Sign on the door

Open up the sky
All gather around
Praise the Lord and
Take a look at what I found
I got love that's as big as raging storm
I got walls coming down that I don't need no more
I got a sign on the door that says
Lonely don't live here anymore

Kasey Chambers

Faust in Copenhagen

This book, Faust in Copenhagen by Gino Segrè, looks very interesting. I read a review from the UK Telegraph written by Kenan Malik, a British lecturer, writer and broadcaster, with a background in neurobiology and history of science.

Malik critiques Segrè for not paying enough attention to the physics of quantum mechanics:

What interests Segrè is the context of scientific discovery, both personal and cultural. This is both the strength and the weakness of his book.

I don't see that this has to be a weakness. I haven't read much about quantum mechanics, but surely there are already books around which deal with the physics in detail. What's wrong with a book that deals more with the personalities involved, and the cultural context? It sounds like Segrè has a fascinating thesis:

Quantum mechanics, he suggests, was part of a broader development in which modernism overthrew classical concepts. Quantum theories resulted from the same kind of 'wild experimenting' that also produced James Joyce's Ulysses, Schoenberg's atonalism and Giorgio de Chirico's landscapes. In all these cases 'the outer world, carefully described for hundreds of years, did not seem to match the inner world that was being uncovered'.

Malik does not agree, however:

The strangeness of quantum mechanics is, however, not a reflection of the cultural context in which the theories developed - it is simply a reflection of the fact that the subatomic world is indeed a strange place... If, as Einstein said, God doesn't play dice with the universe, it's not because he hasn't read Ulysses.

I'm open to sociological treatments of science - not, perhaps, as a replacement for discussing the "science" or the "physics", but as a complementary viewpoint. Obviously, if quantum mechanics is an accurate depiction and explanation of the sub-atomic universe, it wasn't the culture of the early 20th-century that made the universe this way. However, the surrounding culture may have given the scientists involved the conceptual tools with which to understand the sub-atomic world.

I think this book would make a nice addition to my library and I'm looking forward to reading it. Shame about that pesky PhD...

Gwyneth

My "new" laptop (now nearly one year old) does not yet have a name. I refer to my old laptop as "Dell" - partly because she (yes, it's a girl) is a Dell, and partly in honour of Del, the main character in Alice Munro's Lives of Girls and Women, one of my favourite books.

I have decided that my current laptop will now be known as "Gwyneth." Since Gwyneth Paltrow named her daughter "Apple", it seems fitting to name my Apple "Gwyneth."

(By the way, this post was written on my other Apple - the computer I use at uni - which shall henceforth be known as... no, that's going a bit too far!)

Tee hee!

I was just writing an email and made a typo in the word "conversation". I have now decided that "coonversation" is a good word to describe talking about cheese!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Ouch, my sides!

(See, this is what doing a PhD can do to a person...)

Animator versus Animation

This is extremely cool. Click here.

Nice. Very nice.

"Don't you have to believe in the 39 articles?

"Only the evangelical ones."

Click here.

Ouch!

I went to the gym last night. I hadn't been since Saturday, because I'd been a bit lazy, but I was feeling pretty good so I didn't go too easy on myself. I spent 20 minutes walking briskly on the treadmill; 10 minutes on the exercise bike; 5 minutes on the rowing machine; 5 minutes on the cross-trainer; and then only 7.5 minutes on the treadmill again before I felt a stitch in my side and couldn't continue. I was a little surprised, because I generally work myself hard enough to get out of breath, but not hard enough to get a stitch (I don't know if that's a good thing, or a bad thing).

When I got home, my chest was feeling rather constricted, as though something were pressing on it, preventing me from taking a deep breath. I figured I must be coming down with a cold or something (not good!) This morning, when I woke up, I could still feel the spot where I had a stitch. I'm not in a lot of pain - it just feels uncomfortable. I'm wondering if I actually pulled a muscle while I was on the rowing machine or cross-trainer. Not good at all!

I'm back!

I figured it was about time I updated my blog. I've been back in the country for just over two weeks; back at uni for one week; and back at my thesis for one day. Perhaps I'll get around to finishing my travel blog some day (I had a great time in Oxford, Lancaster, Walsall and Edinburgh!) but at the moment I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by the PhD.

Today I've been looking over my first three chapters and various notes I've made to try to figure out how to improve them. I just came across this little note that I wrote on 24-5-07. I was working on my conference papers, and thinking through my "model" of natural theology. I wrote:

I really need to read all natural theological works again to see if this all fits! Aack! Exhaustion!!

Ecclesiastes 12:12 is the favourite Bible verse of students everywhere, but I think it is even more appropriate for PhD students:

Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

Not only are there more books made by the time you finish your PhD so that the literature review that you wrote at the beginning is now out of date, but your ideas change, so you need to go back and look again at all the stuff you've read over the first few years because you'll now see it in a different light... I get exhausted just thinking about it!

2007 New College Lectures

Prof Oliver O'Donovan will present the New College Lectures in 2007 on the topic of 'moral wakefulness'-the mind alert to shape decisions and actions. Professor O'Donovan is one of the foremost scholars in the field of Christian ethics. He is currently Professor of Christian Ethics and Practical Theology at the University of Edinburgh School of Divinity, Scotland (since 2006). He has published 10 major works which have had a significant impact in the world of political theology and ethics.

Much has been said about the need for moral judgment, foundational values and ethical practice in business, public and personal life. Professor O'Donovan suggests that "the experience of moral wakefulness is universal, and ways of describing the experience, and the philosophical puzzles they pose, are legion". In this lecture series he will explore how we overcome the constant tensions that arise between the objective and subjective, valuing and deciding, 'good' and the 'right'? Professor O'Donovan believes that Christian faith can shed light on this commonest and yet most mysterious of human experiences. He will explore this topic in three public lectures over three nights:

Tuesday 4th September: 'Waking'
The metaphor of wakefulness is constantly drawn on in the Gospels to focus the heart of moral sensibility. How does the invocation of God serve to make the moral stance conceivable to us?
Drinks and canapés in Scientia building UNSW from 6:15 pm with lectures to follow from 7:15pm, question time and supper.

Wednesday 5th September: 'Admiring'
Moral attentiveness to the world is a task of affective intelligence, of 'admiration', not merely of 'cognition'. What kind of coherence and order do we suppose in our world and how do assertions about a 'Word of God' serve to underpin that coherence?
7:30pm Main Common Room, New College , UNSW. Question time and supper to follow the lecture.

Thursday 6th September: 'Resolving'
How can we make the transition of reason from what is the case to what we are to do? How may we intelligently 'frame' an action to perform without arbitrariness?
7:30pm Main Common Room, New College, UNSW. Question time and supper to follow the lecture.

Entrance is Free
New College is located on Anzac Pde, Kensington @ UNSW
RSVP essential for all lectures by 31st August
Phone (02) 9381 1999 or email newcollege@unsw.edu.au