tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4592343867641408602024-02-20T19:43:05.921-07:00Sententiæ DeoScientia ad maiorem Dei gloriam<br>Mater Dei Maria, Sedes Sapientiæ et Stella Matutina, ora pro nobis.Geremiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11812810552682098086noreply@blogger.comBlogger170125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-459234386764140860.post-60409465785673059942017-07-04T09:13:00.003-07:002017-07-04T09:20:53.020-07:00Transversal's Duhem issue<a href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/issue/view/6"><i>Transversal</i>'s issue dedicated to Duhem</a> has been released; it's open-access (<a href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/issue/download/6/7">full issue PDF</a>):<br />
<div class="csl-bib-body" style="line-height: 1.35; padding-left: 2em; text-indent: -2em;">
<div class="csl-entry">
<br />“Dossier Pierre Duhem.” <i>Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science</i>, no. 2 (2017). https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/issue/view/6.</div>
<span class="Z3988" title="url_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fzotero.org%3A2&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Dossier%20Pierre%20Duhem&rft.jtitle=Transversal%3A%20International%20Journal%20for%20the%20Historiography%20of%20Science&rft.issue=2&rft.date=2017&rft.language=English"></span>
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<h2>
No 2 (2017)</h2>
<h3>
Dossier Pierre Duhem</h3>
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<strong>Pierre Duhem’s Philosophy and History of Science</strong></div>
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Full Issue</h3>
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<h3>
Table of Contents</h3>
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From the Editors</h4>
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<a href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/article/view/49">Historiography of Science: The Link between History and Philosophy in Understanding Science</a>
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Mauro L. Condé, Marlon Salomon </div>
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01
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Dossiers (Issue-specific topics)</h4>
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<a href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/article/view/51">Introduction</a>
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Fábio Rodrigo Leite, Jean-François Stoffel </div>
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03
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<a href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/article/view/39">Duhem’s Analysis of Newtonian Method and the Logical Priority of Physics over Metaphysics</a>
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Eduardo Salles de Oliveira Barra, Ricardo Batista dos Santos </div>
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07
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<a href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/article/view/33">The French Roots of Duhem’s early Historiography and Epistemology</a>
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Stefano Bordoni </div>
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<a href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/article/view/44">Duhem’s Critical Analysis of Mechanicism and his Defense of a Formal Conception of Theoretical Physics</a>
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José R. N. Chiappin, Cássio Costa Laranjeiras </div>
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36
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<a href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/article/view/45">Anti-Scepticism and Epistemic Humility in Pierre Duhem’s Philosophy of Science</a>
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Marie Gueguen, Stathis Psillos </div>
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<a class="file" href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/article/view/45/51">PDF</a>
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54
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<a href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/article/view/37">Duhem: Images of Science, Historical Continuity, and the First Crisis in Physics</a>
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Michael Liston </div>
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<a class="file" href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/article/view/37/48">PDF</a>
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73
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<a href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/article/view/53">Duhem in Pre-War Italian Philosophy: The Reasons of an Absence</a>
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<div class="tocAuthors">
Roberto Maiocchi </div>
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85
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<a href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/article/view/41">Was Pierre Duhem an Esprit de finesse?</a>
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Víctor Manuel Hernández </div>
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93
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<a href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/article/view/22">Was Duhem Justified in not Distinguishing Between Physical and Chemical Atomism?</a>
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<div class="tocAuthors">
Paul Needham </div>
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108
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<a href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/article/view/35">Bon sens and noûs</a>
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<div class="tocAuthors">
Roberto Estrada Olguin </div>
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<a class="file" href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/article/view/35/41">PDF</a>
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112
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<a href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/article/view/48">Duhem’s Legacy for the Change in the Historiography of Science: An Analysis Based on Kuhn’s Writings</a>
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<div class="tocAuthors">
Amélia Oliveira </div>
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127
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<a href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/article/view/40">Poincaré and Duhem: Resonances in their First Epistemological Reflections</a>
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João Príncipe </div>
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140
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Dossier - Book Reviews</h4>
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<a href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/article/view/32">Pierre Duhem: Between Physics and Metaphysics</a>
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Dámian Islas Mondragon </div>
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157
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<a href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/article/view/54">The New French Edition of Pierre Duhem’s The Aim and Structure of the Physical Theory</a>
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<div class="tocAuthors">
Jean-François Stoffel </div>
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<a class="file" href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/article/view/54/62">PDF</a>
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160
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<a href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/article/view/55">When Historiography Met Epistemology</a>
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<div class="tocAuthors">
Jean-François Stoffel </div>
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163
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Articles</h4>
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<a href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/article/view/8">A
Development of the Principle of Virtual Laws and its Conceptual
Framework in Mechanics as Fundamental Relationship between Physics and
Mathematics</a>
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<div class="tocAuthors">
Raffaele Pisano </div>
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166
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<a href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/article/view/28">Michael Scot and the Four Rainbows</a>
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Tony Scott </div>
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<a href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/article/view/47">Galileo and the Medici: Post-Renaissance Patronage or Post-Modern Historiography</a>
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<div class="tocAuthors">
Michael Segre </div>
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Interviews</h4>
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<a href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/article/view/52">Interview: Helge Kragh</a>
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Gustavo Rodrigues Rocha, Helge Kragh </div>
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Book Reviews</h4>
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<a href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/article/view/36">Galileo as a Critic of the Arts</a>
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Hallhane Machado </div>
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<a href="https://www.historiographyofscience.org/index.php/transversal/article/view/50">A
Contribution to the Newtonian Scholarship: The “Jesuit Edition” of
Isaac Newton’s Principia, a research in progress by Paolo Bussotti and
Raffaele Pisano</a>
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<div class="tocAuthors">
Gustavo Rodrigues Rocha </div>
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Geremiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11812810552682098086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-459234386764140860.post-63678515757652537712017-02-07T13:20:00.004-07:002017-02-07T13:25:13.685-07:00Relational Mechanics and Weber ElectrodynamicsTalk in English about Relational Mechanics (1 hour presentation plus 1 hour debate):
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/L6A59tWV6EM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
Slides of this presentation:
<a href="http://www.ifi.unicamp.br/~assis/Relational-Mechanics-04-02-2017.pdf">http://www.ifi.unicamp.br/~assis/Relational-Mechanics-04-02-2017.pdf</a><br /><br />
Talk in English about Weber's Electrodynamics (1 hour presentation plus 1 hour debate):
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/raG5kr5ba4c" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
Slides of this presentation:
<a href="http://www.ifi.unicamp.br/~assis/Webers-Electrodynamics-06-11-2010.pdf">http://www.ifi.unicamp.br/~assis/Webers-Electrodynamics-06-11-2010.pdf</a>Geremiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11812810552682098086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-459234386764140860.post-91818280850243660532017-01-13T08:06:00.000-07:002020-05-10T15:04:46.543-07:00«How to Think» by Abp. Sheen<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/J69VD-DpJ4g" width="560"></iframe>
@20:07 <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n79084411/">Abp. Sheen</a> speaks of what today would be called dissident scientists (cf. <a href="http://www.archivefreedom.org/freedom/againsttide.pdf"><i>Against the Tide</i></a>):<br />
<blockquote>
It is not to be said that if one does not follow each of these fashions that one is behind the times. No. One is behind the scenes.</blockquote>
Geremiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11812810552682098086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-459234386764140860.post-19703250487845764572016-08-30T16:13:00.001-07:002016-08-30T16:24:28.918-07:00Galileo in the first half of Vatican IIBelow are three examples from the first half of Vatican II where Galileo is explicitly mentioned by name.<br />
<hr size="2" width="100%" />
Bp. <b><a href="http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bcharue.html">André Charue</a></b> of Namur, Belgium, on 17 Nov. 1962, regarding a revision (<a href="https://archive.org/stream/ASI.3/AsI.3#page/n109/mode/2up">p. 114</a>-115) of the schema <i>De sacra liturgia</i>, said (<a href="https://archive.org/stream/ASI.3/AsI.3#page/n141/mode/2up">p. 145</a>):<br />
<blockquote>
<i>Attendite, venerabiles Patres, ad conditionem eorum omnium, qui cum fide catholica componere debent scientificum laborem in universitatibus, in omnibus scientiarum circulis. Exemplum Galilaei et alia exempla recentiora sufficiant! Immaturae declarationes alicuius Concilii, propter earum solemnitatem, onerare possent, dicamus in semisaeculum, conditionem scientificorum.</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
[Beware, venerable Fathers, of the condition of all those who with catholic faith must compose scientific work, in all scientific circles. Let Galileo and the other more recent examples suffice! The immature declarations of some in this Council, because of their solemnity, could aggravate—we speak in the mid-century—the condition of the sciences.] </blockquote>
<hr />
Bp. emeritus of Innsbruck, Austria, <b><a href="http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/brusch.html">Paulus Rusch</a></b> (1903-1986) explicitly mentioned Galileo during the 22<sup>nd</sup> meeting, 19 Nov. 1962, in his intervention (<a href="https://archive.org/stream/ASI.3/AsI.3#page/n351/mode/2up">p. 356</a>-357) against ch. 2, #12 ("Inerrancy") of the first schema the fathers voted on: <a href="https://jakomonchak.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/de-fontibus-1-5.pdf"><i>De fontibus revelationis</i></a>. Cdl. Siri's intervention, which mentioned Pope St. Pius X and Modernism, is on <a href="https://archive.org/stream/ASI.3/AsI.3#page/n33/mode/2up">p. 38</a>-39. The very next day, 61% of the council fathers rejected the schema (cf. <a href="http://www.theway.org.uk/Endeanweb/Ratzinger%20Reader.pdf" rel="nofollow"><i>Ratzinger Reader</i> pp. 258 ff.</a>). John XXIII thereafter called upon a mixed commission (incl. Cdl. Frings, whom Fr. Ratzinger advised, and Rahner) to redraft it. Cdl. Frings said (<a href="https://archive.org/stream/ASI.3/AsI.3#page/n29/mode/2up">p. 34</a>-35) the original schema was too scholastic and professorial in tone, "<i>nec aedificans nec vivificans</i>" ("neither edifying nor vivifying")!<br />
<br />
Here is <a href="https://jakomonchak.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/de-fontibus-1-5.pdf"><i>De fontibus revelationis</i></a> ch.2, #12 on inerrancy:<br />
<blockquote>
Because divine Inspiration extends to everything, the absolute immunity of all Holy Scripture from error [PTC had said "the infallibility and inerrancy"] follows directly and necessarily. For we are taught by the ancient and constant faith of the Church that it is utterly forbidden to grant that the sacred author himself has erred, since divine Inspiration of itself as necessarily excludes and repels any error in any matter, religious or profane, as it is necessary to say that God, the supreme Truth, is never the author of any error whatever. [Pius XII, <i>Divino afflante</i> (EB 539), using the words of Leo XIII, <i>Providentissimus Deus</i> (D 1950); see also EB 44, 46, 125, 420, 463, etc.] </blockquote>
After giving an example of how <a href="http://drbo.org/x/d?b=drb&bk=47&ch=27&l=9#x">Matt. 27:9</a> allegedly errs by quoting Jeremiah when it apparently was really quoting the prophet Zachary, Bp. Rusch said (<a href="https://archive.org/stream/ASI.3/AsI.3#page/n353/mode/2up" style="font-family: 'DejaVu Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">p. 357</a>):<br />
<blockquote>
<i>Accedit nostram Ecclesiam hac in re iam duram passam esse experientiam. Anno 1633 Galilei sub Urbano VIII damnatus est, quia defendit doctrinam contra Scripturam. Doctrinam autem quam defendit erat, sicut notissimum est, terram circa solem rotare et non viceversa.</i>
[Additionally, our church has already suffered a hard experience in this matter. In 1633 Galileo was condemned under Urban VIII because he defended a doctrine contrary to Scripture. But the doctrine that he defended was, as is well-known, that the earth revolves around the sun and not <i>vice versa</i>.] </blockquote>
<hr />
Bp. <b><a href="http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bdarma.html">Michel Darmancier</a></b> (1918-1984), titular of <a href="http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/d4a18.html">Augurus</a>, commenting on the "De ecclesiæ magistero" section (<a href="https://archive.org/stream/ASI.4/AS%20I.4#page/n43/mode/2up">p. 47</a>-54) of the 23 Nov. 1962 schema <i>De ecclesia</i> (<a href="https://archive.org/stream/ASI.4/AS%20I.4#page/n7/mode/2up">p. 12</a> ff.), wrote in his "written <a href="http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/7740">animadversion</a>" (<a href="https://archive.org/stream/ASI.4/AS%20I.4#page/n447/mode/2up">p. 452</a>):<br />
<blockquote>
<i>De illis enim contingentibus elementis sicut in fide et theologia proprie dicta consentire possunt theologi per saecula et per totum orbem catholicum, illa intimius coniungentes cum dogmatibus, quin exinde oriatur quaevis certitudo de illorum veritate, etsi concludi potest fidem ex illis detrimentum non timere. Sic, usque ad saeculum XVI, unanimiter docuerunt theologi terram centrum universorum esse, unde Galileus quidam satis notas difficultates cum sancta Inquisitione expertus est.</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
[The theologians can agree, throughout the ages and the whole catholic world, on those contingent elements in faith and theology properly speaking which are intimately connected with dogmas, which might not arise from any certainty of their truth, although to fear a loss of faith from them cannot be concluded. Thus, until the 16<sup>th</sup> century, theologians unanimously taught that the earth was the center of the universe, whence Galileo experienced some well-known difficulties with the holy Inquisition.] </blockquote>
Geremiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11812810552682098086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-459234386764140860.post-2398850392852307042016-08-03T11:57:00.001-07:002016-08-03T11:57:26.860-07:00Prof. Karsten Danzmann, beantworten Sie bitte 3 Fragen über das LIGO Experiment!<script src="https://d18kwxxua7ik1y.cloudfront.net/product/embeds/v1/change-embeds.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<div class="change-embed-petition" data-petition-id="7548362"></div>Geremiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11812810552682098086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-459234386764140860.post-60635829120728130652016-08-03T08:58:00.001-07:002016-08-03T08:59:31.689-07:00The Principle Podcast Episode 9: Extended Interview Bernard Carr<a href="http://www.theprinciplemovie.com/principle-podcast-episode-9-extended-interview-bernard-carr/#.V6ITWB-cDDg.blogger">The Principle Podcast Episode 9: Extended Interview Bernard Carr</a>: Episode 9 from “The Principle” podcast is extended interview excerpts with Bernard Carr. About Bernard Carr: Bernard J. Carr is a professor of mathematics and astronomy at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL). He completed his BA in mathematics in 1972 at Trinity College, Cambridge. For his doctorate, obtained in 1976, he studied relativity and cosmology under Stephen Hawking at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge and the California Institute of …<br />
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</audio> Geremiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11812810552682098086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-459234386764140860.post-22590323322379483462016-07-07T11:44:00.000-07:002016-07-07T11:44:03.243-07:00Ampère's force law masterpiece in English<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28103479-amp-re-s-electrodynamics" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img border="0" alt="Ampère's Electrodynamics: Analysis of the Meaning and Evolution of Ampère's Force between Current Elements, together with a Complete Translation of ... Phenomena, Uniquely Deduced from Experience" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1449313359m/28103479.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28103479-amp-re-s-electrodynamics">Ampère's Electrodynamics: Analysis of the Meaning and Evolution of Ampère's Force between Current Elements, together with a Complete Translation of ... Phenomena, Uniquely Deduced from Experience</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1911209.Andr_Koch_Torres_Assis">André Koch Torres Assis</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1691027832">5 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
<a href="http://www.ifi.unicamp.br/~assis/Amperes-Electrodynamics.pdf" rel="nofollow">Free complete PDF version of this book available <strong>here</strong>.</a><br><br>This is the first published English translation of Ampère's masterpiece, <a href="https://googledrive.com/host/0BzMHTgCmyrNZLVJtd210NFp1TE0/Ampere_v0.zip" rel="nofollow">
<em>Mémoire sur la théorie mathématique des phénomènes électrodynamiques uniquement déduite de l’expérience</em>
</a> (cf. <a href="https://googledrive.com/host/0BzMHTgCmyrNZLVJtd210NFp1TE0/Ampere_v0.zip" rel="nofollow">Godfrey's unpublished one</a>).<br><br>Assis & Chaib give an excellent introduction to Ampère's work, as well as many computer-generated illustrations of Ampère's ingenious experiments.<br><br>It is enough to quote Maxwell on the importance of Ampère's work:<blockquote>The experimental investigation by which Ampère established the laws of the mechanical action between electric currents is one of the most brilliant achievements in science. The whole, theory and experiment, seems as if it had leaped, full grown and full armed, from the brain of the ‘Newton of electricity.’ It is perfect in form, and unassailable in accuracy, and it is summed up in a formula from which all the phenomena may be deduced, and which must always remain the cardinal formula of electrodynamics.</blockquote>Also, Ampère invented the word "electrodynamics"! ☺<br><br>This work shows how Ampère experimentally determined the so-called Ampère force law (not to be confused with one of Maxwell's equations, called Ampère's circuital law, which has nothing to do with Ampère besides dealing with currents, as Ampère did not deal with the field concept).
