natural theology

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Notes

Sunday 21 March 2021 - Saturday 27 March 2021

[Notebook: DB 86: Hilbert / Minkowski]

[page 143]

Sunday 21 March 2021

China is doomed as long as it ignores the creative power of the universe. So maybe the first chapter of quantum-theology must be about evolution, ie entropy, lack of control. The god of determinism versus the god of chance - so page 1: entropy, randomness and evolution: the principle of requisite variety. Ashby W Ross Ashby: An Introduction to Cybernetics (part II)

Monday 22 March 2021

[page 144]

Maxwell's equations describe a cyclic machine rather like a perpetual motion internal combustion engine each cycle of which (from a quantum mechanical point of view) is a quantum of action so that a photon described by Maxwell, frequency ω has energy E = ω. Can we apply a similar mechanistic approach to other particles such as the electron, and so devise a mechanism for interaction between photons and electrons? The quantum field theory approach to this and similar issues is so abstract that it makes very little sense except to produce an exceedingly compact mathematical notation that appears to ignore all the details and concentrate of symmetry alone,

Dante, Paradise, Musa. Dante Alighieri: Paradise (Mark Musa translate and introduce)

Musa page ix:Introduction: 'The Divine Comedy is one man's vision of the state of souls after death, written with the purpose of saving all mankind.' Quantum-theology is one person's vision of the state of humanity in life written with the purpose of creating a true picture of our place within divinity. I am but a shadow of Dante, but I have given myself twenty years to do my best.

Everything we see in the world is quantum mechanics in action and this is just as true of seeing itself.

Tuesday 23 March 2021

Our indigenous friends talk of dreamtime which seems to relate to the time when the word was created which may relate to the observation that our dream states are more creative than our waking states.

[page 145]

If we pursue this idea into the realm of cognitive cosmology we encounter the quantum mechanical observation that there are more states in the world of quantum amplitudes than there are in the world of observation, a fact related to the idea that a wave function of many possibilities "collapses" at the moment of observation, something we might compare to the evolutionary paradigm of variation and selection, the moment of observation (that is communication between two quantum states) acting to select a possibility to become realized, rather as a spinning die (with six eigenstates) settles on a table in one of its eigenstates [or a "fit" entity has specific survival algorithms that keep it safe in its environment].

We expect god, which is the universe, to grow organically, like the universe.

Zee, Second ed. Anthony Zee: Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell

Running on empty. Despite the repeated claims of physicists like Zee and Wilczek that quantum field theory and the standard model are the greatest ever human intellectual achievements I find it hard to get on the bandwagon and am reminded of nothing more than the Roman Catholic Church's claim to have the gift of absolute truth, to be infallible and to have the right to preach its delusions to everybody and expect them to believe it. I am confident in my condemnation of the church but freely admit that from an engineering and technological point of view the physicists have a good grip on reality but I have a solid mental block about the fundamental roots of physics. I hope it will go away soon so that I can freely incorporate the known beauties of the physical world in my site on quantum theology. Read on and keep looking for jewels. Frank Wilczek: The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces

[page 146]

My problem starts with the path integral. My hoped for solution puts quantum theory in a layer prior to space-time, and what I want to know is how quantum theory generates space. The answer lies in the boson/fermion dichotomy.

The ancients constructed their world from logic rather than empirical data, as we do, and on the whole their logic was sound even if they did not get everything right. So it makes pretty good sense that the world should be eternal, driven by an inexhaustible unmoved mover, which these days we might call the quantum of action.

Wednesday 24 March 2021

The linearity of superposition enables us to create complex functions dynamically out of simple components whose principal feature are amplitude, frequency and phase and we imagine that this is the way algorithms are encoded into particles as, for instance, all the orbits of atomic electrons are superposed to create the 'personality' of the atom which is revealed by its spectrum of emission and absorption.

A quantum of action is one turn, so energy is in effect revolutions per time [ie revolution and time are duals, one representing the other, identical but orthogonal, the first duality emerging in the unity of action, the creation of energy and time from action].

Thursday 25 March 2021

Dante Paradise III 31: 'Speak them, listen, trust in what they say, for they are filled with the true light of God, that gives them peace and does not let them err.'

This is what I want to do with my visible god.

