Arquivo para a ‘Information Science’ Categoria
The mystery of black holes
04
Jan
The center of the Milky Way, the galaxy where our
solar system inhabits, is formed by a disk with spiral arms and a dense, yellowish central region known as the “bulge” and there are around ten billion stars orbiting the colossal object that is its center called the supermassive black hole Sagittrius A*.
So, if in the past geocentrism (the Earth as the center) was a naive idea, now Heliocentrism (the sun as the center) is also a provincial and outdated idea, but what black holes are, it was not Einstein but Karl Schwarzschild who was the first to propose its existence.
Steven S. Gubser’s book “The Little Book of Black Holes”, deals in a simple way, as much as possible, explains Einstein’s special and general relativity and Schwarzschild’s equations that gave rise to the topic, black holes are one of the strong themes in current astronomy and one of the sources of research for the James Webb mega-telescope.
The book begins by recounting an experiment carried out on September 14, 2015, almost a hundred years after Einstein announced his theory of general relativity, two massive detectors, one in Louisiana and the other in Washington, were carrying out a gravitational wave experiment when they detected an audible signal, such as a serious knock and five months later they announced that they had detected two colliding black holes forming a larger one, the discovery was spectacular.
Both black holes and gravitational waves were predicted in Einstein’s Theory. In this theory, the black hole is a region of space-time (the notion of absolute time and space has already been overcome) where all nearby matter is attracted and is impossible to escape.
There is a popular saying that everything that goes up must come down, says the author, however the idea of the Schwarzschild equations is that nothing can go up, only come down and in the case of black holes where does that which must come down go, that is, what happens to what is attracted to the black hole.
We know the story of the apple that would have inspired Newton’s law of universal gravitation, the author of the book then suggests an apple falling into a black hole.
An apple outside the black hole events everything is static, at the horizon of these events everything is dynamic, flowing towards an all-encompassing singularity (where space-time changes dynamically in an extraordinary way, there two dimensions compress and the third is stretched.
Stephen Hawking, famous for proposing Big Bang equations, speculated that black holes are not actually black, they have their color (in fact, outside our visual range of colors from violet to red) determined by temperature, energy and entropy of its surface (if we can call the two dimensions that, since it is space-time).
This simplified introduction is developed over seven chapters of the book, in astronomical details and their equations, which requires some more specific knowledge of physics.
Gubser, Steven S., Pretorius, F. 2021. The Little Book of Black Hole. US: Princeton Press, 2018.
Physics and the mind of God
03
Jan
The basic original question of man is language,
but when searching for information man was forced to look at the universe and try to understand its enigmas, geocentrism (the earth as the center of everything), heliocentrism (the sun as the center of everything) dominated human language and thought for millennia, throughout this time anthropocentrism dominated human conception and with this the attempt to dominate all of nature grew.
However, nature is indomitable, modernity was an attempt to dominate the forces of nature and assert anthropocentrism over it, but it has its own logic, and when looking more deeply the universe that had a mythological explanation moved to a more focused focus. clear of eschatological inquiry: where did we come from and where are we going.
The book by theoretical physicist Michio Kaku: “The God equation” takes a deep dive into this issue from contemporary physics and cosmology, the physicist is the great theorist of string physics (Hyperspace is one of his books), professor at Harvard and host of programs on Discovery Channel.
In his book he explains the quest of physicists such as Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein to try to explain all the forces of the cosmos, what is called the theory of everything, and which in its current formulation is called the Standard Physics Theory, the discovery of quantum forces of particles, including the Higgs boson, the vision of the photon with a particle of zero mass, the particles of terrestrial magnetism helped this unification, but that’s not all.
Many physicists have failed, the quantum explanation breaks with the idea of “thing” that some dualist authors continue to have, the “quantum” is something beyond it has a third state, called in physics the “third included” where a particle is between the Being and Non-Being and is not dual.
If this state of quantum physics is already a reality, what the particles actually are is still a mystery, and the “most promising candidate (and, in my opinion, the only candidate) is string theory, which says that the universe it is not made of point particles, but rather of tiny vibrating strings, where each mode of vibration corresponds to a subatomic particle” (Kaku, 2022).
