Sales, K. Rebels against the Future

Meanwhile I have been reading Kirkpatrick Sales' book on the Luddites - Rebels Against the Future. He has sympathy with the Luddites, but is unfortunately caught in the academic language and the concepts which that language supports. Thus, "The Industrial Revolution". This is one of those thought stopping cliches which seems to say something.

I have been wondering whether it be not a flaw in our language that nouns are too easily made into adjectives. Thus "industrial revolution" gives a false direction to the mind. It does not quite mean a "revolution in industry". There is a problem as well in the mis-use of "revolution". Properly stated the changes might be called an "upheaval in industry". Or sinking of human energy into a near frozen form of production, intolerant of flexibility.

Sales, alas, goes on to connecting recent movements - highly abstract and intellectual - such as the ecology business with the efforts of the Luddites. All such movements fail to allow for human beings as animals. They demand that humans act as moral creatures only, taking moral as some abstract notion, not rooted in some more central notion. He has an inkling when he refers to native respect for the gods of rivers; he does not take the further step, which our civilization offers, of considering that there is but one God who made all the rivers.
Sales considers the problems which have arisen with the use, and too great exploitation of the "resources" (the wealth) of nature. He refers to multi-national corporations and "their" efforts to escape from local controls. He does not see that you can no more escape local controls than you can escape gravity; we are made to be in one place or another. He has been suckered by the notion of these agglomerates as "persons", making rational decisions. He does not see that the "rationality" of the decisions is not reasonable. Thus, all the talk about the bottom line, a purely numerical measure, which can easily be cooked. He has a sense that such measures are misapplications, but cannot connect it up with the problem. The problem is simple enough: a currency has value only to the extent that it is backed up by a country, which is to say by its police: local control.
Sales' account of the actions of the English government during the Luddite revolution (revolution being a return to old morals) is one of a brutal rejection of those morals. The argument for laissez faire is not only disingenuous; it is pusillanimous. Che sera sera. It is a sneak's trick to change "content yourself in the situation in which you find yourself" to "content yourself in the situation to which you have been assigned". This is the meaning behind "natural selection".
Underlying the problem of "capitalists" is that no man can really handle the amount of wealth which the system diverted into private hands. Who dies rich, dies disgraced. There are few monuments created by men who were merely rich. Monuments of poetry and philosophy, monuments of our arts, the enduring treasures, are created by men always on the verge of bankruptcy. J.P. Morgan could but collect the works of men whom he would not have invited to dinner. But he supported no artists or writers of his own generation. Like Henry James, and Justice Holmes, his playing with the "English" tradition sucked out his soul. He drowned in money. The fatal flaw in Sales' book is to be found in the title: correct it from Rebels Against the Future to Rebels Against the "Future". The flaw becomes apparent.

Gribbins, J. & M. Richard Feynman

I go back now to John & Mary Gribbin's biography of Richard Feynman. It is too bad that publishers no longer have editors who might squeeze out the cliches of sophomore survey courses. It is a limitation of Feynman's thought that he was unable to grasp the philosophical concepts which underlie the study of physics. Interesting is the remark that Feynman was admitted to Princeton with the understanding that, although Jewish, he was not religious. The Gibbins' refer to Feynman's "genius". Feynman would have choked on that. He was a good physicist because he never got far away from the real daily world. He recognized that we could give explanations - mathematical formulas - for happenings in the world; the which explanations are helpful to us. But the bird sings whether we understand the song or not; that the ring loosened on the Challenger the same way a ring loosens on a finger in cold water.

Kueng, Hans

I am 1/3rd the way through Father Kueng's book on Infallibility. It seems to be chiefly a gripe about the failure of the curia to appreciate Father Kueng. I wonder that thoughtful Germans do not realize that to "outsiders" of our time, there must be some account, or awareness, of the happenings in Germany under the Nazis. The "Lutheran" spirit was sucked into that turmoil to which it had no answer. Father Kueng does reveal the connection between the Lutheran resistance to the dogma of infallibility and the resistance to the homage to the Blessed Virgin. Strange that this so frightens them. It sounds like a case of being "woman-shy".

Vidal, Gore. At Home.

Gore Vidal's essays, At Home, contain his dispute with various scholars of Lincoln. The scholars have forgotten that the purpose of writing biographies of such people as Lincoln is that they be read. As a novelist, Vidal has a finer sense of likelihood. Scholars are too involved with records to be good biographers. When they start imputing motives, they mean only "how I would act in such circumstances".
[Note: in his memoir - Palimpsest - Vidal comments that he has maintained a 40 year friendship by not engaging in sexual activity. This seems to me a major point in all the discussions about homosexual relations].

Heilbron. J.L.. THE SUN IN THE CHURCH: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories. Harvard UP 1999

A fascinating topic - the meridians designed into church floors with openings high up (solar disks) to allow the sun's image to fall on them at precise moments. A historian of science, the author has a good grasp of the problems of calculating time and hours and the like. He mars his book by a condescension to the astronomers. ("We moderns know so much more") and what appear to be obligatory sneers at the Church. (The publisher had (possibly still has?) a fund established in the 18th Century "to confute the damnable errors of the Roman Church"). It is too bad that some Jews have picked up this Anglican virus, which serves no purpose but to denigrate.
Prof. Heilbron evidently has problems with his own background. A Jew sneering at religion is an unhappy creature. But the scientific parts are good. The book merits a place in a library with its sarcasms deleted, its errors donec corrigentur ("Bellarmine lived on garlic and water" - snicker, snicker). And its style a bit refined ("the basic qualitative conception of a planetary system ...". What does that mean? "Religiosity" - ? and the like).

Zeitlin, Irving. Ancient Judaism: Biblical Criticism From Max Weber to the Present (Polity 1984)

I had pretty much abandoned Max Weber. His German is near impenetrable, but Mr. Zeitlin can handle it. I put this book in the same category as Jesse Byson's books on the government structures in Iceland, as revealed through the sagas. They are like Robert Wolff's book on social customs in Victorian England: a historian reading a text (Wolff had a collection of 3-decker novels, bought for amusement) with a historian's ears. So Mr. Zeitlin reads the Bible with the ears of a sociologist, and apparently knows Hebrew. It is a book I would like to keep to go back to, but I fear I must yield it to Fr. Francis. It is too complex a book on a subject I know too little about for me to cite particular matters. It is astonishing how well it harmonizes with Belloc's book on The Battleground. For those getting into a sweat about "democracy", Mr. Zeitlin points out neatly that Israel is the democratic society: every man is equal before God. No man is greater, no man less than another. Kings as well as swineherds must answer to God. I find astonishing how well Mr. Zeitlin's book clarifies much of the Gospels and Acts and Epistles.