Friday 26 March 2021

[page 147]

Saturday 27 March 2020

Broken Hill to Wilcannia

We are trying to make the biggest thing we know, the universe, out of the smallest thing we know, the quantum of action, following some sort of logically consistent process which the universe (and us) must invent as we go on because the original divine quantum of action (envisaged by Aristotle and Aquinas [as the first mover and god]) has zero structure and so zero entropy and therefore, from a cybernetic point of view can have no control over the future (Ashby, ref above).

Now a good rule of thumb in the writing game is not to write the introduction until you have written the book because then you know what you are introducing, so this is an interim introduction, more of a record of hope rather than achievement, and so I am entitled to take a few stabs at what I hope to achieve.

Copyright:

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

Further reading

Books

Alighieri, Dante, and Mark Musa (translator), The Divine Comedy Vol. III: Paradise, Penguin Classics 1986 'In his translation of Paradise, Mark Musa exhibits the same sensitivity to language and knowledge of translation that enabled his versions of Inferno and Purgatory to capture the vibrant power and full dramatic force of Dante’s poetry. Dante relates his mystical interpretation of the heavens, and his moment of transcendent glory, as he journeys, first with Beatrice, then alone, toward the Trinity. Professor Musa’s extraordinary translation and his interpretive commentary, informative glossary, and bibliography clarify the theological themes and make Dante accessible to the English-speaking public.' 
Amazon
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Ashby, W Ross, An Introduction to Cybernetics, Methuen 1956, 1964 'This book is intended to provide [an introduction to cybernetics]. It starts from common-place and well understood concepts, and proceeds step by step to show how these concepts can be made exact, and how they can be developed until they lead into such subjects as feedback, stability, regulation, ultrastability, information, coding, noise and other cybernetic topics.' 
Amazon
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Lonergan, Bernard J F, and (edited by Frederick E Crowe and Robert M Doran, Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St Thomas Aquinas, Herder & Herder 1971 Jacket: "Grace and Freedom represents Lonergan's entry into subject matter that would occupy him throughout his lifetime. At the same time it is a manifestation of the thinking that has made him one of the world's foremost Thomist scholars. . . . Lonergan's thesis is that from the sixteenth century onwards, commentators on Thomas Aquinas lacked historical consciousness, raised questions that Thomas had never considered, and obfuscated the issues. Lonergan's achievement consists in having retrieved the actual postion by adopting a historical approach that has reconstructed [Thomas's] intellectual development on grace. . . . What Lonergan also adds is a unique diagnosis of the mistakes made by the modern scholastic authors in their treatment of grace. Throughout this work, Lonergan discovers in Thomas a mind in constant development, displaying radical shifts on fundamental questions. . . . ' 
Amazon
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Stiglitz, Joseph E, Freefall: America, Free Markets and the Sinking of the World Economy, W. W. Norton & Company 2010 Amazon Product Description ' . . . The Great Recession, as it has come to be called, has impacted more people worldwide than any crisis since the Great Depression.

Few are more qualified to comment during this turbulent time than Joseph E. Stiglitz. Winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, Stiglitz is “an insanely great economist, in ways you can’t really appreciate unless you’re deep into the field” (Paul Krugman, New York Times). In Freefall, Stiglitz traces the origins of the Great Recession, eschewing easy answers and demolishing the contention that America needs more billion-dollar bailouts and free passes to those “too big to fail,” while also outlining the alternatives and revealing that even now there are choices ahead that can make a difference. The system is broken, and we can only fix it by examining the underlying theories that have led us into this new “bubble capitalism.” ' 
Amazon
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Wilczek, Frank, The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces, Basic Books 2008 ' In this excursion to the outer limits of particle physics, Wilczek explores what quarks and gluons, which compose protons and neutrons, reveal about the manifestation of mass and gravity. A corecipient of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics, Wilczek knows what he’s writing about; the question is, will general science readers? Happily, they know what the strong interaction is (the forces that bind the nucleus), and in Wilczek, they have a jovial guide who adheres to trade publishing’s belief that a successful physics title will not include too many equations. Despite this injunction (against which he lightly protests), Wilczek delivers an approachable verbal picture of what quarks and gluons are doing inside a proton that gives rise to mass and, hence, gravity. Casting the light-speed lives of quarks against “the Grid,” Wilczek’s term for the vacuum that theoretically seethes with quantum activity, Wilczek exudes a contagious excitement for discovery. A near-obligatory acquisition for circulating physics collections.' --Gilbert Taylor  
Amazon
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Zee, Anthony, Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell, Princeton University Press 2010 ' Since it was first published, Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell has quickly established itself as the most accessible and comprehensive introduction to this profound and deeply fascinating area of theoretical physics. Now in this fully revised and expanded edition, A. Zee covers the latest advances while providing a solid conceptual foundation for students to build on, making this the most up-to-date and modern textbook on quantum field theory available. This expanded edition features several additional chapters, as well as an entirely new section describing recent developments in quantum field theory such as gravitational waves, the helicity spinor formalism, on-shell gluon scattering, recursion relations for amplitudes with complex momenta, and the hidden connection between Yang-Mills theory and Einstein gravity. Zee also provides added exercises, explanations, and examples, as well as detailed appendices, solutions to selected exercises, and suggestions for further reading.' 
Amazon
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Papers

