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Notes

Sunday 24 April 2022 - Saturday 30 April 2022

[Notebook: DB 88: Salvation]

[page 67]

Sunday 24 April 2022

One force for the political unification of different human groups is a common enemy. We have many common enemies like war and famine which have led toward considerable globalization but are not quite global enough to force world peace as an invasion from another planet might be. We do have two enemies that we might exploit for this purpose: global failure of the ecosystems that support us exemplified by global warming; and global failure of the political systems that enable unity, exemplified by the Soviet Union, the US , the communist party of China and now

[page 68]

Putin's autocratic Russia and his attack on the sovereign democracy of Ukraine which has shed light on the possibility of destruction [and colonization] of further nations and prompted a global discussion of the best way to defend Ukraine and all other nations against destruction by aggressive neighbours. A dangerous answer is that we should all become nuclear armed, but this simply increases the threat of aggression. Instead the answer must lie in human symmetry and the implementation of a global theology open enough to accept all non-aggressive religions and providing a foundation for a global immune system to combat the emergence of cancers in the body politic. Cancer - Wikipedia, The War of the Worlds - Wikipedia

Monday 25 April 2022

Hahn page 102: ' . . . there is a kind of rule,—well known to physicists familiar with the history of their own science—that it is in very complicated matters that discoveries are normally made; the simple cases do not show up until later.' Otto Hahn (1966): A Scientific Autobiography

Tuesday 26 April 2022

I am a great lover of biographies one by-product of which is to remind me that I have led a pretty mundane life despite my gigantic ambition to completely revise physics and theology to make them mutually compatible and open a path to heaven on Earth by exposing the power of the spiritual space revealed by Cantor. Although I may be a bit hyperactive I have been able to take my time with this project because I have encountered a continual stream of revelations for 50+ years which is quite relaxing, making the journey seem worthwhile and leading me to the point where I think I can complete a draft of cognitive cosmology by mid year and then begin another campaign, my fifth, after Flinders University, University of New England, Australian Catholic University and Adelaide University, seeking a [n academic] platform to test my ideas.

The individuating role of matter goes back to Plato who (perhaps tacitly) expressed the idea that the idea of horse appeared in a multiplicity of earthly horses, albeit imperfectly, because it was the one idea of horse embodies in an unlimited number of material flesh and blood hordes, all both distinct and different [perhaps due to imperfect copying of the heavenly horse]. Theory of Forms - Wikipedia, Principle of individuation - Wikipedia

Transitions between transfinite numbers identified by Cantor are non-linear, ie exponential. Because quantum mechanics is inherently linear and begins with a countable infinity [aleph0]of basis vectors in Hilbert

[page 69]

space it cannot by itself get to aleph1[the continuum]. It requires the transition to Minkowski space which provides the non-linearity necessary to get to the higher degrees of transfinity. This must (?) be the conclusion of page 14: The measurement problem, and it also suggests that quantum computation can be no more powerful than a turing machine. Turing machine - Wikipedia

The subset proof of Cantor's theorem works because is assumes the existence of 1 copies of the oelements of the set of natural numbers to achieve the result card P(0) = 1. This process is forbidden in Hilbert space by the no cloning theorem. The no-cloning theorem is bypassed by the existence of spacelike separation in Minkowski space (because the proof of the no-cloning theorem requires the impossibility of duplication of real [quantum?] information?). Cantor's theorem - Wikipedia

A lot of what I have to say depends on the fact that formal mathematics cannot be represented in the integral world: God created the integers, all else is the work of mathematicians is reflected in our assumption that the maximum number of vectors in Hilbert space is o. Alexander Philip Bird: Kronecker, God and the Integers

Everything, Everywhere, All at Once Everything, Everywhere, All at Once - Wikipedia

Wednesday 27 April 2022
[Page 14] cc14_measurement is dragging the chain rather as page 4: Gravitation: universal self awareness did from the beginning of this month. The process is a bit like mineral exploration, seeking to establish confidence in my estimates of the plausibility of my story. The task now is to reassess my reliance on Zurek's approach to the collapse of the wavefunction and to diagnose Einstein's difficulty in making the transition from the deterministic continuous mathematics of gravitation in a differentiable manifold [to] quantum theory in a logical quantized manifold which I am beginning to see Hilbert space to be now that I have explored the idea of divorcing it from Minkowski space.