Gerber, S.C. First Principles: the Jurisprudence of Clarence Thomas. NYU 1999).

At last, a book on Clarence Thomas' thinking! The author seems to be about 30. (The dedication gives the impression that he has three parents). He is of the half-educated tribe which feels and believes and has unbiased opinions, expressed in cliches garnered in survey courses. He is unable to restrain himself from giving an opinion, as though it mattered to us what he - whom we not know from Adam - believes.
Thus, he feels it necessary to express an opinion about the Anita Hill charges. With it he destroys the whole purpose of our elaborate judicial machinery (as Judge Thomas pointed out at the time) which involves oaths, cross examination, rules of evidence, juries, and the like. The proceedings did indeed turn into "a high-tech lynching". Mr. Gerber is said to have a Ph.D. and a J.D. I continue to offer odds that he never had a course in logic. Nor one in the meaning of words. Writers "author" books and articles. There are "undeniable facts". (And most likely "unnegotiable demands").
Nor in history ("burning at the stake was a common punishment in colonial America"). He is surprised to learn that the Pilgrims were intolerant. He notes that Locke was tolerant of everyone except atheists and Roman Catholics. He cannot see that such notions as "the people of the nation as voiced in their respective electoral districts" emphasize the species over the specimens: Blacks over a black; das Volk over folks.
He "believes" that thinking consists in moving around survey course phrases ("liberal", "conservative"). And that scholars' opinions, as distinct from their proper work of collecting and editing ("gathering & sorting") are more than academic. It is not an evaluation shared by the populace, nor I hear-tell by judges themselves who tire of reading treatises by Inexperienced Experts.
Clarence Thomas foxes him because his jurisprudence is aimed at the individual primarily as individual and not as a specimen of a species. This may reflect the judge's time in a seminary, preparing for the priesthood, (which he left because of foul-mouthed racist remarks), during which he had to study the process of thinking, especially logic. Logic is as dull, and as necessary, as geometry.
There are some interesting bits. Harry Blackburn's comment (Hudson v. Macmillan 1992) about "whipping with leather straps, beating, shocking with electricty ..." display a mildly morbid imagination. Anglophiliacs do have a taste for such things. Leo Spitzer has taught us to listen to the music of such phrases. And the ease with which Judge Souter will accuse Judge Thomas of being "disingenuous" (50 cent word for "lying"). He would be more honest to say "he is disagreeable: he disagrees with me" and burst into tears.
Still: ho hay libro sin algo bueno. The quotations from Judge Thomas' opinions and writings are a beginning of a presentation of his thought.

Curran, C.E,. The Catholic Moral Tradition Today: a Synthesis. (Georgetown UP 1999).

I think the author is a priest, but there is no indication of it. We read at Malachi 2:7f.: "For the lips of the priest shall keep knowledge and they shall seek the law at his mouth: because he is the angel of the lord of hosts. But you have departed out of the way and have caused many to stumble at the law".
It is difficult to keep one's temper at the lack of precision in the vocabulary. The author is not authorized to make a presentation of the Catholic moral tradition. His is but one man's take on it. He relies on rhetorical devices rather than clarity: "liberation" theology, whatever that means; "contra-ception", aimed at the ex post facto of copulation occluding the role of the impregnator; the (I cannot refrain from saying) "smarmy" effort to be "with it" in using the feminine personal person as though he has any idea of what it is like to be a woman; an appeal to the Shoah. He cites Karl Barth, and Father Kueng, with no sense of how German sounds in the ears of those who were caught up in the catastrophe.
His is a professor's take, academic, with no real sense of the personal problems and difficulties felt by those for whom he, as a priest, is meant to be a shepherd dog. He makes claim to be a prophet. The comfort of his tenured position belies him. He speaks of fire, but does not know that it is hot.

[I note that the book is published by a Jesuit "university". That it would not have received a nihil obstat by the local bishop explains the Jesuit resistance to "interference" by bishops in their ideas of education, which are more like indoctrination. It seems that their predecessors complained to the Secretary of State (Roger Taney) when the local bishop complained to Rome about their goings-on. They called it appealing to a foreign power. Cuius regio eius religio lives still).

MacCulloch, D. Thomas Cranmer. 1996

I got through Diarmaid MacCulloch's Thomas Cranmer (1996). (The blurbs cite Leslie Rowse referring to Cranmer as "a big-wig"). It's a good book for the details of what was going on. Poor Cranmer got caught by Henry's desire to get a son. He was not a great brain in the thinking line (which may account for the beauty of his prose). Nor had he much sense of the weakness of our moral nature. (Bouwsma's Calvin cites the Frenchman on Henry "the monster" - after Henry's death). For various reasons, Henry wanted Catherine as his wife. The pledge, the gage, was "til death do us part". Henry lost but couldn't accept the loss. Instead of accepting Mary as heir and getting on with his life, he set about turning the necessary reform of the monasteries and the too rich ecclesiastical holdings into a grab bag.
Cranmer did not see that the first divorce would lead to another and another. And the setting up of Henry as the deciding voice in the church in England would lead to the breakdown of monarchy and church alike. Incoherence at the center leads to chaos, held together only by hysteria. There is much to be said for a "holistic" view of things. MacCulloch occludes (there's a good word) the persecutions in Ireland and even in Scotland, with that English ("Anglo-Saxon") brutality which shocked all observers. He is irritated by the "papists" mockery of Cranmer's "fat German wife stuffed into a barrel" to hide her from Henry. No sense of humor in Diarmaid.
But all in all it's a valuable book as a description of the beginnings of the Church of England, with its pleasure in place and its ambitious clergy; its corruption of Scripture, its fear of women, its loathing of the dirt of poverty. All these reforming, protesting institutions end always by proclaiming that the reformers are a select of God. But fail to note that they may have been selected for particular duty, especially towards the poor - and not for particular pleasure. The flaw in the justification of the monarch as head of the head (the monarch rules by divine right in the simple sense that God made the heir) was demonstrated by the "glorious revolution". The English politicos would accept God's making of the heir, unless they didn't like the heir.
Now that the money is running out, they hysterically offer more and more excuses - a little divorce, a roll in the sack without consequence, a justification of the rich with their fear of poverty. The "Head" of the Church of England is a woman. Her successor is to be Charles. It is not without interest, as they say in the auction catalogues, that the protesting countries are the hot-beds of eu-genics and eu-thanasia, cheered on by their clergy, leading their sheep to the slaughter in the name of "humane-ity".
The triumph of secular religion saw the rise of "Enthusaism", "Pietism", the effort of worried souls, and especially the poor, to escape from the hell of predestination to which Anglicans and Lutherans and Calvinists had condemned them. Bad cyst to their greedy hearts. Had MacCulloch been able to control his irritation at the "papists", it would be a better book. He does demonstrate that Belloc was right and the Prot historians "disingenuous".

