natural theology

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vol VII: Notes

1999

Notes

[Sunday 21 February 1999 - Saturday 27 February 1999]

[BOOK, DB 50]

[page 166]

Sunday 21 February

A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf. Woolf

A book is a product of a whole culture, not just the individual participant in the culture who writes it.

God is pure action / actuality

Not the same as the {fullness of being}

Each transfinite number is the Fullness of its predecessor.

Scale invariant = god's problems are the same as my problems.

HEAVEN = an asymptote = unattainable

[page 167]

It is not a crime to be tempted. Action is all that is actionable.

The measure of the university is the size of its library. [now the whole internet!]

RELIGION = OPERATING SYSTEM

Life is pure act: the question is what to do = where to go. The possibilities are always greater than the reality. THE GROWTH POTENTIAL OF BEING. We exist at a point in the growth of the Universe.

To be tempted is not a crime.

Dynamic justice : Equal bandwidth for each position.

Monday 22 February
Tuesday 22 February

[page 168]

Wednesday 24 February

Age is making me aware of the struggle for existence experienced by those who make a living by physical work (perhaps ? % of our population). Tiredness is in effect the enemy. Also explains why men may have difficulties with putting women in positions of control since they fear the dissipation of hard earned capital.

Interest arises because of the production efficiencies brought about by capital investment. Some of the return on capital accrues to the moneylender, some to the person who uses the capital goods. My problem is I am not working in a market but in a fixed environment of poorish friends. Also high ambition to totally reform theological view of the world induces financial and psychological stress that would be absent if I could a) drop the ambition or b) recruit funds and people to help me with it. Perhaps this year will be both the most stressful of my life and also the darkest before the dawn.

ISLAM = SUBMISSION = WORK
MOTHERHOOD = bowing to reality.

[page 169]

The spirit of this site revolves around the physical symbol religion is the technology of peace. The meaning I give to this symbol is mooted in the history of this site and will be (hopefully) explicated in great detail in pages to come.

How do many become one? Why is the one many? The explication of peace revolves around these questions. Here we are doing science, where by science we mean expressing the life of the Universe in our own words.,

Theology is the theory of peace, and religion is the industry associated with it.

Lourdes: people sufficiently empowered may work miracles upon themselves. Lourdes - Wikipedia

I set out many years ago to make a living from religion as an employee of the Roman Catholic Church but was dismissed for failing to toe the

[page 170]

official line. I have spent the last thirty years building houses and thinking about the relationship between religion and human habitat. Now I have decided to go into the religion business on my own account.

Quality control. The enemy of quality control is blind management cf. space shuttle. Space Shuttle Challenger disaster - Wikipedia There are no end of priesthoods that claim for one reason or another to be exempt from normal requirements of quality control. There are revolutionaries who feel that their cause is so important that they are licensed to kill indiscriminately.

Thursday 25 February
Friday 26 February

A blueprint for the religion industry:

1. We are all prophets (Spirit)
2. We are all divine (Son)
3. The world is god (Father)

[page 171]

On the religion industry,

Religion is big business. Department of Business, Economics, Statistics and Informatics at Örebro University

We define order using the membership relation, and then use ordering to define all permutations. The transfinite space of permutations defines al possible structures.

A language is a subspace of this space.

. . .

Order and Chaos: Genesis describes the development of order out of chaos. Genesis

Domestic definition of chaos: how much mess can you tolerate.

[page 172]

It is abut 30 years since I was first judged to have departed from Catholic (or at least Dominican) orthodoxy. www.op.org

The empirical foundation of the position promoted [on this site] is my personal experience of life enriched by communications of others.

Catholic theology is heavily constrained by the institutional requirements of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC). The RCC is essentially a monarchy. If it were a democracy, we could say that its guiding light is the will of its people.

I could not bear this constraint and have been driven by the need to find a new religious position since I abandoned Catholicism.

The church position requires a number of counterintuitive positions which are summarized in the 24 theses. 24 Theses

Proof of god: this position remains unacceptable to me.