The classical word, apart from gravitation, is a world of one way communication. A star sends information to me but I send nothing [or very little] back. This is the world inhabited by Einstein. The quantum world is much more natural. Every communication is a meeting. There are always two actors and they are almost always changed by the meeting. Because there are two basically uncorrelated actors the outcome has a random element which arises through quantization. Everett and many others think the evolution of unobserved quantum systems is deterministic, but Turing, Cantor and Wiener between them say that this cannot be [the linearity implicit in unitarity ensures that a vector remains a complete set of events in the probabilistic sense as it evolves, but does not demand that the sequence of events retains its exact identity as the theory of communication requires. All that is required is that only one of the possible events happens at a time and the sum of their probabilities remains 1]. Hugh Everett III (1957): "Relative State" Formulation of Quantum Mechanics, W. Ross Ashby (1964): An Introduction to Cybernetics

[page 70]

The fundamental error in physics is identical to the fundamental error in theology, ie determinism. In physics the deterministic error is supported by continuous mathematics; in theology is is supported by the omnipotent God. Both, since the days of Gödel and Turing are logically impossible fictions.

Another new website – pternip.com, a collection of all the tweets to be sent under the handle of @pternip [maybe @theologyco], my basic public outreach. See if it available [yes]. A compendium of physico-theological tweets [ie principles].

Thursday 28 April 2022

cc15_invisibilty: file:///Sites/CC/cc15_invisibility.html

Friday 29 April 2022

cc16_network: file:///Sites/CC/cc16_network.html

Saturday 30 April 2022

An impasse?? Head gone blank. Even the old technique of staying in bed until a useful though emerged has not worked. And what is the use of all this transfinite stuff? A measure of the creative power of the universe

For a long time I have thought that the use of real numbers, ie continuity, is the source of many evils, a sort of brute force continuity which is not very smart, descended from Euclid's lines and points. Instead I have favoured the logical continuity devised [by Aristotle] by his middle term in syllogisms and the notion of continuity by ends overlapping [in space]. Now is the time to put this into action, beginning perhaps with a statement of principle, since in the beginning I was enthused by Einstein's idea that a theory should be a consequence of principles. Term logic - Wikipedia, Aristotle (continuity)

Cantor sought the cardinal of the continuum but he was thwarted by the orthogonality between the notion of set and the notion of cardinality pointed out by Paul Cohen. What Cantor did achieve, however, is to move the discussion from the smooth continuity demanded by calculus to the logical continuity demanded by mathematical proof, a sort of metacontinuity which is the key to my quest for cognitive cosmology. So I need to restate continuity before going on. Georg Cantor - Wikipedia, Paul Cohen (1980): Set Theory and the Continuum Hypothesis

[page 71]

In June 1933 Einstein delivered a Herbert Spencer Lecture entitled On The Method of Theoretical Physics. He began with a disclaimer, used very often these days in the corporate world by directors of corporations making market sensitive announcements which contain Forward looking Statements. Herbert Spencer - Wikipedia, Albert Einstein (1934): On the Method of Theoretical Physics, Fortescue Metals Group Limited (ASX FMG): Annual General Meeting, 9 November 2021

He said:

If you wish to learn from the theoretical physicist anything about the methods which he uses. I would give you the following piece of advice: Don't listen to his words, examine his achievements. For to a discoverer in that field, the constructs of his imagination appear so necessary and so natural that he is apt to treat them not as creations of his thoughts but as given realities.

This statement may seem to be deigned to drive my audience away without further ado. For you will say to yourselves, 'The lecturer is himself a constructive physicist; on his own showing therefore he should leave the consideration of the structure of theoretical science to the epistemologist.