Martha Beck, Expecting Adam.

Adam smelling the bushes: the spirit rejoices in the sensual.

10: I don't know if I ever met anyone at Harvard who found it pleasant

42: John was one of about 50 students to achieve the coveted status of summa cum laude. I managed to love & accept him despite this ... His mother leaned over to me & explained: "John is not really intelligent. He's just a hard worker"

44: With that enormous smile that means that he's really, really worried

73: The real magic is in the pumpkin, in the mice, in the moonlight; not beyond ordinary life but in it.

77: Harvard's Dr. Smurf

98: Whatever supernatural beings are operating around us, they are working from a priority list that is very different from mine. Strangely enough, I have learned to trust them anyway.

101: Adam has angels like a dog has fleas

110: We took to our new environment like a hog to slops

116: Those of us who are trained in the social sciences know how to find data to support whatever we want to be true

222: The lifetime of fear in Dr. Grendel, desperately avoiding the stigma of stupidity

246: I did not see the imposing powerful father of my childhood. I saw an old man who had never, not for one moment of his life, believed that it was possible to be loved for himself.

262: My karma ran over my dogma

271: The Down's teenager who could not speak but could use a computer

285: I prayed without trying to control the answer

Jaki, S.L. PATTERNS OR PRINCIPLES 1995

vii. The dire substitution of patterns for principles

7 Relativity is the most absolutist of physical theories. Einstein wanted it to be called the theory of invariance [speed of light is absolute]

11 That an interaction which cannot be measured exactly cannot happen exactly [Heisenberg] jumps from the operational to the ontological

41 You will never know what is enough until you have more than enough [Blake]

51 The poisonous bite of a tarantula: homosexuality [Xenophon Memor p.22]

52 Marxists have always loved working on democracies that worked

51+ I.F. Stone

52 Popper

54 Guardini

60 the failure of saving the phenomena

61 the temptation to pantheism which ruined ancient religion as well as ancient science

76 Newton spent his old age erasing Descartes from his notebooks [as Descartes erased Buridan from his memory]

90 Kant’s failure

93 Newtonian physics which Kant knew only by hearsay

94 faith taken for sentiment

95 If nothing remains unchanged while changes go on, there is no ground to predicate change itself

105 Science made all too manifest its inability to assure its proper use

126 the infinity catastrophe

150 Fritz Haber’s synthetic nitric acid made it possible to prolong the war from 4 months to 4 years

156 Supercollider [he’s for it]

176 Capitalism played v. little part in that creative explosion which has characterized science for the past hundred years

200 Science is organized common sense

201 Quantum theory: no one can cut thinner than the thinnest instrument at his disposal

207 Plato who frowned on material reality

209 Principle of uncertainty = principle of operational inexactitude

215 on the other

227 Physicists like everyone are subject to the logic of the first step taken

Jaki, S.L. GOD & THE COSMOLOGISTS 1998

13: Kant: “I am God” [Opus postumum]

43 The universe was what the universe had to be: a most specific totality of all things, that because they were things, could only be specific

45 “The making something shapely out of shapelessness” [Gamow. Creation of the universe 2d prtg vii]

48 the proton-antiproton imbalance, & the quark-antiquark imbalance

55 The specificity of the universe, which is an evidence of its reality, is also evidence of its contingency, namely that it is but one of many possible universes

92 the obscurantist interpretations of science arising from pantheism and the necessity of the universe to be what it is

95 the aesthetic argument which is solipsistic

106 the exclusivity claims of science are butterfly nets trying to capture angels

109 the quest for an ultimate self-explanatory theory

168 “Questions of terminology are never important” [Popper. Open universe p.7]

192 The role of the moon in leading to life on earth – slowing down the rotation to 24 hours, development of the magnetic field, tidal effects

194 Difference of the view of the heavens from the Northern & Southern hemispheres
[Polaris]

216 Judaism, Islam, Protestantism fail in science for misunderstanding the Creator

218 There is no observable state, however primordial, about which physics could establish that it had to be preceded by that very nothing

220 Every word represents a class or group

269 How can we be certain that a final theory is final?

Jaki, S.L. IS THERE A UNIVERSE? 1993

viii Theological discourse about such a revelation has always lacked firm basis and consistency in the measure in which attention failed to be given to the reality of the universe. The universe remains also the ground that alone can assure consistency to scientific as well as philosophical discourse.

4 Kant roamed across a science-coated fantasy world as he listed in the same work [Allg. Naturgesch.] the physical and moral characteristics of the inhabitants of each of the planets

26 Profuse talk about the evolution of entities served as an excuse for not facing up to the philosophical issues involved in the reality of those entities themselves

74 “The most important of the defects [of logical positivism] was that nearly all of it was false” [AJ Ayer]

Jaki, S.L., OSB. THE LIMITS OF A LIMITLESS SCIENCE. 2000.

vii. Science ceases to be competent whenever a proposition is such as to have no quantitative bearing

2 Theology…was long ago proposed as a science by Augustine and Aquinas.

3 What is gravity? What is electricity? What is magnetism?

10. Purposiveness – this chief characteristic of life processes

10 Contrary to the claim that DNA is the secret of life, life remains the secret of DNA

10 What is the “now” which is the very center of consciousness?

11 Every bit of knowledge begins with the registering of something that exists.

15 There is no common boundary between two numbers

16 Newton’s theory of gravitation is like Maxwell’s theory of electro-magnetism: it is Newton’s system of equations

37 [the dictionary game]

