a new theology

Contact us: Click to email

1. Entropy and metaethics


Outline
1: Abstract
2. Introduction
3. A mathematico-metaphysical prelude: entropy, steam engines and the limits to control
4. Wittgenstein: from analytic judgement to social synthesis
5. Murdoch: morality is a continuous complex internal process
6. From individual to society
7. Discussion: complexity, value and the sovereignty of morality
8. Conclusion

1: Abstract

In the Christian tradition, the fundamental moral sanction is the judgement of God, the sovereign power which consigns people to heaven or hell in the afterlife depending on their behaviour in this life.

New Testament Christian Churches claim a biblical mandate to be God's agents on Earth, holding “the keys to the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 16:19, Mark 18:18). This authority was almost unopposed until the seventeenth century when the writers of the Enlightenment began to question the authority of the Churches.

Kant saw enlightenment as human emergence from childhood. A principal step in this direction is the recognition that death is real and the afterlife is a fiction. It became necessary for secular moralists to seek a new foundation for moral behaviour. We may see the consequent development split into two camps, one attempting to find a 'scientific' basis for morality and the other seeking a 'humanistic' basis, a distinction captured more broadly in the German terms Naturwissenschaft and Geistestwissenschaft, natural science and soul science. Immanuel Kant (1784)

Here I wish to explore this issue by contrasting a natural scientific approach to the more soulful approach of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Iris Murdoch, looking for common ground. If we reject divine revelation as the foundation for morality we must find our grounds within the universe, which is tantamount to the naturalization of morality. So the question becomes 'how does nature embrace spirit as the sovereign ground for moral value?'.

Here we come up against the theory of evolution which suggests that survival of the fit may endorse what in the past would have been regarded as selfish immoral individualism. This raises the question of the relative values of competition and cooperation.

I propose an answer in terms of what Einstein considered to be the most fundamental and irrefutable law of nature, the second law of thermodynamics, which expresses the fact that entropy almost never decreases. In a more morally relevant frame, this law expresses the fact that the universe is inherently creative. Human spirituality, whatever it may be, has emerged from the natural world. Second law of thermodynamics - Wikipedia

Back to top

2. Introduction

Science can instruct morality at certain points and can change its direction but it cannot contain morality nor ergo moral philosophy (Murdoch 2001 page 27). Is this true? Iris Murdoch: The Sovereignty of the Good

From the beginning of the Common Era until the Enlightenment the Christian Churches were the principal determinants of ethics and morality. At their core was a History of Salvation expressed in various creeds. Christianity fused into its current doctrinal form in fourth century after Constantine established it as the official religion of the Roman Empire. The story is well known. God created the world and everything in it, including the first people. Apostles' Creed - Wikipedia

They disobeyed God, the Original Sin. God punished the world by introducing death, work and pain. Christian theologians further claimed that the original sin caused a disconnect between reason and passion. Thus began the war of the flesh against the spirit (Paul, Galatians 5:17 sqq.). Passion was understood to be a force generated in the animal body which distorted rational moral behaviour. Catholic Catechism: III. Original sin

Science, particularly inspired by Darwin’s theory of evolution, discounted the story of the Fall and established that life as we experience it is exactly as it is, a rational consequence of evolution by natural selection. Pain is not a punishment, it signals excessive stress, damage or disease. Work is not a punishment, it is a prerequisite for life. Jesus was wrong about the birds (Matthew 6:25 sqq). He did not notice how hard they work feeding themselves and their chicks. Death is not a punishment but a natural consequence of the enormous complexity of physical bodies which are constantly renewing themselves through time by internal communication. Occasional errors accumulate as bodies age over a lifetime, culminating in a final fatal error. Reproduction provides not only new individuals to perpetuate the species, but the variation that serves as the foundation for evolution.

Since Darwin’s time, moral philosophy has of necessity begun to deal with this radical change in our understanding of human existence.

One approach to the rebuilding of morality on a non-religious basis has been to use a scientific model. The difficulty here is that the scientific method is based on publicly observable phenomena while much of morality appears to be a personal, internal, conscious phenomenon. This essay is particularly concerned with Iris Murdoch’s critique of the behaviourist, existentialist, utilitarian analytic approach to morality that seeks to express it in terms of observable acts rather than internal states (Murdoch op. cit. page 8).

Part of the problem here is the rather narrow analytic and empirical view of the nature of sciences taken by some commentators. Here I wish to point out some support for Murdoch’s critique through the scientific concept of entropy which, as its Greek derivation suggests, is concerned with inner transformation (Oxford English Dictionary s.v).

We may detect an increasing humanistic movement throughout liberal democracies in ethics, law, justice and human security. This change may be attributed to a trend in human rights insofar as they influence human relationships. It is true that the world is still not short of criminals, extremists and violent and repressive governments, but it would appear that violence in most of its manifestations is trending down. From a moral and ethical point of view, we might say that society is softening and becoming more sensitive and responsive to human needs. Steven Pinker: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Andrew Mack: The Human Security Report

We might see the Renaissance and the Enlightenment as the beginning of the return of human spirituality to the natural world after it had been outsourced to Heaven by ancient and violent theological traditions that see the material world as defective and inhuman.

I begin with a scientific prelude which puts the power of morality in the formal context of the theory of control, cybernetics. I then trace the application of this idea through the Wittgenstein’s life and Murdoch’s critique. W. Ross Ashby: An Introduction to Cybernetics

Back to top

3: A mathematico-metaphysical prelude: entropy, steam engines and the limits to control

The “softening” of human relationships is a characteristic of the evolution of the universe as a whole, a consequence of the second law of thermodynamics, commonly stated as entropy almost never decreases. An alternative statement might be the universe is irresistibly creative.

