TMI
> After all, the Elohim only gave themselves a day to create us (…albeit they
> wasted the following day).
This reminded me of the time Ken Iverson recommended that I read The Book of J
(I was trying to get him to tell me why the new language was named J).
The Jahwist, or Yahwist, often abbreviated J, is one of the hypothesized
sources of the Pentateuch--the first five books of the Hebrew Bible—Genesis,
Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
The purported authors are J and E. Other authors are P (Priestly), D
(Deuteronomist), and R (Redactor, the editor who pulled the various pieces
together).
Some passages refer to God by calling God by the name Yahweh, but others refer
to God using a plural noun as Elohim. In P, God's name is not yet known
("God," in Hebrew Elohim, is not a name; it is what God is.
Genesis 1-2:3 always and only refers to God as Elohim
What Harold Bloom and David Rosenberg did in their book, The Book of J, was
isolate the J text, translated it, and add commentary.
The Book of J argues in several essays that "J" was not a religious writer but
a fierce ironist and a woman living in the court of King Solomon. He also
argues that J is a writer on par with Homer, Shakespeare and Tolstoy.
In Genesis 11:1–9 is the story of the Tower of Babel in which Yahweh confuses
mankind's language to prevent them from understanding each other and
approaching divinity.
Maybe there is a metaphor or model of deconstruction to understand what became
and would become of the languages APL and J
... "Tower of Babel," a tall structure listing hundreds of programming
languages… Ada, Pascal, C++, BCPL, a predecessor of C.
> the growth of new languages will probably slow down and evolution will
> produce dominant languages that will force out weaker ones.
> of the approximately 1000 languages implemented up to 1993, 700 are dead.
> HOPL-II papers in the ACM SIGPLAN Notices, March 1993.
>
According to scientists there is no such thing as settled science. Science is
iterative— think of Aristotle who said the Sun and the planets orbited Earth
with no sign that the Earth was in motion. The laws of motion were refined by
Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Einstein.
The main mechanism of quality assurance for science is peer review but also
wider publication. Public participation in review of science requires that the
public be science-literate—better educated.
> Jose – thank you for introducing me to Alhazen.
> Significantly predates René Descartes, whom I recall being taught was the
> originator of the Method of Systematic Doubt.
> Quite clearly the priority belongs to Alhazen.
Anaxagoras lived in the fifth century BC. He was called the first philosopher
in Athens. He has been called the father of Physics. Socrates said that
greatness in any art required the Anaxagorean lesson. Anaxagoras helped
Pericles not by telling him how the world works but by getting him to value
thinking about how the world works.
Anaxagorus made careful observational and calculations and determined that the
moon and sun were not gods, but objects. He learned that the rocky moon
reflects light from the fiery sun and that allowed him to explain lunar phases
and eclipses.
He believed that the original state of the cosmos was a primordial mixture of
all its ingredients which existed in infinitesimally small fragments of
themselves. This mixture was not entirely uniform--some ingredients were
present in higher concentrations than others and varied from place to place. At
some point in time, this mixture was set in motion. The whirling motion shifted
and separated out the ingredients ultimately producing the cosmos of separate
material objects, all with different properties.
Anaxagoras was labeled as a chief denier of the idea that the moon and sun
were deities. He was sentenced to death for breaking impiety laws. Instead he
went into exile for the rest of his life.
Anaxagoras (c. 500 bce — c. 428 BCE,
Alhazen (Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham) c. 965 – c. 1040 AD
Descartes (1596–1650)
Alhazen had to pretend to be mad while he worked on his science to escape the
wrath of the caliph of Cairo.
see: COSMOLOGICAL THEORIES THROUGH HISTORY
https://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/cosmological.html
<https://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/cosmological.html>
Descartes aimed for a system of philosophy and ethics independent of arbitrary
assumptions and authority. He began by doubting everything he knew, testing to
discover what he could not doubt—that would be his axiom, an irrefutable truth
on which to build Everything. He landed on “I think therefore I am.” Then he
posited that his existence must have a cause greater than himself—God. Ooops—he
slipped in an axiom about things in the Universe needing causes. And another
about the direction of causes (whereas physics is time-symmetric and entropy
gives time its arrow). And another about…well you can go on. It's basically
bolloks.
Sextus Empiricus documented skeptical arguments of other skeptics up to 200 CE
to challenge any claims of dogmatic philosophers and in the fifteenth century
the texts of Sextus in Greek were brought from the Byzantine Empire into Italy.
It was to be used as a weapon against philosophy independent of religion. It
was the time if the Reformation. In 1524, Erasmus published an attack on Martin
Luther's views on free will. The central error of Erasmus' book, according to
Luther, was that Erasmus did not realize that a Christian cannot be a skeptic.
Christianity involves the affirmation of certain truths because one's
conscience is completely convinced of their veracity.
Descartes wanted a system immune from skeptics. Descartes tried to prove that
God would not let us be chronically deceived.
Descartes withdrew his book from being published when he learned that Galileo
was captured by the Inquisitors of the Faith. He didn’t mention Capernicus or
heliocentric solar system.
Skepticism originally had a particular meaning to the Greeks—continual
inquiry—I don’t know but I'm trying to find out. It was founded on the will to
seek truth.
Bayle argued that the theories of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Malebranche,
when skeptically analyzed, cast in doubt all information about the world, and
even whether a world exists.
The Catholic Church condemned Galileo for his wayward thinking and declared
that both science and scripture were settled on an earth-centred universe. Pope
Urban VIII’s chief inquisitor sentenced the aged astronomer to house arrest
after he was forced to publicly recant his denial of geocentricism.
On SEPT. 11, 1822
>> The College of Cardinals finally caves in to the hard facts of science,
>> saying that the "publication of works treating of the motion of the Earth
>> and the stability of the sun, in accordance with the opinion of modern
>> astronomers, is permitted.”