41 Whitehead on Darwinists who devote their lives to the purpose of proving that there is no purpose. [Function of reason 1929 p. 12]

43 The infinite is only a facon de parler [Gauss to H. Schuhmacher 12 July 1831]

76/35 Galileo’s free fall acceleration and uniformly restricted ascent &c were commonplace in Parisian scholasticism

82 The proofs of math are not proofs: they are identity relations.

85 Aristotle’s categories are 10, of which only quantity is simple.

86. The human mind can cope with fuzziness; computers cannot.

88. The similarities between me and my father are different [Y. Berra]

90. “What is wrong with logical positivism? Almost everything.” [AJ Ayer]

93 The philosophers spread darkness by claiming that all is physics.

94 The NYTIMES: this notorious promoter of very superficial consensus with very transparent objectives

95 “… the Victorians, the ones who took Darwin’s books for scientific proof that they could do anything provided that the consensus of society was not offended”.

96 metabasis eis allo genos

98 Man began to philosophize by being amazed at things as they are

101 Subatomic theories are based on inference

104 There are no proofs in science, there are only identity propositions

110. Platonism just does not work. [Plato’s symposia included a good deal of wine sipping on comfortable couches, the forerunner of academic chairs]

132 The invalidity of the law of causality [Heisenberg]

133 Physics notes sequences, not causes

135 What cannot be measured exactly, cannot take place exactly [Heisenberg]

149+ on Weinberg

170 “Mathematics: the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true… “physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover [Russell]

194 Viscount Norwich: only two religions: Roman Catholicism and the others which don’t matter.

220 The truths of science demand experimental verification.

West, Rebecca. ST. AUGUSTINE 1982 [1933]

6. In the old days the Roman Empire had given its children considerable freedom in exchange for their submission to the essential discipline necessary for the maintenance of the state. A peasant could become a landowner. The reforms of Diocletian and Constantine were the legislative experiments of men who had been imperfectly educated on the bases of the old Roman civilization and whose personal experience had been too consciously pre-occupied with violence and compulsion. Hence they treated the organic as inorganic and made every man a peg stuck in a hole.

30. Augustine was a dreamy student.

33. The sense of guilt which we all have and which seems to be due to an inherent shame at individual experience… The real offense of homosexuality brings the confusion of passion into the domain where one ought to be able to practice calmly the art of friendship…

The gratuitous character of adolescent delinquency

34. A’s dislike of Greek … his natural hatred of suavity

60. A and his friends Alypius and Nebridius

77. God is so entirely taken for granted that He is almost ignored.

83. After baptism, A and Alypius and a new found friend Evodius returned to Africa.

104. The root of sin was regarded by Ambrose not as sensuous, not as a mere matter of fleshly appetites, but as situated more deeply in man’s perverse use of his free will.

105. But now A depicted the relationship between God and man as being passionate and eventful and subject to useful alienation, followed by happy reconciliation, like the relationships of the flesh.

110. All classicism [Aquinas] depends on a previous romanticism [Augustine].

111. Jerome was a saint in the highly technical sense of the word, being a literary genius of repellent disposition and venomous tongue.

156. A was one of those people who never deserve forgiveness, but always receive it.

Wheeler, John Archibald. Geons, Black Holes & Quantum Foam: a Life in Physics 1998

13: Lise Meitner & Otto Frisch formulated the explanation of fusion in Dec. 1938, which if the Nazi physicists had not ignored it would have led them to the A‑bomb

19: Had the A‑bomb project started a year earlier, the war might have ended a year earlier.

23: most nuclei are prolate spheroids (footballs)

24: the split is best achieved if the nucleus can be deformed to a peanut‑shell shape. Orange to cucumber to peanut shell. The addition of an extra neutron excites the nucleus

28: Isotopes U235 and U238 have the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons. They differ physically but not chemically. Uranium used at Hiroshima; plutonium (which does not exist in nature but was manufactured during the 39/45 war) was used at Nagasaki

28/29: Neutrons & protons belong to a group of particles called fermions. Identicals cannot co‑exist unless they have a different spin. But neutrons & protons can co‑exist. Nuclei contain equal number (more or less) of p's & n's, but heavier nuclei have more n's (U238: 92p, 146n) because p's repel each other electrically but n's do not. After U238, nuclei are too unstable. Energy is released by fusion of light nuclei, or fission of heavier

30: nuclei prefer an even number of n's or p's

45, n.2: Neutrino: no charge and little mass [a particle without mass is possible ‑ anti‑neutrinos [60,n.]

56: Barn [from side of a barn]: square with sides 1 millionth of one millionth of a centimeter. A neutron is smaller than a nucleus but can be enlarged because of its wave nature

89: anti‑matter ‑ positron

100: the helium atom with two electrons is much more complicated than the hydrogen atom with one. Scattering = bouncing off [even through] plus absorption: dispersion relation is the proportion of scattering: absorption

134: cosmic rays: mesons (between electron & proton). There are several, but mainly two kinds: pions which decay into muons which hit the earth

136: gamma ray: high energy photon

137: a nucleus behaves like a droplet

148: Problems worthy of attack / Show their worth by hitting back (Piet Hein).

There is an infinite jumble of virtual particles

153: That he is not religious but church‑going

166/7: Events happeninng before the cause: time running backwards, but prevented because the infinite number of backwards & forwards cancels out

169: Harry Smythe (his chairman at Princeton): most particles of cosmic rays are protons (hydrogen nuclei), some are of heavier elements. Hitting the atmosphere, they create particles. The most common ‑ pions ‑ are positive, negative, or neutral. Neutral goes nowhere. Positive / negative decay produces muons or neutrinos. Positive muon: 1 positron + 2 neutrinos. Negative muon: 1 electron + 2 neutrinos. If captured by n atom, it descends to lowest energy state ["orbit"] (Chang radiation). If absorbed by the nucleus, proton is transformed into a neutron and a neutrino is emitted. Pion, neutron, & proton (strongly interacting particles) are composed of quarks

174: Jayme Tiomno, chased by the Brazilian military in 1973 went to the Pontifical U in Rome

178: Muon, having a strong family resemblance to the electron, each having a companion neutrino & belonging to the family of leptons ["light" or "small"]. Muon is 200x heavier than the electron. But the "tau" with its neutrino is 3500x heavier

179: He is for the Super‑conducting Collider but allows that the energy of cosmic rays surpasses every accelerator by a large margin

185: the pre‑print is the principal means of communication. The published paper is a historical record. That nucleons move like gas molecules in the nucleus.

