natural theology > notes > 8 february 2004

Related sites

Revealing Vatican attempts to propagate its religion by international treaty

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

Augustine, Saint, and Edmond Hill (Introduction, translation and notes), and John E Rotelle (editor), The Trinity, New City Press 1991 Written 399 - 419: De Trinitate is a radical restatement, defence and development of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Augistine's book has served as a foundation for most subsequent work, particularly that of Thomas Aquinas.
Amazon back

Bergson, Henri, and Arthur Mitchell (translator), Creative Evolution, Rowman & Littlefield 1983 Amazon Book Description: 'Creative Evolution, originally published in 1911 by Henry Holt and Company, is the work which catapulted Bergson from obscurity into world-wide fame. A study of the philosophical implications of biological evolutionary theory, the impact of this book reached far beyond biology and seemed to many to herald a new age in philosophy and the sciences.'
Amazon back

Churchill, Winston S, A History of the English Speaking People (Volume 1), Cassell Reference 2002 Amazon Product Description 'Volume I tells the story of Britain from pre-history to the Battle of Bosworth - the last of the battles of the Wars of the Roses in 1485 - and describes the strife and turmoil in the making of a nation. When this volume begins, tribal law was supreme; when it ends, Brtiain had become a nation and stood on the threshold of those adventures overseas which were to make an empire. Along the way we encounter a plethora of closely observed characters - William the Conqueror, Alfred the Great, Richard the Lionheart, Joan of Arc - and Churchill analyses the beginnings of Parliament, the Church and the monarchy with an eye as sharp as his legenday wit.'
Amazon back

Coughlan, G D, and J E Dodd and B M Gripaios, The Ideas of Particle Physics: An Introduction for Scientists, Cambridge University Press 2006 Amazon Product Description 'The third edition of this well-received book is a readable introduction to the world of particle physics. It bridges the gap between traditional textbooks on the subject and popular accounts that assume little or no background knowledge. Carefully revised and updated, this new edition covers all of the important concepts in our modern understanding of particle physics. The theoretical development of the subject is traced from the foundations of quantum mechanics and relativity through to the most recent particle discoveries and the formulation of modern string theory. It includes a full description of the prospects for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, which will allow many key ideas to be tested. The book is intended for anyone with a background in the physical sciences who wishes to learn more about particle physics. It is also valuable to students of physics wishing to gain an introductory overview of the subject.'
Amazon back

Dodd, J E, and G D Coughlan, The Ideas of Particle Physics: An Introduction for Scientists, Cambridge UP 1991 Jacket: 'This book is intended to bridge the gap between traditional textbooks on particle physics and the popular accounts of the subject ... Although entirely self contained, it assumes a greater familiarity with the basic physics concepts than is usually the case in popular texts. This then allows a fuller discussion of more modern developments.'
Amazon back

Einstein, Albert, and Robert W Lawson (translator) Roger Penrose (Introduction), Robert Geroch (Commentary), David C Cassidy (Historical Essay) , Relativity: The Special and General Theory, Pi Press 2005 Preface: 'The present book is intended, as far as possible, to give an exact insight into the theory of relativity to those readers who, from a general scientific and philosophical point of view, are interested in the theory, but who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus of theoretical physics. ... The author has spared himself no pains in his endeavour to present the main ideas in the simplext and most intelligible form, and on the whole, in the sequence and connectionin which they actually originated.' page 3
Amazon back

Feldman, , Joel S, and Thomas R Hurd, Lon Rosen, Jill D Wright, QED: A Proof of Renormalizability, Springer Verlag 1988
Amazon back

Hacklin, J, and Clement Huart, Raymonde Linossir, H de Wilman-Grabowska, Charles-Henri Marchal, Henri Maspero, Serge Eliseev and Paul-Louis Couchoud (Introduction), Asiatic Mythology: A Detailed Description and Explanation of the Mythologies of all the Great Nations of Asia, Crown Publishers Crescent Books Jacket: Asiatic Mythology was a great pioner work when it was first published [1932] and it has been ever since. . . . The Introduction says, "To penetrate to the heart of a civilization we ought to begin with a knowledge of its gods." Asiatic Mythology does indeed penetrate to the heart of civilizations that are drawing nearer to us than ever before. Therefore the book is today more significant and valuable than ever.' back