We would need a microscope powerful enough to see electrons, quarks, neutrinos, etc. they are nothing more than vibrations of tiny loops, similar to rubber bands. If we put these elastic bands to vibrate countless times and in different ways, we will eventually be able to create all the subatomic particles in the universe, and this means that the laws of physics are summarized in these modes of vibration of the small strings.
Kaku says in the introduction to his book: “chemistry is a set of melodies that we can play with them. The universe is a symphony. The mind of God, which Einstein eloquently referred to, is a cosmic music that spreads across space-time” (Kaku, 2022).
Kaku, Michio. 2022. A equação de Deus (The God equation). Trans. Alexandre Cherman, Brazil, R.J.: ed. Record, 2022.
From information to narration
02
Jan
The title is purposefully the opposite of the first
chapter of Byung Chul Han’s book on the crisis of narration, although he quotes Walter Benjamin who cites the experience of narration in a period before the internet, but the Korean-German philosopher does not clearly see this previous crisis the internet, and thus he himself falls into what he condemns, the absence of analysis in time.
If it is true that the Internet and its tool for making information available to laypeople, which is the Web (born in the 90s, more than 20 years after the internet) not only created a profusion of means of disseminating information and its narratives, but also created the possibility of its profusion in audio and video, which gives rise to a new possibility of recorded narration for podcasts and videos.
Of course, this does not mean that that primitive narrative prior to writing and the press, typical of primary orality, has returned, it exists in original cultures and also in some Western cultures and beliefs, for example, among the Kurds there are the “çîrokbê” who, if it were Literally translated, it would be what we understand in Western culture as “history”.
Byung Chul Han’s sentence about the digital universe is clear: “Digitalization deobjectifies and disembodies the world. It also eliminates memories” (Han, 2022) this is partly true, but digital media itself, once recorded, becomes a thing, and once a narration is made, just for example, by Kurdish narrators, the information (in the sense of Chul Han) returns to narration, that is, the reverse process is possible.
Its error, from a philosophical point of view, is an old question about what things are (or what they are), the relationship between subject and object is the result of Western dualism since Parmenides, and only a non-dual vision can understand that the A thing is also not a thing in itself, once narrated.
Thus, information will always be paradoxical, it is narrated when it is and not narrated after it has become narrated-information and is subject to historical distance, but if seen from the point of view of quantum physics it is even more complex, because there are both things, from which the question arises from some physicists that time does not exist, difficult for today’s culture.
This question of time arose in 2012 in a TedTalk by the Italian Carlo Roveli: “Time Doesn’t Exist and I’ll Tell You That in 15 Minutes”, but has gained popularity now because the James Webb mega-telescope proposes several new paradigms when looking deeper into the universe, We are at the end of the Copernican era, the center of our galaxy is a black hole and they have already started to say what they are, dark matter and dark energy are also beginning to be revealed.
The theoretical physicist Michio Kaku gives the history of this idea, “In The God Equation” (ed. Record, 224 pp, trans.: Alexandre Cherman), and there he gives a written account of today’s physics.
Han, Byung-Chul (2022). Não-coisas : reviravoltas do mundo da vida / Byung-Chul Han ; tradução de Rafael Rodrigues Garcia. – Petrópolis, RJ : Vozes, Brazil.
Happy 2024 and blog line
31
Dec
It is difficult to make a positive assessment of 2023,
we expected some positive reaction from humanity in the post-pandemic where many died as a result of the worsening of collateral diseases caused by the coronavirus, we expected more solidarity and respect for human life.
Ukraine will start the year with a day of mourning due to the massive attack carried out by Russia that killed 39 people and injured 159 others, most of them civilians, the UN declared the attack “unacceptable” and the United States admits direct intervention in war through its troops, this would in practice represent the beginning of a 3rd. World War.
In addition to this crisis, there is the scourge of war in the Gaza strip and tension between Venezuela and Guyana.