218: Lyman Spitzer's figure‑8 donut. The Russians had the same idea, but their Tokamak was more robust than Spitzer's Stellarator

228: in beginning his work on relativity he was "trying to get behind the mathematical formalism that had dominated the theory for decades, looking for real tangible physics"

229: the collapse of a massive star ‑ to a "singularity" ‑ a geometric point of infinite density ("black hole"). Near a proton, the electric field becomes stronger & stronger, the closer you get to the proton. If it were a true point, the field would become infinitely strong when you reach the proton. But it doesn't; the proton has a structure. The field is merely very large, not infinite.

230: From space & time, the special theory of relativity created space/time.[or confirmed it?]

231: John Philoponus demonstrated equal acceleration in 517 AD, a millennium before Galileo.

232: After we have pushed the the quantum theory in every extreme direction we can think of ... we will likely find some strange new ways in which the theory is valid before we find out where it is not valid.

235: The 3rd law: every action has a re‑action equal in force, opposite in direction. We pull the Earth to us equally as the Earth pulls us to it.

236: A gravitating body made entirely of electromagnetic fields: (G‑ravity; E‑ lectromagnetric + ON = GEON

237: A period ‑ . ‑ is 1 million atoms across; an atom is 100,000 protons across. (A period ‑.‑ is 100,000 million [100 billion] protons across)

251: New theories reduce to old in suitable domains

262: My religious convictions, which center on guides to living, guides to civilized intercourse among humans. The deep questions I wrestle with belong to science as I define it, not to religion

287: [On his work for Convair]: Convair executives were happy to make limited nuclear weapons,

but did not like to be thought of as "merchants of death".

287: How come the quantum? How come the universe? How come existence? These are questions that should fall ‑ that will fall ‑ within physics and will be answered as matters of science, not of philosophy or theology or speculation. [How easily scientists become the Village Atheist].

Weinberg, Steven. Dreams of a Final Theory 1992

The dust jacket blurb tells us that Prof. Weinberg is a Nobel Laureate "for his work in unifying two of the fundamental forces of nature". What is probably meant (I offer this suggestion only to save the writer from a charge of imbecility) is formulating a theory about the unity of the two forces. This confusion between theory and fact is typical of the book, alas. And typical of the lack of the study of logic among physicists. Cross my heart, I made an effort to persist in reading it. But it is like swimming in a bathtub.

4: that we need a machine to break out of the impasse in which physics finds itself. [I am smart; it's physics which is in the impasse. A poor workman blames his tools]

38: the final laws will be megalaws that determine the probabilities of being in different types of sub‑universes. [mega = super. He means meta‑physics]

44: setting consciousness to one side for a moment [a dangerous invitation to a reader who is already nodding]

47: longing for extra‑terrestrials to confirm our mathematics [and he complains of astrologers]

50: there is no room in nature for astrology or telekinesis or creationism or other superstitions. [Neat glide between astrology & creation. There is no room in nature for creation because nature arises from creation]

59: living things are the way they are because through natural selection they have evolved to be that way [Natural Selection? & he talks of superstitions? The sense of the sentence is: living things are the way they are because that's the way they are]

61: discovering the source of the Nile did nothing to illuminate the problems of Egyptian agriculture [Knowing where the water comes from ‑ how it does ‑ has no effect on agriculture? Has he heard of the Aswan Dam? This is a man who asks for several billion dollars to build a super‑duper‑collider]

66: the historical importance [he means the importance to science, not to history]

246: that Schroedinger's "enough is known about the material structure of life to tell exactly why present‑day physics cannot account for life". W gives his reason: that the genetic information which governs [!] living organisms is far too stable to fit into the world of continual fluctuations described by quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics. Schroedinger's mistake was pointed out by Max Perutz... Schroedinger had ignored the stability that can be produced by the chemical process known as enzymatic catalysis. [Weinberg's error lies in not recognizing that this is just pushing the problem back. What then controls the chemical process? Weinberg's failure is failing to notice that life is far more interesting to us as living creatures than the mechanics that we share with increasingly entropic matter].

And so on. The professor needs a little modesty and respect for other scientists and their work. Newman did warn of a black hole at the center of study ‑ the absence of an independent effort to account for why there is something rather than nothing ‑ would lead to every discipline claiming to be the discipline: claiming to be the final account.

The feeling core of the book ‑ the heart of the book ‑ is his chapter on "God". John Wheeler's memoir is as confused about God ‑ some sort of Ethical Cultural thing ‑ but in his efforts to explain muons and pions and geons, he displays his passion for physics. And explains in the display how physicists came to concocting all these little bits; the necessity to our understanding for these little bits. The old indivisible atoms are not wrong; they are just Ptolemaic. Richard Feynman's passion for his subject was greater than Wheeler's. Feynman spent much time pointing out what was not explained. He dwelt on the limitations, pushing the envelope without breaking it.

Prof. Weinberg's book is stuck in the current theories. He refers to the "holocaust" (which others more accurately call the catastrophe). The distinction is a scientific one, a distinction in our science (knowledge) of morality; and being a distinction in morality is of greater subtlety and greater importance. Failing to leave the matter independent of his speculations in physics, Prof. Weinberg falls back into the superstition of a Great Mother, blind and without the other senses. He is unsettled about the great persecution, but does not realize that the acceptation of the Great Mother theory was the excuse for the persecution. If we be but temporary arrangements of molecules, what difference if one or another, or one or another thousand, or one or another million of these billions of arrangements are re‑arranged? Nor does he take a care, at his age, to watch that his chaotic speculations do not dishonor the fathers and discourage the young. He sneers at creationism; his substitute is less attractive. We are all in the hands of Blind Erda, the Green‑Eyed Torso. And that it was the physicists' curiosity (interest) which made possible the development of the atomic bomb. What if his hero Heisenberg had succeeded in making one?