Hoddeson, Lillian, and Laurie Brown, Michael Riodan & Max Dresden (editors), The Rise of the Standard Model, Cambridge University Press 1997 Review '... a beautifully produced collection of essays by most of the leading scientists involved - including no fewer than eight Nobel laureates - and several eminent historians ... both practitioners and knowledgeable bystanders can draw inspiration from these reflections on what may turn out to have been the golden age of particle physics.' Graham Farmelo, New Scientist 'The volume is informative and useful to historians of physics.' Helge Kragh, Centaurus '... this book is ... worthwhile , timely and valuable.' R. Barlow, European Journal of Physics
Amazon back

Kauffman, Stuart, At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Complexity, Oxford University Press 1995 Preface: 'As I will argue in this book, natural selection is important, but it has not laboured alone to craft the fine architectures of the biosphere . . . The order of the biological world, I have come to believe . . . arises naturally and spontaneously because of the principles of self organisation - laws of complexity that we are just beginning to uncover and understand.'
Amazon back

Lederman 1, Leon, and Dick Teresi, The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the question, Mariner Books (June 26, 2006) • Language: English • ISBN-10: 0618711686 • ISBN-13: 978-0618711680 2006 '. . . Part history, part autobiography, part polemic, with sideswipes on mystics onthe way, the book is a strange hotch-potch held together more by Lederman's outsize personality than any logic. . . . ' Roland Pease Nature 362, 302 (25 Mar 1993)
Amazon back

Maxwell, James Clerk, Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (vol 1), OUP 1998 First published 1873
Amazon back

Maxwell, James Clerk, Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (vol 2), OUP 1998 First published 1873
Amazon back

Ricks, Thomas E, Fiasco, The American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2003 - 2005, Penguin (Non-Classics) 2007 Amazon.com Review 'Fiasco is a more strongly worded title than you might expect a seasoned military reporter such as Thomas E. Ricks to use, accustomed as he is to the even-handed style of daily newspaper journalism. But Ricks, the Pentagon correspondent for the Washington Post . . . has written a thorough and devastating history of the war in Iraq from the planning stages through the continued insurgency in early 2006, and he does not shy away from naming those he finds responsible. His tragic story is divided in two. The first part--the runup to the war and the invasion in 2003--is familiar from books like Cobra II and Plan of Attack, although Ricks uses his many military sources to portray an officer class that was far more skeptical of the war beforehand than generally reported. But the heart of his book is the second half, beginning in August 2003, when, as he writes, the war really began, with the bombing of the Jordanian embassy and the emergence of the insurgency. His strongest critique is that the U.S. military failed to anticipate--and then failed to recognize--the insurgency, and tried to fight it with conventional methods that only fanned its flames. What makes his portrait particularly damning are the dozens of military sources--most of them on record--who join in his critique, and the thousands of pages of internal documents he uses to make his case for a war poorly planned and bravely but blindly fought. . . . ' Tom Nissley
Amazon back

Ricks, Thomas E, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008, Penguin Press HC, The (February 10, 2009) • Language: English • ISBN-10: 1594201978 • ISBN-13: 978-1594201974 2009 Amazon product description: 'The Gamble offers news breaking information, revealing behind-the-scenes disagreements between top commanders. We learn that almost every single officer in the chain of command fought the surge. Many of Petraeus’s closest advisers went to Iraq extremely pessimistic, doubting that the surge would have any effect, and his own boss was so skeptical that he dispatched an admiral to Baghdad in the summer of 2007 to come up with a strategy to replace Petraeus’s. That same boss later flew to Iraq to try to talk Petraeus out of his planned congressional testimony. The Gamble examines the congressional hearings through the eyes of Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, and their views of the questions posed by the 2008 presidential candidates. For Petraeus, prevailing in Iraq means extending the war. Thomas E. Ricks concludes that the war is likely to last another five to ten years—and that that outcome is a best case scenario. His stunning conclusion, stated in the last line of the book, is that “the events for which the Iraq war will be remembered by us and by the world have not yet happened."'
Amazon back