Wadman, Meredith, "Call for lighter regulatory burden on NIH researchers", Nature, 398, 6724, 18 March1999, page 180. back

Links

Alice Clement, When our evoutionary ancestors first crawled onto land, their brains only half filled their skulls, ' Growing and maintaining brain tissue is energetically expensive for animals. The relative size of different regions of the brain is thought to be guided by a concept known as “the principle of proper mass”.
This states the more important a sense or brain region is to an animal, the more likely it is that region will be enlarged compared to others. After all, it’s pointless to spend lots of energy growing a visual processing centre if you’re a blind, cave-dwelling animal.' back

Australasian Association of Philosophy, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 'The Australasian Journal of Philosophy (AJP) is one of the world's leading philosophy journals. Founded in 1923, it has been continuously published ever since. It is recognized as one of the best in the analytic tradition, but is not narrow in what it regards as worthy of acceptance.' back

Cliff, Petridis & Cartelle, Evidence of brand new physics at Cern? Why we’re cautiously optimistic about our new findings, ' The new result relates to an experimental anomaly that was first hinted at in 2014, when LHCb physicists spotted “beauty” quarks decaying in unexpected ways. Specifically, beauty quarks appeared to be decaying into leptons called “muons” less often than they decayed into electrons. This is strange because the muon is in essence a carbon-copy of the electron, identical in every way except that it’s around 200 times heavier. You would expect beauty quarks to decay into muons just as often as they do to electrons. The only way these decays could happen at different rates is if some never-before-seen particles were getting involved in the decay and tipping the scales against muons.' back

Elisabeth Findlay, We can’t seem to get enough of the Impressionists but can we move on from the sanitised version?, ' At the heart of the popularity of Impressionism is a romanticised story of a group of young artists battling against the conservatism of the dominant French Salon. They are repeatedly presented as a passionate collective who embraced plein air painting, capturing nature with unprecedented freshness. Impressionist exhibitions almost invariably perpetuate the notion of the male artist as a genius. An aura surrounds artists such as Monet, Renoir and Degas. They are repeatedly viewed as heroic radicals who shunned the establishment, rallying together to champion a new form of art.' back

Jonathan Watts, Disease outbreaks more likely in deforestation areas, study finds, ' Outbreaks of infectious diseases are more likely in areas of deforestation and monoculture plantations, according to a study that suggests epidemics are likely to increase as biodiversity declines. Land use change is a significant factor in the emergence of zoonotic viruses such as Covid-19 and vector-borne ailments such as malaria, says the paper, published on Wednesday in Frontiers in Veterinary Science. . . . The authors said this was because diseases are filtered and blocked by a range of predators and habitats in a healthy, biodiverse forest. When this is replaced by a palm oil plantation, soy fields or blocks of eucalyptus, the specialist species die off, leaving generalists such as rats and mosquitoes to thrive and spread pathogens across human and non-human habitats. The net result is a loss of natural disease regulation.' back

Kareem Fahim, Erdogan pulls Turkey out of European treaty aimed at protecting women from violence, ' ISTANBUL — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a surprise decree early Saturday withdrawing Turkey from a landmark European treaty that women's rights groups said had played a critical role in protecting Turkish women from gender-based violence. . . . At the same time, rates of domestic violence and femicide have risen. More than 400 women were killed by male partners last year, and so far in 2021, 78 women have been killed, according to We Will Stop Femicide. The killings and other violent attacks — captured on video and widely disseminated on social media — have shocked Turkey and galvanized women’s groups. back

