throne of God, where the saved will be delivered and the unsaved cast into eternal flames.' back

Evil empire - Wikipedia, Evil empire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Reagan's March 8, 1983 speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida is his first recorded use of the phrase "evil empire." Reagan said:

In your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride, the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil' back

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin Homepage, 'The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin; Presenting the Original Facts and Documents Upon Which the Story Is Founded, Together with Corroborative Statements Verifying the Truth of the Work. By Harriet Beecher Stowe. Boston: John P. Jewett and Company, 1854.'

Stowe wrote this book to defend her novel against one of the most wide-spread complaints that pro-slavery critics lodged against it -- that as an account of slavery Uncle Tom's Cabin was wholly false, or at least wildly exaggerated. Thus The Key is organized around that defensive project, taking up her major characters one at a time, for example, to cite real life equivalents to them. At the same time, defending her novel led her to mount a more aggressive attack on slavery in the South than the novel itself had. In the novel she works hard to be sympathetic to white southerners as well as black slaves; here, her prose seems much angrier, both morally and rhetorically more contemptuous. One explanation for this sharper tone could be the novel's reception in the South, where no one seems to have appreciated her attempt to be fair. Stowe was probably unprepared for the South's shrill rejection of the book.

The Key is prickly, dense book, with none of the readability of Uncle Tom's Cabin. When it first came out, it was also a best seller, though it's likely many bought it without understanding its nature. It's also a kind of fiction. Although it claims to be about the sources Stowe consulted while writing the novel, for example, she read many of the works cited here only after the novel was published. back

Operation Menu - Wikipedia, Operation Menu - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Operation Menu was the codename of a covert United States Strategic Air Command (SAC) bombing campaign conducted in eastern Cambodia from 18 March 1969 until 26 May 1970, during the Vietnam War leading to the destruction of over 1,000 towns and villages, the displacement of 2,000,000, and the deaths of over 700,000 to 1,000,000 Cambodians. The supposed targets of these attacks were sanctuaries and Base Areas of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and forces of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF or derogatively, Viet Cong), which utilized them for resupply, training, and resting between campaigns across the border in the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam).' back

Pentagon Papers - Wikipedia, Pentagon Papers - Wikipedia, the free encyhclopedia, 'The Pentagon Papers, officially titled United States–Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, was a top-secret United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. The papers were first brought to the attention of the public on the front page of the New York Times in 1971.[1] A 1996 article in the New York Times said that the Pentagon Papers "demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance"' back

Pindar - Wikipedia, Pindar - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Pindar (Greek: Πίνδαρος, Pindaros; Latin: Pindarus) (ca. 522–443 BC), was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, Pindar is the one whose work is best preserved.' back

Qantas flight 32 - Wikipedia, Qantas flight 32 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Qantas Flight 32 was a Qantas scheduled passenger flight which suffered an uncontained engine failure on 4 November 2010 and made an emergency landing at Singapore Changi Airport. The failure was the first of its kind for the Airbus A380, the world's largest passenger aircraft. It marked the first aviation occurrence involving an Airbus A380.' back

Stagnation point - Wikipedia, Stagnation point - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In fluid dynamics, a stagnation point is a point in a flow field where the local velocity of the fluid is zero.[1] Stagnation points exist at the surface of objects in the flow field, where the fluid is brought to rest by the object. The Bernoulli equation shows that the static pressure is highest when the velocity is zero and hence static pressure is at its maximum value at stagnation points. This static pressure is called the stagnation pressure. . . . On a streamlined body fully immersed in a potential flow, there are two stagnation points — one near the leading edge and one near the trailing edge. On a body with a sharp point such as the trailing edge of a wing, the Kutta condition specifies that a stagnation point is located at that point. The streamline at a stagnation point is perpendicular to the surface of the body.' back

Tony Abbott MHR, Federal Member for Warringah - Tony Abbott MHR, 'Tony Abbott was elected Member for Warringah at a by-election in March 1994. Prior to entering Parliament he was Executive Director of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy from 1993-94. From 1990-93 he was press secretary and political advisor to the Leader of the Opposition, Dr John Hewson. His previous career was in journalism, where he wrote as a feature writer for 'The Bulletin' and 'The Australian'.' back

vol VII: Notes

1999

Notes

Sunday 15 August 1999

Monday 16 August 1999

Tuesday 17 August 1999

Wednesday 18 August 1999

Thursday 19 August 1999

Friday 20 August 1999

Saturday 21 August 1999

Further reading

Books

Links