Rose, Paul Lawrence, Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb 1939-1945: A Study in German Culture, University of California Press 1998 Amazon Editorial Review From Booklist 'Of the controversies surrounding the dawn of the atomic age, ranking near the top is the matter of Werner Heisenberg and his team's failure to put a bomb in Hitler's hands. Two principal explanations exist. One view, presented in Thomas Powers' Heisenberg's War (1993), is that Heisenberg hindered research, and, in any event, was not ordered to go all out for the bomb; Rose adopts the opposing contention that Heisenberg failed not because of moral compunctions but because he miscalculated the moderator required by a plutonium-producing reactor and the critical mass for a U235 bomb. That Rose spitefully condemns Powers' popular book as "entirely bogus" indicates the passion he brings to arraigning Heisenberg and his historical defense; and on bomb technology, the strictly technical side, Rose bests Powers. However, his attempted clinching of the argument by digressions into German patriotism and Heisenberg's mindset is too speculative to be convincing. Deeply researched scholarship for serious students.' Gilbert Taylor
Amazon back

Streater, Raymond F, and Arthur S Wightman, PCT, Spin, Statistics and All That, Princeton University Press 2005 Amazon product description: ' PCT, Spin and Statistics, and All That is the classic summary of and introduction to the achievements of Axiomatic Quantum Field Theory. This theory gives precise mathematical responses to questions like: What is a quantized field? What are the physically indispensable attributes of a quantized field? Furthermore, Axiomatic Field Theory shows that a number of physically important predictions of quantum field theory are mathematical consequences of the axioms. Here Raymond Streater and Arthur Wightman treat only results that can be rigorously proved, and these are presented in an elegant style that makes them available to a broad range of physics and theoretical mathematics.'
Amazon back

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, and David Francis Pears, Brian McGuinness, Bertrand Russell , Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Routledge 2001 'This as a most imortant book containing original ideas on a large range of topics, forming a coherent system, which, whether or not it be, as the author claims, in its essentials the final solution of the problems dealt with, is of extraordinary interest and deserves the attention of all philosophers.' Frank Ramsey, 'Critical Notice of L Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus', Mind, XXXII, no 128 (October 1923) pp 465-78.
Amazon back

Papers

Lederman, Leon, "The God particle et al.", Nature, 448, 7151, 17 July 2007, page 310-312. 'The birth of particle physics -- that is high energy physics -- can be dated to about 1950, offspring of the marriage between nuclear physics and the study of cosmic rays. It exploited techniques and technology from both disciplines, and its objective was to identify the primordial particles of nature -- those from which all matter is made -- and codify the laws of physics that oversee their propperties and social behaviours.'. back