The term entropy originated in the industrial age when steam engines began to replace human and animal power as the driver of industry. Sadi Carnot published Réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu et sur les machines propres à développer cette puissance (Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire) in 1824. Sadi Carnot, Carnot heat engine - Wikipedia

Carnot developed an abstract model of a heat engine which has since come to be called the Carnot cycle. By considering a reversible system which could turn heat into mechanical energy and mechanical energy back into heat, he derived an expression for the maximum possible efficiency of any such heat engine. Carnot did not use the term entropy, but Rudolph Clausius identified the reality and coined the term, and saw that it was closely connected to the fact that the Carnot cycle is reversible. All physical systems conserve energy; reversible systems conserve entropy. The universe is not reversible. Its entropy continually increases. Rudolph Clausius: The Mechanical Theory of Heat with its Applications to the Steam-Engine and to the Physical Properties of Bodies

Ludwig Boltzmann took the next step in understanding entropy by realizing that it is simply a count. The entropy of a system, he found, is the logarithm of the number of “complexions” that the elements of a system may have. In the case of a gas, it counts the number of different ways the molecules in the gas can be arranged. It may be that Boltzmann’s inability to convey the subtlety of his concept of entropy to his contemporaries was a factor in his ultimate suicide. Boltzmann's entropy formula - Wikipedia, Cercignani: Ludwig Boltzmann: The Man Who Trusted Atoms

Since entropy is a pure dimensionless number, entropy can apply to any system which has distinct states. It is not confined to physical dimensions such as mass, length or time, which is why this section is called a “mathematical-metaphysical” prelude. The entropy of a gas or of a society are equally amenable to counting their complexions. A discerning and cultured individual has higher entropy than a person with a “one track mind”. Renes Descartes might say that they have more "clear and distinct ideas". Manley & Taylor (1996): Descartes Meditations - Trilingual Edition

Einstein wrote:

A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended its area of applicability. Therefore the deep impression that classical thermodynamics made upon me. It is the only physical theory of universal content which I am convinced will never be overthrown, within the framework of applicability of its basic concepts. Howard & Steichel: Einstein: The Formative Years, 1879-1909 (Einstein Studies volume 8), page 1

The next role for entropy is another way of counting that was introduced by Claude Shannon when he devised the mathematical theory of communication (Shannon 1949, Khinchin 1957). Here he uses entropy as a measure of information. The role of information is to resolve uncertainty. The measure of uncertainty is the number of possibilities from which one must make a choice. Claude Shannon: Communication in the presence of noise, Aleksandr Khinchin: Mathematical Foundations of Information Theory

Some roulette wheels, for instance, provide 32 slots where the ball may come to rest when the wheel stops spinning. If one was informed of the wining slot in advance of every spin, gambling could become a very profitable enterprise. But this is not so if the wheel is fair. Roulette - Wikipedia

The entropy of roulette is, by count, 32. The information obtained when we learn the outcome of a spin is equal to the entropy of the wheel. As noted above, entropy is expressed as a logarithm of a number of complexions. In the context of information theory, this logarithms is expressed in base two numbers and the resulting number is the measure of information in bits. Since 32 is 2 to the power of 5, the entropy of a roulette wheel is 5 bits and the information revealed each time the wheel comes to rest is identically 5 bits.

Shannon used the entropy concept to calculate information emitted by a communication source. We model a source A by the “letters” ai that it can emit and the probability pi of each letter. We presume that the source only emits one letter at a time, so that the sum of these probabilities pi is 1. The the entropy H of the source is then given in bits per letter H = -Σi pi log2 pi.

An important feature of this function is that H is maximized when the pi are all equal. This condition is realized naturally in the physical systems that Boltzmann studied. It also provides the underlying rationale for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: the entropy of society is maximized when everyone has equal weight in social communication. United Nations

It is desirable that as time goes by the entropy of society increases both by increasing the complexity of our responses to one another, and by levelling social differences of opportunity so each of us has equal probability of achieving a good varied and interesting life. Entropy thus gives us a measure of both the softening of society and the sovereignty of moral value.

High entropy implies high value, that is high density of information. Entropy is closely related to equilibrium and stability. The state of maximum entropy for any system is also the state of maximum stability because every possible variation is taken into account. There are no destructive surprises. From this we may argue that the most stable society is a society of equals.

With the advent of the internet, the value of entropy has been reappraised under a new name, bandwidth. In Aristotelian terms, bandwidth is potential. A movie, for instance, may be encoded in a gigabyte of data. A gigabyte has the potential to encode any one of 2 to the power of 8 billion different movies, a huge number. The information content of an actual downloaded movie, which is, like the stationary roulette wheel, one choice out of all the possibilities, is 8 billion bits (1 byte = 8 bits), precisely equal to the entropy of the signal required to transmit it.

This increase in entropy is one of the formal foundations of the evolution of the universe. Whitehead and Russell pursued Hilbert’s formalist feeling that mathematics would turn out to be completely deterministic. Gödel and Turing showed that this is not so. This formal uncertainty in mathematics models the possibility of variation which lies at the root of the increase in entropy and evolutionary creativity. Solomon Feferman et. al.: Kurt Goedel: Collected Works Volume 1 Publications 1929-1936, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem

Murdoch emphasises the coupling between goodness, knowledge and breadth of vision in the following passage:

It is a deep paradox of moral philosophy that almost all philosophers have been led in one way or another to picture goodness as knowledge: and yet to show this in any sort of detail, to show ‘reality’ as ‘one’, seems to involve an improper prejudging of some moral issue. An acute consciousness of this latter difficulty has indeed made it seem axiomatic to recent philosophers that ‘naturalism is a fallacy’. But I would suggest that at the level of serious common sense and of ordinary non-philosophical reflection about the nature of morals it is perfectly obvious that goodness is connected with knowledge: not with impersonal quasi-scientific knowledge of the ordinary world, whatever that may be, but with refined and honest perception of what is really the case, a patient and just discernment of what confronts one, which is the result not simply of opening one’s eyes but of a certainly perfectly familiar kind of moral discipline (op. cit. page 37).

As moral disciplines go, science is one of the most carefully monitored, constrained by publication, peer review and refined scepticism.

In law, the sovereign has maximum control, monarchs typically claiming power of life and death over their subjects. Cybernetics is built on the notion of entropy through the “principle of requisite variety” or “requisite entropy”. To control anything, the controlling system must have entropy equal to or greater than that of the system controlled. For morality to be sovereign over all value, therefore, it must have greater entropy than all value. We return this issue in section 6 From individual to society. Ashby, op. cit.

Back to top

4: Wittgenstein: from analytic judgement to social synthesis

It is common to divide Wittgenstein’s relatively short philosophical career into two epochs the first characterized by the Tractatus and the second by the posthumous Philosophical Investigations. Some authors see a much more nuanced progression, but here I will stick with the “two epoch” model. Anat Biletski and Anat Matar (Standford Encyclepoedia of Phiosophy): Ludwig Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein was originally educated as an aeronautical engineer and his engineering, logical and mathematical background is reflected in the Tractatus.

