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Java/Birma 1942-'45 - Dagboek by JCB (Dutch, 310k pdf)
De Bataafse Mythe
Rembrandt: 'De eed van Claudius Civilis' (Museum Stockholm)
Humor / Relegion
- "If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated." — Voltaire (1694-1778).
- "Once there was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled:
. . . This time is called the Dark Ages."
- "These are my opinions. If they were the Biblical truth, your bushes would be burning."
- "A cult is a religion with no political power." — Tom Wolfe.
- "A religion is a cult that succeded."
- "If Jesus knew what's going on in His name, He would turn in His grave."
- "Religion is to brain what tapeworm is to intestine."
- "A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle."
- "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine." — Patti Smith.
On the Structure of our Universe (Cosmology) - John Sankey
There are competing models of the universe (other than the Big Bang) : steady state
models. In these views, the universe is eternal - a desirable philosophy for many
(although that has nothing to do with science).
Distant objects are red because light quanta gradually lose
energy through postulated non-scattering interactions with the universe as they
traverse it (tired light). Such lost energy would be turned into mass at a rate
equivalent to only a hydrogen atom per cubic kilometre per year could produce a
steady physical expansion thus a Doppler red shift similar to that we see. It is not,
however, understood how a steady state universe could be gravitationally stable.
(The 'cosmological constant' is a fudge factor, not an explanation. Besides,
Einstein's version of it doesn't work.) Stars are in galaxies because gravitation
is always attractive, therefore unstable, and will merge together into black holes
once they dissipate their angular momentum relative to each other. Where does the
radiation necessary for matter creation and space expansion come from once everything
is sucked into black holes? Besides, the success of the quantum origin of the universe
at predicting the distribution of elements long ago disheartened most supporters of
steady state. About the only supporters of the pure steady-state universe left are
those who propose that gravitational flatness is a necessary condition for existence
of any universe. (Of course, they may just be right in that - measured densities
keep inching towards that required for flatness.)
-- However, the real power of the Big Bang model is that it unites the two
sciences that depend on big money : Astronomy and High-energy physics. Ever-larger
particle accelerators, which pack more and more energy into a point, were not just
self-generating data (more in, so more out), they were exploring 'the beginning of
everything'. So were ever more powerful telescopes - seeing fainter meant seeing
farther which in turn meant seeing nearer 'the beginning'. And so, astronomy and
high-energy physics closed ranks - anyone who didn't support the standard model
was out, from either field. The guiding principle of both fields became 'being right'
rather than 'getting things right', in short, the 'big science' syndrome.
Theory in the Age of Digital Transformation : (by Henry Jenkins, MIT)
"What, then, is the work of theory in the age of digital transformation?
Digital theory offers us explanations, interpretations, and predictions
which enables us to manage the process of technological change and its
impact upon our social, cultural, economic, political, and personal lives.
Digital theory provides a point of intersection between the languages and
practices of science and engineering on the one hand and the arts and humanities
on the other. Digital theory embraces the utopian imagination not as a way of
predicting the future but as a way of envisioning meaningful change and keeping
alive the fluidity which digital media has introduced into many aspects of our
social and personal lives. Digital theory identifies historical antecedents for
contemporary media developments and at the same time, defamilarizes older media
and opens them to re-examination. What is striking about the present moment is
not simply that academic theorists have responded quickly to a changing media
environment — itself a phenomenon virtually without precedents — but theory
production has been embraced by the larger society. Theorists are interviewed
as media celebrities in the pages of mass market magazines like Wired.
Vernacular theory surfaces and is debated on almost every on-line discussion
list and newsgroup as everyday citizens hope to better understand the nature of
the transformations occurring around them. Theoretical arguments are forming the
basis for the early court decisions which determine what model of regulation,
intellectual property rights or anti-trust litigation is most appropriate for
cyberspace. The impact of digital communications on all aspects of modern life
has made the process of mediation remarkably visible and has created a new demand
to answer questions which once would have seemed the arcane interest of media scholars."
table_of_physical_constants . . . Exact Particles .vs. Fuzzy Waves
. . . "If I don't see far, it's because Giants are standing on my shoulders." [Dave Rusin]
Yahoo group WSM
- On naturals N and reals 2^N : numberline and Lattice.