So far as I personally am concerned, I can defend myself against an objection of this sort by assuring you that it was no suggestion of mine but the generous invitation of others which has placed me on this dais, which commemorates a man [Spencer] who has spent his life in striving for the unification of knowledge

He goes on to say:

Conclusions obtained by purely rational processes are, so far as Reality is concerned, entirely empty. It is because he recognized this, and especially because he impressed it upon the scientific world, that Galileo became the father of modern physics and in fact the whole world of natural science.

After some discussion he comes to a crucial point which shaped his struggles for a theory of everything in his later life:

It is essential from our point of view that we can arrive at these constructions and the laws relating them with one another by the principle of searching for the mathematically simplest concepts and their connections. In the paucity of mathematically existent simple field-types and the relations between them lies the justification for the theorists hope that he may comprehend reality in its depths.

The most difficult point in such a field-theory at present is how to include the atomic structure of matter and energy. For the theory in its basic principle is not an atomic one in so far as it operates exclusively with continuous functions of space, in contrast to classical mechanics whose most important feature, the material point, squares with the atomistic structure of matter.

He then states his problem with quantum theory:

The modern quantum theory, as associated with the names of de Broglie, Schrödinger, and Dirac, which of course operates with continuous functions, has overcome this difficulty by means of a daring interpretation, first given in clear form by Max Born:—the space functions which appear in the equations make no claim to be a mathematical model of atomic objects. These functions are only supposed to determine in a mathematical way the probabilities of encountering these objects in a particular place or in a particular state of motion, if we make a measurement. This conception is logically unexceptionable and has led to important successes. . . . I cannot help confessing that I myself accord to this interpretation no more than a transitory significance. I still believe in the possibility of giving a model of reality, a theory, that is to say, which shall represent events themselves and not merely the probability of their occurrence.

He has hope for satisfactory a future theory:

And yet a theory may perfectly well exist. which is in a genuine sense an atomistic one (and not merely on the basis of a particular interpretation), in which there is no localizing of the particles in a mathematical model. . . . Thus in a continuum theory, the atomistic character could be satisfactorily expressed by integral propositions without localizing the particles which constitute the atomistic system.

Only if this sort of representation of the atomistic structure be obtained would I regard the quantum problem within the framework of a continuum theory as solved.

Pais, Einstein page 17; 'It was faith in himself that led him to persevere.' Abraham Pais (1982); 'Subtle is the Lord...': The Science and Life of Albert Einstein

The big thing in physics moved from general covariance (classical) to gauge invariance (quantum). General covariance - Wikipedia, Gauge theory - Wikipedia

The universe is quantized from the beginning since logic is quantized and the universe is logical. What I want is to use this fact to avoid all the calculational details of quantum field theory (which as Einstein would have noted) is about statistics) and get down to the events themselves which are logical operations. Continuous mathematics only applies in the limit of large numbers as we learn from Khinchin and Komogorov. Alexandr Khinchin (1998): The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Statistics, Khinchin (1957): Mathematical Foundations of Information Theory, Andrey Kolmogorov Foundations of the Theory of Probability

Is mathematics a science? One can say that before formalism it was because arithmetic and all the subjects built on arithmetic could be verified by counting actual objects. As soon as we move into infinity, however, we must abandon empiricism and rely solely on consistency, so the mathematics of infinity is of necessity [formalist] as Cantor and Hilbert learnt [but, as Einstein says above Conclusions obtained by purely rational processes are, so far as Reality is concerned, entirely empty]. Rosza Peter (1961): Playing with Infinity: Mathematical Explorations and Excursions

Copyright:

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Further reading

Books

Ashby (1964), 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.' 
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Cohen (1980), Paul J, Set Theory and the Continuum Hypothesis, Benjamin/Cummings 1966-1980 Preface: 'The notes that follow are based on a course given at Harvard University, Spring 1965. The main objective was to give the proof of the independence of the continuum hypothesis [from the Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms for set theory with the axiom of choice included]. To keep the course as self contained as possible we included background materials in logic and axiomatic set theory as well as an account of Gödel's proof of the consistency of the continuum hypothesis. . . .'  
Amazon
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Hahn (1966), Otto , and Willey Ley (translator and editor); Glenn Seaborg (Introduction), A Scientific Autobiography, Charles Scribner's Sons 1966 Seaborg: 'It has been given to very few men to make contributions to science and humanity of those made by Otto Hahn. He has made contributions over the span of nearly two generations, beginning with a key role in the earliest days of radiochemistry in investigating and unraveling the complexities of natural radioactivity and culminating with the tremendous discovery of the nuclear fission of uranium.'
German Edition: Von Radiothor zur Uranspaltung Braunschweig 1962.  
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Khinchin (1957), Aleksandr Yakovlevich, Mathematical Foundations of Information Theory (translated by P A Silvermann and M D Friedman), Dover 1957 Jacket: 'The first comprehensive introduction to information theory, this book places the work begun by Shannon and continued by McMillan, Feinstein and Khinchin on a rigorous mathematical basis. For the first time, mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, cyberneticists and communications engineers are offered a lucid, comprehensive introduction to this rapidly growing field.' 
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Khinchin (1998), Aleksandr Yakovlevich, The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Statistics, Dover 1998 'In the area of quantum statistics, I show that a rigorous mathematical basis of the computational formulas of statistical physics . . . may be obtained from an elementary application of the well-developed limit theorems of the theory of probability.' 
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Kolmogorov, Andrey Nikolaevich, and Nathan Morrison (Translator) (With an added bibliography by A T Bharucha-Reid), Foundations of the Theory of Probability, Chelsea 1956 Preface: 'The purpose of this monograph is to give an axiomatic foundation for the theory of probability. . . . This task would have been a rather hopeless one before the introduction of Lebesgue's theories of measure and integration. However, after Lebesgue's publication of his investigations, the analogies between measure of a set and mathematical expectation of a random variable became apparent. These analogies allowed of further extensions; thus, for example, various properties of independent random variables were seen to be in complete analogy with the corresponding properties of orthogonal functions . . .' 
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Pais (1982), Abraham, 'Subtle is the Lord...': The Science and Life of Albert Einstein, Oxford UP 1982 Jacket: In this . . . major work Abraham Pais, himself an eminent physicist who worked alongside Einstein in the post-war years, traces the development of Einstein's entire ouvre. . . . Running through the book is a completely non-scientific biography . . . including many letters which appear in English for the first time, as well as other information not published before.' [Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber boshaft is er nicht] 
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Peter (1961), Rozsa, and Z. P Dienes (translator), Playing with Infinity: Mathematical Explorations and Excursions, Dova 1961 ' This popular account of the many mathematical concepts relating to infinity is one of the best introductions to this subject and to the entire field of mathematics. Dividing her book into three parts—The Sorcereer's Apprentice, The Creative Role of Form, and the Self-Critique of pure Reason— Peter develops her material in twenty-two chapters that sound almost too appealing to be true; playing with fingers, coloring the grey number series, we catch infinity again, the line is filled up, some workshop secrets, the building rocks and so on.' 
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Links

Albert Einstein (1934), On the Method of Theoretical Physics, ' If you wish to learn from the theoretical physicist anything about the methods which he uses. I would give you the following piece of advice: Don't listen to his words, examine his achievements. For to a discoverer in that field, the constructs of his imagination appear so necessary and so natural that he is apt to treat them not as creations of his thoughts but as given realities.' back

Alexander Philip Bird, Kronecker, God and the Integers, ' “Natural numbers were created by God, everything else is the work of men.” Kronecker in a lecture for the Berliner Naturforscher Versammlung (1886). Leopold Kronecker (1823–1891) was a German mathematician who worked on number theory and algebra. He is considered a pre-intuitionist, being only close to intuitionism because he rejected Cantor’s Set Theory. He was, in fact, more radical than the intuitionists. Unlike Poincaré, for example, Kronecker didn’t accept the transfinite numbers as valid mathematical entities.' back