Saturday 27 February

The critical empirical fact that has imprinted itself on me in my religious journey is that religion (and the loss of religion) [is] associated [with] very powerful feelings. This led me to my fundamental hypothesis about religion, it is a force as strong as death (or life) which binds unrelated individuals into an organism which enhances the lives of at least some of the people within it.

If this is the case, religions, like genes, have a strong bearing on the fitness and survival of their members and we would expect some sort of natural selection among them. By this criterion, Christianity has been a very successful religion. I[t] has more than a billion adherents who tend to be found in the wealthier communities of the world.

The world enjoys a rich diversity of religions, each with different tone and temper. Christianity seems quite belligerent, to the degree that the

[page 174]

evolutionary step we call the Reformation spawned an era rich in religious wars,

My working definition of religion is best understood in the context of sociobiology. Wilson Sociobiology sets out to explain cooperative behaviour among living creatures. It has roots in 'neo Darwinism', one of whose staunch advocates is Richard Dawkins. Dawkins Dawkins sees genes as the rulers of life. Life as we know it is simply the genes' way of reproducing and improving themselves.

From this point of view, it only makes sense for one organism to cooperate with another if such cooperation results in increased prevalence of the cooperative genotypes in the gene pool. So bees die in defence of hive and queen.

Have needed to formulate a new religious view of the world, that is link myself to the world anew to give myself meaning and make life in the possible psychologically

[page 175]

viable. It follows from this than no person can exist as an island. We are individuals but our individual existence depends on communication with an environment comprising other people, the natural world and human institutions including governments, churches, corporations of every sort, families, tribes etc etc.

A Religion in communication terms is a protocol for human existence.

My sanity gave me no choice but to fashion a new religion. The first requirement was security. Once bitten, twice shy.

As I contemplated my fate during the early despair dominated days after I left the church there was no comparison between the

[page 176]

[credibility of Catholic theology and science].

Theology is the science of personal experience.
Religion is the protocol of human organism, the technology of peace.

Science is the recursive use of mathematics not only to model the Universe, but to estimate the probability that a given model does fit the observations.

The good news is that I have made it through hell without committing suicide (as many do) and found the possible land on the other side. I know now that work and pain are not punishment for some original sin, consequences of a nature rendered defective by some nebulous fault of its own in the face of a stern but loving god who sent his own son to redeem us and lead us into paradise IF we obey a set of rules laid down by a human organization we call a church, an embodiment of religion.

I know [and] feel that the Christian story is a poor approximation to reality, a yet remains

[page 177]

as a monument and reference point to a discernible stage in human evolution.

After a long opposition, the Church has succumbed to the power of the theory of evolution. . . .

30 year loop coming back to the starting point. My point of departure (and so last point of contact) was Bernard Lonergan's Insight. Lonergan Englishing Thomas Aquinas; showing [his] weakness.

Big contrast between transcendental method and static god.

Aleph(human)

My overall interest is to revisit the events of my transition in the cold light of academia.

Summarize my position in a series of propositions contrasting it with the Catholic position. These propositions represent my current beliefs but may be viewed as hypothetical by one who

[page 178]

stands by the standard Catholic Model.

[subject headings]

1. Theology
2. Religion
3. Genesis
4. Original sin and redemption
5. Pain, suffering and sin
6. Trinity
7. Jesus
8. Mystical body
9. Death
10. Real presence
11. Providence and prescience of god
12. Prayer and magic

[page 179]

13. Theory of everything
14. Prophecy
15. Language
16. Christianity is bigger than the Roman Catholic Church.

MA - exclude empirical residue

PhD - show that visible Universe is all that is

MA based on

a) epistemological works of B J Lonergan, Verbum, Insight and Method

b) standard textbooks on set theory, logic, quantum mechanics, foundations of logic and mathematics, communication theory, cybernetics

c) personal experience of transition out of the Roman Catholic Church

Effect of MA and PhD is to make god + Universe one, so that theology may be considered an empirical science and to global consensus reached and peace.