Phi-wave Aether theory
- C.H.Thompson (2004)
My interest in discrete math - Motivational discussion with Pertti Lounesto - sci.math dec'99
"Distant stars (spectra) blurr only in even-dimensional spaces". Pertti Lounesto.
Speed of sound - in various materials.
Limits to classic EM fields
- Kirk McDonald (Princeton-U)
Wave structure of Matter - Gabriel LaFrenière.
QuickBasic for animation of Wave Motion - Charles Peirce
Moon distance by Laser reflection - Apollo 11 (1969)
Pioneer_10 - shows decay of radiowaves (A. Stolmar)
. . . .
- Photon halftime = 4.2 x 10^9 yrs
Redshift by Photon decay
- Photon halftime = 6.5 x 10^9 yrs (M. Lewis)
"A photon has weight" - Williamson, van 't Hooft
- On the structure of our Universe : a balanced view (John Sankey)
Some 60 columns on Science - (Ira Pilgrim)
#13: Science and Belief
. . Scientists are also Human. . (on the role of Inertia in Science)
"The fact is that while science has made a great deal of progress, human nature
hasn't changed. People often ignore facts that don't conform to their preconceptions.
Whether or not we want to admit it, scientists are people.
Years ago a small airplane made an emergency landing on a highway near Salt Lake City.
While the pilot waited for a car to come along to take him to where he could get help,
an automobile crashed into the airplane. When the driver of the car was asked if he
didn't see the airplane, he replied, "Yes, I saw it, but I didn't believe it."
I don't wonder why no one made Newton's observations (colors/prism) before him.
I suspect that someone might have, but he didn't believe it. And if he did believe it,
there was no one he could tell it to, nor could he get it published.
#19: Mystification
"The story of The Emperor's New Clothes tells how a group of tailors mystified
an emperor into believing that they had woven a suit of clothes that was so fine
that it couldn't be seen. A child, who had not yet been trained to accept
mystifications, points out that the emperor is naked. The story ends there.
-- The author doesn't tell you what happened to the child. Odds are that he
went to bed without supper and was forced to repeat over and over again
"The emperor knows all, and I know nothing". - That is the way of the world.
I could have tried to mystify you by saying it in Latin: Sic transit whatever.
If you didn't know the meaning of the word mystification, you know now.
There isn't a human being who hasn't been exposed to the process in school,
church, TV and every means of communication. Its purpose is to give one
person power over another through the (mis-)use of words.
Ron's place
. . Biographies of interesting writers/scientists/philosophers/etc.
"Alternative Physics On Line" . . Critical notes by prof. U.Bartocci (U-Perugia.it)
SSE: Society for Scientific Exploration (Stanford-Univ, USA, 1982)
The primary goal of the international Society for Scientific Exploration (SSE)
is to provide a professional forum for presentations, criticism, and debate
concerning topics which are for various reasons ignored or studied inadequately
within mainstream science. A secondary goal is to promote improved understanding
of those factors that unnecessarily limit the scope of scientific inquiry, such as
sociological constraints, restrictive world views, hidden theoretical assumptions,
and the temptation to convert prevailing theory into prevailing dogma.
As science has developed, it has become increasingly compartmentalized.
This may make the operation of each discipline more efficient, but we run the risk
that the profession may not be responding to challenges that do not fit neatly
into the matrix of present-day science.
-- "Advances are made by answering questions.
-- Discoveries are made by questioning answers." ... Bernard Haisch :
. . . (Astrophysicist and past Editor of the Journal of Scientific Exploration)
Natural Philosophy Alliance (NPA)
. . A critical view on flawed assumptions in fundamental Physics (by professionals)
Red-shift of fotons: Lossy Light propagation in Ether, after all?
. . NB: Common Sense suggestion by an amateur;-)
Hubble Red Shift by Photon Decay: a sensible explanation - by Michael Lewis
Examples of Suppression in Science
"The Suppression of Inconvenient Facts in Physics" by Rochus Boerner, 2003.
. . . "Textbooks present science as a noble search for truth.
. . . However, for many scientists this is a cruel myth." [On unnatural inertia] :
- "In true science, theory always surrenders to the primacy of evidence.