Neder, I, N Ofek, Y Chung, M Heiblum, D Mahalu & V Umansky, "Interference between two indistinguishable electrons from independent sources", Nature, 448, 7151, 19 July 2007, page 333 - 337. 'Very much like the ubiquitous quantum interference of a single particle with itself, quantum interference of two independent, but indistinguishable, particles is also possible. For a single particle, the interference is between the amplitudes of the particle's wavefunctions, whereas the interference between two particles is a direct result of quantum exchange statistics. Such interference is observed only in the joint probability of finding the particles in two separated detectors, after they were injected from two spatially separated and independent sources. Experimental realizations of two-particle interferometers have been proposed; in these proposals it was shown that such correlations are a direct signature of quantum entanglement between the spatial degrees of freedom of the two particles ('orbital entanglement'), even though they do not interact with each other. In optics, experiments using indistinguishable pairs of photons encountered difficulties in generating pairs of independent photons and synchronizing their arrival times; thus they have concentrated on detecting bunching of photons (bosons) by coincidence measurements. Similar experiments with electrons are rather scarce. Cross-correlation measurements between partitioned currents, emanating from one source, yielded similar information to that obtained from auto-correlation (shot noise) measurements. The proposal of ref. 3 is an electronic analogue to the historical Hanbury Brown and Twiss experiment with classical light. It is based on the electronic Mach–Zehnder interferometer that uses edge channels in the quantum Hall effect regime. Here we implement such an interferometer. We partitioned two independent and mutually incoherent electron beams into two trajectories, so that the combined four trajectories enclosed an Aharonov–Bohm flux. Although individual currents and their fluctuations (shot noise measured by auto-correlation) were found to be independent of the Aharonov–Bohm flux, the cross-correlation between current fluctuations at two opposite points across the device exhibited strong Aharonov–Bohm oscillations, suggesting orbital entanglement between the two electron beams.. back

't Hooft, Gerard, "The making of the standard model", Nature, 448, 7151, 19 July 2007, page 271 - 273. 'The standard model of particle physics is more than a model. It is a detailed thoery that encompasses nearly all that is known about the subatomic particles and forces in a concise set of principles and equations.. back

Links

Aquinas 165 Summa I, 28, 1: Are there real relations in God? 'Reply to Objection 4. Relations which result from the mental operation alone in the objects understood are logical relations only, inasmuch as reason observes them as existing between two objects perceived by the mind. Those relations, however, which follow the operation of the intellect, and which exist between the word intellectually proceeding and the source whence it proceeds, are not logical relations only, but are real relations; inasmuch as the intellect and the reason are real things, and are really related to that which proceeds from them intelligibly; as a corporeal thing is related to that which proceeds from it corporeally. Thus paternity and filiation are real relations in God.' back

Aquinas 20 Summa I, 3, 7: Whether God is altogether simple? 'I answer that, The absolute simplicity of God may be shown in many ways. First, from the previous articles of this question. For there is neither composition of quantitative parts in God, since He is not a body; nor composition of matter and form; nor does His nature differ from His "suppositum"; nor His essence from His existence; neither is there in Him composition of genus and difference, nor of subject and accident. Therefore, it is clear that God is nowise composite, but is altogether simple. . . . ' back

Aquinas 20 Summa: I 3 7: Whether God is altogether simple? 'I answer that, The absolute simplicity of God may be shown in many ways. First, from the previous articles of this question. For there is neither composition of quantitative parts in God, since He is not a body; nor composition of matter and form; nor does His nature differ from His "suppositum"; nor His essence from His existence; neither is there in Him composition of genus and difference, nor of subject and accident. Therefore, it is clear that God is nowise composite, but is altogether simple. . . . ' back

Circle group - Wikipedia Circle group - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'In mathematics, the circle group, denoted by T (or in blackboard bold by ), is the multiplicative group of all complex numbers with absolute value 1, i.e., the unit circle in the complex plane.' back

Clay Millenium Prize - Atiyah Michael Atiyah Lecture back

Clay Millenium Prize - Tate Lecture by John Tate back

Dark energy - Wikipedia Dark energy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'In physical cosmology & Astronomy, dark energy is a hypothetical form of energy that permeates all of space and tends to increase the rate of expansion of the Universe. Dark energy is the most popular way to explain recent observations that the Universe appears to be expanding at an accelerating rate. In the standard model of cosmology, dark energy currently accounts for 74% of the total mass-energy of the Universe.' back

Diffeomorphism - Wikipedia Diffeomorphism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'In mathematics, a diffeomorphism is an isomorphism of smooth manifolds. It is an invertible function that maps one differentiable manifold to another, such that both the function and its inverse are smooth. . . . They are C^r diffeomorphic if there is an r times continuously differentiable bijective function between them whose inverse is also r times continuously differentiable. back

