Category Archives: History

Arts, Christianity, Culture, History

No guard but bullion train stays on track

– Jerusalem, August 458 BC

(Ezra 7,8; cf. 2:2–60)

A LARGE CONSIGNMENT of gold and silver has safely avoided the attentions of the robber barons during a 4-month, 900-mile-journey from Babylon to Jerusalem.

The treasure, a gift from King Artaxerxes for the worship of Yahweh, was carried in a human train of more than 1,700 people, the first major migration to Judah for half a century. Many were relatives of people already in the city.

Led by the widely-respected priest and teacher, Ezra, they had refused the king’s offer of an armed guard as they walked across the fertile crescent of northern Mesopotamia.

It was a bold act of faith in Yahweh’s protection, by a devout group which had spent three days in prayer and fasting before setting out in April from the Ahava Canal where they had gathered.

Ezra carried personal letters from Artaxerxes authorising the expedition and ordering Persian officials in Judah to provide wine, oil, wheat, salt and gold and silver for the temple officers, who were also granted tax exemption.

It is said that Ezra has been personally commanded to teach the law of Yahweh and to mete out traditional punishments on people who do not obey it.

– The name Yahweh is mentioned more than 6,800 times in the Old Testament. It appears in every book but does not appear in Esther, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. In English translations of the Bible “Yahweh” is translated to mean LORD

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Arts, History, Science

Quantum Leaps: Albert Einstein

1879–1955

OF the essays written by Einstein in 1905, arguably the most influential was his enunciation of a “special” theory of relativity, which advanced the idea that the laws of physics are actually identical to different spectators, regardless of their position, as long as they are moving at a constant speed in relation to each other. Above all, the speed of light is constant. It is simply that the classical laws of mechanics appear to be obeyed in our normal lives because the speeds involved are insignificant.

The Speed of Light

But the implications of this principle if the observers are moving at very different speeds are bizarre and normal indicators of velocity such as distance and time become warped. Indeed, absolute space and time do not exist. Therefore, if a person were to theoretically to travel in a vehicle in space close to the speed of light, everything would look normal to them, but another person standing on earth waiting for them to return would notice something very unusual. The space ship would appear to be getting shorter in the direction of travel. Moreover, whilst time would continue as “normal” on earth, a watch telling the time in the ship would be going slower from the earth’s perspective even though it would seem correct to the traveller (because the faster an object is moving the slower time moves). This difference would only become apparent when the vessel returned to earth and clocks were compared.

If the observer on earth were able to measure the mass of the ship as it moved, he would also notice it getting heavier too.

Ultimately, nothing could move faster than or equal to the speed of light because at that point it would have infinite mass, no length, and time would stand still.

A General Theory of Relativity

From 1907 to 1915, Einstein developed his special theory into a “general” theory of relativity which included equating accelerating forces and gravitational forces. Implications of this extension of his special theory suggested light rays would be bent by gravitational attraction and electromagnetic radiation wavelengths would be increased under gravity. Moreover, mass, and the resultant gravity, warps space and time, which would otherwise be “flat”, are turned into curved paths which other masses (for example, the moons of planets) caught within the field of the distortion follow.

Amazingly, Einstein’s predictions for special and general relativity were gradually proven by experimental evidence. The most celebrated of these was the measurement taken during a solar eclipse in 1919 which proved the sun’s gravitational field really did bend the light emitted from stars behind it on its way to earth. It was the verification which led to Einstein’s world fame and wide acceptance of his new definition of physics.

Einstein spent much of the rest of his life trying to create a unified theory of electromagnetic, gravitational and nuclear fields but failed. It was at least in keeping with his own remark of 1921 that “discovery in the grand manner is for young people and hence for me is a thing of the past.”

E=MC²

Fortunately, then, he had completed three other papers in his youth (in 1905) in addition to his one on the special theory of relativity! One of these included the now famous deduction which equated energy to mass in the formula E=mc² [where E=energy, m=mass and c=the speed of light]. This understanding was vital in the development of nuclear energy and weapons, where only a small amount of atomic mass (when released to multiply by a factor of the speed of light squared under appropriate conditions) could unleash huge amounts of energy.

The third paper described Brownian motion, and the final paper made use of Planck’s quantum theory in explaining the phenomenon of the “photoelectric” effect, helping to confirm quantum theory in the process.