If observations are made that, after careful verification and theoretical analysis,
are found to be inconsistent with a theory, than that theory has to go - no matter
how aesthetically pleasing it is, or how prestigious its supporters are, or how many
billions of dollars a certain industry has bet on it. But in current mainstream science,
the opposite occurs with disturbing regularity. Anomalous evidence is first ignored,
then ridiculed, and if that fails, its author attacked. Scientific conferences will not
admit it to be presented, scientific journals will refuse to publish it, and fellow
scientists know better than to express solidarity with an unorthodox colleague."
- R.G.Jahn - [On snug and inert 21st century science, due to vested interests] :
". . . Even more seriously, it is an establishment that persists in frenetically sweeping
legitimate genres of new anomalous phenomena under its intellectual carpet, thereby
denying its own well-documented heritage that anomalies are the most precious raw
material from which future science is formed."
- Nico B : It may well be that Europe, China and India, less industrialized than the US
- hence less liable to suffer from the above mentioned scientific inertia due to vested
interests - in the 21-st century recoup the initiative for a badly needed scientific élan.
- M.Psimopoulos, T.Theocharis : "How to test special relativity", Nature 319, p.269 (23jan86)
"... All sorts of experiments have already been conducted in space. But the few experiments
which might have truly tested the perhaps most fundamental and controversial hypotheses
in twentieth century physics- Einstein's postulates - have curiously not been done."
(NB: Only Extra-terrestrial measurements can test the Ether-Drag hypothesis;
. . . . the M/M experiment (1887): measuring light-speed along Earth surface is insufficient)
- Bryan G.Wallace : "The Farce of Physics"
Non-constant light speeds measured in planetary radar propagation tests (publication blocked).
OPTIS
Satellite Based Optical Tests of Special and General Relativity (U-Düsseldorf.de)
Interview with Carver Mead (on his non-statistical 'Coherent Physics')
Q : "And so mathematical description was substituted for understanding?"
CM: "Absolutely. It's conceptual nonsense. You can calculate stuff with the theory, but
the words people put around it don't make any sense. That had the effect of driving the
more conceptually oriented students out of physics. We have ended up with more and more
mathematicians in the physics departments. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with
mathematics. It's the language we use to express the precise relations of physical law.
But there is an increasing tendency to mistake the language for the physics itself.
Once we lose the conceptual foundations, the whole thing becomes a shell game.
There are very few conceptual workers left in the field. Feynman was one of the last,
and he wasn't willing to take on the Copenhagen clan. Nobody was, until we come to
A.O.Barut, John Dowling, John Cramer, and a few others." [ . . . ]
Q : "What's the problem with point particles?"
CM: "Because they are assumed to occupy no space, so they must be accompanied
by infinite charge density, infinite mass density, infinite energy density. Then these
infinities get removed again by something called "renormalization." It's all completely
crazy. But our physics community has been hammering away at it for decades.
- - Einstein called it Ptolemaic epicycles all over again..."
Q : "Running through your work gives the idea that the deeper thing is probably simpler.
CM: "It always worked out that when I understood something, it turned out to be simple.
Take the connection between the quantum stuff and the electrodynamics in my book.
It took me thirty years to figure out, and in the end it was almost trivial. It's so simple
that any freshman could read it and understand it. But it was hard for me to get there
since all this historical junk was in the way." (NB: unlearning is harder than learning)
..."I think Einstein was a scientist in the truest sense in his response to the Copenhagen
interpretation. He said that none of us would be scientist if deep down you didn't believe
there is a set of regularities in the operation of physical law. That is a matter of faith.
It is not something anybody can prove, but none of us would be scientist if we didn't
have that faith." -- ( The 'strange' usefulness of Mathematics in Physics ;-)
Q : "Does biology have a problem analogous to the physics problem :
- - lots of people barking up trees, and few looking at the forest?"
CM: "Every scientific discipline does. Our establishment rewards that kind of behavior.
It's very, very hard to ask the deeper questions, because you won't get tenure that way."
T. Van Flandern, J.P.Vigier :
Experimental Repeal
of the Speed Limit for Gravitational,
Electrodynamic, and Quantum Field Interactions, Foundations of Physics, 32 (2002) p.1031-68
Metaphysics / Natural Philosophy - On the Wave Structure of Matter
Pertti Lounesto on far-star spectra : NOT blurred in odd dimensional space!
