vol 7: Notes
2006
Sunday 24 December
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... to restore theology to the mainstream of science
Notes
[Notebook: DB 560 Spotlights]
[Sunday 24 December 2006 - Saturday 30 December 2006]
Sunday 24 December 2006
Monday 25 December 2006
[page 56]
Tuesday 26 December 2006
Physical theology [a preface]. Physical theology.
Since, as a small child in the ;ate 1940's I first learned of the nuclear explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki that brought my father home form the war, I have had an intense intellectual relationship with weapons and war. The Committee for the Compilation of Materials on the Damage Caused by the Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki This intensified through the Cold War, the Vietnam War and the steady background of lesser wars which have assaulted us, and gradually coalesced into an ambition to produce a noetic (mind) weapon which would show us how to manage our affairs without war.
This essay is an impressionistic outline of my latest results.
[page 57]
The Theory of Peace had its first outing in a series of ten programs broadcast through 2BOB Radio between June and August 1987. A Theory of Peace The Cold War fizzled out with a miraculous absence of bloodshed soon after. The first break in the Berlin Wall occurred on the evening of November 9, 1989. Fall of the Berlin Wall
Historians will discuss the Cold War for centuries to come, but I was happy to see that I had fingered some of the forces at work. Gaddis First accept that war is a natural phenomenon. It is ubiquitous in recorded history. It is the manifestation, on the human scale, of the conflict between the unlimited possibilities of the universe and the limited resources available for their realization. As long as there is enough to go around, peace is possible, but as soon as population exceeds carrying capacity, someone has to go by violence or starvation. A prerequisite to peace, then, is to reduce demand or increase supply. We reduce demand by population control and reducing the amount of resources required per person. We increase supply by diverting more of the world's resources towards ourselves.
The conflict between possibilities and resources drives evolution by natural selection, of which we are a product. As a result of hard evolutionary discipline we and all other living organisms are extraordinarily efficient. I am a community of independent entities (atoms, molecules,
[page 58]
cells, etc) bound together by a layered network of [communication] whose ultimate bandwidth is defined by [my] power (100 Watts) and the quantum of action. ...
By these standards current human technology is extremely wasteful and inefficient. The scope for reducing our demand on our environment by appropriate physical and social technology is almost unlimited. From an energy point of view, the sunlight falling on one square metre of the earth is sufficient to support one 100 Watt human. On the other hand, all material resources can be recycled, at a certain cost in energy.
Although these ultimate limits are unattainable in practice, we can go a long way toward them by playing our cards right. Here enters the noetic weapon, conceived as theology and implemented in religion. The key insight is that communication creates space. Ultimately the closed world of communism was prized open when the barriers to communication imposed by a totalitarian regime were broken by conversation, printing, radio, television and all the other means of human conversation.
Clear and present dangers overshadow vague and absent ones. The end of the Cold war revealed the multitude of smaller conflicts that circle the globe and underline the religious nature of war.
[page 59]
One may see the Cold War as a conflict between Christianity and Marxism in its incarnation as a state religion. From my point of view, both these organizations are reactionary, totalitarian, anti-democratic and repressive of human creativity. The end of the Cold war has also revealed conflict between the fundamentalist wings of Christianity and Islam.
Wednesday 27 December 2006
Thursday 28 December 2006
Friday 29 December 2006
Saturday 30 December 2006
Books
| Feynman, Richard P et al, and , The Feynman Lectures on Physics (volume 3) : Quantum Mechanics, Addison Wesley 1970 Foreword: 'This set of lectures tries to elucidate from the beginning those features of quantum mechanics which are the most basic and the most general. ... In each instance the ideas are introduced together with a detailed discussion of some specific examples - to try to make the physical ideas as real as possible.' Matthew Sands Amazon back |
| Gaddis, John Lewis, The Cold War: A New History, The Penguin Press 2005 Jacket: 'Many will remember what it was like to live under the shadow of the Cold War: the ever-present anxiety that at some point, because of some miscalculation or act of hubris, we might find ourselve sin the middle of a nuclear holocaust ... How did this terrible conflict arise? How did wartime allies so quickly become deadly foes after 1945 and divide the world into opposing camps, each armed to the teeth? And how, suddenly, did it all come to an end? Only now that the Cold War has been over for fifteen years can we begin to find a convincing perspective on it. John Lewis Gaddis's masterly book is the first full, major history of the whole conflict and explains not just what happened, but why it happened ... Gaddis has synthesized all the most recent scholarship, but has also used minutes from Politburo meetings, startling information from recently opened Soviet and Asian archives, ... and above all the words of the leading participants themselves -- showing what was realy on the mind of each, with a very dramatic immediacy. ...' Amazon back |
| 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' Amazon back |
| The Committee for the Compilation of Materials on the Damage Caused by the Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Physical Medical and Social Effects of the Atomic Bombings, Hutchison 1981. Jacket: 'This book is the definitive account of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. ... More than four years in the making, this clearly written and jargon free account is both a summary and an analysis by Japan's leading physicists, physicians and social scientists of the full findings about the immediate damage of the bombs ... and their permanent medical, genetic, social and psychological effects. In almost every respect the findings show that the damage caused by the bombs was much more serious than earlier studies have indicated. Not only were there more deaths, but a terrible and lasting impactcan be seen in terms of chronic disease (especially cancers), genetic and chromosomal damage, and social disorganisation - family disruption, crime, suicide and mental illness.' Amazon back |
Click on an "Amazon" link in the booklist at the foot of the page to buy the book, see more details or search for similar items
Related sites:
Concordat Watch
Revealing Vatican attempts to propagate its religion by international treaty