Elementary particle - Wikipedia Elementary particle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'In particle physics, an elementary particle or fundamental particle is a particle not known to have substructure; that is, it is not known to be made up of smaller particles. If an elementary particle truly has no substructure, then it is one of the basic building blocks of the Universe from which all other particles are made. In the Standard Model, the quarks, leptons, and gauge bosons are elementary particles.' back

Gauge boson - Wikipedia Gauge boson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'In particle physics, gauge bosons are bosonic particles that act as carriers of the fundamental forces of nature.[1][2] More specifically, elementary particles whose interactions are described by gauge theory exert forces on each other by the exchange of gauge bosons, usually as virtual particles.' back

Gauge theory - Wikipedia Gauge theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'In physics, gauge theory is a quantum field theory where the Lagrangian is invariant under certain transformations. The transformations (called local gauge transformations) form a Lie group which is referred to as the symmetry group or the gauge group of the theory. For each group parameter there is a corresponding vector field called gauge field which helps to make the Lagrangian gauge invariant. The quanta of the gauge field are called gauge bosons. If the symmetry group is non-commutative, the gauge theory is referred to as non-abelian or Yang-Mills theory.' back

Goldstone boson - Wikipedia Goldstone boson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'In particle and condensed matter physics, Goldstone bosons (also known as Nambu-Goldstone bosons) are bosons that appear in models with spontaneously broken symmetry.' back

Google.org Searching for solutions 'Google.org aspires to use the power of information and technology to address the global challenges of our age: climate change, poverty and emerging disease. In collaboration with experienced partners working in each of these fields, we will invest our resources and tap the strengths of Google's employees and global operations to advance our initiatives.' back

Henry IV De Haeretico Comburenda Statutes of the Realm, 2:12S-28: 2 Henry IV: ' . . . and they the same persons and every of them, after such sentence promulgate shall receive, and them before the people in an high place cause to be burnt, that such punishment may strike fear into the minds of others, . . . ' back

Higgs boson - Wikipedia Higgs boson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'In particle physics, the Higgs boson is a massive scalar elementary particle predicted to exist by the Standard Model. The Higgs boson is the only Standard Model particle that has not yet been observed. Experimental detection of the Higgs boson would help to explain how massless elementary particles can cause matter to have mass. More specifically, the Higgs boson would explain the difference between the massless photon, which mediates electromagnetism, and the relatively massive W and Z bosons, which mediate the weak force. If the Higgs boson exists, it would be an integral and pervasive component of the material world.' back

John Wycliffe - Wikipedia John Wycliffe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'Chair Jaimin John Wycliffe . . . also spelled Wyclif, Wycliff, Wiclef, Wicliffe, or Wickliffe) (mid-1320s – 31 December 1384) was an English theologian, lay preacher[1], translator and reformist.' back

Ludwig Wittgenstein - SEP Ludwig Wittgenstein (Standord Encyclopedia of Phlosophy) 'Considered by some to be the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, Ludwig Wittgenstein played a central, if controversial, role in 20th-century analytic philosophy. He continues to influence current philosophical thought in topics as diverse as logic and language, perception and intention, ethics and religion, aesthetics and culture.' back

Mass gap - Wikipedia Mass gap - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'In quantum field theory, the mass gap is the difference in energy between the vacuum and the next lowest energy state. The energy of the vacuum is zero by definition, and assuming that all energy states can be thought of as particles in plane-waves, the mass gap is the mass of the lightest particle. Since exact energy eigenstates are infinitely spread out and are therefore usually excluded from a formal mathematical description, a more pedantic definition is that the mass gap is the greatest lower bound of the energy of any state which is orthogonal to the vacuum.' back

Method of Fluxions - Wikipedia Method of Fluxions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'Method of Fluxions s a book by Isaac Newton. The book was completed in 1671, and published in 1736. Fluxions is Newton's term for differential calculus (fluents was his term for integral calculus). He originally developed the method at Woolsthorpe Manor during the closing of Cambridge during the Great Plague of London from 1665 to 1667, but did not choose to make his findings known (similarly, his findings which eventually became the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica were developed at this time and hidden from the world in Newton's notes for many years).' back