The year is not yet over and this month the blog broke its record number of hits with more than 32 thousand and the new line where we delve deeper into the issue of the noosphere, based on Teilhard Chardin who coined the term, also the crisis of thought (we see that the philosophy is also experiencing a crisis) and which is the origin of the current civilizational crisis and Cyberculture, with ethical and social aspects that are deepened in readings of both the emergence of new technologies (ChatGPT, Bard, Azure, etc.) that enter the Era of Generative AI, in the LLM (Large Language Model) model.
The complex scenario requires reading a few authors who detect the golden thread of the current crisis, the idealistic model that comes from the dualism of Ancient Greece (being is and non-being is not), the centralizing and monopolizing state model (even the liberal model that grows in some countries continues to dictate centralized theories and models) and whose crisis affects the social body, culture and even religion where there is no shortage of false prophets, soothsayers and apocalypticists, this appeal grows depending on the severity of the time.
We leave a breath of hope, of certainty that it is possible to emerge from a crisis with balance, responsibility and a dispassionate look at problems, passion for life yes, but not that of fanatics and saviors of the country who contribute little or nothing to humanitarian and responsible for the human future.
2024: wrath or peace, hope
29
Dec
In 2023 we saw an escalation of wars: the war in
Ukraine intensified, after a terrorist attack by Hamas in Israel, the war there broke out and intensified, the threat of a dispute between Guyana and Venezuela which is now returning to the issue of sending from an English warship to the area.
The climate is far from being seen with possibilities of peace, in Ukraine, Russia carried out intense attacks at the end of the year and Poland accuses that there were missiles from Russia that violated its airspace, Hezbollah began an escalation of attacks on Israel, and Venezuela says it will respond to the British warship with “defensive” military action.
As if that weren’t enough, the election now in January in Taiwan puts pressure on China since conservative parties are in the lead and the defense of the territory that China considers its province is one of the mottos for the election and the provocations in Taiwan’s territorial waters are frequent (photo).
There is always hope, there are many forces that seek to demonstrate the senselessness of wars, the deaths of innocent people, the immense damage to national economies, and the first thing that is lost in all wars: the truth about the real interests in conflicts , are never what they proclaim: interests in defending “the people” and the most fragile who are precisely the biggest victims.
In the midst of the great conflict, what can happen is what they try to hide: the great clearing of consciences, not only collective ones, but mainly individual ones, countries and economies in ruins, poverty everywhere and on an individual level, what we are and what that we do around our personal conscience in the face of serious situations around us.
Although my personal hope is small in relation to war, it is great in relation to the individual plan, in great conflicts and great scourges, great men and great leaders appear who march in the opposite direction to the powerful and arrogant.
Those who have experienced great scourges and conflicts are those who witness the horror of wars.
The divine medium and the mass of the world
26
Dec
Complete 100 years since the Mass on the
World by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), he was a philosopher, paleontologist, Jesuit priest and French mystic, among his outstanding works are “The place of man in nature”, “The divine environment” and days celebrated 100 years of the Mass of the World.
In the scientific world, after graduating in Paleontology, at the Natural History Museum in Paris, he wrote his doctoral thesis: “The mammals of the French lower Eocene and their sites”, he was professor of geology at the Catholic Institute of Paris in 1920 during the period of his doctorate at the Sorbonne.
For Chardin, after the emergence of life in the period of cosmogenesis and geogenesis (formation of the universe), the biosphere is formed. ).
On one occasion when he was in the Ordos desert, in Mongolia, and had neither bread nor wine, he said that without being able to celebrate mass, he instead composed the Mass About the World, a mystical account in certain parts, but not far from the doctrine Christian, where he refers to the “Omega Point” and the “Cosmic Christ”, essential aspects of his thought.
There are excerpts from Laudato Si that recall this “mass”: “At the height of the mystery of the Incarnation, the Lord wants to reach our innermost being through a piece of matter. He does not do it from above, but from within, so that we can encounter Him in our own world. In the Eucharist, fullness is already achieved, being the vital center of the universe, a center overflowing with love and endless life. United with the incarnate Son, present in the Eucharist, the entire cosmos gives thanks to God. Indeed, the Eucharist is, in itself, an act of cosmic love’ (Laudato Si’, 236)
True joy
22
Dec
The word used for “joy”, in the original Greek, is
χαρά (chara), which is related to the words χάρις (charis), which is usually translated as “grace”, and χάρισμα (charisma), which means both a gift of grace, without cost, as coming from grace.