<br/><br/>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/41830392-geremia">View all my reviews</a>
Geremiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11812810552682098086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-459234386764140860.post-16496538550005185042016-06-10T11:14:00.001-07:002016-06-10T11:14:08.227-07:00Was Galileo persecuted?<div class="post-text" itemprop="text">
Before Copernicus, Bishop <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Nicole_Oresme.aspx#1" rel="nofollow">Nicole Oresme</a>
(d. 1382) advanced the hypothesis that the earth, not the heavens,
rotates diurnally. He was not condemned because he did not reinterpret
Holy Scripture to support his scientific view.<br />
<br />
Galileo was condemned because he ventured into Scriptural exegesis—in, e.g., his 1615 <a href="http://www.inters.org/galilei-madame-christina-Lorraine" rel="nofollow"><em>Letter to the Grand Duchess Madame Christina Lorraine</em></a>—contrary
to the unanimous consent of the Fathers of the Church and the Council
of Trent. Copernicus did not do Scriptural exegesis regarding
heliocentrism.<br />
<br />
Galileo was condemned as "vehemently suspected of heresy" for holding
"The proposition that the Sun is the center of the world and does not
move from its place[, which] is absurd and false philosophically and
formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scripture."
(<a href="http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/condemnation.html" rel="nofollow">1633 Condemnation</a>).<br />
<br />
To say Galileo was persecuted seems to imply he adhered to a
different religion than Catholicism. He was Catholic, hence the Church
had jurisdiction over him in moral or religious matters. His house
arrest was quite unusual; it was really a paid retirement, during which
he wrote his most important physics work, <a href="http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/galilei-dialogues-concerning-two-new-sciences" rel="nofollow"><em>The Two New Sciences</em></a> (1638).<br />
<br />
As the Tuscan ambassador Francesco Niccolini wrote on 27 February 1633 (p. 225 of Maurice A. Finocchiaro's <a href="https://isidore.co/calibre/browse/book/4743" rel="nofollow"><em>The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History</em></a>):<br />
<blockquote>
His Holiness [Pope Urban VIII] answered that he had done Mr.
Galilei a singular favor, not done to others, by allowing him to stay in
this house [the Tuscan embassy] rather than at the Holy Office, and
that this kind procedure had been used only because he is a dear
employee of the Most Serene Patron [the Pope] and because of the regard
due to His Highness [the Pope]; for a Knight of the House of Gonzaga,
son of Ferdinando, had been not only placed in a litter and escorted to
Rome under guard but was taken to the Castle and kept there for a long
time til the end of the trial. I showed myself to be aware of the nature
of the favor, and I humbly thanked His Holiness [the Pope];<br />
</blockquote>
and on 16 April 1633 (p. 250-51 of <a href="https://isidore.co/calibre/browse/book/4743" rel="nofollow"><em>ibid.</em></a>):<br />
<blockquote>
Indeed, there is no precedent of anyone ever having been
interrogated during a trial without being detained in a prison cell, and
in this regard he has profited from being employed by His Highness
[Pope Urban VIII] and from being lodged at this house; nor is there
knowledge of anyone else (whether bishop, prelate, or nobleman) who,
immediately upon his arrival in Rome, has not been kept at the Castle or
at the same palace of the Inquisition, subject to all rigor and
strictness. Furthermore, they even allow his servant to wait on him, to
sleep there, and, what is more, to come and go as he pleases, and they
allow my own servants to bring him food to his room from here and to
return to my house morning and evening.<br />
</blockquote>
This singular treatment can hardly be considered a persecution.<br />
<br />
His house arrest began at the same Tuscan embassy on 24 June 1633. On
1 December 1633, the Pope allowed Galileo to return to his villa in
Arcetri, near Florence, where he stayed for the rest of his life.<br />
</div>
Geremiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11812810552682098086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-459234386764140860.post-74320222652283553512016-05-20T17:44:00.003-07:002016-05-20T17:44:55.999-07:00Physics: A Holistic Perspective<!--This file was converted to xhtml by LibreOffice - see http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/tree/filter/source/xslt for the code.--><head profile="http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/"><title xml:lang="en-US">- no title specified</title><link href="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" hreflang="en" rel="schema.DC"></link><link href="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" hreflang="en" rel="schema.DCTERMS"></link><link href="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/" hreflang="en" rel="schema.DCTYPE"></link><link href="http://purl.org/dc/dcam/" hreflang="en" rel="schema.DCAM"></link><style type="text/css">
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<!-- "li span.odfLiEnd" - IE 7 issue</style></head><span class="T4">My friend wrote the following; it's an
excellent summary of modern physics from a Catholic perspective.
Homeschoolers would also benefit from it because of the summary
questions at the end: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="T4">I. The Nature of Physical Science</span><br />
<div class="P12">
<br /></div>
<div class="P8">
<span class="T5">A. Truth, Opinion, Science, and Faith</span></div>
<div class="P12">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">Before commencing the study of any subject matter, one ought to know its definition, scope, and methods. We must therefore examine the nature of physics, both in itself, and in relation to other branches of study. Let us attempt to understand it by first defining what we mean by “science.”</span></div>
<div class="P19">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">Physics is one among many different sciences. Today, when we say “science,” we usually mean one of the physical sciences. But that is simply a prejudice of the modern mind. “Science” is derived from the Latin “</span><span class="T7">scientia</span><span class="T6">,” which means “knowledge.” This clearly distinguishes it from technology, which is an application of this knowledge to the practical needs of life. Truth is the correspondence between our judgments and reality. Truth does not lie in our ideas, but in the affirmations and denials we make with those ideas. If our judgment about the world accurately reflects reality, then we call it a true judgment; otherwise, we call it a false judgment. Opinion can therefore in some sense be called “knowledge,” inasmuch as some opinions are indeed true. So what distinguishes science from true opinion?</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">We are often correct in our assertions about the world, but cannot say why. We cannot give a reasoned account of our knowledge. We merely have true opinions. Science, then, to distinguish it from true opinion, is defined as “knowledge through causes.” That is to say, if we know the causes (or reasons) for something, then we understand what it is and how it behaves in varying circumstance. If we remove the causes, then we necessarily remove these behaviors, and perhaps even the thing itself. In this way we have added to our true opinion a reasoned account of our knowledge. Naturally, some events cannot even in principle be the subject of human science. Any contingent event, that is, any event that may or may not occur in a fixed set of circumstances, cannot be the subject of a science. For instance, since human will is free to choose, one cannot prove or predict its acts. For if the will were determined by the circumstance in which it must choose, it would cease to be free. One consequence then of “rationalism” (the false opinion that all reality is subject to human science) is that free will is denied. God, by way of comparison, does have knowledge of these “future contingents,” for it is God Who moves our wills directly. In like manner, history cannot be a human science, because its course is not governed solely by material factors, but by human beings acting freely. In general, if the causes of anything are inaccessible to our human intellects, that thing cannot be the subject of a human science.</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">A question that will naturally occur to students concerns the place of the Catholic Faith: Is their act of faith merely true opinion, science, or something else entirely? For the theological modernist, faith is an opinion that answers to nothing objective, but to the subjective needs of men. In other words, it is even less than true opinion. It is opinion that corresponds not to a single reality, but to the desires of many different believers, which can be and usually are contradictory. This modernist conception of faith is utterly false, but before we examine the true nature of faith, we ought to consider why the modern world has taken refuge in this empty notion. It is clear that faith cannot be the same as science, because we do not </span><span class="T6">know the causes of much that is comprehended under faith. There are two reasons for this. First, many articles of the Faith concern contingent events: the fall of man, the Incarnation, the Redemption, and many others. These belong properly to the study of salvation history, and depend upon not only the free choices of creatures, but the absolute freedom of the Creator. Second, some of the articles of faith transcend our human capacities of rational demonstration. Examples here must include the doctrine of the Trinity and the miracles performed by Christ. At this point the modernist goes wrong, because he is really a rationalist. Logically speaking, if the whole universe is knowable by human science, and human science has no way of evaluating the articles of faith, these articles must not correspond to anything in reality. These false friends of religion therefore seek some substitute for objective reality. All that remains to them is their subjective consciousness, so they set up a correspondence between faith and subjective feeling instead. Faith for the modernist is not about the world “out there” (reality), but about the world “in here” (feeling). Consequently authentic religion is for the modernist not a life in conformity with the Divine Will, but one in conformity with personal longings.</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">If, however, we are honest about the limits of human reason, our humility will lead us to a better account of the act of faith and, through this act of faith, to a more profound understanding of God and the universe of beings created by God. The Catholic Faith, which makes dogmatic claims about reality that can and often do conflict with faulty claims of human science, is most certainly true in every respect. Such claims as conflict with the Catholic Faith are not really science at all, or even true opinion. They are falsehoods. But what allows us to profess the Faith with this absolute certainty? What character does it have beyond true opinion? An act of faith is an act of trust in the authority of a revealer. It is an entirely reasonable and rational act if we can ascertain that the revealer both has the knowledge in question and will not deceive us.</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">Modern scientists ask for just such an act of faith from their pupils. The student has no way of verifying the immense number of observations and inferences that have been incorporated into modern science. He must depend upon the knowledge and veracity of his instructor, who himself depended upon another. Thus, there develops a scientific tradition (handing down) of previous observation and inference. The student, for his part, has good reason to have faith in his instructor. The instructor is likely to have credentials indicating his proficiency in the subject matter. He may have accrued many years of service at a prestigious university or scientific institution. Moreover, he would be severely penalized for deviating in essentials from that tradition. Peer reviews and academic evaluations continually guarantee that the scientist conforms to the generally accepted views of the scientific community. The instructor has few credible incentives to misrepresent physical theories to the student and will suffer serious consequences if he systematically does so. It is therefore entirely reasonable for the student to submit his mind to that of his teacher, so long as the scientist remains within the boundaries of his competence.</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">The act of faith that the Catholic makes is similar, but more certain and absolute, depending also upon the gift of God. First he determines, either by his own reason, by his common sense, or by following the reasoning of another, that there is a God, Who has every perfection of Being, including Truth and </span><span class="T6">Goodness. These truths are sometimes called the “Preambles of the Faith,” because they are the reasonable foundation on which our act of faith depends. Now God has intervened in human history, initially by sending the prophets, but finally by sending His Eternally-Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, born into time of the Blessed Virgin Mary. By His public miracles and especially by His Resurrection from the dead, He has proven His Divinity. We may therefore conclude two things: First, as perfect Truth, Christ has knowledge of all things created and uncreated. Second, as perfect Goodness, He can have no desire to deceive us and wills only the good. His Doctrine is therefore true in all details and best calculated for the good of those who will receive it. We cannot pick and choose which doctrines to believe, but are obliged to assent to Revelation in its entirety because of the Authority of the Revealer. To assure that the Tradition (handing down) of the Faith is maintained until the end of time, He established a visible Church that is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic.</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">Faith and science can never be in contradiction, for all truth has its ultimate source in God. But we must be careful to distinguish their relative certainties. It is science that cannot contradict Faith, and not vice-versa, for the Divine Revealer is more perfect in truth and goodness than any creature, and Christ has demonstrated His Divinity with unshakable proofs. We must reject, therefore, whatsoever we find in human doctrines that either contradicts or yields a conclusion contradicting Divine Revelation, bearing in mind always the </span><span class="T7">Magisterium</span><span class="T6"> (Teaching Authority) of the Catholic Church.</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P8">
<span class="T5">B. Three Orders of Scientific Abstraction</span></div>
<div class="P12">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">Since science is “knowledge through causes,” we naturally seek to understand what is meant by causes, for we cannot use these as instruments of understanding unless we can accurately recognize and classify them. But it is important to first distinguish clearly between the three principal sciences applied to the material world: metaphysics, mathematics, and physics. In the classical and medieval traditions, these sciences study real beings, but each studies beings under a different aspect. Metaphysics is the highest of these, for it is “the science of being as being.” In saying that it is a “</span><span class="T7">science of being</span><span class="T6">,” we simply mean that we are studying </span><span class="T7">real beings</span><span class="T6">. In saying that metaphysics is “the science of being </span><span class="T7">as being</span><span class="T6">,” we indicate that the particular aspect under which we are studying beings is precisely their</span><span class="T7"> being</span><span class="T6">. The first is materially what we are studying, the second is the formal aspect under which it is studied. In other words, we are studying beings just insofar as they are beings and no further. We are not interested in their particular nature, whether they are living or inert, but only what can be inferred about them from their existence. This definition will become clearer if we compare metaphysics to mathematics. Mathematics likewise studies real beings, but under the aspect of quantity. So mathematics can be defined as “the science of being as </span><span class="T7">quantified</span><span class="T6">.” It is concerned with beings only insofar as they can be measured. Finally, the classical and medieval traditions understand physics as “the science of being </span><span class="T7">as movable</span><span class="T6">.” In other words, physics considers </span><span class="T7">ens mobile</span><span class="T6">, which is Latin for “mobile being.”</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">These three sciences are traditionally understood to form a hierarchy, with metaphysics at the top, followed by mathematics, and then physics. This hierarchy corresponds to differing orders of abstraction, </span><span class="T6">with physics being the least abstract, mathematics more abstract, and metaphysics the most abstract. When we say that one is more abstract than another, we do not necessarily mean that one is more complicated than another, or even more difficult, but rather that as we progress upwards, we leave out certain aspects of real beings. Let us consider a concrete example. Real material beings possess </span><span class="T7">individual</span><span class="T6"> matter that makes each thing to be </span><span class="T7">this thing</span><span class="T6"> and no other. For example, Socrates is individuated (made an individual) by this </span><span class="T7">particular</span><span class="T6"> matter (</span><span class="T7">these</span><span class="T6"> hands, </span><span class="T7">this</span><span class="T6"> snub nose). But the human intellect can only apprehend things abstractly; there can be no science of individuals. The first abstraction is to leave out the individuality (or </span><span class="T7">thisness</span><span class="T6">) of the matter. What is left is matter insofar as it is sensible (able to be perceived by the senses). The study of beings under this aspect is called “physics.” Physics studies Socrates not insofar as he is Socrates, but insofar as he is a man. It pertains to a man to have matter, indeed, but not any </span><span class="T7">particular</span><span class="T6"> matter.</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">When objects are studied mathematically, they are studied only insofar as their matter is intelligible, for the intellect leaves out of consideration their sensibility. When we imagine a mathematical triangle, we consider it extended in two dimensions, but this extension is only intelligible to the understanding, not perceptible to the five senses. Likewise, when we study Socrates mathematically, we consider him only insofar as he has a measurable body. (</span><span class="T7">e.g.</span><span class="T6"> He is 68 inches tall. He weighs 160 pounds.) Finally, metaphysics abstracts from matter entirely, for it considers only the existence of the object and any other attributes that accrue to it from that existence alone. So we consider Socrates insofar as he has being and the unity, truth, and goodness, that necessarily accompany being.</span></div>
<div class="P4">
<br /></div>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="Table1"><colgroup><col width="104"></col><col width="178"></col><col width="144"></col><col width="133"></col><col width="189"></col></colgroup><tbody>
<tr class="Table11"><td class="Table1_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 0.9347in;"><div class="P7">
<span class="T8">Science:</span></div>
</td><td class="Table1_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 1.6in;"><div class="P7">
<span class="T8">Studies:</span></div>