Qubit - Wikipedia Qubit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'A quantum bit, or qubit . . . is a unit of quantum information. That information is described by a state vector in a two-level quantum mechanical system which is formally equivalent to a two-dimensional vector space over the complex numbers. Benjamin Schumacher discovered a way of interpreting quantum states as information. He came up with a way of compressing the information in a state, and storing the information on a smaller number of states. This is now known as Schumacher compression. In the acknowledgments of his paper (Phys. Rev. A 51, 2738), Schumacher states that the term qubit was invented in jest, during his conversations with Bill Wootters.' back

Renormalization - Wikipedia Renormalization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'In quantum field theory, the statistical mechanics of fields, and the theory of self-similar geometric structures, renormalization refers to a collection of techniques used to take a continuum limit.' back

Spontaneous symmetry breaking - Wikipedia Spontaneous symmetry breaking - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'Spontaneous symmetry breaking in physics takes place when a system that is symmetric with respect to some symmetry group goes into a vacuum state that is not symmetric. At this point the system no longer appears to behave in a symmetric manner. It is a phenomenon that naturally occurs in many situations. The symmetry group can be discrete, such as the space group of a crystal, or continuous (i.e. a Lie group), such as the rotational symmetry of space.' back

Tensor - Wikipedia Tensor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'A tensor is an object which extends the notion of scalar, vector, and matrix. The term has slightly different meanings in mathematics and physics. In the mathematical fields of multilinear algebra and differential geometry, a tensor is a multilinear function. In physics and engineering, the same term usually means what a mathematician would call a tensor field: an association of a different (mathematical) tensor with each point of a geometric space, varying continuously with position.. back

Wu-Ki Tung Bjorken scaling - Scholarpedia 'Bjorken Scaling refers to an important simplifying feature (scaling) of a large class of dimensionless physical quantities in elementary particles, notably the structure functions in deep inelastic scattering, that implies observed strongly interacting particles (hadrons) are made of point-like constituents. It was first proposed by James Bjorken in 1968. This idea, along with the contemporaneous concept of partons by Feynman, and the subsequent experimental discovery of (approximate) scaling behavior, inspired the formulation of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), the modern fundamental theory of strong interactions, in 1974. Bjorken scaling is, however, not exact; it is mildly broken. The QCD theory can predict the logarithmic scale-breaking behavior of the relevant physical quantities; and these predictions have been fully confirmed by modern high energy experiments.' back

Yang-Mills theory - Wikipedia Yang-Mills theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'Yang-Mills theory is a gauge theory of quantum field theory based on the SU(N) group. It was formulated by Yang and Mills in 1954[1] in an effort to extend the original concept of gauge theory for an Abelian group, as was quantum electrodynamics, to the case of a nonabelian group with the intention to get an explanation for strong interactions. This initial idea was not a success as the quanta of the Yang-Mills field must be massless in order to mantain gauge invariance but such massless particles should have had long range effects that are not seen in experiments. So, the idea was put aside till the start of 1960 when the concept of breaking of symmetry in massless theories, initially due to Jeffrey Goldstone, Yoichiro Nambu and Giovanni Jona-Lasinio, with particles acquiring mass in this way, was put forward.' back

Yoichiro Nambu - Wikipedia Yoichiro Nambu - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'Yoichiro Nambu . . . born January 18, 1921) is a Japanese-born American physicist, currently a professor at the University of Chicago. Known for his contributions to the field of theoretical physics, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2008 for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics.' back

Notes

Sunday 8 February 2004

Monday 9 February 2004

Tuesday 10 February 2004

Wednesday 11 February 2004

Thursday 12 February 2004

Friday 13 February 2004

Saturday 14 February 2004

Further reading

Books

Papers

Links