Thus there is something of “grace” in joy that differentiates it from happiness, due to the distance in understanding this term with an unnatural and objective aspect, there are those who prefer happiness as something more “solid” in times of liquid reductionism consecrated by a certain type of thought and that has even entered religious environments and thus seek it and what is objective, solid and which comes from idealism and Eurocentric thought.
Joy, peace and true asceticism are only found in hearts that have found true and divine wisdom.
The appeal to earthly goods, human achievements and all types of fleeting happiness, increasingly common in the idealist narrative, has nothing to do with joy, and if there is happiness it is fleeting and will have a cost.
Christmas and the end of the year festivities can be part of this fleeting happiness or give space to the hearts and souls that have already found perennial and eternal joy: the divine in the midst of the human.
Confidence and humility
21
Dec
In moral philosophy there are two types of trust:
trust, which is characterized by the deepest interpersonal relationship, which involves good will and vulnerability, and reliability, a more basic type of trust that refers to the functioning of the world and things.
A good interpersonal relationship cannot be established without respect, and respect requires humility, simplicity and true relationships. Reliability also involves humility in learning how the world and things work and finding balance in social relationships.
There is an epistemological concept that works on the issue of trust, it involves testimony, it helps knowledge both in personal relationships and in reliability.
Interpersonal conceptions propose a use of the concept of trust based on analogies, and can be applied to epistemological debates without neglecting the moral issue.
This neglect due to an excessively objective and even positivist conception that still strongly influences epistemic approaches is common. An interesting proposal to be analyzed is from Richard Foley (2001).
The use of moral concepts in epistemology (LOCKE, 1975; CHISHOLM, 1966) worked in moral philosophy to resolve epistemic questions, but it is questionable whether the simple reduction of epistemic concepts to moral is valid, Firth (1978) defends the irreducibility of epistemic concepts , saying that although they can be conceived in an analogous way, and may even be similar, they are not irreducible to each other, which can cause theoretical confusion.
So because they are analogous and relevant, because many of our daily beliefs (not necessarily objectively scientific concepts) are acquired by the speech acts of other human beings in everyday relationships, the problem then is precisely knowing how to accept these speech acts as epistemic sources, as they are in different cultures and on a large social scale.
Foley uses the concept of self-trust, but the relationship we establish with our own faculties is a relationship of reliability. If we look for the origins of both concepts, we will find considerable differences between rely and trust, but they are used as synonyms and ignore the differences.
Foley’s mistake is precisely because he disregards the moral characteristics of trust, and it is important to be studied because of this, in everyday life we forget that trust involves moral aspects, including a fundamental one, which is humility in recognizing the speech of the Other.
CHISHOLM, R. (1966) Theory of knowledge. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
FIRTH, R. (1978) Are epistemic concepts reducible to ethical concepts? In: GOLDMAN, A. I.; KIM, J. Values and Morals. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
FOLEY, R. (2001) Intellectual trust in oneself and others. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press.
LOCKE, J. (1975) An essay concerning human understanding. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Humility and power
20
Dec
Polarizations and assertions of power are growing, this does not lead to symmetry, respect and goes in the opposite direction of humility, not that corny text typical of power, but that wisdom of those who know what they are and where they come from, the dust or humus, where the word comes from.
Humus is the Greek word that means earth and that updated in Portuguese became fertile land, from this same word the words “man” and “humanity” originate, and if it can be opposed to an idea of power, on the other hand it is not opposite to the idea of strength and wisdom.
For Hannah Arendt, power is inherent to any political community, but true leaders result from the human capacity to act together, under the consensus of all, and Byung Chul Han, who is a reader of Hannah Arendt, establishes that only symmetry where respect exists, which is the foundation of the public sphere, and where it disappears, it collapses, he writes in his book “The Swarm” which examines culture in the new social media.
