"natural theology > notes > 1999

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Cantor, Georg, Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers (Translated, with Introduction and Notes by Philip E B Jourdain), Dover 1955 Jacket: 'One of the greatest mathematical classics of all time, this work established a new field of mathematics which was to be of incalculable importance in topology, number theory, analysis, theory of functions, etc, as well as the entire field of modern logic.'
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Cercignani, Carlo, Ludwig Boltzmann: The Man Who Trusted Atoms, Oxford University Press, USA 2006 'Cercignani provides a stimulating biography of a great scientist. Boltzmann's greatness is difficult to state, but the fact that the author is still actively engaged in research into some of the finer, as yet unresolved issues provoked by Boltzmann's work is a measure of just how far ahead of his time Boltzmann was. It is also tragic to read of Boltzmann's persecution by his contemporaries, the energeticists, who regarded atoms as a convenient hypothesis, but not as having a definite existence. Boltzmann felt that atoms were real and this motivated much of his research. How Boltzmann would have laughed if he could have seen present-day scanning tunnelling microscopy images, which resolve the atomic structure at surfaces! If only all scientists would learn from Boltzmann's life story that it is bad for science to persecute someone whose views you do not share but cannot disprove. One surprising fact I learned from this book was how research into thermodynamics and statistical mechanics led to the beginnings of quantum theory (such as Planck's distribution law, and Einstein's theory of specific heat). Lecture notes by Boltzmann also seem to have influenced Einstein's construction of special relativity. Cercignani's familiarity with Boltzmann's work at the research level will probably set this above other biographies of Boltzmann for a very long time to come.' Dr David J Bottomley
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Christie, Agatha, The Clocks, HarperCollins Publishers Canada 1988 Amazon costomer review: 'The first time I read this novel, I had to reread it again. Why? So many questions still linger at the end of the story even though the pages has ended. I wondered and reread and after the third reading, I finally got it all. The Clocks is a story that has two main plots, and the one has absolutely nothing to do with the other. But they were connected in a way when a young typist finds a dead body in a livingroom of a blind woman. From there it's red herring all the way. But bits of real clues emerge when Mr Lamb (a fake name) talks to a girl with a broken leg. Poirot only comes in now and then but became more interested when another murder occurs, while Lamb becomes Poirot's legs, ears and eyes. Oh yes, there are clues aplenty, but a broken high heel has never been this important as a clue. Christie delivers this story with delightful take that neither too wordy nor too lengthy. This is another often neglected classic Christie, so get it. madonluv
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Christie, Agatha, Dead Man's Mirror, Bantam Books 1988 Amazon customer review:'This book follows the same old Agatha Christie/Hercule Poirot formula. And, like macaroni & cheese or mashed potatoes, I found this murder mystery comforting and delightful in its familiarity. A collection of relatives and friends gather at a country house, and their dominating and idosyncratic host commits suicide ... or does he? Fortunately, shortly before the fatal shot was fired, the dead man had the foresight to invite Hercule Poirot for a visit. Thank goodness he is there to unravel things, as only he can! If you are looking for a by-the-book fact and/or forensic based mystery, like those by Cornwell or Grafton or Paretsky, you'll be disappointed. But if you're looking for evocative mood, wit and charm, you'll enjoy yourself.'
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Debray, Regis, God, An Itinerary, Verso 2004 Amazon Product Description 'God, who has changed the lives—and deaths—of men and women, has in turn changed His face and His meaning several times over since His birth three thousand years ago. He may have kept the same name throughout, but God has been addressed in many different ways and cannot be said to have the same characteristics in the year 500 BC as in AD 400 or in the twenty-first century, nor is He the same entity in Jerusalem or Constantinople as in Rome or New York. The omnipotent and punitive God of the Hebrews is not the consoling and intimate God of the Christians, and is certainly not identical with the impersonal cosmic Energy of the New Agers.

