from the glacier

I was thinking yesterday evening about the reluctance of certain people to accept the role science plays in human understanding. But then, in contradistinction, I thought about how scientists are unable to keep their conclusions within their own realm of human knowing (trying to talk about God, morality, society and so forth). Then it occurred to me: in order to "do science" one has to be both intellectual and virtuous. Six day creation folks are obviously not smart enough for science. Even St. Augustine on the strength of Scripture alone saw that six days is analogical. Now with empirical deductive evidence we should revel that the conclusions are the same. Scientists, on the other hand, are not virtuous enough to see how their efforts are ad maiorem gloriam Dei. The world was created according to laws. Numeric ones, as much as that may gall the "philosophic" element. Understanding the numbers gives insight into the mind of God. This is a holy task. It should be approached with reverence and awe.
It makes me very sad for mankind when I see those that actually believe in holiness hide their collective heads in the sand (or up their collective ass, depending on how you look at it). According to these morons, we understood God at the time of Moses, what more could we learn? Six days, dinosaurs and people roaming around with saber-toothed tigers, flood "geology" and so forth. The whole thing is a scandal. It supports my theory that, as a culture, we are not ready for science. Modern Americans: we're either too vicious, or too fucking stupid.

Remember when you were a little kid? If you were like me and weren't around a lot of other children (at least in spirit not around them) you spent a lot of time hiding in your imagination. My second son, Andy is like this. He has the "black-footed penguin of death" as I call it, he just calls her penguin. Any time anything bad happens around here, it's penguin's fault. Penguin hits people, breaks lego towers, keeps Andy and John from sleeping at nap time, disturbs the Rosary, talks back, and any other wicked thing Andy can think for penguin to do. Andy is a very good kid. Penguin, however, is not.
Now wouldn't it be nice if this carried over into adulthood . . .
I would walk around work with a stuffed animal blaming all fuckups on it. It would make talking shit to other people a lot easier too. "I wasn't calling so-and-so stupid, it was frog." You get the picture. "Frog forgot to pay the power bill, not me." "Frog was speeding, I was trying to drive thirty-five." "Frog cut you off not me. What's that frog? Frog says you drive like an asshole anyway." Ah the simple pleasures in life, lost to adulthood.

Let's open a can of worms. All modern political philosophy from Locke to Rousseau and others says that the governments exists by consent of the governed. That may or may not be the foundations for the regime in which we live - I suppose certain friends of mine would say no. Be that as it may, there is even in "On Kingship" and certain passages of the Summa by St. Thomas that require government to have the consent of the governed. Look at our current regime. What if the government lost the consent. What does that morally do? Does the governing body have to have a mass resignation? What qualifies as consent? Simple majority? Plurality?
But what if the governing body lost the consent of the ruled - but did not lose the power. Wouldn't that put us two degrees from Molotov cocktails and rock fights? It wouldn't be a rebellion, or a revolt - both of these operate within the framework of a legitimate government. It would be a revolution. So if natural law states that the foundation of rule is by consent, and the consent is rescinded, then revolution is legal (in the natural sense if not in the sense of positive human law). But then again, if the rule of (positive) law broke down, I'd probably be one of the first assholes up against the wall when the revolution came.

Since my mathematico-physical writings hold no interest for anyone (at least that may pretend to read this), I decided to bring in science in a popularized way to the glacier. All week in the newspapers and on the internet there have been articles on the "death" of Pluto. On the Daily Southtown in Chicago the front page even had "Pluto: 1930-2006". What a crock of shit. Pluto still is what it is, the have just changed what they classify it as. The new definition of "planet" includes sufficient mass to avoid irregularities in the orbit. It is well known that Pluto's orbit overlaps Neptune's. Thus, by the new definition it is not a planet. So what. I like to think of it analogically: you can call a shithead a neo-conservative, but does that change the underlying? You could call a Puritan a "trad", and what's the difference? One could even call whining irrational linguistics "postmodern philosophy" but it still is what it is.
A rose by any other name. . .?

If we have a non-expanding, rotating "universe" with a non-zero cosmological constant of sufficiently severe four dimensional geometry, the geodesic (or rather world-line of a particular body) describes a "circle". This is not to say a body "orbits" continually. That misses the point. Orbits understand the closed loop not as a geodesic, but rather in three dimensional space. Repetition is not the case, but rather the cessation of time per se according to the mathematical construct. The question then becomes not whether this (our) universe could conform to the radical geometry of the "Godel universe" but rather, given the equivalence of all frames of reference in general relativity, how this does not "kill" time for all frames of reference. That is to say that if time (t in equations) can be shown - when conjoined to space in the continuum - to be demonstrably false, what does this do to our intuitive sense (philosophical sense?) of time.