The Tractatus is a rather abstract and formulaic analytic account of thought, language, logic, propositions, meaning and philosophy with no overt moral content. He had, he thought, completed a book that provided a definitive and unassailably true solution to the problems of philosophy. Ray Monk: Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, page 173

The first World war interrupted Wittgenstein’s philosophical career and after the war he abandoned academia for some years and trained as a schoolteacher in Austria and, beginning in 1920, taught in small rural schools. He also built himself a house in a remote village and spent much time living alone. Here I understand Wittgenstein’s life as a history of carefully conscious moral development, from the entitled scion of a very wealthy family to a philosopher steadfastly seeking to see a way through the complexities of human existence.

We may understand Wittgenstein’s moral transition as a move both toward human symmetry and toward the development of a new internal state. Biletski and Matar emphasise that in the Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein is at pains to emphasise commonplace and empirical approaches to language. In contrast to the rather technical approach he took in the Tractatus, he turns to “meaning as use”. He is concerned with particular cases, not generalizations, cases that we might call complexions in Boltzmann’s terminology.

In his preface to the Investigations Wittgenstein makes a point of the intractable complexity of his mental states:

After several unsuccessful attempts to weld my results together into such a whole, I realized that I should never succeed. The best that I could write would never be more than philosophical remarks; my thoughts were soon crippled if I tried to force them on in any single direction against their natural inclination.——And this was, of course, connected with the very nature of the investigation. For this compels us to travel over a wide field of thought criss-cross in every direction.—The philosophical remarks in this book are, as it were, a number of sketches of landscapes which were made in the course of these long and involved journeyings. Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations

Wittgenstein’s Preface serves to some extent as an apology for the “grave mistakes” in the Tractatus pointed out to him by his friend the mathematician Frank Ramsay. Overall his attitude of humility in the face of philosophical difficulties is a strong contrast to his earlier feeling that he has once solved all the problems of philosophy. Frank P. Ramsay - Wikipedia

Here we might make a distinction between ethics and morals. Ethics deals with public constraints on behaviour, the sort of things mandated by corporate codes of ethics and the work of ethics committees. Morals on the other hand may be seen as personal qualities, internal states that guide individual behaviour. An immoral person, for instance, may feel free to ignore the guidance of an ethics committee, whereas a moral person will willingly comply provided they judge that the decision of the committee is reasonable. Ethics, in other words, is amenable to codification and “black letter” legislation whereas Wittgenstein’s experience suggests that such is not the case with our internal moral states. Ethics - Wikipedia

Wittgenstein’s moral sensitivity is illustrated by a confession he made. While he was teaching he hit a child. This incident plagued his conscience. Ten years later, in 1937, he confessed it to his Russian teacher. Wittgenstein's Confession

The sovereignty of ethics so conceived in the public domain of law and religion is reasonably clear. In liberal democracies the numbers have it. Government goes to the party that can command higher entropy and autocratic politicians who demand power without numbers are considered to act unethically.

Back to top

5: Murdoch: morality is a continuous complex internal process

To learn more about the sovereignty of morality over all value, I turn to Iris Murdoch, particularly the Idea of Perfection in The Sovereignty of the Good (Murdoch op. cit.). For my purposes, Wittgenstein’s life serves as an example of the deepening process, the altering and complicating process, that she sees in the emergence of love (page 28). A common term for this is ‘growth’ by analogy to the growth of a tree from simple sapling to complex giant. Murdoch is particularly concerned with the relationship between “good” and “value”, one of the oldest philosophical questions. Plato arrived at the “form of the good” as the “transcendent principle of all goodness”. Dorothea Frede (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy): Plato's Ethics: An Overview

Aristotle followed a similar line, and Christianity, which learnt much of its moral theology from the Greeks, still remains (outside the specifically secular field of moral philosophy), one of the principal vehicles of moral education in the West.

Murdoch’s thesis is effectively endemic in the Catholic Church. In Catholic moral theology, at least in the fifties, it is a sin to have ‘bad’ or ‘indecent’ thoughts. An important part of the Catholic Catch 22 is to make sure we all think we are sinners. Although Murdoch does not want to let God creep into her argument, it was made very clear to us children that God saw what went on in our minds as well as the things we actually did and judged us accordingly. (Murdoch op. cit. p 18).

Murdoch is arguing against the analytic position that morality lies in action rather than thought, but insofar as education influences thought patterns, it would be very difficult for a child brought up in the Catholic mould to sympathise with Hampshire’s view that anything which is to count as a definite reality must be open to several observers, if for no other reason that it precludes us from discussing consciousness. This seems quite absurd since consciousness is a very active area of psychological and philosophical research. Christoph Koch: The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach

Catholicism also embodies the notions of love and perfection that are important to Murdoch. The high point of the New Testament is the commandment of love. When asked what is the great commandment of the Law, Jesus replied:

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. (Matthew 22:37-40).

These commandments were already present in the Hebrew Bible (Deuteronomy, 6:4-5, Leviticus 19:17-18), but Jesus gives them preference over all the other commandments of the Law and universalizes love of neighbour through the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37).

The Catholic Church also developed the doctrine of supererogation, designed to overcome the defects allegedly arising from the original sin. God punished the first people by introducing death, the need to work, and pain, particularly in childbirth. Later theologians also concluded that the punishment included breaking the nexus between reason and passion. In Catholic moral theology sin and evil are closely related to irrationally passionate behaviour. The “evangelical counsels” recommending the monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience were intended to overcome this defect in human nature (Matthew 19:21). Much of the philosophical development of morality still carries echoes of its Christian antecedence, seeking rational grounds for moral behaviour and developing the moral character necessary to overcome the abyss of passion. Aquinas, Summa, I II, 82, 3: Is original sin concupiscence?

Murdoch contests the rational analytic approach to morality which she sees as behaviourist, existentialist and utilitarian:

It is behaviourist in its connection of the meaning and being of action with the publicly observable, it is existentialist in its elimination of the substantial self and its emphasis on the solitary omnipotent will, and it is utilitarian in the assumption that morality is and can only be concerned with public acts (op. cit. pp 8-9).

The Idea of Perfection revolves around the parable of the Mother (M) and Daughter in Law (D). M is concerned by the fact that her son has married D, whom she considers to be “common” and “beneath” him. Being perfectly English she carefully hides her disdain but expresses it internally with words that express her disappointment with D. Later, without changing her behaviour, she reconsiders her opinion of D and learns to accepts that D is worthy of her son. Belle (2013 film) - Wikipedia

The point is that M has had a change of heart with no overt expression. We may contrast this story with the real life changes in Wittgenstein’s behaviour as he coped with the demands of his own reality. The point that we have private lives and that they are the field of morality is clear.