</td><td class="Table1_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 1.3in;"><div class="P7">
<span class="T8">Example:</span></div>
</td><td class="Table1_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 1.2in;"><div class="P7">
<span class="T8">Leaves Out:</span></div>
</td><td class="Table1_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 1.7in;"><div class="P7">
<span class="T8">Supplies Principles To:</span></div>
</td></tr>
<tr class="Table11"><td class="Table1_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 0.9347in;"><div class="P7">
<span class="T2">metaphysics</span></div>
</td><td class="Table1_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 1.6in;"><div class="P7">
<span class="T2">“being as being”</span></div>
</td><td class="Table1_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 1.3in;"><div class="P7">
<span class="T2">Socrates as being</span></div>
</td><td class="Table1_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 1.2in;"><div class="P7">
<span class="T2">all matter</span></div>
</td><td class="Table1_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 1.7in;"><div class="P7">
<span class="T2">mathematics, physics</span></div>
</td></tr>
<tr class="Table11"><td class="Table1_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 0.9347in;"><div class="P7">
<span class="T2">mathematics</span></div>
</td><td class="Table1_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 1.6in;"><div class="P7">
<span class="T2">“being as measurable”</span></div>
</td><td class="Table1_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 1.3in;"><div class="P7">
<span class="T2">Socrates as body</span></div>
</td><td class="Table1_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 1.2in;"><div class="P7">
<span class="T2">sensible matter</span></div>
</td><td class="Table1_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 1.7in;"><div class="P7">
<span class="T2">physics</span></div>
</td></tr>
<tr class="Table11"><td class="Table1_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 0.9347in;"><div class="P7">
<span class="T2">physics</span></div>
</td><td class="Table1_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 1.6in;"><div class="P7">
<span class="T2">“being as movable”</span></div>
</td><td class="Table1_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 1.3in;"><div class="P7">
<span class="T2">Socrates as man</span></div>
</td><td class="Table1_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 1.2in;"><div class="P7">
<span class="T2">individual matter</span></div>
</td><td class="Table1_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 1.7in;"><div class="P14">
<br /></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="P21">
<br /></div>
<div class="P11">
<span class="T3">Table I.A: The Hierarchy of Abstraction in the Sciences</span></div>
<div class="P22">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">This hierarchy of abstraction among metaphysics, mathematics, and the physical sciences, is also a hierarchy of principles. A superior (more abstract) science is able to supply principles of study to its subordinate sciences. The definition of motion in physics must be taken from metaphysics, for physics cannot define its own subject matter. Likewise, physical science depends upon mathematics for its understanding of quantity, which is absolutely crucial to the study of bodies in motion. The lower science cannot supply the higher examples with principles for study, but only concrete material for the higher science to study. So physical science provides bodies to be studied mathematically, and both physical science and mathematics provide beings to be investigated by metaphysics. The principles of study descend downward from higher science to lower, while the matter to be studied ascends from lower science to higher. Before we proceed to a study of physical science, then, it is necessary to discover in metaphysics some basic principles to guide us.</span></div>
<div class="P7">
<span class="T5">C. Motion and the Four Causes</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">We know from experience that there is change or motion. It is inescapably part of this world. There are also many different kinds of motions. So we would do well to define motion first.</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">A little thought will convince the student that the task is no easy one. It is one thing to recognize motion when we see it, but to define it requires a good deal of genius, such as that possessed by Aristotle. He recognized that to define motion, we need to say something about the terms of motion, that is, the before and after of every change. Aristotle saw clearly that change is only possible when something actual is also potentially something else. For example, a piece of bronze may </span><span class="T7">actually</span><span class="T6"> be a bust of Julius Caesar, but it is </span><span class="T7">potentially</span><span class="T6"> a bust of Marcus Brutus, that is, if it were melted down and recast in a different shape. Before any such change takes place, there must be these two principles in a thing: First, the matter (bronze), which can potentially be given a different form. Second, the form itself (Caesar), which determines it to be this thing and no other. The bronze can potentially become many different things; we say that this matter has a potency to become all of them, but can be actually only one of them at a time. Perhaps now we can understand what is meant when it is said that “being is divided into act and potency.” These are two principles that all created beings possess, and it is in terms of them that we must define motion.</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">We might be tempted to say that “motion is a change from potency to act,” and we would be correct, but we would have failed to define “motion.” Why? Because we would then be required to define “change,” which, as a little thought will make clear, is really nothing more than the “motion” we set out to define. This is an example of a logical fallacy called “</span><span class="T7">petitio principii</span><span class="T6">,” or “begging the principle.” Motion cannot be defined as a particular kind of motion! Aristotle, on the other hand, saw that in every continuous motion the object is in varying degrees of reaching its final actuality. To return to our example, as the molten bronze is poured into the cast, it gradually assumes the form of the bust of Brutus. At each moment it is actually some particular shape on its way to becoming Brutus. Aristotle saw that something like this was happening in every continuous motion. He therefore defined “motion” as “the entelechy of a being in potency insofar as it is in potency.” This term, “entelechy,” means something close to “act,” but it also includes the idea of reaching its end. As it has come down to us through the medieval Latin tradition, motion is defined simply as “the act of a being in potency insofar as it is in potency.” In our example, the motion from Caesar to Brutus would be “the shape of the bust of Caesar which is potentially Brutus, insofar as the bust is potentially Brutus.” The potency of being Brutus lies in the bronze, not in the current shape of Caesar. In other words, it is not “the shape of the bust of Caesar which is potentially Brutus insofar as it is actually Caesar.” This shape would be its present form, the shape of Caesar’s bust. Motion is something’s act precisely in its ability to be something else, that is, just insofar as it is in potency. Philosophers may legitimately debate the merits and difficulties of such a definition, but a better one has yet to be proposed.</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">We are half way to understanding Aristotle’s four causes in material substances. We have already discussed two kinds of cause: the material cause and the formal cause. In our example, the material </span><span class="T6">cause is the bronze which can potentially become many different shapes, and the formal cause is the shape of Caesar’s bust. These two causes, matter and form, are called “intrinsic causes” because they lie within the material substance. Both the bronze and its present shape are included in the bust itself, but two other causes do lie outside of the bust. The latter causes are therefore called “extrinsic causes.” The first of these, called the “efficient cause,” is the working of a sculptor. A bust of Caesar cannot become a bust of Brutus without an external agent (one acting) to impress upon it a new form. This agent is the efficient cause. The second, or “final cause,” is the end to which the sculpture must conform. In forming the bust of Brutus from the bronze in the bust of Caesar, there must be some standard toward which the bronze is directed. This is the ideal shape which the sculptor holds in his mind. The sculptor strives to bring the shape of the bronze into conformity with his idea. Without any one of these four causes we are unable to explain why things change.</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">There is another way to view these four causes. We have seen that the bust is in act insofar as it has a determined shape. The shape (form) in some sense acts upon the bronze (matter) to determine it to this one thing and no other. The form is active in relation to the matter; the matter is passive in relation to the form. Or, in other words, the form acts upon matter; the matter is acted upon by form. Now the efficient cause operates through form because it imparts form to matter. That is, it causes form to act upon matter. The final cause operates through matter because it directs the matter to its new form. That is, it causes the matter to be acted upon by form. The difference is subtle, but the efficient and final causes can be likened respectively to pushing and pulling. Whereas the efficient cause moves by action from a beginning, the final cause moves by attraction to an end.</span></div>
<div class="P22">
<br /></div>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="Table2"><colgroup><col width="72"></col><col width="89"></col><col width="200"></col><col width="289"></col></colgroup><tbody>
<tr class="Table21"><td class="Table2_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 0.6458in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T8">Cause:</span></div>
</td><td class="Table2_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 0.8in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T8">Location:</span></div>
</td><td class="Table2_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 1.8in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T8">Example:</span></div>
</td><td class="Table2_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 2.5993in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T8">Causal Character:</span></div>
</td></tr>
<tr class="Table21"><td class="Table2_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 0.6458in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T2">Formal</span></div>
</td><td class="Table2_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 0.8in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T2">intrinsic</span></div>
</td><td class="Table2_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 1.8in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T2">shape of bust</span></div>
</td><td class="Table2_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 2.5993in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T2">acts upon matter</span></div>
</td></tr>
<tr class="Table21"><td class="Table2_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 0.6458in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T2">material</span></div>
</td><td class="Table2_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 0.8in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T2">intrinsic</span></div>
</td><td class="Table2_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 1.8in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T2">Bronze</span></div>
</td><td class="Table2_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 2.5993in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T2">is acted upon by form</span></div>
</td></tr>
<tr class="Table21"><td class="Table2_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 0.6458in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T2">efficient</span></div>
</td><td class="Table2_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 0.8in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T2">extrinsic</span></div>
</td><td class="Table2_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 1.8in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T2">action of the sculptor</span></div>
</td><td class="Table2_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 2.5993in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T2">causes form to act upon matter</span></div>
</td></tr>
<tr class="Table21"><td class="Table2_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 0.6458in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T2">Final</span></div>
</td><td class="Table2_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 0.8in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T2">extrinsic</span></div>
</td><td class="Table2_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 1.8in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T2">sculptor’s idea of the bust</span></div>
</td><td class="Table2_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 2.5993in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T2">causes matter to be acted upon by form</span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="P21">
<br /></div>
<div class="P11">
<span class="T3">Table I.C: The Four Causes</span></div>
<div class="P15">
<br /></div>
<div class="P8">
<span class="T5">D. Science and Method</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">Clearly, the methods of each science will differ. Physical science, because it abstracts from particular matter, but not from sensible matter, can make extensive use of the senses in its demonstrations (experiments). Mathematics, having abstracted from sensible matter, cannot use sensible objects in its demonstrations (proofs). It can only use the ideal properties of bodies in intelligible matter. This does not mean that the mathematician cannot use drawings or diagrams to help him remember. It only means that the diagram, which in fact always departs from the ideal, cannot supply the principles of his </span><span class="T6">demonstration. Metaphysics, having abstracted from matter entirely, cannot use either sensible objects or ideal bodies. It must use principles of pure intellect and judgment alone.</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">We have said already that the superior science supplies principles to the lower sciences. Metaphysics studies beings only insofar as they have being. One principle of metaphysics is the principle of non-contradiction: a thing cannot be and not be at the same time under the same aspect. Clearly, both mathematics and physical science make ample use of this metaphysical principle. But mathematics adds new principles, for instance, the postulates of Euclidean geometry, without which it would not be possible to reason about figure. Physical science, the least abstract of the three, borrows from mathematics as well as metaphysics, for without the conclusions of mathematics, the physical sciences would be unable to measure change. But it also must seek additional principles from the senses.</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">The modern mind calls a science only that which can be studied experimentally, that is to say, through the experience of the senses. Mathematics, abstracting from sensible matter as it does, has consequently become today an exercise in logic having no necessary connection to reality. Indeed, the attempt has been repeatedly made to resolve all of mathematics into merely </span><span class="T7">logical</span><span class="T6"> relationships, without any recourse to imagination and its intelligible matter. Naturally, metaphysics is rejected outright by those who do not understand the orders of abstraction proper to each science, and who therefore exclude whatever does not invoke a material cause. This scientific demand is nonsense, especially where the science of revealed theology is concerned. For the various elements of Divine Revelation can serve as principles (causes) of demonstration no less than those of geometry or physics. Moreover, such theological demonstrations are more dignified inasmuch as the principles of demonstration often transcend what can be obtained by any human science.</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">Leaving these higher sciences aside, the experience of the senses should be an important part of method in the physical sciences. The “scientific method” is usually presented as a clear-cut, even mechanical, order of investigation. But this order does not always hold in practice. The investigations of physical science bring the whole man, with all his prejudices and experiences, inclinations and aversions, into a new relation with the physical world. Many physical discoveries have been the result of accident, blind trial and error, or sudden brilliant insight. Examining this method will, nevertheless, help the student understand an important part of the physical scientist’s work.</span></div>
<div class="P22">
<br /></div>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="Table3"><colgroup><col width="33"></col><col width="366"></col></colgroup><tbody>
<tr class="Table31"><td class="Table3_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 0.2993in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T2">1.</span></div>
</td><td class="Table3_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 3.3in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T2">Define a problem that requires a solution.</span></div>
</td></tr>
<tr class="Table31"><td class="Table3_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 0.2993in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T2">2.</span></div>
</td><td class="Table3_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 3.3in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T2">Produce an hypothesis to explain the problem.</span></div>
</td></tr>
<tr class="Table31"><td class="Table3_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 0.2993in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T2">3.</span></div>
</td><td class="Table3_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 3.3in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T2">Predict new consequences of the hypothesis</span></div>
</td></tr>
<tr class="Table31"><td class="Table3_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 0.2993in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T2">4.</span></div>
</td><td class="Table3_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 3.3in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T2">Test the hypothesis experimentally.</span></div>
</td></tr>
<tr class="Table31"><td class="Table3_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 0.2993in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T2">5.</span></div>
</td><td class="Table3_A1" style="text-align: left; width: 3.3in;"><div class="P8">
<span class="T2">Formulate a valid theory that yields new problems.</span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="P21">
<br /></div>
<div class="P11">
<span class="T3">Figure I.D: The Steps of the “Scientific Method”</span></div>
