I listen to Great Courses on Audible. It helps to keep my brain working. Right now I am nearing the end of Einstein’s Relativity and the Quantum Revolution: Modern Physics for Non-Scientists. (US HERE – UK HERE) In that context, I also had reason this morning to peruse the must-own book by A.G. Sertillanges, OP, The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods (US HERE – UK HERE).
I found this in Sertillagnes (p. 116), which dove-tailed with my relativity endeavor:
The intellectual position of Thomism is so well chosen, so removed from all the extremes where abysses of error yawn, so central as regards the heights, that one is logically led up to it from every point of knowledge, and from it one radiates along continuous paths, in every direction of thought and experience.
That was a little bright spot for my day, a discrete packet of energy for my mind.
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Oh my gosh. I love beautiful writing. That is beautiful. I’d guess most people coming out of our current education system couldn’t read that. And if they did wouldn’t understand it.
Concerning relativity, I can recommend the little book by Dr. Einstein himself, which is actually quite readable for someone with a high school education in Physics and Math.
Also there is “Thirty Years that Shook Physics” by George Gamow, on quantum theory. That is actually still available at Amazon, as is the Einstein book.
I have a lot of respect for the Dominicans. They manage to keep the order together and can include within their community vast differences around liturgical sensibilities, practices, and and even philosophical and theological differences. They don’t usually crack apart and the center tends to hold and unlike the SJ’s don’t usually swing en masse one way or the other. And they don’t climb into self imposed ghettos or enclaves
I do like this kind of stuff, being decidedly a non-physicist but decidedly interested in this area, ever since I read a book called “Schrödinger’s cat” way back in the 80s. So thanks for this, Fr.
I followed the AmazonUK link and found that the book details show it as being published in January 1656. So it must have been very influential in Newton’s early education, then. Explains a lot, that does. It’s all relative, I’m sure, although I don’t want to treat the subject with less than fitting gravity. Nor to open a black… ooops… rabbit hole.
I suppose that a book called “Schrödinger’s cat” could also have been published in 1656 because of superimpositioning. However, once you identify where/when the book is, it would cease to be in the other when/where. It’s complicated.
And speaking of Schrödinger’s cat…
https://ed.ted.com/lessons/can-you-solve-the-giant-cat-army-riddle-dan-finkel#review
A fun little mental workout.