There is a tension between positivist empirical science and theoretical philosophy of science (or theoretical physics). On the one hand, empiricism leads us from our experience of time to the measurement of time by clocks. But this very "commonsensical" approach leads us to the integration of time with space as the four dimensional continuum. If we, in an empirical manner, describe, mathematically, time as space-like all vestiges of "time", as we experience it, fade. Time then becomes the t of the equation, the fourth dimension in exotic geometry. All that then remains is the equivocal name.

A little research into the writings of one of my heroes, Godel, has provided me with an interesting conundrum. I understand general relativity pretty well; well enough that I can manipulate the more simple solutions to the field equations. But I have a problem... or is it physics??

We all remember special relativity and the deductions that distance and time are dependent upon relative motion, and what happens in one frame of reference can be described equally as well in another frame of reference, provided gravity is ignored and the frames are moving in a uniform non-rotating manner. But general relativity elaborates on this, including gravity and any relative motion whatsoever. Just as in special relativity, in general relativity any frame of motion works equally well to describe any motion. Hell, its all relative.
Well, Schwartzchild discovered that there are solutions to the field equations for gravity that would produce infinite gravitation: the Schwartzchild singularity. Then they were observed (black holes, they are called, because Schwartzchild singularity is a mouthful). Also, we can see that because of the distortion that gravity has on the four dimensional spacetime fabric, all bodies move along "geodesics" in space-time - the shortest 4D path geometrically speaking. But if we change frames of reference, we're okay - 'cause its all relative. Still things move along geodesics - just with regard to the newly distorted space-time. Also, for general relativity to be "true" all imaginable possible "universes" that satisfy the field equations are all equally valid.
But then Godel had to come along. In 1949 he published a brief paper showing solutions to the field equations (now called Godel Universes) where the geodesic was a circle. "A circle!!?" you exclaim. Or perhaps you don't. This would mean that traveling quickly, one would come to a "point" in "time" that was the beginning. Time would be circular. But before you break out the H. G. Wells, if you go forward to the past, then the past hasn't passed because it is presently the future. Either it is, or in the Godel Universe, there is no time. "Okay fine, there's no time in the Godel Universe, so fucking what?" But if in this possible universe there is no time, it is equally valid in all universes satisfying the strictures of general relativity - including our own. Therefore there's no time.
So, relativity captures time and shoe-horns it into a space-like dimension. This renders all philosophic, empirical, epistemological concerns for time null. But in capturing time, in sealing it with space, in making it computable, time pulled a Houdini - and vanished.
What now?

It has been awhile since I mentioned Kurt Godel in this on-again off-again excuse for a blog. I was again pondering incompleteness as a theorem in reference to human understanding and the myth of artificial intelligence. Since all computers (machines) work by a finite set of axioms (on-offs or 0 and 1s in binary code) and all finite sets of axioms are mathematically incapable of demonstrating truths within their systems (that can be known to be true by man) computers are incapable of thinking even if thinking were purely mechanistic. It seems rather to point out that men do not think mechanistically - a crushing blow to computer geeks and positivists everywhere.

But what really piqued my curiosity was the paper Godel wrote in 1949 about relativity. Still in the process of researching, but needless to say the physics of a static, rotating universe with a non-zero cosmological constant intrigues me. I'll keep you posted. . .

I'm another year older today. It always makes me muse on my life around this time. I was thinking about the proverbial 'where am I in life' question, and wondering if this is where I saw myself when I graduated high school, or college. Then I realized: I didn't see myself really anywhere - and that is where I've ended up. Every plan I've ever had has been either half-assed or delusional, and of course has never come to pass. But it is easier to daydream than to work for something. God must know that I'm incapable of self-determination too - for some things have fallen through due to no fault of my own. Random failure makes me wonder how much worse of a person I would be if I had success. But, we must trust in His wisdom. On another digression, the Hubble Constant has been recalculated recently. If the new data is correct, the calculations for the age and size of the universe need to be increased by fifteen percent. This makes the universe not 13.7 billion years old, but rather 15.8 billion years old. Increased human insignificance? Perhaps.