Further Achievements

Almost inevitably, Einstein was also drawn into the atomic bomb race. He was asked by fellow scientists in 1939 to warn the US President of the danger of Germany creating an atomic bomb. Einstein himself had been a German citizen, but had renounced his citizenship in favour of Switzerland, and ultimately America, having moved there in 1933 following the elevation of Hitler to power in his home country. Roosevelt’s response to Einstein’s warning was to initiate the Manhattan project to create an American bomb first.

After the war Einstein spent time trying to encourage nuclear disarmament.

In 1922, Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics.

. Science Book

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Arts, History, Philosophy

Philosophy: On Reason and Experience

AGE OF REASON AND ENLIGHTENMENT

“Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” – George Washington (1732–1799)

IN the eighteenth century, the Age of Reason – characterised by thinkers such as Descartes, Hobbes and Locke during the seventeenth century – brought about a seismic shift in emphasis in philosophical thought. Massive advances were made in the natural sciences and this in turn led to a questioning of old certainties and a rush of new and often competing ideas concerning everything from how knowledge and truth can be acquired and tested to the first seedlings of notions of democracy, representation and civil liberties. The floodgates opened, characterised best by Kant’s imperative in his essay “What is Enlightenment?” The human mind was emerging from the darkness of infancy and maturing like that of an enquiring child, while Kant urged people to “dare to know”. Reason and experience became the watchwords in this new philosophy, which was more concerned with how things actually are rather than how they could or possibly should be.

However, not all enlightenment was positive. There were darker consequences of this new awakening, as evidenced by the reign of terror following the French Revolution and by the work of possibly the most morose thinker of all time, Arthur Schopenhauer, who once wrote in an essay that everyone should swallow a live toad for breakfast to guarantee they wouldn’t have to experience anything else quite as dispiriting again for the rest of the day. It would also be a mistake to think that the status quo embraced the new enlightenment with open arms. The preface quote for this article is taken from George Washington’s farewell address to the American people and illustrates that although there was an explosion in free-thinking in some quarters, the old guard – the protectors of religious-based morality – were deeply suspicious and frightened of these new ideas about how to live in and view the world.

Reading the great thinkers of reason and experience shouldn’t be difficult. Most of what they had to say seems pretty self-evident today, obvious even, yet somehow their arguments can be difficult to follow. This is largely due to the intellectual zeal with which they approached their investigations and their fervent search for one over-arching, all-encompassing system of thought. It didn’t help either that this spirit of competitiveness led to petty rivalries. The German philosopher Schopenhauer had a hatred of Hegel bordering on the pathological. This drove him to take up a position at the University of Berlin, where Hegel had a seat, just to try and prove his ideas were more popular with the students (but he failed spectacularly). Nonetheless, readers should appreciate that the philosophers of the ages of reason and enlightenment represent a pivotal point in the history of philosophy.

“Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond… Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.” – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)

HEGEL

Hegel was a major figure in German idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality was revolutionary at the time and a major factor in the development of some radical threads of left-wing political thought.

Hegel was born on 27 August 1770, in Stuttgart, Germany. He studied philosophy and classics at Tubingen, and after graduation became a tutor and explored theology. Hegel taught at Heidelberg and Berlin, where he wrote and explored philosophical and theological concepts.

His major work, The Phenomenology of Spirit (or mind), was published in 1807 and his ideas developed in other deeply complex works until his death, from cholera, in 1831.

Almost everything that Hegel was to develop over the rest of his life is prefigured in the Phenomenology, but the work is far from systematic and generally accepted as difficult to read. The Phenomenology attempts to present human history, with all its revolutions, wars and scientific discoveries, as an idealistic self-development of an objective Spirit or Mind.

His mark on history has been profound, in that his influence has spread throughout both left- and right- wing political thought. In fact, the interpreters of Hegel split into “left” and “right” camps. Marx drew inspiration from Hegel by developing the idea that history and reality should be viewed dialectically and that the process of change – the struggle – should be seen as a transition from the fragmentary towards the complete. This is a skewed development of what Hegel tried to suggest in phenomenology. However, in practical terms it is likely that Hegel may have approved of Marx’s revolutionary interpretation, as he was witness at close hand to revolutionary Europe towards the end of the eighteenth century. It is even said that he celebrated Bastille Day every year.

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