In 1992, for a pope John Paul II officially concede that the Earth isn't
stationary in the heavens and eight years after that, in 2000, apologized for
the way the Catholic Church treated Galileo.
Climate skeptics question the causes of climate change, just as Darwin skeptics
question the underlying causes responsible for evolution. They question the
extent of environmental impacts to date. They also question proposed solutions
and suggest they are draconian measures more likely to do harm or good.
> But some of the "reasons" we were given don't stand up to simple modelling.
> Like the reason why the human eye couldn't have arisen by blind chance. Or
> that natural selection can give rise to sterile worker ants
It was Sir Charles Bell who talked about the human hand evincing intelligent
design and evolution being both impartial and blind. These are theories of
Natural Theology.
The PAX6, SIX, VAX, and EMX gene families are concerned with the development of
eyes.
Darwin discussed sterile worker ants in the context of how evolution by natural
selection could apply. Eusocial insects such as ants, wasps and bees, are
divided into reproductive and sterile castes. Worker ants provide valuable
services that help their nest mates reproduce without reproducing themselves.
Darwin proposed that natural selection operates both on individuals and on the
family or group. The latest finding of genetics and molecular signalling show
how different species of ants have evolved to larger colony sizes and more
coherent the groups.
The skeptical arguments being raised about climate models are remarkably
similar to arguments raised about evolution.
Intelligent Design tries to refute evolutionary theory but pointing to eyes (or
any other living structure) that they say can’t possibly form by blind chance
and must have they must have been created, or designed, by some intelligent
designer. The concept of irreducible complexity is one of the pillars for the
theory of Intelligent Design. (Axiom--only intelligence has the capability of
creating things that are very complex or very unlikely). If some life form was
found that was unrelated to all life on earth—the most likely explanation would
be that it was extraterrestrial not that it proved Intelligent Design.
Darwin’s theory of evolution does not invoke blind chance—it says natural
selection is sufficient to account for changes. This can be modelled in various
ways to gain understanding. see for example
Evolutionary dynamics on graphs
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature03204
<https://www.nature.com/articles/nature03204>
Skeptical arguments about climate change argue climate is not driven by manmade
factors but is due to natural causes. Teachers are told to explicitly teach
“both sides” of the climate change debate.
Expressions of climate science skepticism include questioning the expertise of
climate scientists or questioning whether climate is amenable to being modelled
or questioning if anything can be done—all legitimate questions. However is the
skepticism aiming to further inquiries and learn more or to shut down
scientific inquiry?
> On Jun 22, 2019, at 10:39 PM, Ian Clark <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> The advantage of the Met Office is that it's not the website of a
> campaigning organisation, which could in principle be trimming its figures
> to fit its outlook. The Met Office has an overriding mission to forecast
> the weather accurately. Period.
There misleading information put out by enterprises seeking to evade
climate-related restrictions for purely financial reasons—this is very well
hidden since they are targeting people typically suspicious of large
corporations.
Here is an example of a campaigning organization:
> The billionaire boss of Ineos has launched an outspoken attack on “stupid”
> European energy policies that he said were deterring investment in the
> industry.
The Anglo-Swiss chemicals firm Ineos, founded by Sir Jim Rattcliffe, who is the
chief executive and chairman, is privately leading an industry lobbying attempt
to avoid paying for the cost of decarbonising Britain’s economy.
Ineos now has rights toto drill and explore for shale gas across 1.2m acres in
the East Midlands, Yorkshire and Cheshire.
> The campaign is being supported by the UK Student Climate Network
> <https://ukscn.org/>, which helped coordinate the recent school strikes that
> saw more than a million young people
> <https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/19/school-climate-strikes-more-than-1-million-took-part-say-campaigners-greta-thunberg>take
> part in demonstrations over the escalating global warming crisis.
>
> Anna Taylor, 18, co-founder of the group, said: “Climate criminals like
> Ineos, with their fracking for plastics agenda, are already destroying our
> environment and fuelling climate change for profit.
>
> “Allowing them unfettered access to classrooms and attempting to normalise
> their fossil fuels ‘extractivism’ with our generation is totally and utterly
> unacceptable and must be outlawed.”
>
You could have students assess not only the cost but the feasibility of the
proposed carbon capture and storage technique used to achieve negative
emissions. Offsetting 15-20 years of current annual emissions amounts to to
600-800 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide.
The students could learn what variables are omitted from climate models--solar
activity, volcanic eruptions, or natural ocean ENSO (El Ninos/ La Ninas)
cyclical environmental conditions The variance due to these factors can be
accounted for after the fact when making comparisons of actual CO2 levels to
previous predictions. What initiates an event? Why are some events more extreme
than others, the foreseeable future, ENSO may not be reliably predicted more
than a few months in advance. The “well observed” record goes back to the
1950s, which means there are only ~15-20 La Nina or El Niño events to study.
Let them know that greenhouse gas concentrations is not the only thing driving
global warming; changing land use, such as the conversion of forests to
farmland, coastland lost to rising sea levels will add to the problem, too.
Colored dissolved organic matter is omitted—CDOM and chlorophyl because they
don’t have the processing power
All models are wrong but some are useful. They won’t be flawless and they won’t
be precise but we use models as tools to understand things.
> The computer used to develop and run the first model was a Univac 1108 with
> half a megabyte of memory—not enough to store a song or a high-resolution
> picture today. Most watches, cell phones, MP3 players, and other electronic
> gadgets now have computer chips that process faster than the Univac 1108. It
> took 20 minutes to run one model-day for just the atmosphere. The modern
> supercomputer at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL)
> currently provides more than 100,000 times the computing power of that early
> computer.
Donna Y
[email protected]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