Is the electron a photon with toroidal topology? - by M. van der Mark, and J. Williamson
Donut structure of electron
Abstract : symposium talk (TU Eindhoven, 2001)
Michelson/Morley : measuring in a medium moving along with the Earth proves nothing about 'Ether'.
Remember history ... re Hubble Red-shift: 20 yrs after Einstein's RTh
Einstein on Ether,
he called it 'ponderable matter' (lecture 5 May 1920, Leiden Univ;-)
Caroline Thompson physics site : Common sense is less common than you think,
. . . but C.H.Thompson has it! -
Comments
Re: Steady-state Universe : Matter converted into wave energy in some places and back again in others."
Don't rock the Boat : Can you blame them? After all, one cannot be careful enough about one's reputation...
Large precession of Mercury's orbit near the Sun : due to ether density modulation near a heavy body?
Red-shift by photon friction in 'ether' :
. . . Frequency dependent energy loss: lower (red) freq's travel further (less damping)
(Re: Occam's Razor in Math & Physics): Common Sense ... seems less common than you'd think...
Re: a minimal 'particle' (electron) being an ether_tornado?
: _Why_ (if indeed) are all electrons the same?
"Threshold" as the difference between quantity & quality.
- Re: the difference between particle and wave.
What is the lifetime of an electron? : The energy loss could re-appear as low freq. 'background radiation'.
Test this hypothesis of ether-drag : the Mercury orbit precession .. using established orbit CAD
Dark Matter/energy
by vanderL :
-- "Why do you insist on discussing the concept of God, it has nothing
to do with science, and the idea of God is not falsifiable (the hallmark of
a scientific model). You cannot disprove the existence of such an entity,
so you cannot approach it scientifically. Look at
electric-cosmos , and if
needed just keep on reading, it explains how science should work and then
it explains how stars function when viewed in electrical terms, especially the
more exotic variable stars suddenly seem a lot less exotic. I think it is worth
a very careful look.
-- I hope we can discuss the topic of dark energy/ dark matter a little further.
I agree with you that the Big Bang theory is just that, a theory. Concepts like
inflation, neutron stars/neutronium, black holes, dark matter and dark energy
are all theoretical constructs, invented to keep the BB theory alive.
-- It should be the other way around, first we gather data, then we make a model
and then we test and adjust the model. If too many adjustments are needed the
theory is probably wrong and we need a new theory. I don't see this happening at all.
-- When looking at the Big Bang, it keeps limping on, because people believe that
it MUST be true, just like religion, in disregard of overwhelming evidence against it.
In my opinion an Electric/Plasma model would fit the data better, but everyone
should make up its own mind. And don't let other people tell you what to believe."
Re: "The Einstein Hoax" (sci.math 14jan2000):
- On lossy light propagation, and from the outside looking-in...
Theory-edge (6sep98) :
- FLT(case1) and the 'triplet' structure of units in semigroup Z(.) mod p^k
Re: Problem with Cantor's diagonal argument (re finite case)
- Cantor & Binary matrix row permutations
Re: Why the attack on Cantor's Theory? - A simple string generation difference Peano N vs. Cantor 2^N
Re: Does the set of all sets exist? - Sets, power sets & Cantor's binary representation.
An interesting discussion - on FLT / Wiles' proof / Psychology / Science & Math.
ilja-schmelzer :
General Lorentz Ether Theory.
A New Non-Doppler Redshift . . by Paul Marmet, Herzberg
. . Institute of Astrophysics, National Research Council, Ottawa, Canada
Possible Cause of Red-shift? - String Theory Discussion Forum
All about the MM experiment
- Forgotten history of Michelson-Morley experiment 1887 (J.R.Redbourne)
List of articles on Cosmic 'ether' (aether)
"Dayton Miller and the Ether-Drift" :
Critical historical remarks.
Re: Do you actually need an ether model?
. . Only if you don't allow perpetuum-mobile (lossless foton travel is un-natural)
--> We would do best to remember our history!
(-->)
Indeed, and in fact Hubble - in his 1931 paper with Humason - warned in a footnote
that his 'Doppler' view of the Redshift was just an assumption, for the time being,
and that it could well be caused by a 'tired light' (or a 'foton-decay') process,
proportional to traveled distance (versus proportional to speed). He admitted the
properties of intergalactic space were just not known at that time (or are they now?