Walker, Williston. A History of the Christian Church 1954

49: the persecutions under the "gentle" Marcus Aurelius

50: on Justin Martyr. That the early apologists did not convince the rulers, but strengthened the Christians

166: The rule in the East that married men could not become bishops "has had the great disadvantage of blocking promotion in the Eastern church"

170: [on martyrs & saints]: "There arose thus a popular Christianity of the second rank, as Harnack has well called it"

172: This Christianity of the second rank ... undoubtedly made the way for heathenism to Christianity easier for thousands, but it largely heathenized the Church itself"

180: Augustine on the Trinity: "We say three "persons" not in order to express it, but in order not to be silent"

324: The Inquisition in Spain was a national institution in clerical garb and denounced by the popes

‑‑: Ximinez' was the first new Greek NT, but Erasmus rushed his into print to forestall it

329: Erasmus was not an impeccable Latinist. His knowledge of Greek was superficial. [ff. The history of the Reformers and the connections with princes is not pleasant reading]

383: Frederick I of Scandinavia bought the nobles with church property

384: In Norway and Iceland, Lutheranism was long popularly resisted

385: Gustavus Vasa also looked to confiscate long before popular acceptance

407: Henry 8 remained a Catholic, as did the majority of Englishmen

409: Somerset's attempt to limit the rapacity of the landowners led to his downfall at the hands of Warwick

516: to Wesley, Calvinism seemed paralyzing to moral effort

539: Like all compromising parties, its influence was temporary

Moorman, J.R.H. A History of the Church in England 1980

The early chapters are a waste land of old error.

210: The Puritan meetings could be & very often were very edifying, especially if conducted by scholars. [So much for saintliness]

264: The spirit of tolerance, or rather, of weariness"

279: [under the Whigs] "clergy who were ambitious, as indeed, most of them were ..."

324: [industrial revolution] "large masses of people were crowded together in conditions which were often brutal and degrading" [often?]

332: Thomas Arnold looking to create "a truly national church in which all sincere Christians could be united, except Roman Catholics and Unitarians"

351: the church started a number of training schools: "Care was taken to see that the children were not educated above their station"

388: "Christ came to save the world, not civilize it" [Catherine Booth]

401: The Church Association believed much in the weapon of persecution... In 1888, the saintly bishop of London, Edward King, was tried by Archbishop Benson, and found guilty of the mixed chalice, the manual acts, the sign of the cross.

418: More successful were the efforts made among the better type of soldier

443: Women who wish to give their lives to the church are naturally reluctant to enter a profession in which there is no prospect of promotion

445: The worship of the C of E is controlled by Parliament

And so on and on. The early history is false. The "bishop" of Ripon is an embarrassment.

Kelly, J.N.D. Jerome 1998

Born in Dalmatia 331.

20: On entering the religious life, J could not abandon his books [Let.22,30]

27: Trier was J's favorite city in W. Europe

45: J's letter of affection to Rufinus [374: Ep.3 & 4]

60: allegorical after literal interpretation

76: "even morally offensive passages of the O.T.": Anglican Canon Kelly [morally offensive in the O.T.? Will he rewrite the OT?]

87: "Textual criticism is, of course, a modern science": Kelly ["Of course" is what Stanley Fish calls the giveaway that something is not "of course"]

92: "Paula's ruinously lavish charity": Kelly [Whom did it ruin?]

106: Contra Helvidium [Kelly is contemptuous of the idea of a chaste marriage]

142: J calling Rome "the scarlet clad whore"

178: "the most vivid impression he leaves is of his conceit and vanity": Kelly

186: "Against Jovinian seems to modern readers ...": Kelly [modern readers = me]

272: "Augustine was the younger man, still at the beginning of what was to be an increasingly splendid career": Kelly [Place seeking?]

293; "These prophets offer difficulties which even [sic] modern scholarship finds baffling": Kelly

A sad book, which apparently is only too typical of the [now hidden] scorn and bitterness of the Anglican establishment. His Dictionary of the Popes is worthwhile. This book adds nothing.

Allitt, Patrick. Catholic Converts 1997

59: "In Germay, they know why they are Protestants. I never knew an Englishman who did; and if he inquires, he becomes a Catholic" [F. Nightingale]

83: "Patient as an observer, he is utterly imbecilic as a scientific reasoner" [O. Browning on Darwin]

136; her research eventuated [sic] in seven books

148: Having become a Catholic, Ellen Gates Starr [partner of Jane Addams], she soon became convinced that the Church was the most dedicated social justice organization in the country, though few impartial observers would agree with her. [JDRockefeller agreed]

156: "Hobbes persuasive fictions, are not history" [Eva Ross]

157: [on the women converts] "still, taken together they are worthy of investigation" [Where did Allitt pick up his English gentility]

182: the German invasion of Belgium was "dastardly"

207: Dorothy Day's & Mary West's rural communities in the late 1940s "were in a practical sense, dismal failures"

234: The urbane conciliatory tone of the convert intellectuals laid the foundations for the ecumenical 1960s and the more adventurous Catholic generation that was to replace this one. [or were the reason why the council was necessary?]

Fraenkel, Hermann. Ovid: Poet Between Two Worlds 1956

2: The 19th ... a century which we are not accustomed to regard as an arbiter elegantiarum

11f.: on Aurora & her ruination of sleep & repose & call to the brutalities of the day

17: it was as the sun was setting on Greek myth that its skies glowed with the most gorgeous colors

18: Amantium irae amoris integratio est (Terence Andria 555)

22: the breakdown of a willed self‑identity, of a willed isolation of the soul

24ff: love as disjuncted from marriage

26f: the lack of career choice for such a young patrician as Ovid

28: let them lay their grasping hands upon everything, let them sway elections & lawsuits [Ars Am.III, around 45]

83: Inopem me copia fecit [Meta 3,466. Narcissus]

95: Ipso fit utilis usu [made useful by use]

100: Naivete can be found everywhere in Ovid. Without it, no man can have a vision, or be a poet [?]

Interesting discussion of Ovid. The professor occasionally goes a shade too far in giving his opinions. Making connections, demonstrating the facts and the texts is one thing; opining about love, another. Too bad that Freud was so taken by the Greeks. The Romans are closer to our sense of what goes on. Also our language.