Aristotle (continuity), Physics V, iii, 'A thing that is in succession and touches is 'contiguous'. The 'continuous' is a subdivision of the contiguous: things are called continuous when the touching limits of each become one and the same and are, as the word implies, contained in each other: continuity is impossible if these extremities are two. This definition makes it plain that continuity belongs to things that naturally in virtue of their mutual contact form a unity. And in whatever way that which holds them together is one, so too will the whole be one, e.g. by a rivet or glue or contact or organic union. ' 227a10 sqq back

Cancer - Wikipedia, Cancer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal bleeding, prolonged cough, unexplained weight loss, and a change in bowel movements. While these symptoms may indicate cancer, they can also have other causes. Over 100 types of cancers affect humans.' back

Cantor's theorem - Wikipedia, Cantor's theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In mathematical set theory, Cantor's theorem is a fundamental result which states that, for any set A , the set of all subsets of A, the power set of A, has a strictly greater cardinality than A itself. For finite sets, Cantor's theorem can be seen to be true by simple enumeration of the number of subsets. Counting the empty set as a subset, a set with n elements has a total of 2>sup>n subsets, and the theorem holds because 2>sup>n > nfor all non-negative integers. Much more significant is Cantor's discovery of an argument that is applicable to any set, and shows that the theorem holds for infinite sets also.' back

Dennis Overbye, Tripping Through the Universes, ' So meet Evelyn Wang, a middle-age Chinese immigrant who runs a laundromat and has issues with her taxes, her traditionally forbidding father (newly arrived from China) and her lesbian daughter. In the new film “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Evelyn has been picked to save the realm of universes from a destructive demon because she is such a loser in this one. Above all, she must reconnect with her daughter, the main agent of chaos in her local cosmos. Thus, she finds herself careening through alternate universes and alternate versions of the self she might have been.' back

Everything, Everywhere, All at Once - Wikipedia, Everything, Everywhere, All at Once - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Everything Everywhere All at Once is a 2022 American science-fiction action film written and directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (collectively known as "Daniels"). It stars Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr., with James Hong and Jamie Lee Curtis. The plot follows a Chinese-American woman (Yeoh) being audited by the Internal Revenue Service who discovers that she must connect with parallel universe versions of herself to prevent a powerful being from causing the destruction of them all.' back

Fortescue Metals Group Limited (ASX FMG), Annual General Meeting, 9 November 2021, ' The purpose of this presentation is to provide general information about Fortescue Metals Group Ltd (“Fortescue”). It is not recommended that any person makes any investment decision in relation toFortescue based on this presentation. This presentation contains certain statements which may constitute “forward-looking statements”. Such statements are only predictions and are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties which could cause actual values, results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those expressed, implied or projected in any forward-looking statements. No representation or warranty, express or implied, is made by Fortescue that the material contained in this presentation will beachieved or prove to be correct.' back

Gauge theory - Wikipedia, Gauge theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In physics, a gauge theory is a type of field theory in which the Lagrangian does not change (is invariant) under local transformations from certain Lie groups. The term gauge refers to any specific mathematical formalism to regulate redundant degrees of freedom in the Lagrangian. The transformations between possible gauges, called gauge transformations, form a Lie group—referred to as the symmetry group or the gauge group of the theory. Associated with any Lie group is the Lie algebra of group generators. For each group generator there necessarily arises a corresponding field (usually a vector field) called the gauge field. Gauge fields are included in the Lagrangian to ensure its invariance under the local group transformations (called gauge invariance). When such a theory is quantized, the quanta of the gauge fields are called gauge bosons. If the symmetry group is non-commutative, then the gauge theory is referred to as non-abelian gauge theory, the usual example being the Yang–Mills theory. ' 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.' back

Georg Cantor - Wikipedia, Georg Cantor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor (March 3 [O.S. February 19] 1845 – January 6, 1918) was a German mathematician, born in Russia. He is best known as the creator of set theory, which has become a fundamental theory in mathematics. Cantor established the importance of one-to-one correspondence between sets, defined infinite and well-ordered sets, and proved that the real numbers are "more numerous" than the natural numbers. In fact, Cantor's theorem implies the existence of an "infinity of infinities". He defined the cardinal and ordinal numbers and their arithmetic. Cantor's work is of great philosophical interest, a fact of which he was well aware of.' back