- e.g. can a parellax measurement of the DISTANCE to far stars with redshifted spectrum
be done with any sufficient accuracy ?-)
By the way, congratulations on the charming farmer/mouse story. I actually thought his
neighbour's name was Zweistein, who showed that there is no 'air' for sound to
propagate in, after accurate sound-propagation speed measurements in three
orthogonal directions, while in a riding closed train compartment without windows
(which of course he did not know at the time;-)
see http://home.iae.nl/users/benschop/ether.htm
For a math approach, via Maxwell E/M eqns *with* damping coefficient in a dissipative
medium (you may call it 'aether' or 'ether' or 'cosmic soup' if you like)
see Mike Lewis on Foton Decay (hypothesis;-) at http://members.chello.nl/~n.benschop
He derives a foton half-time of 1/(h.c^2) sec, which is about 6.5 billion years
(nasty idea: does an electron or proton have a finite lifetime ? Yakh . . . )
Of course, if one - as a real scientist - disavows any 'perpetuum mobile' ,
then one equally strongly despises the idea of a foton (cq. light) travelling
for bilions of years *without* any loss of energy (detect some irony ?-)
Oh well, as many a farmer will agree, it is all human psychology man !!
Since when do vested intersts NOT have an enormous inertia ?!
[ Human Inertia ]
PS: The Redshift is a VERY weak effect, and was detected some 20 years AFTER Einstein's
great theory..... Even E himself gave 'space' some specific deformation properties
(but do keep calling it Vacuum, please... since it is PURE : dissipation is
for farmers and engineers, not for real scientists ;-)
Re: What is a Crackpot? - On dissident / alternative 'common sense' model of the Cosmos.
Was There a Big Bang? . . I Honestly Don't Know . . (2002, 3rd ed.) by Richard Carrier
Hubble Red Shift by Photon Decay: a sensible explanation - by Michael Lewis
- Universal Kinetic Energy Field . . by Dan K. McCoin
- UniKEF: Ether links
Tribute to Jean-Pierre Vigier and the Causal Model of Quantum Mechanics
. . . Book review: on electron = 'particle' guided by its corresp. wave
(in 'ether' medium). Vigier writes: . . .
"In my opinion the most important development to be expected in the
near future concerning the foundations of quantum physics is a revival,
in modern covariant form, of the ether concept of the founding fathers
of the theory of light . . . [I]t now appears that the vacuum is a real
physical medium which presents some surprising properties". (p 272)
Red Shift and Distances. . . by Mike and Sue Lawrence. . .
Chapter 10 : Tired Light
- History of Einstein's Relativity- vs. Lorentz' Aether- Theory
>
> - "The Einstein Hoax" - by H.E.Retic (1997)
>
> If you have read the material at above Website, and have an objective
> criticism, you will receive a courteous reply. And, if your criticism
> cannot be refuted, your input will either be incorporated to correct
> the text or, if the criticism is of sufficient import, the text will
> be withdrawn. So far, the material has received two types of response.
> One type (60%) is extremely favorable, the other type (I presume from
> the "idiot savant" community) is insulting but has yet to provide an
> objective criticism on any point. One thing can be stated with
> certainty, the World is entitled to a higher quality of workmanship
> from those to whom it has granted World Class status.
>
> E-mail:- retic@viconet.com
NB: I'll have a closer look.
As an interested "crank" (someone who's not averse to thinking for
himself, despite the dangers of it in an established thinking frame;-)
have look at http://www.iae.nl/users/benschop/ether.htm :
"Red-shift of fotons: Lossy Light propagtion in Ether, after all?"
Which might just attain a slightly more established gloss if indeed
the Maxwell equations could be extended to include a loss term...
See http://members.chello.nl/~n.benschop (by Michael Lewis)
Does'nt every process in Nature dissipate -- a "perpetuum mobile"
being rather utopean. *Why* should light propagation through
billions of lightyears be any different ?-)
--
Ciao, Nico Benschop. | AHA: One is Always Halfway Anyway
http://www.iae.nl/users/benschop | Institute of Advanced Engineering
zyx.org/BIGBANG
- A balanced critique on 'religious zeal' in present-day science.
prof. Allen Rothwarf (1935 - 1998) incl.: "An Aether model of the Universe".