<div class="P22">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">First, the investigator must begin with something he wishes to explain. He produces an hypothesis (educated guess) about the causes responsible. He then predicts new consequences from the hypothesis that can be tested experimentally. The testing of these leads, in turn, to a more comprehensive theory that produces new questions or problems for the scientist. Theories that have been thoroughly tested and have attained a high degree of certainty are sometimes called “scientific laws” or “laws of nature.” The third step is truly the great advance which the moderns have made upon classical Greek science. For the ancient Greeks were keen observers, profound thinkers, and quite imaginative in their hypotheses. Yet, each one having explained some physical phenomenon to his own satisfaction, they ceased to progress. It is really no wonder if an hypothesis accounts for all present observations. That is precisely why it was formed! If it did not, it could be easily discarded. But how can one determine which of the remaining hypotheses is the best? The modern method demands not only that the hypothesis account for prior observations, as did the ancient method, but also that it yield new predictions, which can then be tested. The linear method of the Greeks has been replaced by a circular one that, if followed diligently and with intelligence, will constantly check the accuracy of our physical theories. This modern scientific method has, for both better and worse, radically transformed the intellectual and material culture of the modern world.</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">There remains to say a few things about experiments. An experiment is not simply a </span><span class="T7">passive listening</span><span class="T6"> to nature; it is an </span><span class="T7">active interrogation</span><span class="T6"> of nature. Nature cannot be allowed to speak at random, but must be made to answer the questions we put to it, which means that an experiment must be carefully conceived and executed. Prior to the experiment, we should </span><span class="T7">already</span><span class="T6"> have an hypothesis about the causes that are operating behind the appearances. The experiment must be designed to verify or reject that hypothesis with certainty. This is what Francis Bacon called an </span><span class="T7">experimentum crucis </span><span class="T6">(critical experiment). The physical circumstance of the experiment will typically be an uncommon or contrived one in which the presence or absence of the these causes will be easily seen. It will very often require a physical apparatus to put nature into such a condition and scientific instruments to amplify and record the results of the experiment.</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">The classic example of the </span><span class="T7">experimentum crucis</span><span class="T6"> is Sir Isaac Newton’s experiment validating his theory of color mixture. It was well known from ancient times that some transparent materials, such as raindrops and some glasses, have the power to produce all the colors of the rainbow from an initial beam of white light. Some investigators were of the opinion that white light is </span><span class="T7">modified</span><span class="T6"> to produce these colors. Newton, on the other hand, thought white light a composition of all of the colors, and that the prism is just </span><span class="T7">separating</span><span class="T6"> white light into its colored components. He performed a simple experiment to decide which of the hypotheses was true. He first used a glass prism to produce the whole rainbow (the visible spectrum of light) from a single beam of white light. But then he cleverly positioned another prism to take in all of the colored beams and reunite them into a single beam. If the material of the prism were really modifying the light, the second prism would either further modify the light or have no more effect on the already modified light. On the other hand, if his own hypothesis were true, the various colors would be gathered back together to form white light again. The experiment proved him correct. He could separate white light into </span><span class="T6">colored components and then mix them back together again to form white light. The competing theory of color was overturned.</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P5">
<br /></div>
<div class="P17">
<span class="T5">E. Physics and the Physical Sciences</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">Were we to leave off our discussion of the physical sciences here, we would be greatly deceived about the scope of modern physics. For in early modern times a great change took place in the whole conception of the physical world.</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">The classical physics of Aristotle regards the world as filled with various natures. For instance, there is the nature of a stone, the nature of a tree, and the nature of a horse. The first is a mineral, the second a plant, and the third an animal. The Greek “</span><span class="T7">φύσις</span><span class="T6">,” from which we derive the word “physics,” and the Latin “</span><span class="T7">natura</span><span class="T6">,” from which we derive the word “nature,” have the same basic meaning. They refer to the essence of a thing insofar as it is a principle of operation and motion. In other words, having a particular nature implies having a particular kind of operation and motion. So the inert stone has its principles of motion, the living plant another set of principles, and the sensitive animal still another set of principles. These principles of operation are understood to be embodied in the highest form of the individual substance, which is called the substantial or essential form. When the substantial form is also a principle of the operations of life, it is called a soul. So a stone has the ability to act and be acted upon through contact. In addition to these operations of lifeless matter, a plant has operations proper to its own degree of being: It can transform inert matter into living matter through growth and reproduce to form new plants. An animal adds to these operations those of the senses: touch, taste, smell, vision, and hearing, or some combination of these. So it has a more perfect operation and a more perfect being than the plant. The study of these substances reveals a hierarchy of natures in the world, with man, whose soul is both the substantial form of the body and a spiritual (non-material) substance in its own right, at the pinnacle of the material creation.</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">A change in thinking is evident when we consider that we no longer understand physics to be the study of </span><span class="T7">natures</span><span class="T6">, but the study of </span><span class="T7">nature</span><span class="T6">. The mechanical philosophies of the early modern period had a leveling effect. The entire universe was conceived as one vast machine with interacting material parts, all essentially inert. The difference in </span><span class="T7">perfection</span><span class="T6"> between a living being and an inert one was reduced to a mere difference in </span><span class="T7">complexity</span><span class="T6">. René Descartes, the first significant proponent of this philosophy, dispensed with the souls of animals and plants, but perceiving that man possesses spiritual operations (intellect and will) that do not involve matter, he retained the human soul. The human body was an “extended substance,” the human soul a “spiritual substance.” Man had become a body accidentally united to an angel. There is no way in his philosophy to rejoin the soul and body into a single human being. Later thinkers, taking Descartes to his logical conclusion, dispensed entirely with a soul that had ceased to have any relation to the physical world: Man is a machine, a marvelously intricate one to be sure, but just a machine.</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">So plants, animals, and men might exhibit extraordinary complexity of structure and behavior, but they can ultimately be reduced to the mechanical interaction of their material parts. This mechanical philosophy of nature is therefore called “reductionist.” The idea of individual substance has disappeared altogether. </span><span class="T6">The operations of inert matter, now understood to be universal and, even more importantly, </span><span class="T7">complete</span><span class="T6"> descriptions of all matter, have been stripped from substantial forms and turned into “laws of nature.” Where then do these “laws” exist? In God? Scientists of the early modern period were commonly of this frame of mind, but later agnostic and atheistic thinkers could not avail themselves of this option. Form had become nothing but a particular arrangement of matter. The only remaining option was to identify these operations with matter itself. So the leveling of reality became an inversion: Matter is the basic reality; form and spirit, so-called, are but fleeting arrangements of matter. In this way were born the pernicious doctrines of Darwinism and Marxist materialism.</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">Since matter is understood to be the ultimate reality, and since mathematics is able to study the arrangements of matter in bodies, the application of mathematics is central to modern physics. Whatever cannot be reduced to quantity is dismissed as incapable of scientific study. There are indeed legitimate investigations corresponding to today’s mathematical physics. In the middle ages, such sciences were called “</span><span class="T7">scientiae mediae</span><span class="T6">,” or “intermediary sciences.” St. Thomas Aquinas taught that these sciences have a physical subject (matter), and a mathematical aspect of study (form). Medieval examples are optics and astronomy. What is objectionable in modern physics is not that bodies should be studied mathematically, but that the philosophies and even the mathematical doctrines underlying modern physics make it </span><span class="T7">exclusively</span><span class="T6"> mathematical. These doctrines contain a complete restructuring of the physical sciences. Modern physics considers the ultimate “laws” and material constituents of </span><span class="T7">inert</span><span class="T6"> bodies. Other physical sciences, for their part, are considered legitimate only insofar as they are thought to be reducible to physics. In accordance with reductionist thinking, they cannot invoke principles superior to those that govern inert matter. Most striking of all, since physics now has regard only for lifeless matter, there is today neither in theory nor in practice a true science of biology! All that remains is the name.</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P19">
<span class="T6">The Catholic student must always be aware of this inversion in modern physics and cautious of its influence in his thinking. Contrary to what many Catholic apologists claim today, modern physics implies a philosophy that cannot be reconciled to the Catholic Faith, for it is false in its very principles. This is not to say that modern physics’ mathematical predictions are inaccurate, for these conform well to reality. It is not experience that is faulty, but the formulation and interpretation of experience. There remains for orthodox Catholic scientists and philosophers a task of immense scope, severe intellectual discipline, and unremitting opportunity. The physical sciences, and indeed the various branches of mathematics, must be reconceived and reordered, all the while preserving the great multitude of legitimate modern discoveries and observations. No individual or small group of individuals will suffice; this project will demand the labor of legions of talented and dedicated philosophers, theorists, experimentalists, teachers, and popular expositors. Catholic Tradition affirms that “grace builds upon nature.” With a sound philosophy of nature again in hand, the Church will find more fertile ground in which to plant the seeds of faith. Let us be sure that the credit for this is referred to God alone:</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P11">
<span class="T7">Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam</span><span class="T6">.</span></div>
<div class="P20">
<br /></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T5">Chapter I.A Review Questions:</span></div>
<div class="P13">
<br /></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T6">1. What is meant by “truth”?</span></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T6">2. What is a “science”? How does it differ from “true opinion”?</span></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T6">3. What is meant by a “contingent” event? Why cannot these be the subject of a human science?</span></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T6">4. What does the theological modernist mean by “faith”?</span></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T6">5. What does the orthodox Catholic believer mean by an “act of faith”?</span></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T6">6. Does the scientist demand an act of faith from his student? Why?</span></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T6">7. Why is the Catholic’s act of faith in Jesus Christ entirely reasonable?</span></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T6">8. How must all conflicts between scientific theory and the Catholic Faith be resolved? Why?</span></div>
<div class="P13">
<br /></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T5">Chapter I.B Review Questions:</span></div>
<div class="P13">
<br /></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T6">1. How are the subject matters of physics, mathematics, and metaphysics defined?</span></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T6">2. What do we mean when we say that one science is more “abstract” than another?</span></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T6">3. In what way do physics, mathematics, and metaphysics abstract from individual beings?</span></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T6">4. Under what aspects would physics, mathematics, and metaphysics study a diamond?</span></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T6">5. In what way does the hierarchy of sciences yield also a hierarchy of principles?</span></div>
<div class="P13">
<br /></div>
<div class="P6">
<span class="T5">Chapter I.C Review Questions:</span></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T6">1. What are meant by “act” and “potency”?</span></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T6">2. How is “motion” defined?</span></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T6">3. How does the act of motion differ from the act of form?</span></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T6">4. What is the difference between an intrinsic and extrinsic cause?</span></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T6">5. What are the four causes? Which are intrinsic and which extrinsic?</span></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T6">6. How should we understand the difference between an efficient cause and final cause?</span></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T6">7. Give an example of a motion not found in the text and identify its four causes.</span></div>
<div class="P13">
<br /></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T5">Chapter I.D Review Questions:</span></div>
<div class="P13">
<br /></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T6">1. In what way does the order of abstraction of each science determine its method?</span></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T6">2. Give examples of principles that physics borrows from metaphysics and mathematics.</span></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T6">3. What are the five steps of the modern “scientific method”?</span></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T6">4. How do the physical investigations of the modern scientists differ from those of the ancient Greeks?</span></div>
<div class="P23">
<span class="T6">5. Why cannot the “scientific method” of the physical sciences be applied to mathematics, metaphysics, and theology?</span></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T6">6. What is an </span><span class="T7">experimentum crucis</span><span class="T6">? What distinguishes it from mere observation of nature?</span></div>
<div class="P13">
<br /></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T5">Chapter I.E Review Questions:</span></div>
<div class="P13">
<br /></div>
<div class="P9">
<span class="T6">1. How does the classical science of Aristotle view the world?</span></div>
<div class="P10">
<span class="T6">2. What did the Greeks and Latins understand by the terms “</span><span class="T7">φύσις</span><span class="T6">” and “</span><span class="T7">natura</span><span class="T6">”?</span></div>
<div class="P10">
<span class="T6">3. What is a “substantial form”? What is a “soul”?</span></div>
<div class="P10">
<span class="T6">4. Describe the “mechanical philosophy” of nature.</span></div>
<div class="P10">
<span class="T6">5. Describe Descartes’ philosophy of the body and soul. What is the great problem with it?</span></div>
<div class="P10">
<span class="T6">6. How did the notion of a “law of nature” come about?</span></div>
<div class="P10">
<span class="T6">7. In what way has modern science limited the idea of form?</span></div>
<div class="P10">
<span class="T6">8. How do Darwinism and Marxist materialism find their justification in modern physics?</span></div>
<div class="P10">
<span class="T6">9. Why has mathematics become so central to the modern study of the world?</span></div>
<div class="P10">
<span class="T6">10. What are “</span><span class="T7">scientiae mediae</span><span class="T6">”? Give some examples.</span></div>
<div class="P10">
<span class="T6">11. Why is there today no true science of biology?</span></div>
<div class="P10">
<span class="T6">12. Can modern physics in its present formulation be reconciled to the Catholic Faith? Why or why not?</span></div>
</blockquote>
Geremiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11812810552682098086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-459234386764140860.post-11334248390724852082016-05-16T13:25:00.002-07:002016-05-16T13:25:50.126-07:00Review of «To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science» by Steven Weinberg<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22328555-to-explain-the-world" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img border="0" alt="To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1410766672m/22328555.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22328555-to-explain-the-world">To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/86758.Steven_Weinberg">Steven Weinberg</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1639937683">2 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
It is good to see a mainstream physicist somewhat dispelling the myth that the Middle Ages were a scientifically dark era; however, he dismisses, with not much proof, the "continuity thesis" that modern physics is a natural, continuous result of 2000+ years of scientific thought (cf. Hannam's <em>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6601976.God_s_Philosophers_How_the_Medieval_World_Laid_the_Foundations_of_Modern_Science" title="God's Philosophers How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science by James Hannam">God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science</a>
</em>). Weinberg seems to think the Middle Age physicists were groping in the dark, stumbling upon discoveries they didn't know the meaning of. This couldn't be farther from the truth. The Middle Age physicists were able to formulate precise, very modern questions and offer penetratingly clear answers to questions on infinity (laying the foundations of calculus) and on the fundamentals undergirding even modern physics: place, time (and its relativity), void, and the "plurality of the worlds" (i.e., what's called "parallel universes" today), as shown in <em>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/436536.Medieval_Cosmology_Theories_of_Infinity__Place__Time__Void__and_the_Plurality_of_Worlds" title="Medieval Cosmology Theories of Infinity, Place, Time, Void, and the Plurality of Worlds by Pierre Duhem">Medieval Cosmology: Theories of Infinity, Place, Time, Void, and the Plurality of Worlds</a>
</em>.<br><br>Weinberg begins with Aristotle and also mentions prominent High Middle Ages physicists like Bishop Oresme and Buridan, in addition to those at Merton College known for the Mean-Speed Theorem, but overall his treatment of the Middle Age physicists and the question of modern vs. pre-modern physics was treated sloppily.