Rubinstein, William D. The Myth of Rescue 1997

Subtitle: "Why the democracies could not have saved more Jews from the Nazis".

Mr. Rubinstein's thesis is simple. That Hitler's mania about the Jews grew greater as his persecution proceeded. A great percentage (78%) of German Jews escaped from Germany. Up to mid‑1939, the persecution was a brutal harassment. With the onset of the war, it evolved into genocide, as Jews ‑ many of whom were refugees from Germany into territories conquered by the German armies ‑ were trapped and could no longer escape. Hitler expressly forbade emigration, in what the author labels as his frenzy to destroy the "biological" basis of Judaism. The author dismantles various myths as (dangerous) wish‑filled thinking, the imaginings of after the event desires to lay blame other than where it is properly laid: on Hitler's frenzy to destroy. Anti‑ semiticism evolved into genocide. Many, while not sharing it, did not act vigorously enough to contain it, chiefly for failing to recognize it as the mania that it became. Many Jews in Germany expected it to "blow over". Kristallnacht (November 1938) was a determining moment.

Brogan, D.W. The American Character 1944

11: the seaboard were outposts of the old world rather than capitals of the new

12: Marietta = Marie Antoinette; Terre Haute = Akron

44: birth control: race suicide [TR]

53: you can refuse a man love, play, money. But if he wants a fight, you've got to oblige him [Mr. Dooley]

121: Charles II on the preacher: "his nonsense suits their nonsense"

132: the never ending audacity of elected persons [Walt Whitman]

140: When we're finished with the English language, it will look as though it's been run over by a musical comedy" [Mr. Dooley]

148: What the American woman suffers from is too much poor‑quality attention

Bryant, Arthur. English Saga, 1840‑1940 1945

9: the more squeamish and frugal morals of the money makers

51: the dark satanic mills [not much changed, as far as the undeveloped countries are concerned]

‑‑: laissez‑faire aux autres

98: "A precedent embalms a principle" [Disraeli]

100ff: on Ireland "The people of Ireland as a result of the curiously irresponsible policy which their English rulers ‑ partly through fear and partly through religious hatred ‑ had adopted towards them for two centuries, were ignorant, poor and degraded"

134f: Religion

153: The mind forged manacles [Blake]

165: In London & in urban England, in which the making of wealth had been elevated into a moral duty, poverty hung its head for shame .. it was despised. It was not for nothing that Marx was studying economic phenomena in the British capital

171: For Gladstone, the Budget's object was to exempt as large a portion of the nation as possible from the unwelcome obligation to contribute to the national financial burden

174: Not that Gladstone, the champion of tolerance, had the least objection to a Jew in his place

178: "The church is a sacred corporation for the promulgation & maintenance of certain Asiatic principles, which, although local in their birth, are of divine origin and of universal and external practical application" {Disraeli pref. to Coningsby]

181: "If no church comes forward, man will find altars & idols in his own heart & imagination to which to offer the fruits of his labor" [Disraeli]

182: "Our boasted progress has only been an advancement in a circle ... our new philosophy has brought us back to that old serfdom which it has taken ages to extirpate"

.. "A domestic oligarchy under the guise of Liberalism is denationalizing England"

210: The vital attribute of a home is that it should be permanent

214: The escape from personal responsibility into the corporation

215: The Companies Act of 1862 completed the divorce between Christian conscience and economic practice

218: The capitalist became a rentier. Socialism is but an attempt to transfer ownership of capital from the bureaucracy of corporations to the bureaucracy of government agencies

220: Divorced from economic liberty, political liberty has little meaning

221: The dictatorship of the state would be exercised on the behalf of the citizens (and run by Nosey Parker)

229: Charity, invested with the prim pince‑nez of the statistical bureaucrat

257: Ruskin the imperialist

276: An inevitable consequence of capitalist enterprise is the creation of bourgeois youth demanding university education and employment in a bureaucracy

Nickerson, Hoffman. The Inquisition. With a pref. by Hilaire Belloc. 1923

By an Episcopalian, and NY State assemblyman, who was moved to write by the idiocies of Prohibition, which he calls a taboo, typical of the Puritan mind. The bulk of the book is on the Albigensian crusade. The preface by Belloc is good on the manner of writing history: clearing away accumulated rubbish.

1: Protestantism's abandonment of theology and concentration upon taboos

‑: men of science: morally, and therefore politically, such men may be, and often are, grossly ignorant and stupid

3: The 13th Century was astonished, not like the 19th by mastery over nature, but by the discovery of the great moral forces in human nature

‑: prying impudence

4: the dogma of the infallibility of the press

8: the tie of personal devotion and loyalty to a chieftain belongs not only to every barbarian, but to every schoolboy

10: Many of our politicians think of government, not as something to live under, but to live upon

17: The guilds guaranteed to the workman his independence and security so well that our labor unions grope after them like blind giants

24: our industrial societies with their exaltation of power

49: the Albigensians believed, not in marriage, but in promiscuity. [The heresy included a penchant for suicide]

81: dabbling in bigamy on the modern American plan

122: Innocent 3 had the high sense of fairness often bred in upright natures by the study of law, and the exercise of power

233: on the connection between industrial capitalism, Edward 6, Elizabeth and laws against drunkenness (the result of poverty)

Whitehead, A.N. Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead recorded by Lucien Price 1954

5: We were religious but with that moderation natural to people who take their religion in Greek

8: married the Irish, Evelyn Wada

"Harvard’s lectures on the damnable errors of the church of Rome"

57: I can generally tell where old Jowett is is making a fool of himself; which is about every other sentence

81: Tests are applying the stomach pump [W.James]

89: There is no tolerance, unless there is something to tolerate; and that in practice is likely to mean something that most people would find intolerable

90: The only justification of the use of force is to reduce the amount of force necessary

91: Foreign policy has been run by a Tory group who wanted peace in order to keep their havings

174: I consider Christian theology to be one of the great disasters of the human race. [W's father was a comfortably situated parson]

204: As luck would have it, Providence was on my side [S.Butler. Erewhon]

250: Cooking is one those arts which most requires to be done by people of a religious nature" ["A good cook cooks to the glory of God" ‑ Mrs. W]

255: "The emphasis of John Dewey is on security"

256: My parents represented their religion to us chiefly as a means of keeping order ‑ order in the family, and order in society. But that is something quite different from religious conviction

Ackerknecht, Erwin H. Rudolf Virchow 1953

v: the unit of life is the cell

6: In reactionary Germany, medicine had lost itself in the jungles of romantic speculation or the deserts of naked empiricism

11: In 1846, Virchow destroyed Rolitansky's theory of cells formed from amorphous material [blastema]

22: omnis cellula a cellula

27: V coined "Kulturkampf"

49: the assumption which since Locke, Condillac & Cabanis has guided so many medical scientists: that sense impressions are the primary elements of mental life

51: "within the limits of science there is no faith ... If these limits are respected, faith can have real objects. It is therefore not the task of science to attack the objects of faith. It should only mark the limits which can be reached by human understanding"

52: Human consciousness is scientifically incomprehensible. V was a realist not a materialist.