Based on these recipes for power exercised in favor of and with the public sphere, it is possible to think of a power relationship with humility, true empowerment is not the exercise of force or even violence, but its suppression and the reestablishment of balance, dialogue and if possible, from consensus, true leaders seek this.
Yes, it is contrary to everything we are seeing and witnessing in the public sphere, the imposition of people, structures and ways of oppressing one part of the population in response to another that claims to be the owner of true privileges due to the violence suffered, however, that is, a vicious circle where violence is justified and perpetuated.
It is not by chance that wars grow with or without weapons, but considering that it is possible to subjugate the opposing group by this means is a delusion, since anyone who is subjected to some type of deprivation, without the humility that results from wisdom and fortress, will respond in kind and the principle of all war is exactly this.
We spoke in the previous post about matris in grêmio, generator of divine wisdom and strength, in the biblical text it says that the powerful looked at “the humility of his servant”, but even leaders and religious currents understand this “power” as the worldly one that oppresses the Other, which is the origin of so many apostasies and bad doctrines, not by chance end in abuse of power.
T he angel who announces the divinity of Mary’s conception (the name Conceição comes from there), is Gabriel which means fortress of God, in a society where arrogant, arrogant power predominates and which turns into dictatorial, it is understandable that the power of a fragile virgin and docile the divine will is incomprehensible, nothing more contrary to the oppressive false “power”.
Blessed Duns Scotus
08
Dec
The wisdom and depth of the teachings of this 13th
century Franciscan friar, however, took 9 centuries to be recognized and venerated by the Catholic Church. It was only during the Pontificate of John Paul II that he was beatified and recognized as a saint.
Pope Francis in a recent homily extolled the qualities of Scotus, stating: “There are great scholars, great specialists, great theologians, teachers of the faith, who have taught us many things. They penetrated the details of Sacred Scripture (…), but they could not see the mystery itself, the true core (…). The essentials remained hidden! (…)”.
Gifted with a brilliant intelligence and driven to speculation, this intelligence for which he earned the title of Doctor subtilis “Subtle Doctor”, Duns Scotus was directed to study philosophy and theology at the famous universities of Oxford and Paris and his work
Endowed with a brilliant intelligence and driven to speculation – this intelligence for which he earned the title of Doctor subtilis, “subtle Doctor” from tradition -, Duns Scotus was directed to the studies of philosophy and theology at the famous universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Paris , and thus his works received the titles of Opus Oxoniense (Oxford), Reportatio Cambrigensis (Cambridge), Reportata Parisiensia (Paris).
Among his mystical works are studies on the incarnation, in Reportata Parisiense he wrote: “To think that God would have renounced this work if Adam had not sinned would be totally irrational. I say, therefore, that the fall was not the cause of Christ’s predestination, and that, even if no one had fallen, neither angel nor man, in this hypothesis Christ would still have been predestined in the same way” (in III Sent, d 7.4).
Duns Scotus, still aware that, in reality, because of original sin, Christ redeemed us with his Passion, Death and Resurrection, reaffirms that the Incarnation is the greatest and most beautiful work in the entire history of salvation and that this is not conditioned by no contingent fact, but is God’s original idea of finally uniting all created things with Himself in the person and flesh of the Son.
Pope Paul VI also declared this vision of the incarnation affirmed in Scotus: “strongly “Christocentric”, it opens us to contemplation, stupor and gratitude: Christ is the center of history and the cosmos, he is the One who gives meaning, dignity and value to our lives.” (homily of November 19, 1970).
Not only the role of Christ in the history of salvation, but also that of Mary is the object of reflection in Doctor subtilis. At the time of Duns Scotus, most theologians opposed an objection, which seemed insurmountable, to the doctrine according to which Mary Most Holy was exempt from original sin from the first moment of her conception: the dogma of the Immaculate conception of Mary, defended by Scotus centuries before the Catholic Church declared it.
Scotus was so convinced of this dogma that he was buried in the church of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary (photo), in Cologne, Germany, where he died on November 8, 1308.