If this position can be defended it opens the way to the unification of religions because theology can become an empirical science, the union of all science and, so, like the other sciences, slowly converge on a unified transcription of the nature of the world.

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

Click on the "Amazon" link below each book entry to see details of a book (and possibly buy it!)

Dawkins, Richard, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design, Penguin/Pelican 1996 Preface: '[Darwinism] is, indeed a remarkably simple theory; ... In essence it amounts simply to the idea that non-random reproduction where there is hereditary variation, has consequences that are far reaching if there is time for them to be cumulative ... ' 
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Dawkins, Richard, The Selfish Gene , Oxford UP 1976 Amazon: Editorial review: 'Inheriting the mantle of revolutionary biologist from Darwin, Watson, and Crick, Richard Dawkins forced an enormous change in the way we see ourselves and the world with the publication of The Selfish Gene. Suppose, instead of thinking about organisms using genes to reproduce themselves, as we had since Mendel's work was rediscovered, we turn it around and imagine that "our" genes build and maintain us in order to make more genes. That simple reversal seems to answer many puzzlers which had stumped scientists for years, and we haven't thought of evolution in the same way since.' Rob Lightner 
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Dawkins, Richard, Climbing Mount Improbable, W. W. Norton & Company 1997 Amazon editorial review: 'How do species evolve? Richard Dawkins, one of the world's most eminent zoologists, likens the process to scaling a huge, Himalaya-size peak, the Mount Improbable of his title. An alpinist does not leap from sea level to the summit; neither does a species utterly change forms overnight, but instead follows a course of "slow, cumulative, one-step-at-a-time, non-random survival of random variants" -- a course that Charles Darwin, Dawkins's great hero, called natural selection. Illustrating his arguments with case studies from the natural world, such as the evolution of the eye and the lung, and the coevolution of certain kinds of figs and wasps, Dawkins provides a vigorous, entertaining defense of key Darwinian ideas.' 
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Genesis, and Alexander Jones (editor), in The Jerusalem Bible, Darton Longman and Todd 1966 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep, and God's spirit hovered over the water.' (I, 1-2) 
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Higman, Bryan, Applied Group-Theoretic and Matrix Methods, Dover Publications Jacket: '... This work, a comprehensive, thoroughly reliable exposition of the basic ideas of group theory (realized through matrices) and its applications to various areas of physics and chemistry, systematically covers this important ground for the first time. ... Although [it] deals basiclaly with advanced level material, the unusually clear exposition provides much valuable insight and fruitful suggestion for student and specialist alike. Chemists, physicists, mathematicians, and others who would like an idea of the applications and methods of group and matrix theory in the physical sciences will profit greatly from this book. ...'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' 
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Lonergan, Bernard J F, Method in Theology, University of Toronto Press for Lonergan Research Institute 1996 Introduction: 'A theology mediates between a cultural matrix and the signifcance and role of religion in that matrix. ... When the classicist notion of culture prevails, theology is conceived as a permanent achievement, and then one discourses on its nature. When culture is conceived empirically, theology is known to be an ongoing process, and then one writes on its method. Method ... is a framework for collaborative creativity.' 
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Marais, Eugene, and (translated by Winifred de Kok, The Soul of the White Ant, Penguin Books 1973 Jacket: 'Is nature a state of chaos or a predetermined pattern of existence? Is a termite colony a collection of individuals or a single, unified organism working toward a single aim? In this utterly absorbing study of a termite colony, Eugène Marais, the brilliant South African journalist, lawyer poet and natural scientist poses these intriguing questions. Ten years of close observation led him to some startling conclusions - with disturbing social implications.' 
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Merton, Robert C, Continuous Time Finance, Wiley-Blackwell 1992 Amazon Product Description 'Robert C. Merton's widely used text provides an overview and synthesis of finance theory from the perspective of continuous-time analysis. It covers individual financial choice, corporate finance, financial intermediation, capital markets, and selected topics on the interface between private and public finance. For this revised edition a new section on managing university endowments has been added. The book begins with a foreword by Paul Samuelson.' 