<br/><br/>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/41830392-geremia">View all my reviews</a>
Geremiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11812810552682098086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-459234386764140860.post-83005939873578328682016-04-06T11:19:00.000-07:002016-04-07T17:36:33.451-07:00Neo-Pythagoreanism<span style="font-size: small;">Here is the exchange between my friend who is interested in <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Pierre_Maurice_Marie_Duhem.aspx#1">Duhem</a>:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: small;">this comes from a recent article my "Duhem"
Google alert found for me:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">Babette Babich, “<a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00071773.2016.1139927">Heidegger’s
Jews: Inclusion/Exclusion and Heidegger’s Anti-Semitism</a>,” <i>Journal
of the British Society for Phenomenology</i> 47, no. 2 (April 2,
2016): 133–56, doi:10.1080/00071773.2016.1139927.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">Babich, as fn. #62 says, is a student of Lonergan.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">Here's where he discusses Duhem, ending with an interesting
observation. I haven't read Duhem's <i>La science allemande</i>
in its entirety; just the part I sent you regarding Einstein and
the "geometric/'mathematical' mind."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;">By contrast, especially for those of us up on our
Laruelle or our Stiegler or Meillassoux or our Simondon, and
even in conjunction with the present theme, thinking of
identities and differences, thinking of Heidegger and his Jews
in a French context, who reads Pierre Duhem, author of the
posthumous <i>German Science</i>?<span class="referenceDiv"><a class="dropDownLabel" href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00071773.2016.1139927#FN0050"><sup>50</sup></a></span>
Have we today – even those of us interested, as I am interested,
in the history and philosophy and sociology of science – any
political geography of theory in science in connection to or
with hermeneutic reflection? In connection to Heidegger, ah,
yes, but not with respect to questioning science much less
technology? We leave to those in power their game plan, and we
do so without remainder. Critical theory has thus managed not to
be critical for years.
</span><br />
<div class="paragraph">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">Where Duhem in 1916 criticizes the German turn of mind as it
finds expression in Gustav Kirchoff, a theorist of
mathematical physics, we could find Heidegger's words along
with Duhem's critique: “We can and will posit [<i>poser</i>] …
<i>Wir können und wollen setzen</i> … ”<span class="referenceDiv"><a class="dropDownLabel" href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00071773.2016.1139927#FN0051"><sup>51</sup></a></span>
Note that this stipulative posing is by no means limited to a
dogmatic and axiomatic controversy. The mathematician David
Hilbert made this the watchword of the so-called Göttingen
programme, which project included Husserl.<span class="referenceDiv"><a class="dropDownLabel" href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00071773.2016.1139927#FN0052"><sup>52</sup></a></span>
As Duhem continues to refute Heinrich Hertz's explicitly
deductive construction of mechanics,<span class="referenceDiv"><a class="dropDownLabel" href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00071773.2016.1139927#FN0053"><sup>53</sup></a></span>
the problem is not that the postulate is arbitrary but rather
that it is, out of context and history, thereby articulated,
“imperiously”: “<i>Sic volo, sic jubeo, sit pro ratione
voluntas.</i> [I will it thus, I order it thus; let my will
stand in the place of reason.]”<span class="referenceDiv"><a class="dropDownLabel" href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00071773.2016.1139927#FN0054"><sup>54</sup></a></span>
What Duhem ultimately sought, fierce as his gainsaying was,
was only the inclusion of specifically French science—this
would be the torch later taken up by Bachelard and Canguilhelm
and today, if less and less, Serres—finally admitted to the
table along with German science: “<i>Scientia germanica
ancilla scientiae gallicae</i>.”<span class="referenceDiv"><a class="dropDownLabel" href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00071773.2016.1139927#FN0055"><sup>55</sup></a></span></span></div>
<div class="paragraph">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">In the published version we can read Duhem citing Nietzsche's
contemporary and fellow philologist, Hermann Diels: “the
German is, here and now, on this earth, the sanctuary in which
the principle of order takes refuge.”<span class="referenceDiv"><a class="dropDownLabel" href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00071773.2016.1139927#FN0056"><sup>56</sup></a></span>
Yet it is Duhem's extended citation of Wilhelm Ostwald that is
arguably the most disturbing, even using the language of a
“great secret” with respect to the German:
</span><br />
<blockquote>
<div class="quote">
<div class="paragraph">
<span style="font-size: small;">Germany wants to organize Europe
which, until now, has not been organized. I shall now
explain to you the great secret of Germany. We, or
perhaps rather the German race, have discovered the
factor of organization. Other people still live under
the regimes of individualism, when we are under that of
organization.<span class="referenceDiv"><a class="dropDownLabel" href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00071773.2016.1139927#FN0057"><sup>57</sup></a></span></span></div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<span style="font-size: small;">When Duhem asks “[w]as Scholasticism not
essentially, as German science is, a work of the mathematical
mind”<span class="referenceDiv"><a class="dropDownLabel" href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00071773.2016.1139927#FN0058"><sup>58</sup></a></span>
he can seem to approximate Heidegger's standpoint in his <i>Beiträge</i>
with respect to what Heidegger names <i>Machenshaft</i>,
where Heidegger writes in GA 95 (<i>Überlegungen</i> VIII, 5)
of the <i>Black Notebooks</i> currently under discussion.
“One of the most secret forms of the <i>gigantic</i>, and
perhaps the oldest, is the persistent skillfulness in
calculating, pushing, and intermingling through which the
worldlessness of Jewry is grounded.”<span class="referenceDiv"><a class="dropDownLabel" href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00071773.2016.1139927#FN0059"><sup>59</sup></a></span>
Or else and still more troublingly, when Heidegger writes:
</span><br />
<blockquote>
<div class="quote">
<div class="paragraph">
<span style="font-size: small;">the temporary increase in the power
of Jewry has its ground in the fact that the metaphysics
of the West, especially in its modern development,
served as the point of attachment for the diffusion of
an otherwise empty rationality and calculative skill,
which in this way lodged itself in the “spirit” without
ever being able to grasp the concealed domains of
decision on its own. The more original and inceptive the
coming decisions and questions become, the more
inaccessible will they remain to this “race.”<span class="referenceDiv"><a class="dropDownLabel" href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00071773.2016.1139927#FN0060"><sup>60</sup></a></span></span></div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<span style="font-size: small;">This last is only a prelude to the most
infamous of these quotes:
</span><br />
<blockquote>
<div class="quote">
<div class="paragraph">
<span style="font-size: small;">That in the age of machination,
race is elevated to the explicit and specially erected
“principle” of history (or just of historiology) is not
the arbitrary stipulation of “doctrinaires” but a <i>consequence</i>
of the power of machination, which must cast down
beings, in all their regions, into planned calculation.<span class="referenceDiv"><a class="dropDownLabel" href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00071773.2016.1139927#FN0061"><sup>61</sup></a></span></span></div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<span style="font-size: small;">It can be argued that what Duhem calls “German science”
corresponds to what would come to be called “Jewish science”.<span class="referenceDiv"><a class="dropDownLabel" href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00071773.2016.1139927#FN0062"><sup>62</sup></a></span></span><br />
<br />
<hr size="2" width="100%" />
<span style="font-size: small;">52 I
discuss this with attention to the time that was the first few
decades of the twentieth century in the philosophy of science
(and mathematics) in Babich, “Early Continental Philosophy of
Science.</span>
<br />
<div class="paragraph">
<span style="font-size: small;">53 “Let us agree that this point – which
is itself nothing but an algebraic expression, only a world of
geometric consonance take to designate an ensemble of n
numbers – changes, from one instant to another, by an
algebraic formula. From this convention, so perfectly
algebraic in nature, so completely arbitrary in appearance, we
deduce, with perfect rigor, the consequences that calculation
can draw from it, and we say that we are setting forth
mechanics.” Duhem, “Some Reflections on German Science”, p. 93</span></div>
<div class="paragraph">
<span style="font-size: small;">54 Ibid.</span></div>
<div class="paragraph">
<span style="font-size: small;">55 Ibid., p. 112.</span></div>
<div class="paragraph">
<span style="font-size: small;">56 Duhem, “German Science and German
Virtues”, here p. 122.</span></div>
<div class="paragraph">
<span style="font-size: small;">57 Ibid.</span></div>
<div class="paragraph">
<span style="font-size: small;">58 Ibid., p. 123</span></div>
<div class="paragraph">
<span style="font-size: small;">59 Heidegger, <i>Überlegungen</i> VIII,
5, GA 95, p. 97.</span></div>
<div class="paragraph">
<span style="font-size: small;">60 Heidegger, GA 96, pp. 46 (from <i>Überlegungen</i>
XII, 24).</span></div>
<div class="paragraph">
<span style="font-size: small;">61 Heidegger, Ibid., p. 38.</span></div>
<div class="paragraph">
<span style="font-size: small;">62 That argument can be made, but for his
part, Duhem is talking about “scholasticism”, that is what my
old Jesuit teacher, the Canadian Thomist, Bernard Lonergan,
author of the conspicuously named <i>Method in Theology</i>
(1972) and <i>Insight</i>: <i>A Study of Human Understanding</i>
(1957), with its famous listings of points to the seemingly <i>n</i>th
degree, no mere <i>sic et non</i>, took the mid-twentieth
century to an extraordinary pitch well beyond the tradition of
generalized empirical method of “transcendental Thomism”
inaugurated by the Belgian Jesuit philosopher, Joseph
Maréchal. Indeed, Maréchal was probably one of the reasons
Lonergan was able to answer my questions regarding the
intersection of mysticism and empiricism as well as he did.
Maréchal's initial main works included: <i>Le point de départ
de la métaphysique: leçons sur le développement historique
et théorique du problème de la connaissance</i>, 5 vols
(Bruges-Louvain, 1922–47) and <i>Études sur le psychologie
des mystiques</i>, 2 vols (1926, 1937).</span></div>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<hr />
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 150%;">German/Jewish
science (my attempt at a compact definition): a fabricated (magical) new
“physical” science derived from hypothetical equations—e.g. relativistic
dynamics and its geometric implications dictating the replacement of a planar
space with a gravitational field by a curved spacetime <i>without</i> gravitational field. The transition from the former to the
latter is essentially magical, thanks to the concoction of highly elegant algebraic
tools. It would therefore be worth investigating how the actual magic, in the
truly occult sense of the term, has impacted “Jewish science” and its use of
mathematics (as the intellectual Talmudic culture is riddled with magic
practices related to gematric ideas). </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 150%;">Also,
as I read a little bit of Duhem’s writings and get a sense of his Ampèrian affinities,
I’m wondering whether he was aware of (and, if so, what he thought of) the
tensor-based reformulation of electrodynamics (relativistically rewriting Maxwell’s
equations to account for the electromagnetic potential in terms of R<sup>4</sup>
using an electromagnetic field tensor and a current tensor). Electrodynamics
assuming GR has always bothered me a great deal because it essentially unifies Einsteinian
gravitation (its spacetime continuum) and electromagnetism by way of geometry,
not physics (as though the physics of E&M was ultimately dependent upon and
constrained by the non-physical relativistic dogma of gravitation). </span></div>
<hr />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;">Yes, that was fascinating. And the author quoted Duhem's <i>German</i>.
Duhem published in French, English, and German, and knew Latin and
Greek as well as reading comprehension in Italian! He was a true
polymath and polyglot.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">"Ampèrian affinities":</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Duhem certainly admired Ampère's experimental and theoretical
genius, but he disagreed with Ampère's Newtonian inductivism, which
held that "<i>phénomènes électrodynamiques</i>" are "<i><b>uniquement</b>
déduite de l’expérience</i>," as Ampère subtitled <a href="https://isidore.co/calibre/browse/book/5276">his famous work</a>.