Herbert Spencer - Wikipedia, Herbert Spencer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English philosopher, biologist, anthropologist, and sociologist famous for his hypothesis of social Darwinism whereby superior physical force shapes history. Spencer originated the expression "survival of the fittest", which he coined in Principles of Biology (1864) after reading Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. The term strongly suggests natural selection, yet Spencer saw evolution as extending into realms of sociology and ethics, so he also supported Lamarckism. back

Hugh Everett III (1957), "Relative State" Formulation of Quantum Mechanics, ' 1. Introduction The task of quantizing general relativity raises serious questions about the meaning of the present formulation and interpretation of quantum mechanics when applied to so fundamental a structure as the space-time geometry itself. This paper seeks to clarify the foundations of quantum mechanics. It presents a reformulation of quantum theory in a form believed suitable for application to general relativity. . . . The relationship of this new formulation to the older formulation is therefore that of a metatheory to a theory, that is, it is an underlying theory in which the nature and consistency, as well as the realm of applicability, of the older theory can be investigated and clarified.' back

Isabella Higgins, Russian troops came to kidnap and murder this Ukrainian village leader. Here's how she outsmarted them, ' To keep everyone safe, she would first need to stay alive. In other towns across Ukraine, devastating stories have emerged of village leaders being brutally killed. In Motyzhyn, a small town on the north-western outskirts of Kyiv, the female village chief was found with her husband and son in a shallow grave. Halyna Chernyshova says it was her fellow villagers who kept her alive, and she is proud that "no-one here betrayed us".' back

Katharine Q. Seelye, Ursula Bellugi, Pioneer in the World of Sign Language, Dies at 91, ' Dr. Bellugi was a leading researcher at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego for nearly five decades and, for much of that time, was director of its laboratory for cognitive neuroscience. She made significant contributions in three main areas: the development of language in children; the linguistic structure and neurological basis of American Sign Language; and the social behavior and language abilities of people with a rare genetic disorder, Williams syndrome.' back

Leonid Ragozin, Russians are told they have two choices: Win this war or be destroyed, ' Meanwhile, opposition-minded Russians are seeing the carnage Putin has brought to Russian-speaking cities in Ukraine and realizing that he may exact the same in Russia if people rise against him. They get the message. When Putin says Russians and Ukrainians are one people and then — in the next breath — begins slaughtering these people en masse, he is unleashing civil war, by his own logic. For now, that is confined to a neighboring country. But some pro-Kremlin commentators, including the editor of a key history journal and a well-known writer, have recently taken to branding members of the Russian opposition “internal Ukrainians.” The implication is that anti-Putin Russians should be treated with the same cruelty as Ukrainians, because they want to destroy Russia.' back

Lise Meitner - Wikiedia, Lise Meitner - Wikiedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Elise Meitner (7 November 1878 – 27 October 1968) was a leading Austrian-Swedish physicist who was one of those responsible for the discovery of the element protactinium and nuclear fission. While working at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute on radioactivity, she discovered the radioactive isotope protactinium-231 in 1917. In 1938, Meitner and her nephew, the physicist Otto Robert Frisch, discovered nuclear fission. She was praised by Albert Einstein as the "German Marie Curie".' back

Mariana Lenharo & Meghie Rodrigues, How a Brazilian dinosaur sparked a movement to decolonize fossil science, ' In December 2020, a paper in the journal Cretaceous Research sent shock waves through the palaeontology community1. It described a dinosaur species that the authors named Ubirajara jubatus — the first dinosaur found in the Southern Hemisphere to display what were probably precursors to modern feathers. The 110-million-year-old fossil had been collected in Brazil decades earlier — but no Brazilian palaeontologist had ever heard of it. The authors of the paper were from Germany, Mexico and the United Kingdom. It was the latest instance of what some researchers now call palaeontological colonialism, in which scientists from wealthy nations obtain specimens from low- and middle-income countries without involving local researchers, and then store the fossils abroad. The practice can sometimes be illegal.' back