Each of us in the social world is continuously dealing with complex moral problems which perhaps dominate our interior conversation. All our interior life is moral life:

The moral life . . . is something that goes on continually, not something that is switched off in between the occurrence of explicit moral choices (op. cit. page 36).

From biographical details we gather that complex individuals like Wittgenstein were not easy to deal with (Monk, passim).

Back to top

6: From individual to society

Murdoch’s M does not ring particularly true as a human person. Her reticence is a product of much education and cultural pressure. As infants and children, we are accustomed to express ours thoughts and feelings without self censorship. Why does she hide her feeling for D? Why does she work to bring herself around to loving rather than disparaging D? It this a “natural” activity, or is it a consequence of ancient moral habits common in a certain stratum of society?

The evolutionary paradigm provides us with a framework in which to understand this human behaviour. In the beginning we are helpless infants whose only recourse is to cry for help. As we mature we become skilled in the arts of deception which often plays a central role in games, love, business and war. This line of development might lead us to think that evolution would favour the relentless pursuit of personal advantage over the sacrifice and sharing that are involved in cooperation. This though runs contrary to general observation and the nature of entropy and control outlined above. In Memoriam A.H.H. - Wikipedia

Modern cosmology sees the Universe as starting off as a very simple system of fundamental particles endowed with the ability to bind together to form more complex structures. As we move closer to the present, we see atoms and molecules cooperating to form cells and cells cooperating to form multicellular organisms like plants, animals and ourselves. Our species Homo sapiens emerged some 300 000 years ago and evolution has continued to work on us, sculpting our mental and cultural states. We have seen human cooperation expand from families to tribes, cities, nations and united nations. This process is punctuated by death, disease, famine, and war, but the trend is obvious, and points to the power of cooperation. Richard G. Klein; The Human Career: Human Biological and Cultural Origins

Why does cooperation work? The key, I think, is that entropy (and hence information and value) is additive, so that the entropy of a society is a simple sum of the entropy of the individuals comprising it. The increasing entropy of growing societies gives them, in the light of the principle of requisite variety, increasing power of control, which enhances their chances of survival, a virtuous circle. We see the opposite in failing societies where inequality and corruption weaken and break the social contract. Acemoglu & Robinson: Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty

One consequence of this situation is that it is in the interests of society to increase the entropy of its constituents by the implementation of education, equality, the rule of law, righteous policing, democracy, health care, disability support and maintenance of the natural environment.

Murdoch sums up her position in the following words:

. . . I would suggest at the level of serious common sense and of an ordinary non-philosophical reflection upon the nature of morals it is perfectly obvious that goodness is connected with knowledge; not with the impersonal quasi-scientific knowledge of the ordinary world, whatever that may be, but with a refined and honest perception of what is really the case, a patient and just discernment and exploration of what confronts one, which is the result not simply of opening one’s eyes but of a certainly perfectly familiar kind of moral discipline (op. cit. p. 37).

This discipline is powerful enough in many cases to overcome selfishness. Hitler’s philosophy may have been good for Hitler but it was bad for Germany and Europe, so bad that the enormous resources expended in the Second World War were used to restore humanity.

Back to top

7. Discussion: complexity, value and the sovereignty of morality

Given the death of the old God, we are constrained to explain creation by the nature of the world. Is morality sovereign over all value? Yes. Morality is the name for whatever guides our behaviour, and it is our behaviour that creates value, what we might call social capital. Some of this guidance is built in to each of us at birth through the physiology and psychology we have inherited from billions of years of evolution. Some of it is absorbed from our social environment, derived from the thousands of years of social evolution which we can trace in extant literature. The final element is a product of our own decisions and the habits resulting from them which guide our day to day behaviour.

Morality is concerned with the control of personal behaviour. As a moral person, there are some things I ought not do, but moral decisions can be very complex. “Thou shalt not kill” is a good first principle, but then there enter the complexifying issues of accident, self defence, defence of others and war. “Thou shalt not commit adultery” is another simple statement that ramifies endlessly in the forest of sexual mores, particularly in our societies where genders have multiplied and the sacred exclusivity of marriage has been diluted. Moralists, like lawyers, delight in studying ever more complex fictional cases which approach the complexity of real life and become elaborate subjects of the arts and literature in all their forms from technology and sport to poetry.

The essence of science is careful instrumental measurement to extend the power of sensation. The classical physical sciences depend on counting units of mass, length and time. One might argue that morality is totally unlike science because it does not measure. Instead it is generally confined to complex artistic expressions like the parable of the good samaritan or the tale of Billy Budd, which establish complex frameworks to support a moral view. At the beginning of this essay I introduced entropy which I see as a measure that carries across all categories of human experience from science to morality. Entropy does not depend on particular units, it is simply a count, a count of complexions or complexity. Herman Melville: Billy Budd, Sailor and Selected Tales

Universals are symmetries. We speak of sheep because all sheep share a set of common characteristic which enable us to judge with clear certainty whether a particular thing we encounter in the world is a sheep or not. Entropy is the global symmetry. From the quantum of action at the root of physics to the stars, everything is countable. This count points the direction of the stream of creation (sometimes called the arrow of time) and shows the way to go if we want to mimic nature and grow in wisdom and grace.

The idea that each of us is a reflection of the whole is at least as old as the line in Genesis 1:27: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. Each of us is a microcosm, reflecting the birth and evolution of the Universe in our own lives.

Back to top

8: Conclusion

Black letter moral law like the ten commandments is usually enforced by violent punishment. Moses set a precedent which he descended Mount Sinai and slew the idolaters (Exodus 32:28). Murder is a wasteful and inefficient way of keeping the peace, and we have learnt that love and education are much more effective.

Nature may be to some extent red in tooth and claw, but, as traditional human societies often illustrate, it embodies deep spiritual significance. The naturalization of morality along the lines suggested by Wittgenstein and Murdoch is inherently natural, following the evolutionary trend in the universe toward increasing entropy, complexity and gentleness.