Duhem discusses this in his <a href="https://isidore.co/calibre/browse/book/3413"><i>Théorie
physique</i></a> ch. 6,</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">§4 (PDF p. 154): a critique of Newton himself ("<i>Critique de
la méthode newtonienne. - Premier exemple : La Mécanique
céleste</i>")</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">§5 (PDF p. 158): a critique of Ampère ("<i>Critique de la
méthode newtonienne (suite ). – Second exemple :
L’Électrodynamique</i>").</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: small;">(Duhem was very good at making everyone on all sides of a
debate very uncomfortable. ☺)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">Duhem was familiar with Riemann's mathematics. We know this based on
a citation he made to a paper by the Italian mathematician <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-2830900432.html">Enrico
Betti</a>. Duhem's 2nd doctoral dissertation (the accepted one)
was, after all, in the mathematics department; his 1st (the rejected
one) was in the physics department.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">By "tensor-based reformulation of electrodynamics," are you
referring to Maxwell's quaternion way of writing things? For
example, in his <a href="https://isidore.co/calibre/browse/book/3433"><i>Treatise on
Electricity & Magnetism</i> (vol. 2)</a>, p. 232-233, where
he introduces the displacement current, he wrote the Maxwell-Ampère
Law</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><math display="block" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><semantics><mrow><mo>∇</mo><mo>×</mo><mover><mi>B</mi><mo stretchy="false">⇀</mo></mover><mo>=</mo><msub><mi>μ</mi><mn>0</mn></msub><mover><mi>J</mi><mo stretchy="false">⇀</mo></mover><mo>+</mo><msub><mi>μ</mi><mn>0</mn></msub><msub><mi>ε</mi><mn>0</mn></msub><mfrac><mrow><mo>∂</mo><mover><mi>E</mi><mo stretchy="false">⇀</mo></mover></mrow><mrow><mo>∂</mo><mi>t</mi></mrow></mfrac></mrow><annotation encoding="TeX">\nabla \times \vec{B} = \mu_{0} \vec{ J} +
\mu_{0} \varepsilon_{0} \frac{{\partial \vec{E}}}{\partial t</annotation></semantics></math>as</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><math display="block" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><semantics><mrow><mn>4</mn><mi>π</mi><mstyle mathvariant="fraktur"><mi>C</mi></mstyle><mo>=</mo><mi>V</mi><mo>∇</mo><mstyle mathvariant="fraktur"><mi>H,</mi></mstyle></mrow><annotation encoding="TeX">4\pi \mathfrak{C} = V \nabla \mathfrak{H</annotation></semantics></math></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">where</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><math display="block" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><semantics><mrow><mstyle mathvariant="fraktur"><mi>C</mi></mstyle><mo>=</mo><mi>ℜ</mi><mo>+</mo><mover><mstyle mathvariant="fraktur"><mi>D,</mi></mstyle><mo>˙</mo></mover></mrow><annotation encoding="TeX">{\mathfrak{C}} = \Re + \dot{\mathfrak{D}}</annotation></semantics></math>i.e.,
(true current) = (conduction current) + (displacement current);</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><semantics><mstyle mathvariant="fraktur"><mi>H</mi></mstyle><annotation encoding="TeX">\mathfrak{H}</annotation></semantics></math> is
the magnetic force;</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><semantics><mrow><mi>V</mi><mo>∇</mo></mrow><annotation encoding="TeX">V\nabla</annotation></semantics></math> is the
vector part of
<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><semantics><mo>∇<br />
</mo><annotation encoding="TeX">\nabla</annotation></semantics></math>
(i.e., curl).</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">Regarding "occult" and "gematric [geometric?] ideas" in physics:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"> I like <a href="https://isidore.co/calibre/browse/book/5615">Steiner
(2009)</a>'s term "Pythagorean analogies," i.e., "analogies
inexpressible in any other language but that of pure mathematics" (<a href="https://isidore.co/misc/Physics%20papers%20and%20books/Zotero/storage/7Q29PUT4/Karam%20et%20al.%20-%202014%20-%20Comparing%20Teaching%20Approaches%20About%20Maxwell%e2%80%99s%20Disp.pdf">Karam
2014</a>); he cites Maxwell's displacement current as the first
example of a "Pythagorean analogy" in physics.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">Here are Duhem's views of quaternions and vector analysis (<a href="https://isidore.co/calibre/browse/book/3413"><i>Théorie
physique</i></a> ch. 4, §6 "<i>L’École anglaise et la Physique
mathématique</i>," PDF p. 62-63):</span><br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;">Mais chez les Anglais seuls l’amplitude d’esprit se
trouve d’une manière fréquente, habituelle, endémique ; aussi
est-ce seulement parmi les hommes de science anglais que les
Algèbres symboliques, le <i>calcul des quaternions</i>, la <i>vector-analysis</i>,
sont usuels ; la plupart des traités anglais se servent de ces
langages complexes et abrégés. Ces langages, les mathématiciens
français ou allemands ne les apprennent pas volontiers ; ils
n’arrivent jamais à les parler couramment ni surtout à penser
directement sous les formes qui les composent ; pour suivre un
calcul mené selon la méthode des quaternions ou de la <i>vector-analysis</i>,
il leur en faut faire la version en Algèbre classique. Un des
mathématiciens français qui avaient le plus profondément étudié
les diverses espèces de calculs symboliques, Paul Morin, me disait
un jour : « Je ne suis jamais sûr d’un résultat obtenu par la
méthode des quaternions avant de l’avoir retrouvé par notre
vieille Algèbre cartésienne. »</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;">Also, you would be very interested in the</span><br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://isidore.co/calibre/browse/book/3482"><i>Notice
sur les Titres et Travaux scientifiques de Pierre Duhem
rédigée par lui-même lors de sa candidature à l'Académie des
sciences (mai 1913)</i></a></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;">While Duhem wrote most of it—summarizing all his scientific,
philosophical, and historical researches—, Jordan wrote the
biography section, Hadamard wrote the section on the mathematical
aspects of Duhem's works, and Darbon (whom you may not have
heard of) wrote the section on Duhem's history of physics.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">By the way, some considered Duhem "anti-Semitic" because of his
stance on the Dreyfus affair, yet he was close friends with the Jew
Hadamard, who held a very high opinion of Duhem.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">Also, Duhem's influence has been vast, across many fields. For
example, the economist Schumpeter, in his preface to Fr. Dempsey,
S.J.'s erudite defense of the moderns' understanding of interest and
the medievals' arguments against usury, <a href="https://isidore.co/calibre/browse/book/5277"><i>Interest
& Usury</i></a>, mentions how Fr. Dempsey did for economics
what Duhem did for physics; they both showed the medievals'
contributions to their respective modern disciplines.</span></blockquote>
<hr />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">Thanks for this rich piece of Duhemian insights and many
references! Quite dense, owing to the vast extent (“across many fields”) of
Duhem’s multi-layer thought and writings.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">Yes Maxwell’s equations can be reformulated using matrix
operators to represent quaternions. But, in field theories, quaternions are
broader algebraic tools than tensors and need not include any “relativistic”
alteration. Thus “Maxwell’s quaternion way of writing things” is not exactly
the same as a tensor-based reformulation of electrodynamics. The tensor version
of Maxwell’s equations (deriving E&M from the deformation of </span><span style="line-height: 150%;"><b>R</b><sup>4</sup></span><span style="line-height: 150%;">
geometry) describes the relationship between the electromagnetic potential </span><i><span style="line-height: 150%;">A<sup>µ</sup></span></i><span style="line-height: 150%;"> (which, from the
perspective of quaternion operators, would be defined as a quadri-vector
potential), the electromagnetic field strength tensor </span><i><span style="line-height: 150%;">F<sup>µv</sup></span></i><i><sup><span style="line-height: 150%;"> </span></sup></i><span style="line-height: 150%;">(when </span><i><span style="line-height: 150%;">F<sup>µv </sup></span></i><span style="line-height: 150%;">= <i>ω<sup>µv</sup></i></span><span style="line-height: 150%;">), and the current
tensor </span><i><span style="line-height: 150%;">j<sup>µ</sup></span></i><span style="line-height: 150%;">, yielding the
“homogenous” form of Maxwell’s equations:</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="line-height: 150%;">∂<sub>k</sub>F<sub>µv</sub>
+ ∂<sub>µ</sub>F<sub>vk</sub> + ∂<sub>v</sub>F<sub>kµ</sub> </span></i><span style="line-height: 150%;">= 0.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i style="line-height: 25px;">∂</i><sup style="line-height: 25px;">2</sup><i><span style="line-height: 150%;">A<sup>µ </sup></span></i><span style="line-height: 150%;">= <i>j<sup>µ</sup></i></span><span style="line-height: 150%;"> ,</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">where </span><i style="line-height: 25px;">∂</i><sup style="line-height: 25px;">2</sup><span style="line-height: 150%;"><sup style="line-height: 25px;"><i> </i></sup></span><span style="line-height: 150%;">= <i>∂</i><sub>0</sub><sup>2</sup>
- <i>∂</i><sub>1</sub><sup>2</sup><i>- ∂</i><sub>2</sub><sup>2</sup> - <i>∂</i><sub>3</sub><sup>2</sup> = <i>c</i><sup>-2</sup><i>∂<sub>t</sub></i><sup>2</sup> - </span><span style="font-family: "cambria math" , serif; line-height: 150%;">∇</span><sub style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">x</span></sub><sup style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">2</span></sup></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">“Gematric”, referring (adjectively) to the Jewish <i>gematria</i> and its many occult misuses of
mathematics and numbers.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">Fascinating quote pertaining to “Duhem’s views of quaternions
and vector analysis”! Besides Cauchy and his stress tensor, I cannot think of
many French mathematicians and natural philosophers with a taste for the kind
of algebraic operations used in quaternion, vector, and tensor analyses.</span></span></div>
<hr />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;">Oh, I see. You were referring to relativity theory's tensorial
"simplification" of Maxwell's equations. To my knowledge, Duhem
never wrote about that (at least not directly, by writing
relativity's "'homogenous' form of Maxwell’s equations").</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">Re: "Duhem’s multi-layer thought and writings":</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"> Duhem even spoke about Loti, Corneille, Shakespeare, and Dickens
in his <a href="https://isidore.co/calibre/browse/book/3413" target="_blank"><i>Théorie physique</i></a>. Duhem contrasts
Corneille with Shakespeare (∵ he considers both as not
strictly having an <a href="http://sententiaedeo.blogspot.com/2014/05/esprit-de-geometrie-esprit-de-finesse.html"><i>esprit de géométrie</i></a>) and Loti
with Dickens (∵ both are prime examples of an <a href="http://sententiaedeo.blogspot.com/2014/05/esprit-de-geometrie-esprit-de-finesse.html"><i>esprit de géométrie</i></a>). I read <i>Tale of Two Cities</i>
because I was curious if Dickens indeed has an "English mind" (<a href="http://sententiaedeo.blogspot.com/2014/05/esprit-de-geometrie-esprit-de-finesse.html"><i>esprit de géométrie</i></a>), and he certainly does; I wasn't that impressed
with <i>Tale of Two Cities</i> because it didn't have much of an
"Ariadne's thread" (coherent idea/theme) running through it. It was
a disconnected smorgasbord of events and myriads of characters. As
Hertz said, Maxwell's theory is nothing more than Maxwell's
equations. Maxwell did not even derive these equations from a single
principle, like an energy law, which was customary to do in E&M
in the era between Ampére and Maxwell; thus, Maxwell's theory is an
example <i>par excellence</i> of the English/German/geometrical
mind, juggling many disconnected ideas around—which Poincaré said,
in that quote I sent you awhile back [translated on p. 8 of <a href="https://isidore.co/calibre/browse/book/4976">this</a>], makes French minds ill-at-ease
when reading Maxwell for the first time.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"> Have you read any Corneille? I know he wrote <i>Le Cid</i>;
have you seen/read that? Does it exemplify the French <a href="http://sententiaedeo.blogspot.com/2014/05/esprit-de-geometrie-esprit-de-finesse.html"><i>esprit de finesse</i></a>?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">Duhem certainly is not opposed to analogies in physics.
Classification is impossible without the ability to form analogies,
and Duhem defines physical theory as a classification of
experimental laws (not a classification of equations!). Duhem
explicitly mentions "<i>analogie</i>" in <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=c9cTAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA146"><i>Physique
du croyant</i> p. 146</a> ff. (on the analogy between
cosmology [natural philosophy] and physical theory; Duhem
essentially proves Aristotle Physica 191a7-8: "The underlying
nature is known by analogy."), which you may have already
read. He describes very well what Fr. Wallace, O.P., says is the
"teaching that is distinctive of Thomism," i.e., that "analogical
middle terms are sufficient for a valid demonstration" (cf. <a href="http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/q/21380/2014">this</a>).
This is vital for there to be <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ohxdaJqcRf8C&pg=PA295" rel="nofollow">"mixed sciences" or <i>scientia media</i></a>,
where minor and major premises are taken from distinct fields, like
mathematics and physics, with distinct principles of their own. <a href="https://isidore.co/calibre/browse/matches/authors/394" rel="nofollow">Fr. William A. Wallace, O.P.</a>, who pioneered
research into Galileo's logical treatises, describes this very well
in the best logic-of-science work I've ever read: <a href="https://isidore.co/calibre/browse/book/5302"><i>The Modeling
of Nature</i></a> (if Duhem wrote a logical work, which
I wish he did!, it would probably be similar to Fr. Wallace's).</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">Thus, what I think best describes "German" or "Jewish science" is
not that it uses analogy, which all physical theory does, but that
it's Neo-Pythagorean, <i>inverting the <a href="http://sententiaedeo.blogspot.com/2012/09/physics-metascience-metaphysics.html">1st (physical) and 2nd (mathematical) degrees of abstraction</a></i>. Duhem, where he
mentions Einstein in the <i>La science allemande</i>, makes it
clear that one cannot define time from a mathematical equation as
Einstein does. The inversion of the first two degrees of abstraction
has become so extreme that Max Tegmark, who is a hardcore
Pythagorean, even wrote a paper on the "<a href="http://sententiaedeo.blogspot.com/2013/03/everything-is-not-mathematics.html?m=1">Mathematical Universe Hypothesis</a>," i.e., that the universe <i>is</i> mathematics!