Leila McNelli, The Woman Who Shaped the Study of Fossil Brains, ' Tilly Edinger was one of those rare people who knew exactly what she wanted to do. After reading Othenio Abel’s Principles of Vertebrate Paleontology, she had her calling: the study of ancient animals through their bones. She would go on to become one of the most significant paleontologists of the 20th century, and the first woman to be elected president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. Not only that, but she would found an entirely new field of inquiry—paleoneurology, or the study of fossil brains.' back

Matthew Sharpe, Guide to the Classics: Voltaire’s Candide — a darkly satirical tale of human folly in times of crisis, ' “Italy had its renaissance, Germany its reformation, France had Voltaire”, the historian Will Durant once commented. Born François-Marie Arouet, Voltaire (1694-1778) was known in his lifetime as the “patriarch” of the French enlightenment. A man of extraordinary energy and abilities, he produced some 100 volumes of poetry, fiction, theatre, biblical and literary criticism, history and philosophy. Among his myriad works, Voltaire’s Candide, or Optimism (1759) is widely recognised as the masterpiece. A darkly satirical novella taking aim at human folly, pride and excessive faith in reason’s ability to plumb the deepest metaphysical truths, it remains as telling in this era of pandemics and wild conspiracy theories as when first published.' back

Michelle Arrow, Memo Liberal women: if you really want to confront misogyny in your party, you need to fix the policies, ' One group of women was strikingly absent from the March4Justice rallies last week: Coalition MPs. Admittedly, there are not many of them (only 23% of the government’s MPs are female), but the refusal of the minister for women to attend the demonstration was a remarkable abrogation of responsibility. Only one female Liberal MP, Tasmanian Bridget Archer, attended the demonstration. She had assumed – wrongly - it would receive bipartisan support. Like many who marched, she was motivated to attend by what she described as “a deep-seated rage”. ' back

Nazi Germany - Wikipedia, Nazi Germany - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Nazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany under the government of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party (NSDAP), from 1933 to 1945. Third Reich (Drittes Reich) denotes the Nazi State as the historical successor to the mediæval Holy Roman Empire (962–1806) and to the modern German Empire (1871–1918). Nazi Germany had two official names, the Deutsches Reich (German Reich), from 1933 to 1943, when it became Großdeutsches Reich (Greater German Reich).' back

Susan M. Shaw, ' Purity culture and the subjugation of women: Southern Baptist beliefs on sex and gender provide context to spa suspect’s ‘motive’ ' , ' But as a scholar of gender and religion and someone who grew up Southern Baptist, I am aware that holding girls and women responsible for men’s sexual urges is not uncommon in a denomination that expects women to submit to men. . . . Many Southern Baptists believe that the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible happened literally as described. That is, God created one man and one woman, put them in the Garden of Eden, and forbade them to eat the fruit from one tree. Because Eve was the first of the humans to fall from God’s grace by eating the forbidden fruit, she became subject to man. And that subjugation fell on all women, according to Southern Baptist teaching. Further, some Baptists argue that gender hierarchy was God’s original intention. ' back

Voltaire, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4650, ' Pangloss enseignait la métaphysico-théologo-cosmolonigologie. Il prouvait admirablement qu'il n'y a point d'effet sans cause, et que, dans ce meilleur des mondes possibles, le château de monseigneur le baron était le plus beau des châteaux, et madame la meilleure des baronnes possibles. Il est démontré, disait-il, que les choses ne peuvent être autrement; car tout étant fait pour une fin, tout est nécessairement pour la meilleure fin. Remarquez bien que les nez ont été faits pour porter des lunettes; aussi avons-nous des lunettes[2]. Les jambes sont visiblement instituées pour être chaussées, et nous avons des chausses. Les pierres ont été formées pour être taillées et pour en faire des châteaux; aussi monseigneur a un très beau château: le plus grand baron de la province doit être le mieux logé; et les cochons étant faits pour être mangés, nous mangeons du porc toute l'année: par conséquent, ceux qui ont avancé que tout est bien ont dit une sottise; il fallait dire que tout est au mieux.' back

Xanthe Mallet, ‘Cultural misogyny’ and why men’s aggression to women is so often expressed through sex, ' As a woman in academia – a very hierarchical structure – I have been sexually harassed, and I just accepted it as part of my working world. My experience was with a very senior member of a previous university, and I would never have considered challenging him or reporting it, as I was very well aware of the power he had over me and my career. I even considered changing organisations to avoid the unwanted behaviours. The brave women who are now speaking up have changed the way I view my own experience. The more we raise our voices, support each other and encourage change in the attitudes around us, the more we will all benefit.' back

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