Régis Debray's purpose in this major new book is to trace the episodes of the genesis of God, His itinerary and the costs of His survival. Debray shifts the spotlight away from the theological foreground and moves it backstage to the machinery of divine production by going back, from the Law, to the Tablets themselves and by scrutinizing Heaven at its most down-to-earth. Throughout this beautifully illustrated book, he is able to focus his attention not just on what was written, but on how it was written: with what tools, on what surface, for what social purpose and in what physical environment. Debray contends that, in order to discover how God's fire was transferred from the desert to the prairie, we ought first to bracket the philosophical questions and focus on empirical information. However, he claims that this does not lessen its significance, but rather gives new life to spiritual issues. God: An Itinerary uses the histories of the Eternal and of the West to illuminate one another and to throw light on contemporary civilization itself. 50 b/w illustrations.'
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Euripides, and Philip Vellacott, Three Plays: Alcestis, Hipplolytus, Iphigenia in Taurus, Penguin Classics 1974 Amazon Product Description 'One of the greatest playwrights of Ancient Greece, the works of Euripides (484 406 BC) were revolutionary in their depiction of tragic events caused by flawed humanity, and in their use of the gods as symbols of human nature. The three plays in this collection show his abilities as the sceptical questioner of his age. Alcestis, an early drama, tells the tale of a queen who offers her own life in exchange for that of her husband; cast as a tragedy, it contains passages of satire and comedy. The tragicomedy Iphigenia in Tauris melodramatically reunites the ill-fated children of Agamemnon, while the pure tragedy of Hippolytus shows the fatal impact of Phaedra's unreasoning passion for her chaste stepson. All three plays explore a deep gulf that separates man from woman, and all depict a world dominated by amoral forces beyond human control.'
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Fowles, John, The Magus, Back Bay Books: Little Brown and Co 2001 Product Description 'At the novels center is Nicholas Urfe, a young Englishman who accepts a teaching position on a remote Greek island. There he befriends a local millionaire, but the friendship soon evolves into a deadly game and Nicholas finds that he must fight not only for his sanity but for his very survival.'
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Hofstadter, Douglas R, Goedel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Basic/Harvester 1979 An illustrated essay on the philosophy of mathematics. Formal systems, recursion, self reference and meaning explored with a dazzling array of examples in music, dialogue, text and graphics.
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Homer, and Bernard King (introduction) Robert Fagles (translator), The Iliad, Penguin Classic 1998 Amazon From Library Journal 'Why another Iliad? Just as Homer's work existed most fully in its performance, so the Homeric texts call periodically for new translations. With this in mind, Fagles offers a new verse rendering of the Iliad. Maneuvering between the literal and the literary, he tries with varying degrees of success to suggest the vigor and manner of the original while producing readable poetry in English. Thus, he avoids the anachronizing of Robert Fitzgerald's translation, while being more literal than Richard Lattimore's. Fagles's efforts are accompanied by a long and penetrating introduction by Bernard Knox, coupled with detailed glossary and textual notes.' - T.L. Cooksey, Armstrong State Coll., Savannah, Ga.
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Jackson, Roger, and Roger Makransky (editors), Buddhist Theology: Critical reflections by contemporary Buddhist Scholars, Curzon Press 1999 Jacket: 'This volume is the expression of a new development in the academic study of Buddhism: scholars of Buddhism, themselves Buddhist, who seek to apply the critical tools of the academy to reassess the truth and transformative value of their tradition in its relevance to the modern world.'
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Jech, Thomas, Set Theory, Springer 1997 Jacket: 'This book covers major areas of modern set theory: cardinal arithmetic, constructible sets, forcing and Boolean-valued models, large cardinals and descriptive set theory. ... It can be used as a textbook for a graduate course in set theory and can serve as a reference book.'
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Lifton, Robert Jay, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: a study of 'brainwashing' in China, 1989 Jacket: 'Brainwashing has often been described in sensational terms; but Dr Lifton's painstaking investigation of Thought Reform is based on psychological studies (with follow up interviews) of Western civilians and Chinese intellectuals who underwent the process in a variety of prisons, universities and other settings."
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McGrath, Alistair, Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth, HarperOne 2009 Amazon review from Booklist: 'Historian and theologian McGrath believes that heresy has become fashionable. More than that, contemporary Western society considers it radical and innovative, perhaps even cool. This attitudinal change he sees reflected by the renewed surge of interest in atheism and especially by the popularity of the so-called new atheists Sam Harris, Daniel C. Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens and their best-selling antireligious books. McGrath studies the complicated relations between heresy, orthodoxy, and power, and discusses the unprecedented popularity of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2003), placing the novel in the context of a postmodern suspicion of power and the Catholic Church, in particular. He explains the nature of faith, the origins of the idea of heresy, and the diverse roots of Christian heresy from its earliest forms (Ebionitism, Docetism, Valentinianism) to its later, classic formulations (Arianism, Donatism, Pelagianism). Also, he inspects the cultural and intellectual motivations for the existence of heresy. A penetrating examination by an intellectual powerhouse.' --June Sawyers
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Miles, 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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Newman, John Henry, An Essay on the Development of Chritian Doctrine, Cosimo Classics 2007 Jacket: 'Still considered essential reading for serious thinkers on religion more than a century and a half after it was written, this seminal work of modern theology, first published in 1845, presents a history of Catholic doctrine from the days of the Apostles to the time of its writing, and follows with specific examples of how the doctrine has not only survived corruption but grown stronger through defending itself against it, and is, therefore, the true religion. This classic of Christian apologetics, considered a foundational work of 19th-century intellectualism on par with Darwin's Origin of Species, is must reading not only for the faithful but also for anyone who wishes to be well educated in the fundamentals of modern thought. '
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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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Wolfe, Tom, The Pump House Gang, Bantam 1969 Amazon Product Description 'The Pump House Gang: The definitive, super-charged chronicle of today's life styles by America's foremost "pop journalist".' Time
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Links