Back to top

Copyright:

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

Further reading

Books

Acemoglu, Daron, and James Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, Crown Business 2012 "Some time ago a little-known Scottish philosopher wrote a book on what makes nations succeed and what makes them fail. The Wealth of Nations is still being read today. With the same perspicacity and with the same broad historical perspective, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson have retackled this same question for our own times. Two centuries from now our great-great- . . . -great grandchildren will be, similarly, reading Why Nations Fail." —George Akerlof, Nobel laureate in economics, 2001  
Amazon
  back

Ashby, W Ross, An Introduction to Cybernetics, Methuen 1956, 1964 'This book is intended to provide [an introduction to cybernetics]. It starts from common-place and well understood concepts, and proceeds step by step to show how these concepts can be made exact, and how they can be developed until they lead into such subjects as feedback, stability, regulation, ultrastability, information, coding, noise and other cybernetic topics.' 
Amazon
  back

Carnot, Sadi, and Translated by R H Thurston; edited and with an introduction by E Mendoza, Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire: and other papers on the second law of thermodynamics by E Clapeyron and R Clausius, Peter Smith Publisher 1977 Reflections: Everyone knows that heat can produce motion. ... in these days when the steam-engine is everywhere so well known. ... To develop this power, to appropriate it to our uses, is the object of heat engines. ... Notwithstanding the work of all kinds done by steam-engines, notwithstanding the satisfactory condition to which they have been brought today, their theory is very little understood, and the attempts to improve them are still directed almost by chance. ... In order to consider in the most general way the principle of the production of motion by heat, it must be considered independently of any mechanism or any particular agent. It is necessary to establish principles applying not only to steam-engines but to all imaginable heat engines, whatever the working substance and whatever the method by which it is operated. ... [Here enters the seed of entropy] The production of motive power is then due in steam-engines not to an actual consumption of caloric, but to its transportation from a warm body to a cold body, that is, to its reestablishment of equilibrium - an equilibrium considered as destroyed by any cause whatever, by chemical action such as combustion, or by any other.' pages 3-7. 
Amazon
  back

Cercignani, Carlo, Ludwig Boltzmann: The Man Who Trusted Atoms, Oxford University Press, USA 2006 'Cercignani provides a stimulating biography of a great scientist. Boltzmann's greatness is difficult to state, but the fact that the author is still actively engaged in research into some of the finer, as yet unresolved issues provoked by Boltzmann's work is a measure of just how far ahead of his time Boltzmann was. It is also tragic to read of Boltzmann's persecution by his contemporaries, the energeticists, who regarded atoms as a convenient hypothesis, but not as having a definite existence. Boltzmann felt that atoms were real and this motivated much of his research. How Boltzmann would have laughed if he could have seen present-day scanning tunnelling microscopy images, which resolve the atomic structure at surfaces! If only all scientists would learn from Boltzmann's life story that it is bad for science to persecute someone whose views you do not share but cannot disprove. One surprising fact I learned from this book was how research into thermodynamics and statistical mechanics led to the beginnings of quantum theory (such as Planck's distribution law, and Einstein's theory of specific heat). Lecture notes by Boltzmann also seem to have influenced Einstein's construction of special relativity. Cercignani's familiarity with Boltzmann's work at the research level will probably set this above other biographies of Boltzmann for a very long time to come.' Dr David J Bottomley  
Amazon
  back

Damasio, Antonio R, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, Harcourt Brace 1999 Jacket: 'In a radical departure from current views on consciousness, Damasio contends that explaining how we make mental images or attend to those images will not suffice to elucidate the mystery. A satisfactory hypothesis for the making of consciousness must explain how the sense of self comes to mind. Damasio suggests that the sense of self does not depend on memory or on reasoning or even less on language. [it] depends, he argues, on the brain's ability to portray the living organism in the act of relating to an object. That ability, in turn, is a consequence of the brain's involvement in the process of regulating life. The sense of self began as yet another device aimed an ensuring survival.' 
Amazon
  back

Darwin, Charles, and Greg Suriano (editor), The Origin of Species, Gramercy 1998 Introduction: 'In considering the Origin of Species, it is quite conceivable that a naturalist, reflecting on the mutual affinities of organic beings, on their embryological relations, their geographical distribution, geological succession, and other such facts, might come to the conclusion that each species has not been independently created, but has descended, like varieties, from other species.' 
Amazon
  back

Darwin, Charles, The Origin of Species by Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, Cambridge University Press 1859, 2009 'It's hard to talk about The Origin of Species without making statements that seem overwrought and fulsome. But it's true: this is indeed one of the most important and influential books ever written, and it is one of the very few groundbreaking works of science that is truly readable. . . . Darwin's friend and "bulldog" T.H. Huxley said upon reading the Origin, "How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that." Alfred Russel Wallace had thought of the same theory of evolution Darwin did, but it was Darwin who gathered the mass of supporting evidence—on domestic animals and plants, on variability, on sexual selection, on dispersal—that swept most scientists before it. It's hardly necessary to mention that the book is still controversial: Darwin's remark in his conclusion that "Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history" is surely the pinnacle of British understatement Mary Ellen Curtin 
Amazon
  back

Darwin, Charles, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, Penguin Classics 1871, 2004 'No book made a greater impact on the intellectual world of its first Victorian readers nor has had such an enduring influence on our thinking on science, literature, theology and philosophy. In The Descent of Man, Darwin addresses the crucial question of the origins, evolution and racial divergence of mankind, that he had deliberately left out of On the Origin of Species. And the evidence he presents forces us to question what it is that makes us uniquely human.' 
Amazon
  back

Feferman, Solomon, and John W Dawson, Stephen C Kleene, Gregory H Moore, Robert M Solovay, Jean van Heijenoort (editors), Kurt Goedel: Collected Works Volume 1 Publications 1929-1936, Oxford UP 1986 Jacket: 'Kurt Goedel was the most outstanding logician of the twentieth century, famous for his work on the completeness of logic, the incompleteness of number theory and the consistency of the axiom of choice and the continuum hypotheses. ... The first volume of a comprehensive edition of Goedel's works, this book makes available for the first time in a single source all his publications from 1929 to 1936, including his dissertation. ...' 
Amazon
  back

Howard (editor), Don, and John Steichel (editor), Einstein: The Formative Years, 1879-1909 (Einstein Studies volume 8), Birkhauser 2000 ' "What was Einstein like for the first thirty years of his life? Who were the personalities who guided him? What did he read? This book, which hopes to shed light on these questions, is a sequence of academic articles written by Einstein specialists for the Birkhäuser Einstein Studies series. . . .The [book] is remarkably readable and informative. . . .Indispensable for Einstein disciples, the book is also accessible to the general reader. The presentation is excellent and the editing conducted to a high standard. . . .Extensive references are given after each essay and an index of names is provided." ' --The Mathematical Gazette 
Amazon
  back