55: for Marx, historical materialism was not a system, only a method

58: V insisted on localism: "A substance, even when absorbed into the bloodstream, is pathologically irrelevant as long as it does not affect an organ"

59: individualizing treatment

73: Schwann's disproof of spontaneous generation

140: medical instruction does not exist to provide individuals with an opportunity to make a living

146: on the importance of the history of medicine

167: The fanatics of keeping quiet are always simultaneously the fanatics of Mammon [G.Struve]

168: The hope to obtain liberal government from the elderly Wilhelm I was one of the amazing illusions that characterize the history of German liberalism [in 1906, 600,000 Social Democrat votes won 6 seats; 418,000 Conservative won 212

169: the tactfulness of Liberals ["Don't push"] led to the triumph of Bismarck

184: Having conquered Parliament, Bismarck turned to attack the church. V applauded.

186: V regretted his applause

200: Darwinism is a hypothesis without direct evidence

202: One should not ask the schools to teach Darwinism or Haeckelism which are hypothetical: "I can salute and support a scientific hypothesis before it is proven by facts. But I cannot become its partisan as long as scientific proof is lacking"

206: The inheritance of acquired characteristics is a logical necessity for the Darwinian hypothesis

209: Germans are generally short, dark‑haired, and flat‑headed

214: 32% of German school children in 1876 (6,760,000) were blond: of whom 12% were Jewish

228: Applied anthropology: construction of school benches

242: An age in which doctors were less specialized, less affluent, and more liberal

Vidal, Gore. Palimpsest 1996

132: "How" we are often asked "have you stayed together for forty‑four years?" The answer is "No sex".

216: I never go to bed with friends.

Vidal's autobiography. Well written. Too much gossip to be pleasing, but seriously done. He is responding to other people's interests and questions.

Vansittart, Robert. Lessons of My Life 1943

Memoir of a member of the English foreign service, which displays all the virtues of the upper class educational system in England. Vansittart was born in the early 1880s. Likely he went into the foreign service before or after the 14/18 war. His book is an excellent view on the development of the political scene in Europe and the malevolent effect of the "Prussian" spirit (boastful in victory, seeming humble in defeat), both in German speaking lands, and in Europe.

5: Those who ask to be deceived must not grumble if they are satisfied

7: if we wish to get rid of the death penalty, "que messieurs les assassins commencent" (Alphonse Kerr)

8: I have always esteemed the humour of Punch to be a branch of our heavy industry

13: Everyone who has ever gone into partnership with Germany becomes first a sleeping partner, and then an office boy

20: We who have been losing the habits both of plain speaking and of profiting by experience

25: those whose sentiments are really prejudices

34: Nothing gives so clear an idea of infinity than human credulity

35: Germany has deprived the whole 20th Century of sharing the joy

37ff: on Laval's delivery of Austria to Germany by encouraging Mussolini in Abyssinia

42: a sense of humor, which means a sense of proportion

48: People who would not fight must compromise

77: the mouth opens too soon, and the mind not often enough

124: the old world has gone; it was fated by its sins of omission

125: (a totting up of the reparations swindle)

150: Balfour always seemed to me detached from any human activity

152: "Our two greatest poets, Goethe and Schiller, are totally lacking in humor". (Boerne 1830)

157: On German superiority in music (excepting the Dutch van Beethoven) and goes on and on about culture, ignoring the necessity of civilization

172: on the failure of the [state] church

174: In the 14/18 war, the Germans killed the idea of the progress [improvement] of man

‑‑‑: (Denigrating one's own country) is a strange form of righteousness, that in fear of self‑righteousness, takes refuge in slander ultimately revealed as self‑ righteousness after all.

176: I have said just enough to indicate that, in such handling, considerable changes of ritual, and some changes of doctrine, may be necessary

181: (on Niemoeller)

184: Luther returned to the feudal lords the spiritual powers which Charlemagne had taken from them

‑‑‑: German Protestantism: "a cold political party, a social institution"

192: So in his mercy God created pain / and all the ills by which our virtue lives

195: the greatest tragedy in history: fact killed by a theory

196: Lord Lothian had enough knowledge to be persuasively at fault

‑‑‑: on the Accidentalist theory of history ("if only...")

200: You cannot keep a man in indefinite training when pugilism is neither his taste nor his profession

‑‑‑: that nationalism did not develope by itself, but to fill a religious void. "Germanity"

206: "There are no simple and infallible rules of 'principle' and 'right' to determine foreign policy in a given situation (Prof. H. Carr)

209: The revolting textbooks, worse under Weimar than under Wilhelm II

210: In the German schools of his youth: no love of sport, only of fitness

211: religiosity, not religion

222: Fichte cleansed the system of Kant from all its inconsistent and humane elements

225: beginning to bray scientifically

229: "Habituation to certain sounds reaches deeply into character; one soon finds the words and phrases, and finally, even the thoughts that fit such sounds" (Nietzsche)

248: The success of the patter merchants in persuading others has been perhaps less remarkable than their success in persuading themselves

266: Talleyrand, on his death bed, to his doctor calling: "Tell him I am not well enough to see him"

267: "Sudetenland" is a Nazi confection, like the "North German peninsula"

268: (On Bismarck's spoliation of Denmark)

269: By timid language and a false love of peace, Germany is encouraged to believe that she can set treaties at defiance with impunity

281: I come to the final and all‑important lesson. Unless we can learn to think and feel in European terms, Europe will ultimately go her way without us. It is an utter impossibility to feel for Europe without feeling against Germany.