Michelle Ye Hee Lee & Min Joo Kim, As world reopens, North Korea is one of two countries without vaccines, ' The vaccines that were allocated for North Korea through a United Nations-backed global vaccination effort are no longer available, officials said this month, after Pyongyang repeatedly rejected the initiative’s offers of millions of doses. North Korea, already one of the most closed societies in the world, remains in a strict pandemic lockdown and has shuttered its borders except to a minimal level of trade with China, with grave implications for the health and food security of its population. . . . North Korea and Eritrea are now the only two countries in the world that have not administered vaccines.' back

Nick Cohen, Putin has ignited a new anti-colonial struggle. This time, Moscow is the target, ' History is teetering on an edge. No one knows which way it will go. Maybe the Russian empire, the last and most terrible of the European empires, will fall. Or maybe it will absorb the hit and survive as it has survived and expanded since the 17th century. You’d be a fool to bet against it. The graveyards of Eurasia are full of those who did. And yet the breathtaking heroism of the Ukrainian resistance and the insane self-delusion of the Putinist regime are allowing Russia’s opponents from Syria to Central Asia, and from Georgia to Moldova, to ask that most revolutionary of questions: “What if?”. . . Talking to the men and women engaged in what is – if only the global left could see it – the great anticolonial struggle of our times, you hear them moving through the stages of revolutionary commitment. From peaceful protest to jail sentences to the realisation that civil disobedience will never be enough.' back

Principle of individuation - Wikipedia, Principle of individuation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The principle of individuation is a criterion that individuates or numerically distinguishes the members of the kind for which it is given, that is by which we can supposedly determine, regarding any kind of thing, when we have more than one of them or not.[1] It is also known as a 'criterion of identity' or 'indiscernibility principle'. The history of the consideration of such a principle begins with Aristotle.[2] It was much discussed by the medieval philosopher Duns Scotus (c. 1266–1308) with his "haecceity" and later, during Renaissance, by Francisco Suárez (1548–1617), Bonaventure Baron (1610–1696) and Leibniz (1646–1716). back

Term logic - Wikipedia, Term logic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In philosophy, term logic, also known as traditional logic or Aristotelian logic, is a loose name for the way of doing logic that began with Aristotle and that was dominant until the advent of modern predicate logic in the late nineteenth century. This entry is an introduction to the term logic needed to understand philosophy texts written before predicate logic came to be seen as the only formal logic of interest.' back

The War of the Worlds - Wikipedia, The War of the Worlds - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The plot has been related to invasion literature of the time. The novel has been variously interpreted as a commentary on evolutionary theory, British imperialism, and generally Victorian superstitions, fears, and prejudices. Wells said that the plot arose from a discussion with his brother Frank about the catastrophic effect of the British on indigenous Tasmanians. What would happen, he wondered, if Martians did to Britain what the British had done to the Tasmanians? At the time of publication, it was classified as a scientific romance, like Wells's earlier novel The Time Machine.' back

Theory of Forms - Wikipedia, Theory of Forms - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Plato's theory of Forms or theory of Ideas asserts that non-material abstract (but substantial) forms (or ideas), and not the material world of change known to us through sensation, possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality. When used in this sense, the word form or idea is often capitalized. Plato speaks of these entities only through the characters (primarily Socrates) of his dialogues who sometimes suggest that these Forms are the only true objects of study that can provide us with genuine knowledge; thus even apart from the very controversial status of the theory, Plato's own views are much in doubt. Plato spoke of Forms in formulating a possible solution to the problem of universals.' back

Turing machine - Wikipedia, Turing machine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' A Turing machine is a hypothetical device that manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules. Despite its simplicity, a Turing machine can be adapted to simulate the logic of any computer algorithm, and is particularly useful in explaining the functions of a CPU inside a computer. The "machine" was invented in 1936 by Alan Turingwho called it an "a-machine" (automatic machine). The Turing machine is not intended as practical computing technology, but rather as a hypothetical device representing a computing machine. Turing machines help computer scientists understand the limits of mechanical computation.' back

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