Hume, David, and David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton (editors), A Treatise on Human Nature (Oxford Philosophical Texts), Oxford University Press 2000 ' The Oxford Philosophical Texts series consists of truly practical and accessible guides to major philosophical texts in the history of philosophy from the ancient world up to modern times. Each book opens with a comprehensive introduction by a leading specialist which covers the philosopher's life, work, and influence. Endnotes, a full bibliography, guides to further reading, and an index are also included. The series aims to build a definitive corpus of key texts in the Western philosophical tradition, forming a reliable and enduring resource for students and teachers alike. David Hume's comprehensive attempt to base philosophy on a new, observationally grounded study of human nature is one of the most important texts in Western philosophy. It is also the focal point of current attempts to understand 18th-century philosophy The Treatise first explains how we form such concepts as cause and effect, external existence, and personal identity, and how we create compelling but unverifiable beliefs in the entities represented by these concepts. It then offers a novel account of the passions, explains freedom and necessity as they apply to human choices and actions, and concludes with a detailed explanation of how we distinguish between virtue and vice. The volume features Hume's own abstract of the Treatise, a substantial introduction that explains the aims of the Treatise as a whole and of each of its ten parts, a comprehensive index, and suggestions for further reading.' 
Amazon
  back

Khinchin, Aleksandr Yakovlevich, Mathematical Foundations of Information Theory (translated by P A Silvermann and M D Friedman), Dover 1957 Jacket: 'The first comprehensive introduction to information theory, this book places the work begun by Shannon and continued by McMillan, Feinstein and Khinchin on a rigorous mathematical basis. For the first time, mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, cyberneticists and communications engineers are offered a lucid, comprehensive introduction to this rapidly growing field.' 
Amazon
  back

Klein, Richard G, The Human Career: Human Biological and Cultural Origins, University of Chicago Press 2009 ' Since its publication in 1989, The Human Career has proved to be an indispensable tool in teaching human origins. This substantially revised third edition retains Richard G. Klein’s innovative approach while showing how cumulative discoveries and analyses over the past ten years have significantly refined our knowledge of human evolution. . . . In addition to outlining the broad pattern of human evolution, The Human Career details the kinds of data that support it. For the third edition, Klein has added numerous tables and a fresh citation system designed to enhance readability, especially for students. He has also included more than fifty new illustrations to help lay readers grasp the fossils, artifacts, and other discoveries on which specialists rely. With abundant references and hundreds of images, charts, and diagrams, this new edition is unparalleled in its usefulness for teaching human evolution.' 
Amazon
  back

Koch, Christoph, The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach, Roberts and Co 2004 Preface: Francis Crick: ". . . Consciousness is the major unsolved problem in biology. That is there is no present consensus on the general nature of the solution is made clear by Christoph in Chapter 1. How do what philosophiers call "qualia". the redness of red and the painfulness of pain, arise from the concerted action of nerve cells, glial cels, and their associated molecules? Can qualia be explained by what we now know of modern science, or is some quite different kind of explanation needed? And how to approach this seemingly intractable problem. . . . " 
Amazon
  back

McGregor, Richard, The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers, Harper 2010 Amazon editorial review: From Publishers Weekly 'McGregor, a journalist at the Financial Times, begins his revelatory and scrupulously reported book with a provocative comparison between China's Communist Party and the Vatican for their shared cultures of secrecy, pervasive influence, and impenetrability. The author pulls back the curtain on the Party to consider its influence over the industrial economy, military, and local governments. McGregor describes a system operating on a Leninist blueprint and deeply at odds with Western standards of management and transparency. Corruption and the tension between decentralization and national control are recurring themes--and are highlighted in the Party™s handling of the disturbing Sanlu case, in which thousands of babies were poisoned by contaminated milk powder. McGregor makes a clear and convincing case that the 1989 backlash against the Party, inexorable globalization, and technological innovations in communication have made it incumbent on the Party to evolve, and this smart, authoritative book provides valuable insight into how it has--and has not--met the challenge. ' Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 
Amazon
  back

Melville, Herman, and Robert Milder (editor), Billy Budd, Sailor and Selected Tales (Oxford Worlds Classics), Oxford University Press 2009 Product Description 'Billy Budd is among the greatest of Melville's works and, in its richness and ambiguity, among the most problematic. Outwardly a compelling narrative of events aboard a British man-of-war during the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars, Billy Budd, Sailor is a nautical recasting of the Fall, a parable of good and evil, a meditation on justice and political governance, and a searching portrait of three extraordinary men. In this edition are also eight shorter tales, reprinted from the most authoritative recent editions and are supplemented by a penetrating introduction and full notes.' 
Amazon
  back

Monk, Ray, Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, Vintage ex Jonathan Cape 1990 Review: 'With a subject who demands passionate partisanship, whose words are so powerful but whose actions speak louder, it must have been hard to write this definitive, perceptive and lucid biography. Out goes Norman Malcolm's saintly Wittgenstein, Bartley's tortured, impossibly promiscuous Wittgenstein, and Brian McGuinness's bloodless, almost bodiless Wittgenstein. This Wittgenstein is the real human being: wholly balanced and happily eccentric . . . ' The Times 
Amazon
  back

Murdoch, Iris , The Sovereignty of the Good, Routledge & Kegan Paul 1971, 2001 ' Iris Murdoch once observed: 'philosophy is often a matter of finding occasions on which to say the obvious'. What was obvious to Murdoch, and to all those who read her work, is that Good transcends everything - even God. Throughout her distinguished and prolific writing career, she explored questions of Good and Bad, myth and morality. The framework for Murdoch's questions - and her own conclusions - can be found here. 
Amazon
  back

Neuenschwander, Dwight E, Emmy Noether's Wonderful Theorem, Johns Hopkins University Press 2011 Jacket: A beautiful piece of mathematics, Noether's therem touches on every aspect of physics. Emmy Noether proved her theorem in 1915 and published it in 1918. This profound concept demonstrates the connection between conservation laws and symmetries. For instance, the theorem shows that a system invariant under translations of time, space or rotation will obey the laws of conservation of energy, linear momentum or angular momentum respectively. This exciting result offers a rich unifying principle for all of physics.' 
Amazon
  back