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Partterson, Scott, The Quantus: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed it, Crown Business (February 2, 2010) Language: English ISBN-10: 0307453375 ISBN-13: 978-0307453372 2010 Amazon Editorial Reviews “Scott Patterson has the ability to see things you and I don’t notice. In The Quants he does an admirable job of debunking the myths of black box traders and provides a very entertaining narrative in the process.” --Nassim Nicholas Taleb 
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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.' 
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Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro, Studies in Zen, Rider and Co, for the Buddhist Society 1953 Studies in Zen is the eigth volume of the collected works of DT Suzuki. Jacket: 'These studies, packed with the jewels of Zen wisdom, and written with unrivalled knowledge, will appeal to all who seek a deeper understanding of Eastern ways of thought and spiritual achievement. For Zen is unique in the whole range of human understanding, and Dr. Suzuki is accepted as its greatest exponent. 
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Veltman, Martinus, Diagrammatica: The Path to the Feynman Rules, Cambridge University Press 1994 Jacket: 'This book provides an easily accessible introduction to quantum field theory via Feynman rules and calculations in particle physics. The aim is to make clear what the physical foundations of present-day field theory are, to clarify the physical content of Feynman rules, and to outline their domain of applicability. ... The book includes valuable appendices that review some essential mathematics, including complex spaces, matrices, the CBH equation, traces and dimensional regularization. ...' 
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von Neumann, John, and Robert T Beyer (translator), Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Princeton University Press 1983 Jacket: '. . . a revolutionary book that caused a sea change in theoretical physics. . . . JvN begins by presenting the theory of Hermitean operators and Hilbert spaces. These provide the framework for transformation theory, which JvN regards as the definitive form of quantum mechanics. . . . Regarded as a tour de force at the time of its publication, this book is still indispensable for those interested in the fundamental issues of quantum mechanics.' 
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Wilson, Edward Osborne, Sociobiology: The new synthesis, Harvard UP 1975 Chapter 1: '... the central theoretical problem of sociobiology: how can altruism, which by definition reduces personal fitness, possibly evolve by natural selection? The answer is kinship. ... Sociobiology is defined as the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behaviour. ... It may not be too much to say that sociology and the other social sciences, as well as the humanities, are the last branches of biology waiting to be included in the Modern Synthesis.'  
Amazon
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Woolf, Virginia, A Room of One's Own, Granada 1977 Amazon editorial review: 'Surprisingly, this long essay about society and art and sexism is one of Woolf's most accessible works. Woolf, a major modernist writer and critic, takes us on an erudite yet conversational--and completely entertaining--walk around the history of women in writing, smoothly comparing the architecture of sentences by the likes of William Shakespeare and Jane Austen, all the while lampooning the chauvinistic state of university education in the England of her day. When she concluded that to achieve their full greatness as writers women will need a solid income and a privacy, Woolf pretty much invented modern feminist criticism.' 
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Papers
Burkard, Guido, "Splitting States on a Chip", Science, 327, 5966, 5 February 2010, page 650-51. 'The different colors on the surface of a soap bubble arise from the interference of light waves reflecting from the outer and inner surface of the liquid film. As the thickness of the film varies, so will the wavelength of light that undergoes constructive interference and remains visible. This effect can be used to measure small changes in distance if a single coherent beam is used (see the figure, panel A) through the formation of interference fringes. According to quantum mechanics, even material particles such as electrons behave like waves, and indeed, interference can be observed when the electric charge associated with an electron travels along two arms of a ring-like interferometer in the Aharonov-Bohm effect. In addition to their charge, electrons also have two distinguishable spin states, spin-up and spin-down. On page 669 of this issue, Petta et al. (1) demonstrate beam splitting and interferometry for the spin degrees of freedom of two electrons on a semiconductor chip. In this system, the phase of partial waves is associated with spin direction. Nuclear spins, whose coupling to electrons can destroy phase coherence, actually help control spin-state evolution.'. back