Pythagoreans appear to be the first gematrists.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">I was pleased to see <a href="https://isidore.co/calibre/browse/book/5615" target="_blank">Steiner
(2009)</a> quote Peirce regarding analogies between physical
theories (p. 52fn9):</span><br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;">These universal super-laws were, to Peirce's thinking,
the key to the formal mathematical analogies we see between
laws—such as the inverse square laws in gravity and
electricity—analogies that demand explanation (7.509-7.511). But
Peirce looked to these super-laws also to explain, not only the
mathematical form of laws, but even the specific values of the
constants (like the gravitational constant) appearing in them.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;">This reminds me of what St. Thomas said is impossible <a href="http://sententiaedeo.blogspot.com/2016/03/st-thomas-on-limits-of-physics-distance.html">in
that <i>Super Iob</i> quote I sent you</a>, where he says some
things cannot have a natural explanation but are up to the will of
God. A "physical" theory being the analogy between two mathematical
laws is not a physical theory, but a mathematical one, at best, and
a confusing of mathematics with the will of God, at worst.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">This reminds me: I need to read the article ["<a href="https://isidore.co/calibre/browse/book/3836">De Analogia
secundum Doctrinam Aristotelico-Thomisticam</a>"] by <a href="https://isidore.co/calibre/browse/matches/authors/64">Fr. Ramírez, O.P.</a>,
that formed the foundation of his multi-volume <i>De Analogia</i>.
Fr. Rimírez is the master of analogy, and I'm curious what he has to
say about Duhem claim that (<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=c9cTAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA147">p.
147</a>):</span><br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;">…si l'on prononce à cet endroit les mots de <i>preuve
par analogie</i>, il convient d'en fixer exactement le sens et
de ne point confondre une telle preuve avec une véritable
démonstration logique. Une analogie se sent ; elle ne se conclut
pas ; elle ne s'impose pas à l'esprit de tout le poids du principe
de contradiction. Là où un penseur voit une analogie, un autre,
plus vivement frappé par les contrastes des termes à comparer que
par leurs ressemblances, peut fort bien voir une opposition ; pour
amener celui-ci à changer sa négation en affirmation, celui-là ne
saurait user de la force irrésistible du syllogisme…</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;">How is "<i>preuve par analogie</i>" not "<i>une véritable
démonstration logique</i>" thet "<i>ne se conclut pas</i>" and "<i>ne
s'impose pas à l'esprit de tout le poids du principe de
contradiction</i>"?</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"></span></span><br />
<hr />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">The
formalism of quaternions was very much Maxwellian in spirit and has actually been
extended in Germano-Anglo-American electromagnetic field theory on the basis of
the tensor field equations of Einstein. But it is the introduction of the
electromagnetic tensor field </span><i><span style="line-height: 150%;">F<sub>µv</sub></span></i><span style="line-height: 150%;">,
combined with the spin connection vector </span><i><span style="line-height: 150%;">ω<sup>a</sup><sub>b</sub></span></i><span style="line-height: 150%;">
(the electrodynamics simplification of this amounts to equating <i>F</i> and </span><i><span style="line-height: 150%;">ω </span></i><span style="line-height: 150%;">by retranslating the
latter into a rotation tensor, <i>ω<sub>µv</sub></i></span><span style="line-height: 150%;">)
that makes up for </span><b><span style="line-height: 150%;">“relativity
theory’s tensorial "simplification" of Maxwell’s equations”</span></b><span style="line-height: 150%;">,
which consists in the merging of electrodynamics with GR I was referring to (and
wondering whether Duhem had had any thought on this “tensorization” of E&M,
which is all the rage today among pan-relativists).</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">About
tragedians and the difference between <i>“esprit
de finesses”</i> and <i>“esprit de géométrie”</i>,
Duhem was probably keen on his contrasting assessment of Corneille and
Shakespeare on the one hand and Loti Dickens on the other. Corneille, as Molière,
also was a comedy writer and therefore, to my view, does exemplify something of
“un esprit de finesse”, since <i>finesse</i>
was rather characteristic of the kind of spirit 17th century French political/social
satires would famously convey through penetrating comedies (hardly the
under-the-belt level of our contemporary late wisecracking shows on T.V.). </span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">Regarding
the centrality of analogies to the life of the created intellect, you correctly
write: </span><b><span style="line-height: 150%;">“Classification
is impossible without the ability to form analogies”</span></b><span style="line-height: 150%;">,
and logically justify the validity of Duhem’s definition of </span><b><span style="line-height: 150%;">“physical theory as a classification
of experimental laws”</span></b><span style="line-height: 150%;">, namely by way of <i>analogous</i> abstraction (which is what modeling
physical data in the logical formal of a physical theory really amounts to). In
a broader (cross-field) sense, I would define analogicity (</span><i><span style="font-family: "cambria" , serif; line-height: 150%;">ἀνα-λογία</span></i><span style="line-height: 150%;">,
meaning quite literally the <i>logic</i> of
comparative relation between that which is lower to that which is higher) as a
critical way of both intuitively and intellectually seeing the similitude of
the invisible (the higher) mirrored in the visible (the lower). Both the Hebrew
word for <i>intellectus</i> (</span><b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 150%;">בִינָה</span></b><span style="line-height: 150%;">,
“understanding” as the attitude of the intellect seeing in between two things,
meaning re-cognizing the like features by which two essentially distinct things
can coherently be related) and the Aramaic word for “comparison” (</span><span style="font-family: "estrangelo edessa"; line-height: 150%;">ܒ݁ܡܰܬ݂ܠܶܐ</span><span style="line-height: 150%;"> ,</span><b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 150%;">מתלא</span></b><span style="line-height: 150%;">) clearly suggest that an analogy is actually
more than simply a <i>ratio</i>-nal
proportion (in the arithmetic, Aristotelian sense). In revealed anthropology,
it appears (my theory) that the created intellect (whose life is <i>intellectus</i>) is constitutionally <i>analogic</i> (together in inner structure and
cognitive motion).</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">I
did notice Duhem’s mention of analogy in <i>Physique
du croyant</i>. The distinction he makes
(referring to your final question) between <i>“preuve
par analogie”</i> and <i>“une véritable
démonstration logique”</i> does not imply that the first is less intellectually
powerful and epistemologically meaningful than the second. In fact, a mere
logical demonstration, however valid, may not have the same epistemological
value as a proof by analogy, even though the latter’s proof value is technically
more limited than a syllogistic demonstration. What this means is that analogical
knowledge is not reducible to logical validity. Thus a little like he did in <i>La science allemande</i>—first lesson (<i>Les Sciences de Raisonnement</i>)—when
distinguishing between axioms and theorems (which the following sentence on p.
6 summarizes like an aphorism: “Les principes se sentent, les propositions se
concluent…”), Duhem is essentially right to say on p. 147 of <i>Physique du croyant</i>: “Une analogie se
sent ; elle ne se conclut pas…” </span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">The
confusion of degrees of abstraction you talk about is indeed critical! My sense
is that it is typically indulged in because there is actually more to numbers
and their multifaceted relations and properties than their simply being abstract
entities bereft of positive existence outside the mind (<i>entia rationis</i>).<sup>1</sup> However, no one really knows how much
more, and what the true nature of this “more” is. That is the reason why mathematical
physics can really lead to ontological problems (as the nature of the 2nd
degree of abstraction is so evasive), but without possibly providing a
solution. If you remember, it was the sense of my comparative (analogical) “syllogism”
used <a href="http://plumenclume.org/blog/82-le-primat-informationnel-logique-et-ontologie-creatrice">here</a>
to extend Gödel’s incompleteness results from mathematics to all-encompassing
Neo-Pythagorean physical theories whose ultimate Galilean assumption is that “the
universe <i>is</i> mathematics.”</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 12pt 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="line-height: 150%;">“Duhem,
where he mentions Einstein in the <i>La
science allemande</i>, makes it clear that one cannot define time from a
mathematical equation as Einstein does.”</span></b></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">Yes,
and it is very significant that Newton did not include “time” in his descriptive
“universal super-law” of gravitation, while Einstein did. The Neo-Pythagorean
thinking undergirding GR and its inclusion of the time dimension times the
square root of - 1 was never meant to account for empirical results (contrary
to the regular claims appealing to the “countless corroborations” of the curved
geometry of Einsteinian gravitational field). GR was intended to provide a <i>mathematical</i> way out of the
contradiction between the instantaneous Newtonian gravitational field and the new
principles couched in the Einsteinian formulas pertaining to spacetime in SR (implying
action at a distance).</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">I
read Fr. Ramírez’s <i>The authority of St.
Thomas</i>, not his <i>De Analogia</i>.</span> </span>Geremiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11812810552682098086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-459234386764140860.post-17732086389235780252016-04-02T12:12:00.004-07:002021-12-15T13:46:16.965-07:00Capitalism is Usury-ism.Read the following from Fr. Heinrich Pesch, S.J.'s <a href="https://isidore.co/calibre/browse/book/5322"><i>Ethics and
the National Economy</i></a>.<br />
<br />
Fr. Pesch was the first Catholic to write a comprehensive history
of economics, and his student was the anti-<a href="https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/User:Geremia#My_Economic_Views">usury</a> expert Fr. Bernard
W. Dempsey, S.J., author of <a href="https://isidore.co/calibre/browse/book/5277"><i>Interest
& Usury</i></a>, which the famous economist Schumpeter
prefaced, mentioning that Duhem's historical researches in physics are akin to Fr. Dempsey's in economics.<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
"Communism has failed, and now that Capitalism has shown
us in the intervening years that it is even more ruthless than the
communists imagined, we need an alternative to both Marx and the
Manchester School. Heinrich Pesch is that alternative, and Rupert
Ederer [the translator] is his prophet.”<br />
<div align="right">
—E. Michael Jones, Ph.D.<br />
Editor, <a href="http://culturewars.com/">Culture Wars</a>; author, <i>The Slaughter of the Cities</i></div>
</blockquote>
Fr. Pesch, S.J., wrote: "Capitalism is the dominion over the
national economy by the acquisitive interests of those who own
capital."<br />
<br />
p. 85-6:<br />
<blockquote>
Usury is not exclusively a monetary phenomenon
having to do with money-lending. A disparity between what is
offered and what is given in return, resulting in excessive gain,
can arise anywhere in the exchange process, and especially in
business transactions.<br />
Usury in a business transaction is <i>the contractual
appropriation of obvious surplus value in the process of buying
and selling</i>. The damage is done by the contract itself where
performance and remuneration are juxtaposed. …</blockquote>
and, in the chapter "Capitalism & Socialism" (p. 159):<br />
<blockquote>
Capitalists are usurers in the broadest sense of the
word. We understand usury in the same sense as Franz Schaub does,
as any contractual expropriation of what is clearly surplus value.
So, in our time, we use the word capitalism to mean a social
system where usury operates with more or less complete freedom.
The concept, capitalism, signifies a quest for gain that is
totally uninhibited. Capitalism, therefore, means economic
dominion by capitalists…</blockquote>
Pesch is also a Thomist, mentioning St.
Thomas frequently in this work.<br />
<br />
Hilaire Belloc, <a href="http://www.traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/j013htBelloc_FR_1.htm">although some of his writings are Liberal</a>, describes usury well in his chapter on usury in <a href="https://isidore.co/calibre/browse/book/5605"><i>Economics for Helen</i></a>; cf. Fr. Slater's description of usury in his <i><span id="BRreturn"><a href="https://archive.org/details/MN5034ucmf_1">A Manual of Moral Theology for English-Speaking Countries</a></span></i><span id="BRreturn"><a href="https://archive.org/stream/MN5034ucmf_1#page/n343/mode/2up"> p. 321</a></span>. Belloc and Fr. Slater
eloquently explain that usury leads to economic disparities and imbalances. Belloc essentially
expounds on <a href="https://isidore.co/aquinas/summa/SS/SS078.html#SSQ78A1THEP1">St. Thomas's definition of usury as selling what does not exist</a>. Although
Belloc's description of usury was interesting, it seems
Calvinist. Calvin was the first to say that interest can be charged on productive loans.
Catholics before Calvin considered any "<a href="https://isidore.co/aquinas/Emptio.htm">buying and selling of time</a>" usurious.Geremiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11812810552682098086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-459234386764140860.post-76493083965070435062016-03-15T12:00:00.004-07:002021-12-15T13:46:29.036-07:00St. Thomas on the limits of physics (contra the anthropic principle), the distance to the stars, and the anisotropic distribution of matter in the universeFrom <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Saint_Thomas_Aquinas.aspx#1">St. Thomas Aquinas</a>'s <a href="https://isidore.co/aquinas/SSJob.htm#052"><i>Commentary on Job</i> cap. 5 l. 2</a>:<br />
<table cellpadding="12"><tbody>
<tr style="text-align: justify;" valign="top"><td>Est
autem sciendum quod illi qui providentiam negant omnia quae apparent in
rebus mundi ex necessitate naturalium causarum provenire dicunt, utpote
ex necessitate caloris et frigoris, gravitatis et levitatis et aliorum
huiusmodi. Ex his ergo potissime providentia divina manifestatur quorum
ratio reddi non potest ex huiusmodi naturalibus principiis, inter quae
unum est determinata magnitudo corporum huius mundi: <b>non enim potest
assignari ratio ex aliquo principio naturali quare sol aut luna aut
terra sit tantae quantitatis et non maioris aut minoris</b>; unde necesse
est dicere quod ista dispensatio quantitatum sit ex ordinatione alicuius
intellectus, et hoc designat in hoc quod dicit qui facit magna, idest
qui res in determinata magnitudine disponit. Rursus si omnia ex
necessitate principiorum naturalium provenirent, cum principia naturalia
sint nobis nota haberemus viam ad inquirendum omnia quae in hoc mundo
sunt; <b>sunt autem aliqua in hoc mundo ad quorum cognitionem nulla <span style="color: red;">
inquisitione</span> possumus pervenire, utpote substantiae spirituales,
distantiae stellarum et alia huiusmodi</b>; unde manifestum est non
procedere omnia ex necessitate principiorum naturalium sed ab aliquo
superiori intellectu res esse institutas, et propter hoc addit et
inscrutabilia. Item quaedam sunt quae videmus quorum rationem <b>nullo modo
possumus assignare</b>, puta <b>quod stellae disponuntur secundum talem
figuram in hac parte caeli et in alia secundum aliam</b>; unde manifestum
est hoc non provenire ex principiis naturalibus sed ab aliquo superiori
intellectu, et propter hoc addit et mirabilia: sic enim differt
inscrutabile et mirabile quod inscrutabile est quod ipsum latet et
perquiri non potest, mirabile autem est quod ipsum quidem apparet sed
causa eius perquiri non potest.