Pinker, Steven, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Viking Adult 2011 Amazon book description: 'A provocative history of violence—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Stuff of Thought and The Blank Slate Believe it or not, today we may be living in the most peaceful moment in our species' existence. In his gripping and controversial new work, New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows that despite the ceaseless news about war, crime, and terrorism, violence has actually been in decline over long stretches of history. Exploding myths about humankind's inherent violence and the curse of modernity, this ambitious book continues Pinker's exploration of the essence of human nature, mixing psychology and history to provide a remarkable picture of an increasingly enlightened world.' 
Amazon
  back

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, and G. E. M. Anscombe (translator), Philosophical Investigations, Basil Backwell 1965, 1958 ' THE thoughts which I publish in what follows are the precipitate of philosophical investigations which have occupied me for the last sixteen years. They concern many subjects: the concepts of meaning, of understanding, of a proposition, of logic, the foundations of mathematics, states of consciousness, and other things. I have written down all these thoughts as remarks, short paragraphs, of which there is sometimes a fairly long chain about the same subject, while I sometimes make a sudden change, jumping from one topic to another. '  
Amazon
  back

Links

Alan Turing, On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem, 'The "computable" numbers may be described briefly as the real numbers whose expressions as a decimal are calculable by some finite means. Although the subject of this paper is ostensibly the computable numbers, it is almost equally easy to define and investigate computable functions of an integral variable of a real or computable variable, computable predicates and so forth. . . . ' back

Anat Biletski and Anat Matar (Standford Encyclepoedia of Phiosophy), Ludwig Wittgenstein, 'Considered by some to be the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, Ludwig Wittgenstein played a central, if controversial, role in 20th-century analytic philosophy. He continues to influence current philosophical thought in topics as diverse as logic and language, perception and intention, ethics and religion, aesthetics and culture.' back

Andrew Mack, The Human Security Report, Prof. Andrew Mack is director of the Human Security Center at the University of British Columbia in Canada, and former director of the Strategic Planning Unit in the Executive Office of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan from 1998 to 2001 'Improbable though it may seem, the UN is also a real success story. Over the past 15 years there has been real progress toward realizing the organization?s core mandate - spelled out in its 1945 charter - "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war." The just-released Human Security Report, an independent study funded by five governments and published by the Oxford University Press, draws on a wide range of little-publicized scholarly research, plus its own specially commissioned studies, to present a portrait of global security sharply at odds with conventional wisdom (see: www.humansecurityreport.info). The report reveals that after five decades of inexorable increase, the number of armed conflicts started to fall worldwide in the early 1990s. By 2003, there were 40 percent fewer conflicts than in 1992. The deadliest conflicts - those with 1,000 or more battle deaths - fell by 80 percent. Cases of mass slaughter of civilians also dropped by 80 percent, while core human rights abuses have declined in five out of six regions of the developing world since the mid-1990s.' back

Angelo Campodonico, Bonum ex integra causa. Aquinas and the sources of a basic concept, '"Bonum ex integra causa, malum ex particularibus defectibus" . Aquinas finds this clause first of all in Dionysius' De divinis nominibus, which he read in the early years of his academic career when he was an assistant of Albert the Great in Cologne. We must remember that during the Middle Ages Dionysius was considered an auctoritas: he was considered a disciple of Saint Paul, a Saint. Therefore the content of his works was highly considered by medieval theologians. In particular: the fourth chapter of the De divinis nominibus, in which we find that clause, concerns goodness and evil.' back

Apostles' Creed - Wikipedia, Apostles' Creed - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Apostles' Creed (Latin: Symbolum Apostolorum or Symbolum Apostolicum), sometimes titled Symbol of the Apostles, is an early statement of Christian belief, a creed or "symbol". It is widely used by a number of Christian denominations for both liturgical and catechetical purposes, most visibly by liturgical Churches of Western tradition, including the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church, Lutheranism, Anglicanism, and Western Orthodoxy. It is also used by Presbyterians, Methodists, and Congregationalists.' back

Aquinas, Summa, I II, 82, 3, Is original sin concupiscence?, ' I answer that, Everything takes its species from its form: and it has been stated (Article 2) that the species of original sin is taken from its cause. Consequently the formal element of original sin must be considered in respect of the cause of original sin. But contraries have contrary causes. Therefore the cause of original sin must be considered with respect to the cause of original justice, which is opposed to it. Now the whole order of original justice consists in man's will being subject to God: which subjection, first and chiefly, was in the will, whose function it is to move all the other parts to the end, as stated above (I-II:9:1), so that the will being turned away from God, all the other powers of the soul become inordinate. Accordingly the privation of original justice, whereby the will was made subject to God, is the formal element in original sin; while every other disorder of the soul's powers, is a kind of material element in respect of original sin. Now the inordinateness of the other powers of the soul consists chiefly in their turning inordinately to mutable good; which inordinateness may be called by the general name of concupiscence. Hence original sin is concupiscence, materially, but privation of original justice, formally.' back

Belle (2013 film) - Wikipedia, Belle (2013 film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The film is inspired by the 1779 painting of Dido Elizabeth Belle beside her cousin Lady Elizabeth Murray, at Kenwood House, which was commissioned by their great-uncle, William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, then Lord Chief Justice of England. . . .The fictional film centres on Dido's relationship with an aspiring lawyer; it is set at a time of legal significance, as a court case is heard on what became known as the Zong massacre, when slaves were thrown overboard from a slave ship and the owner filed with his insurance company for the losses. Lord Mansfield rules on this case in England's Court of King's Bench in 1786, in a decision seen to contribute to the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act of 1807.' back

Boltzmann's entropy formula - Wikipedia, Boltzmann's entropy formula - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In statistical mechanics, Boltzmann's equation is a probability equation relating the entropy S of an ideal gas to the quantity W, which is the number of microstates corresponding to a given macrostate:
S = k ln W
where k is the Boltzmann constant, . . . which is equal to 1.38062 x 10−23 J/K. back

Carnot heat engine - Wikipedia, Carnot heat engine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'A Carnot heat engine is a hypothetical engine that operates on the reversible Carnot cycle. The basic model for this engine was developed by Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot in 1824. The Carnot engine model was graphically expanded upon by Benoît Paul Émile Clapeyron in 1834 and mathematically elaborated upon by Rudolf Clausius in the 1850s and 60s from which the concept of entropy emerged.' back