Yovel, Yossi, Ben Falk, Cynthia F Moss, Nachum Ulanovsky, "", Science, 327, 5966, 5 February 2010, page 701-704. 'Is centering a stimulus in the field of view an optimal strategy to localize and track it? We demonstrated, through experimental and computational studies, that the answer is no. We trained echolocating Egyptian fruit bats to localize a target in complete darkness, and we measured the directional aim of their sonar clicks. The bats did not center the sonar beam on the target, but instead pointed it off axis, accurately directing the maximum slope ("edge") of the beam onto the target. Information-theoretic calculations showed that using the maximum slope is optimal for localizing the target, at the cost of detection. We propose that the tradeoff between detection (optimized at stimulus peak) and localization (optimized at maximum slope) is fundamental to spatial localization and tracking accomplished through hearing, olfaction, and vision... back
Links
Alan Greenspan, Greenspan on Sources of Financial Crisis, 'It was the failure to properly price such risky assets that precipitated the crisis. In recent decades, a vast risk management and pricing system has evolved, combining the best insights of mathematicians and finance experts supported by major advances in computer and communications technology. A Nobel Prize was awarded for the discovery of the pricing model that underpins much of the advance in derivates markets. This modern risk management paradigm held sway for decades. The whole intellectual edifice, however, collapsed in the summer of last year because the data inputted into the risk management models generally covered only the past two decades, a period of euphoria. Had instead the models been fitted more appropriately to historic periods of stress, capital requirements would have been much higher and the financial world would be in far better shape today, in my judgment.' back
Amir E Khadani and Andrew W Lo, What Happened to the Quants in 2007, 'Abstract During the week of August 6, 2007, a number of high-profile and highly successful quantitative long/short equity hedge funds experienced unprecedented losses. Based on empir-ical results from TASS hedge-fund data as well as the simulated performance of a specific long/short equity strategy, we hypothesize that the losses were initiated by the rapid un-winding of one or more sizable quantitative equity market-neutral portfolios. Given the speed and price impact with which this occurred, it was likely the result of a sudden liquidation by a multi-strategy fund or proprietary-trading desk, possibly due to margin calls or a risk reduction. These initial losses then put pressure on a broader set of long/short and long-only equity portfolios, causing further losses on August 9th by triggering stop-loss and de-leveraging policies. A significant rebound of these strategies occurred on August 10th, which is also consistent with the sudden liquidation hypothesis. This hypothesis suggests that the quantitative nature of the losing strategies was incidental, and the main driver of the losses in August 2007 was the firesale liquidation of similar portfolios that happened to be quantitatively constructed. The fact that the source of dislocation in long/short equity portfolios seems to lie elsewhere—apparently in a completely unrelated set of markets and instruments—suggests that systemic risk in the hedge-fund industry may have increased in recent years.' back
Apple Inc., Mac Dev Center: Applescript Language Guide: AppleScript Fundamentals, This chapter describes basic concepts that underlie the terminology and rules covered in the rest of this guide. back
Archimedean property - Wikipedia, Archimedean property - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In abstract algebra, the Archimedean property, named after the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse, is a property held by some ordered or normed groups, fields, and other algebraic structures. Roughly speaking, it is the property of having no infinitely large or infinitely small elements (i.e. no nontrivial infinitesimals). The notion arose from the theory of magnitudes of Ancient Greece; it still plays an important role in modern mathematics such as David Hilbert's axioms for geometry, the theory of ordered groups, the one of ordered fields and the one of local fields. An algebraic structure in which any two non-zero elements are comparable, in the sense that neither of them is infinitesimal with respect to the other, is said to be Archimedean. A structure which has a pair of non-zero elements, one of which is infinitesimal with respect to the other, is said to be non-Archimedean.' back
Benedict Carey, Evidence That Little Touches Do Mean So Much, '“We think that humans build relationships precisely for this reason, to distribute problem solving across brains,” said James A. Coan, a a psychologist at the University of Virginia. “We are wired to literally share the processing load, and this is the signal we’re getting when we receive support through touch." back