Aquinas 391, Article 3: Whether there is an active intellect?, 'I answer that, According to the opinion of Plato, there is no need for an active intellect in order to make things actually intelligible; but perhaps in order to provide intellectual light to the intellect, as will be explained farther on (4). For Plato supposed that the forms of natural things subsisted apart from matter, and consequently that they are intelligible: since a thing is actually intelligible from the very fact that it is immaterial. And he called such forms "species or ideas"; from a participation of which, he said that even corporeal matter was formed, in order that individuals might be naturally established in their proper genera and species: and that our intellect was formed by such participation in order to have knowledge of the genera and species of things. But since Aristotle did not allow that forms of natural things exist apart from matter, and as forms existing in matter are not actually intelligible; it follows that the natures of forms of the sensible things which we understand are not actually intelligible. Now nothing is reduced from potentiality to act except by something in act; as the senses as made actual by what is actually sensible. We must therefore assign on the part of the intellect some power to make things actually intelligible, by abstraction of the species from material conditions. And such is the necessity for an active intellect.' back

Aquinas 412, Article 1: Whether man has free will, '. . . But man acts from judgment, because by his apprehensive power he judges that something should be avoided or sought. But because this judgment, in the case of some particular act, is not from a natural instinct, but from some act of comparison in the reason, therefore he acts from free judgment and retains the power of being inclined to various things. For reason in contingent matters may follow opposite courses, as we see in dialectic syllogisms and rhetorical arguments. Now particular operations are contingent, and therefore in such matters the judgment of reason may follow opposite courses, and is not determinate to one. And forasmuch as man is rational is it necessary that man have a free-will.' back

General covariance - Wikipedia, General covariance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In theoretical physics, general covariance (also known as diffeomorphism covariance or general invariance) is the invariance of the form of physical laws under arbitrary differentiable coordinate transformations. The essential idea is that coordinates do not exist a priori in nature, but are only artifices used in describing nature, and hence should play no role in the formulation of fundamental physical laws. A physical law expressed in a generally covariant fashion takes the same mathematical form in all coordinate systems, and is usually expressed in terms of tensor fields. The classical (non-quantum) theory of electrodynamics is one theory that has such a formulation.' back

Iris Online, Catullus: the most loved of love poets, dicit: sed mulier cupido quod dicit amanti, in uento et rapida scribere oportet aqua. (70.3-4) She says this: but what a woman says to an eager lover should be written on the wind and running water. back

Lex orandi, lex credendi - Wikipedia, Lex orandi, lex credendi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Lex orandi, lex credendi (Latin loosely translatable as the law of prayer is the law of belief) refers to the relationship between worship and belief, and is an ancient Christian principle which provided a measure for developing the ancient Christian creeds, the canon of scripture and other doctrinal matters based on the prayer texts of the Church, that is, the Church's liturgy. In the Early Church there were about 69 years of liturgical tradition before there was a creed and about 350 years before there was a biblical canon. These liturgical traditions provided the theological framework for establishing the creeds and canon.' 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.[1] 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. . . . There are numerous different versions of Noether's theorem, with varying degrees of generality. The original version only applied to ordinary differential equations (particles) and not partial differential equations (fields). The original versions also assume that the Lagrangian only depends upon the first derivative, while later versions generalize the theorem to Lagrangians depending on the nth derivative. There is also a quantum version of this theorem, known as the Ward–Takahashi identity. Generalizations of Noether's theorem to superspaces also exist.' (Noether E (1918). "Invariante Variationsprobleme". Nachr. D. König. Gesellsch. D. Wiss. Zu Göttingen, Math-phys. Klasse 1918: 235–257.)' back

Vincent of Lerins - Wikipedia, Vincent of Lerins - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Saint Vincent of Lérins (died c. 445) (in Latin, Vincentius) was a Gallic author of early Christian writings.' back

vol VII: Notes

1999

Notes

Sunday 22 August 1999

Monday 23 August 1999

Tuesday 24 August 1999

Wednesday 25 August 1999

Thursday 26 August 1999

Friday 27 August 1999

Saturday 222 August 1999

Further reading

Books

Links