Catholic Catechism p1, s2, c1, a1, p7, III. Original sin, 405 Although it is proper to each individual, original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to evil that is called concupiscence. Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.' back

Claude Shannon, Communication in the Presence of Noise, 'A method is developed for representing any communication system geometrically. Messages and the corresponding signals are points in two “function spaces,” and the modulation process is a mapping of one space into the other. Using this representation, a number of results in communication theory are deduced concerning expansion and compression of bandwidth and the threshold effect. Formulas are found for the maximum rate of transmission of binary digits over a system when the signal is perturbed by various types of noise. Some of the properties of “ideal” systems which transmit at this maximum rate are discussed. The equivalent number of binary digits per second for certain information sources is calculated.' [C. E. Shannon , “Communication in the presence of noise,” Proc. IRE, vol. 37, pp. 10–21, Jan. 1949.] back

Cora Diamond, Eating Meat and Eating People, ' This paper is a response to a certain sort of argument defending the rights of animals. Part I is a brief explanation of the background and of the sort of argument I want to reject; Part II is an attempt to characterize those arguments: they contain fundamental confusions about moral relations between people and people and between people and animals. And Part III is an indication of what I think can still be said on—as it were–the animals' side' back

Dorothea Frede (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Plato's Ethics: An Overview, ' Like most other ancient philosophers, Plato maintains a virtue-based eudaemonistic conception of ethics. That is to say, happiness or well-being (eudaimonia) is the highest aim of moral thought and conduct, and the virtues (aretê: ‘excellence’) are the requisite skills and dispositions needed to attain it. If Plato’s conception of happiness is elusive and his support for a morality of happiness seems somewhat subdued, there are several reasons. First, he nowhere defines the concept or makes it the direct target of investigation, but introduces it in an oblique way in the pursuit of other questions. Second, the treatment of the human good varies in the different dialogues, so that readers find themselves confronted with the problem of what to make of the discrepancies in different works.' back

Dwight Garner, On the Centennial of Iris Murdoch's Birth, Remembering a 20th-Century Giant, 'Later in her life, Murdoch said that she found her first novel, “Under the Net” (1954), to be immature. I’ve recently reread it, and it holds up just fine. In it, Murdoch writes, “To find a person inexhaustible is simply the definition of love.” It’s also the definition of a writer worth rereading over a lifetime. back

E. J. Dionne Jr., Building a Moral Economy, ' Do you build the economy from the top down or from the bottom up? And is the main purpose of the economy the production of things or the enhancement of life? I can imagine immediate objections to both questions. Don’t all successful economies involve bottom-up and top-down elements? Doesn’t everybody claim to be a bottom-up person at heart? And don’t “things” (such as the laptop I am writing on) enhance “life”?' back

Ethics - Wikipedia, Ethics - Wikipedia, the fee encyclopedia, ' Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct. The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns matters of value, and thus comprises the branch of philosophy called axiology.] Ethics seeks to resolve questions of human morality by defining concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime. As a field of intellectual inquiry, moral philosophy also is related to the fields of moral psychology, descriptive ethics, and value theory.' back

Frank P. Ramsay - Wikipedia, Frank P. Ramsay - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Frank Plumpton Ramsey (22 February 1903 – 19 January 1930) was a British philosopher, mathematician and economist who made major contributions to all three fields before his death at the age of 26. He was a close friend of Ludwig Wittgenstein and was instrumental in translating Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus into English, as well as persuading Wittgenstein to return to philosophy and Cambridge.' back

Immanuel Kant (1784), What is Enlightenment, 'Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the enlightenment. back

In Memoriam A.H.H. - Wikipedia, In Memoriam A.H.H. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, '"In Memoriam A.H.H." is a poem by the British poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, completed in 1849. It is a requiem for the poet's beloved Cambridge friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who died suddenly of a cerebral haemorrhage in Vienna in 1833. . . . . It is widely considered to be one of the great poems of the 19th century.
Canto 56: Who trusted God was love indeed And love Creation's final law Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravine, shriek'd against his creed ' back

Jonathan Beale, Wittgenstein's Confession, ' “I have come to make a confession.” It was 1937 and Ludwig Wittgenstein had just arrived at the house of his Russian teacher, Fania Pascal, in Cambridge. He wanted to confess his role in an incident that had plagued his conscience for more than a decade. Confession, as most of us know, takes courage, especially when what you confess reflects regrettable behaviour or an unpleasant character. It forces us to confront things hidden, from others and from ourselves. Facing up to self-deception also demands personal change.' back

Manley, D. B., & Taylor, C. S. (1996), Descartes Meditations - Trilingual Edition, ' The publication of this English-Latin-French edition of Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy is quite simply an experiment in electronic scholarship. We decided to make this edition available and to encourage its free distribution for scholarly purposes. The idea behind the experiment is to see how others involved in electronic scholarship might put these texts to use. We have no predetermined ideas of what such use may be when transformed from this origin. The texts have no hypertext annotations except for those used for navigation. We invite others to download this edition and to create their own hypertext annotated editions and then to publish those additions on their own Web servers for everyone to use.' back

Roulette - Wikipedia, Roulette - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Roulette is a casino and gambling game named after a French diminutive for "little wheel". In the game, players may choose to place bets on either a number, a range of numbers, the colors red or black, or whether the number is odd or even. To determine the winning number and color, a croupier spins a wheel in one direction, then spins a ball in the opposite direction around a tilted circular track running around the circumference of the wheel. The ball eventually loses momentum and falls on to the wheel and into one of 37 (in European roulette) or 38 (in American roulette) colored and numbered pockets on the wheel.' back

Rudolph Clausius, The Mechanical Theory of Heat with its Applications to the Steam-Engine and to the Physical Properties of Bodies, Translated by John Tyndall back

Second law of thermodynamics - Wikipedia, Second law of thermodynamics - Wikipedia - The free encyclopedia, 'The second law of thermodynamics states that in a natural thermodynamic process, there is an increase in the sum of the entropies of the participating systems. The second law is an empirical finding that has been accepted as an axiom of thermodynamic theory. back

Thomas Aqunas, CORPUS THOMISTICUM: S. Alberti Magni Super Dionysium De divinis nominibus :De pulchro et bono, back

United Nations, Official UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights Home Page, 'The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) (French) (Spanish) as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected.'' back

www.theologyco.com is maintained by The Theology Company Proprietary Limited ACN 097 887 075 ABN 74 097 887 075 Copyright 2000-2024 © Jeffrey Nicholls