Black-Scholes - Wikipedia, Black-Scholes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%E2%80%93Scholes' back
Bose-Einstein statistics - Wikipedia, Bose-Einstein statistics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In statistical mechanics, Bose–Einstein statistics (or more colloquially B–E statistics) determines the statistical distribution of identical indistinguishable bosons over the energy states in thermal equilibrium.' back
Department of Business, Economics, Statistics and Informatics at Örebro University, EconPapers: Papers on Economics of Religion, 'EconPapers use the RePEc bibliographic and author data, providing access to the largest collection of online Economics working papers and journal articles. The majority of the full text files are freely available, but some (typically journal articles) require that you or your organization subscribe to the service providing the full text file. RePEc is a distributed data set residing in over 400 archives operated by research organizations, academic departments and publishers. EconPapers would not be possible without the effort of the maintainers of these archives.' back
Diffusion - Wikipedia, Diffusion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Diffusion is a time-dependent process, constituted by random motion of given entities and causing the statistical distribution of these entities to spread in space. The concept of diffusion is tied to notion of mass transfer, driven by a concentration gradient. The concept of diffusion emerged in the physical sciences. The paradigmatic examples were heat diffusion, molecular diffusion and Brownian motion. Their mathematical description was elaborated by Joseph Fourier in 1822, Adolf Fick in 1855 and by Albert Einstein in 1905.' back
Dirac delta function - Wikipedia, Dirac delta function - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Dirac delta or Dirac's delta is a mathematical construct introduced by theoretical physicist Paul Dirac. Informally, it is a function representing an infinitely sharp peak bounding unit area: a function ?(x) that has the value zero everywhere except at x = 0 where its value is infinitely large in such a way that its total integral is 1. In the context of signal processing it is often referred to as the unit impulse function. Note that the Dirac delta is not strictly a function. While for many purposes it can be manipulated as such, formally it can be defined as a distribution that is also a measure.' back
Emanuel Derman and Paul Wilmott, Financial Modeler's Manifesto, 'The Modelers' Hippocratic Oath ~ I will remember that I didn't make the world, and it doesn't satisfy my equations. ~ Though I will use models boldly to estimate value, I will not be overly impressed by mathematics. ~ I will never sacrifice reality for elegance without explaining why I have done so. ~ Nor will I give the people who use my model false comfort about its accuracy. Instead, I will make explicit its assumptions and oversights. ~ I understand that my work may have enormous effects on society and the economy, many of them beyond my comprehension.' back
Fermi-Dirac statistics - Wikipedia, Fermi-Dirac statistics - Wikipedia, the fre encyclopedia, 'In statistical mechanics, Fermi-Dirac statistics is a particular case of particle statistics developed by Enrico Fermi and Paul Dirac that determines the statistical distribution of fermions over the energy states for a system in thermal equilibrium. In other words, it is the distribution of the probabilities that each possible energy levels is occupied by a fermion.; back
Hopfield net - Wikipedia, Hopfield net - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'A Hopfield net is a form of recurrent artificial neural network invented by John Hopfield. Hopfield nets serve as content-addressable memory systems with binary threshold units. They are guaranteed to converge to a local minimum, but convergence to one of the stored patterns is not guaranteed.' back
Lourdes - Wikipedia, Lourdes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Lourdes (Occitan name Lorda) is a town and commune situated in the Southwest of the Hautes-Pyrénées department, lying in the first Pyrenean foothills, in southwestern France. , , , Lourdes was originally a small unremarkable market town lying in the foothills of the Pyrenees. At that time the most prominent feature was the fortified castle which rises up from the centre of the town on a rocky escarpment. Following the claims that there were apparitions of Our Lady of Lourdes to Bernadette Soubirous in 1858, Lourdes has developed into a major place of Christian pilgrimage. Today Lourdes has a population of around 15,000 inhabitants but is able to take in some 5,000,000 pilgrims and tourists every season. Lourdes has the second greatest number of hotels in France after Paris with about 270 establishments.' back
Lourdes-france.org, Lourdes france, le site officiel des Santuaires vous acceuille, Site internet de Sanctuaires Notre-Dame de Lourdes back
Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics - Wikipedia, Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In statistical mechanics, Maxwell–Boltzmann statistics describes the statistical distribution of material particles over various energy states in thermal equilibrium, when the temperature is high enough and density is low enough to render quantum effects negligible.' back
Paul Wilmott, The Use, Misuse and Abuse of Mathematics in Finance, 'Abstract The once ‘gentlemanly’ business of finance has become a game for ‘players.’ These players are increasingly technically sophisticated, typically having Ph.D.s in a numerate discipline. The roots of this transformation have their foundation in the 1970s. Since then the financial world has become more and more complex. Unfortunately, as the mathematics of finance reaches higher levels so the level of common sense seems to drop. There have been some well publicised cases of large losses sustained by companies because of their lack of understanding of financial instruments. In this article we look at the history of financial modelling, the current state of the subject and possible future directions. It is clear that a major rethink is desperately required if the world is to avoid a mathematician-led market meltdown.' back
Quantum fluctuations - Wikipedia, Quantum fluctuations - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In quantum physics, a quantum fluctuation is the temporary change in the amount of energy in a point in space, arising from Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.' back
Scott Patterson and Aaron Luchetti, Boom in 'Dark Pool' Trading Networks is Causing headaches on Wall Street, 'When Cheryl Cargie, head trader at Ariel Investments LLC in Chicago, decided last month to buy 1.3 million shares of a midcap stock listed on the New York Stock Exchange, she spread orders among several "dark pools," the secretive electronic trading networks that match buyers and sellers anonymously. The pools are booming in popularity as big institutional investors look for ways to trade blocks of stock without triggering ripples in the share price, as can happen on traditional stock markets such as the NYSE and Nasdaq Stock Market. But all that darkness is causing nightmares on Wall Street.' back
Space Shuttle Challenger disaster - Wikipedia, Space Shuttle Challenger disaster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred in the United States, over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of central Florida, at 11:39 a.m. EST (16:39 UTC) on January 28, 1986. The Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds into its flight after an O-ring seal in its right solid rocket booster (SRB) failed at liftoff. The seal failure caused a breach in the SRB joint it filled, allowing a flare to reach the outside and impinge upon the adjacent attachment hardware and external fuel tank. The SRB breach flare led to the separation of the right-hand SRB and the structural failure of the external tank. Aerodynamic forces promptly broke up the orbiter. The shuttle was destroyed and all seven crew members were killed.' back
Thanu Padmanabhan, Thermodynamical Aspects of gravity: New Insights, '(Submitted on 26 Nov 2009 (v1), last revised 19 Jan 2010 (this version, v2)) The fact that one can associate thermodynamic properties with horizons brings together principles of quantum theory, gravitation and thermodynamics and possibly offers a window to the nature of quantum geometry. This review discusses certain aspects of this topic concentrating on new insights gained from some recent work. After a brief introduction of the overall perspective, Sections 2 and 3 provide the pedagogical background on the geometrical features of bifurcation horizons, path integral derivation of horizon temperature, black hole evaporation, structure of Lanczos-Lovelock models, the concept of Noether charge and its relation to horizon entropy. Section 4 discusses several conceptual issues introduced by the existence of temperature and entropy of the horizons. In Section 5 we take up the connection between horizon thermodynamics and gravitational dynamics and describe several peculiar features which have no simple interpretation in the conventional approach. The next two sections describe the recent progress achieved in an alternative perspective of gravity. In Section 6 we provide a thermodynamic interpretation of the field equations of gravity in any diffeomorphism invariant theory and in Section 7 we obtain the field equations of gravity from an entropy maximization principle. The last section provides a summary.' back
www.op.org, Dominicans : Order of Preachers, ..., '... the official international Web site of the Order of Preachers (the Dominicans). The branches of the Dominican family are multiple: brothers, contemplative nuns, congregations of contemplative and apostolic sisters, lay persons in fraternities or secular institutes, secular priests in fraternities.' back

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