vol 4: Glossary
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... to restore theology to the mainstream of science
Entity
Let us define an entity as something which is to some degree dynamically independent of its environment. In other words, we might say, it has private degrees of freedom and may communicate within itself to some degree independently of its environment.
So, at one extreme, the universe is an entity. It has a life of its own, which we are part of, and it does not, by definition have anything to do with its environment, since it has none in a physical sense. In a metaphysical sense, the environment of the universe is the logical notion of consistency, which for us models the hypothesis that no entity can harbour an actual contradiction.
At the other extreme we may postulate atoms (adynamos, not to be confused with chemical atoms) which have no internal dynamics, but are simply carried around by their dynamic environment and so function as parts of entities. We may identify adynamos with texts, like this one. We understand text to mean something with no proper time, which does not change unless it is moved by a force emanating from its environment. In the case of this text, it is me and my word processor that is bringing it into existence, and in time it will be propagated by the servers of the www.
Entity is thus opposed to text, the one with, the other without, any internal dynamics. Nevertheless, entities may contain tests, and texts are produced by entities. A most striking relationship between entity and text is illustrated by a living creatures and their genomes. The content of the genome does not change during the life of the individual, axcept through error. The genome is continually being manipulated by the organism top transcribe the information it needs to grow and live, just as a reader manipulates books and other human-readable texts.
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Concordat Watch
Revealing Vatican attempts to propagate its religion by international treaty