</td><td>Note that those who deny providence say that everything which
appears in the world occurs from the necessity of natural causes, for
example, the necessity of heat and cold, of gravity and lightness or
something like this. Divine providence is most powerfully demonstrated
by those things which cannot be explained by natural principles like
these, one of which is the determined quantity of the bodies of this
world. <b>For no reason can be assigned from some natural principle why the
sun or the moon or the earth should be a certain mass (quantity) and
not a greater or lesser one.</b> Thus it is necessary to say that this
determination of masses is from the ordering of some intellect and he [Job's friend, Eliphaz]
discusses this when he says, “He does great things,” i.e. he puts order
in a thing by determining mass. Further, if everything were to come
about from the necessity of natural principles, since natural principles
are known to us, we would have a way of investigating everything in
this world. <b>There are some things in this world however, the knowledge
of which we cannot arrive at by any <span style="color: red;">investigation</span>, for example,
spiritual substances, the distances of the stars, and other things like
this.</b> So everything clearly does not proceed from the necessity of
natural principles, but is instituted by some superior intellect and so
he [Job's friend, Eliphaz] says, “unsearchable.” Likewise, there are also some things which we
see whose nature <b>we can in no way discuss</b>, for example, <b>that the stars
have a certain configuration in this part of the heaven and another in
another part of the heaven</b>. Hence it is clear that this certainly does
not arise from natural principles, but from some higher intellect, and
he adds, “and wonderful things.” For the unsearchable and the wonderful
differ in that the unsearchable is hidden in itself and cannot be
investigated, but the wonderful is indeed seen, though its cause cannot
be investigated.
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Geremiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11812810552682098086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-459234386764140860.post-27863332876577470252016-03-15T11:32:00.000-07:002016-03-15T11:32:14.776-07:00Constitutional FlawsThe Bill of Rights (1791) was modeled off
the French Revolution's <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_Man_and_of_the_Citizen"><i>Déclaration
des droits de l'homme et du citoyen</i></a> (1789), and Thomas
Jefferson influenced both. Two major defects in them are:<br />
<br />
1. <u>religious indifferentism</u> (that all beliefs are equal
under the law):<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
<i>Déclaration des droits</i> Article X:<br />
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
No one may be disturbed for his opinions, even
religious ones, provided that their manifestation does not
trouble the public order established by the law.<br />
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<small>There are people (e.g., Muslims) who believe killing
infidels is a virtue. Why should such a Muslim not "</small><small>be
disturbed for his opinions," even though the "manifestation" of
his beliefs does indeed "</small><small>trouble the public order
established by the law"?</small><br />
<br />
2. <u>freedom of press</u>:<br />
<blockquote>
<i>Déclaration des droits</i> Article XI:<br />
<blockquote>
The free communication of <small>[true <i>and</i><i>
false!</i>*]</small> thoughts and opinions is one of the
most precious rights of man: any citizen thus may speak,
write, print freely, except to respond to the abuse of this
liberty,** in the cases determined by the law.<br />
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<small>*</small><small>Why should one have the freedom to spread
falsehoods and lies?<br />
**"[R]espond[ing] to the abuse of this liberty" is exactly what
anyone who criticizes the dictatorship of the mainstream media
does, yet this Article says they should be silenced! The Liberal
press, lead by the Freemasonic <i>philosophes</i>
(revolutionary French philosophers like Voltaire), is what
instigated the French Revolution in the first place.</small><br />
<br />
These Articles X and XI are combined in the U.S.'s 1st Amendment:<br />
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
</blockquote>
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, …<br />
<blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
These documents are far more tyrannical and revolutionary than the
kings and queens <small>(e.g., King Louis XVI and Queen
Marie-Antoinette, who the French Revolution guillotined)</small>
supposedly were. Yes, there are some good parts of these documents
<small>(like
real natural rights, etc.)</small>, but religious indifferentism
<small>(which says beliefs don't matter)</small> and freedom of
press <small>(which gives way to a dictatorship of the mainstream
media, Hollywood, textbook publishers, et al., who know beliefs
<i>do</i> matter and yet inculcate falsehoods)</small> is the
"drop of poison in the well."Geremiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11812810552682098086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-459234386764140860.post-59398858271823811062016-03-07T10:26:00.001-07:002016-03-07T10:26:57.088-07:00St. Thomas Aquinas (March 7)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://www.u.arizona.edu/~aversa/scholastic/St.%20Thomas%20Aquinas%20feast%20%28Gueranger%29.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="csl-bib-body" style="line-height: 1.35; padding-left: 2em; text-indent: -2em;">
<div class="csl-entry">
Guéranger, Dom Prosper. <i><a href="http://www.theliturgicalyear.org/theliturgicalyearpdfs.html">The Liturgical Year</a>: Septuagesima</i>. Fitzwilliam, NH: Loreto Publications, 2000. </div>
</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="St. Thomas Aquinas's "littera inintelligibilis" or "unintelligible lettering" in a manuscript he wrote and autographed" src="http://www.u.arizona.edu/%7Eaversa/thomas_aquinas_littera_inintelligibilis.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Manuscript page showing “littera inintelligibilis,” written and autographed by St. Thomas Aquinas.</i> —<a href="http://0-go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CCX3407711070&v=2.1&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w">"St. Thomas Aquinas," <i>New Catholic Encyclopedia</i></a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
Geremiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11812810552682098086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-459234386764140860.post-70777007169741588152016-03-06T16:33:00.002-07:002016-03-06T16:34:09.542-07:00Physique de croyantFrench original of <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Pierre_Maurice_Marie_Duhem.aspx#1"><b>Pierre Duhem</b></a>'s 2-part <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/557596498"><i>Annales de
philosophie chrétienne</i></a> <small>(a
<a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13548a.htm"> scholastic</a>/apologetical periodical ed. at the time by R P
Laberthonnière)</small> 77th Year, 4th series , Vol 1 (Oct &
Nov 1905) pp. 44 & 133 article:<br />
<h2>
<i>Physique de croyant</i> (<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=c9cTAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA44">part
1</a>, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=c9cTAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA133">part
2</a>)</h2>
<h2>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;">(<a href="http://ftp.colloquium.co.uk/~barrett/croyant.html">English translation</a>)
</span></span></h2>
<small>
</small>Geremiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11812810552682098086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-459234386764140860.post-65131007485158938952015-08-15T23:44:00.000-07:002015-08-15T23:44:02.065-07:00Happy Feast of the Assumption!
Happy feast of the Assumption of Our Blessed Mother, body and soul,
into heaven.<br />
<br />
Canadian Thomist philosopher Charles de Koninck was a big defender
of the Assumption. He saw <a href="https://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-xii_apc_19501101_munificentissimus-deus.html"><i>Munificentissimus
Deus</i></a> (1 November 1950), which Pius XII promulgated only
a few months after his anti-Modernist and pro-Thomist encyclical <a href="https://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis.html"><i>Humani
Generis</i></a> (12 August 1950), as <i>contra</i> Cartesian
dualism, since the Pope stresses the unity of the body and soul in
proclaiming our Blessed Mother was assumed both body and soul into
heaven.<br />
<br />
Following upon <a href="https://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-xii_apc_19501101_munificentissimus-deus.html"><i>Munificentissimus
Deus</i></a>, we can draw this conclusion: Our Blessed Mother
had the clearest intellect of any human ever. Plus her being the
Queen of the Angels? Wow! No wonder S. Albertus Magnus drew such
knowledge from the Seat of Wisdom!<br />
<br />
Oftentimes we think of purity as meaning free from sexual sins,
lust, <i>porneia</i>, etc., but she is so much purer than that! In
these times of "diabolical disorientation," as Sr. Lucia called
them, we should pray:<br />
<br />
"Immaculate intellect of the Blessed Virgin Mary, angelically orient
our intellects unto thine! Amen!"<br />
<br />
<i>Gaudete in matre nostra. ☺</i>Geremiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11812810552682098086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-459234386764140860.post-29586173054447177652014-12-22T22:32:00.002-07:002014-12-23T21:02:16.054-07:00Chaos: The Film<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/videoseries?list=PLw2BeOjATqruoac7tS6Clnn-mpxlRkXfV" width="560"></iframe><br />
<a href="http://www.chaos-math.org/">Chaos: The Film</a><br />
<br />
Hadamard's <i>Pamphlets </i>contains the paper "Les surfaces à courbures opposées et leurs lignes géodésiques" (<a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015035212359;view=1up;seq=155">p. 71</a>; cf. Jaki's <i>Uneasy Genius</i> p. 350fn113), a classic in chaos theory that inspired "<a href="http://www.chaos-math.org/en/chaos-v-billiards">Duhem's bull</a>" (e.g., in his <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=5mVPK7QBdTkC&pg=PA139"><i>Aim & Structure of Physical Theory</i> p. 139</a> ff.). "Duhem's bull" is mentioned in part 5 of this <i>Chaos: The Film</i>.Geremiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11812810552682098086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-459234386764140860.post-48437347527991561302014-12-22T22:31:00.000-07:002014-12-22T22:31:18.203-07:00Pierre Duhem & Thomas Kuhn<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/nXhVRKh-LLA" width="560"></iframe>Geremiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11812810552682098086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-459234386764140860.post-62823183723047149452014-12-12T19:39:00.001-07:002014-12-12T19:42:10.656-07:00The Ultimate Speed by Dr. Bertozzi<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/B0BOpiMQXQA" width="420"></iframe></div>
<div class="" id="watch-description-text">
<div id="eow-description">
description: </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div id="eow-description">
In his<br />
youth, Dr. William Bertozzi, an MIT professor who has long been a <br />
leader in experimental nuclear physics using beams of electrons, carried<br />
out an experiment in which he explored the relationship between the <br />
velocity of electrons and their kinetic energy by measurements over a <br />
range of accelerating voltages between 0.5 MeV and 15 MeV. The kinetic <br />
energy is measured using calorimetry and the velocity is measured by <br />
time-of-flight. This educational film, made in 1962, documents the <br />
experiment and shows that the electrons have a limiting speed equal to <br />
that of light, in agreement with Einstein's theory of relativity.</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
cited in:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.ifi.unicamp.br/~assis/">A. K. T. Assis</a> and R. A. Clemente,<b> <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00675096">The ultimate speed implied by theories of Weber's type</a></b>,<br />
<i>International Journal of Theoretical Physics</i>, Vol. 31, pp. 1063-1073 <br />
(1992). Abstract: As in the last few years there has been a renewed <br />
interest in the laws of Ampère for the force between current elements <br />
and of Weber for the force between charges, we analyze the limiting <br />
velocity which appears in Weber's law. Then we make the same analysis <br />
for Phipps' potential and for generalizations of it. Comparing the <br />
results with the relativistic calculation, we obtain that these theories<br />
can yield c for the ultimate speed of charges or for the ultimate <br />
relative speed between the charges but not for both simultaneously, as <br />
is the case in the special theory of relativity.</blockquote>
reviewed in:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
<a href="http://scitation.aip.org/content/aapt/journal/ajp/32/3/10.1119/1.1970192">The Ultimate Speed</a> W Bertozzi, I Aron - <i>Am. J. Phys.</i> <b><span class="citationvolume">32</span></b>, 234</blockquote>
Geremiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11812810552682098086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-459234386764140860.post-55617865392212407932014-11-15T18:20:00.000-07:002014-11-15T18:20:15.838-07:00On St. Albert the Great's Feast Day: Magisterium on the True Scientific MethodPope Leo XIII says in his 4 August 1879 encyclical on the restoration of Christian philosophy, <em><a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_04081879_aeterni-patris_en.html" rel="nofollow">Æterni Patris</a></em>:
<br />
<blockquote>
<ol start="30">
<li>And here it is well to note that our philosophy can only by the
grossest injustice be accused of being opposed to the advance and
development of natural science. For, when <strong>the <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14698b.htm" rel="nofollow">Scholastics</a></strong>, following the opinion of the holy Fathers, <strong>always held</strong> in anthropology <strong>that the human intelligence is only led to the knowledge of things</strong> without body and matter <strong>by things sensible</strong>, <strong>they well understood that nothing was of greater use to the philosopher than</strong> diligently to search into the mysteries of nature and to be earnest and constant in <strong>the study of physical things</strong>. And this they confirmed by their own example; for <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Saint_Thomas_Aquinas.aspx#1" rel="nofollow">St. Thomas</a>, Blessed [now Saint] <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Saint_Albertus_Magnus.aspx#1" rel="nofollow">Albertus Magnus</a>,
and other leaders of the Scholastics were never so wholly rapt in the
study of philosophy as not to give large attention to the knowledge of
natural things; and, indeed, the number of their sayings and writings on
these subjects, which recent professors approve of and admit to
harmonize with truth, is by no means small. Moreover, in this very age
many illustrious professors of the physical sciences openly testify that
between certain and accepted conclusions of modern physics and the
philosophic principles of the schools there is no conflict worthy of the
name. </li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
Happy feast day today of <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Saint_Albertus_Magnus.aspx#1">St. Albert the Great</a>!Geremiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11812810552682098086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-459234386764140860.post-45192260920254151222014-10-07T20:21:00.002-07:002014-10-07T20:21:38.675-07:00Lagrange<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/K_tAygfZnAE?list=PLNx90cLAw1NDpNMM4W4Po-2ZKfUsRy1pO" width="560"></iframe></div>
Geremiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11812810552682098086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-459234386764140860.post-47345325980497214192014-09-14T16:46:00.000-07:002014-09-14T16:49:55.020-07:00Traditional Doctrine of Creation<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/UFwEyZ0g3D0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br>by the founder of the <a href="http://kolbecenter.org/">Kolbe Center</a>Geremiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11812810552682098086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-459234386764140860.post-76084721229841907692014-07-29T18:06:00.001-07:002014-07-29T18:07:35.625-07:00Using Maxwell's Equations Before the Electron - Prof Jed Buchwald<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/4GjXASNttn8" width="560"></iframe><br /><br />
Buchwald is one of the greatest living historians of E&M.Geremiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11812810552682098086noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-459234386764140860.post-7141109984592734992014-06-28T21:24:00.002-07:002014-06-28T21:24:04.551-07:00Cosmology Quest<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?list=PL-edc4nsbneWch4Q6aIC7EBms9H7dHzIk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Geremiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11812810552682098086noreply@blogger.com0