. . Some life wisdom one-liners . . by Andy Rooney.
. . Pictures of the Evoluon (Philips, Eindhoven, NL) . . homepage Kees Stravers
. . Pictures of Geldrop (N-Brabant, NL) . .
About Geldrop - (Dutch, with foto's)
electron-photon.pdf - Is the electron a photon with toroidal topology?
. . Martin van der Mark, John Williamson (.pdf, 270k, 25 pgs)
"The Ring of Hyperintegers" . .
(Patrick Reany)
- On p-adics and 'infinite residues', Clifford Algebra, &c.
Controversy :
- Tradition vs. modern, continuous vs. discrete, &c
Filosofy : - Intuition and imagination in Math.
On tough arithmetic problems
- Why they are so hard, and what to do about it.
Right function notation x(fg) vs. g(f(x)) - Attributed (anecdotal) to
AntiZeus , Athens, 450 BC
There are too many B.A.D. mathematicians
- by Melvin Henriksen (The Mathematical Intelligencer, V.15 - 1993)
[... BAD = Bigoted and Destructive ... Math-journal editors ]
"They have little difficulty concluding that if they see no application of an area
to what interests them, it should be pushed out of the "important" general journals.
This is not as easily done with journals published by the A.M.S., but when it is, the
mechanism used is to take control of the editorial board and/or the position of managing
editor while making sure that no member is a specialist in an "inferior" field.
Whereas the journal is still advertised as one that publishes articles in all areas
of mathematics, anyone who submits a paper in certain areas is told that no member
of the editorial board has the expertise to evaluate it, or that the paper is
"unduly technical" and should be submitted to a specialized journal. Since these
boards are almost always self-perpetuating, once a field is deemed unfit for the journal,
it stays that way.
" Something Rotten at the Core of Science? " . . by David F. Horrobin
The Supreme Court questioned the authority of peer review.
Many scientists and lawyers are unhappy about the admission by the top legal
authority in the United States that peer review might in some circumstances
be flawed [1]. David Goodstein, writing in the Guide to the Federal Rules of
Evidence - one of whose functions is to interpret the judgement in the case of
Daubert - states that "Peer review is one of the sacred pillars of the scientific
edifice" [2]. In public, at least, almost all scientists would agree.
Those who disagree are almost always dismissed in pejorative terms such as
"maverick," "failure," and "driven by bitterness."
Peer review is central to the organization of modern science. The peer-review
process for submitted manuscripts is a crucial determinant of what sees the light
of day in a particular journal. Fortunately, it is less effective in blocking
publication completely; there are so many journals that most even modestly competent
studies will be published provided that the authors are determined enough.
The publication might not be in a prestigious journal, but at least it will get
into print. However, peer review is also the process that controls access to funding,
and here the situation becomes much more serious. There might often be only two or
three realistic sources of funding for a project, and the networks of reviewers for
these sources are often interacting and interlocking. Failure to pass the peer-review
process might well mean that a project is never funded. Science bases its presumed
authority in the world on the reliability and objectivity of the evidence that is
produced. If the pronouncements of science are to be greeted with public confidence
- and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that such confidence is low and eroding
- it should be able to demonstrate that peer review, "one of the sacred pillars of
the scientific edifice," is a process that has been validated objectively as a
reliable process for putting a stamp of approval on work that has been done.
Peer review should also have been validated as a reliable method for making
appropriate choices as to what work should be done. Yet when one looks for that
evidence it is simply not there.
Subject: Re: This unintelligible Newsgroup.... (sci.math - 22 Apr 2002)
From: Nico Benschop
Org: Digital Research : Finite Associative Networks
------------------
Kevin Buhr wrote:
>
> "Math Enthusiast" writes:
> >
> > If I may ask, what is the grade/degree of education of the
> > majority of people in this group?
>
> [..good advice..]
> There are plenty of texts, though, that *will* teach you the basics
> of these fields, and many of them will be accessible to someone
> without a calculus background. Set theory and abstract algebra are
> endlessly fascinating, and many undergraduate texts won't assume
> anything more than high-school math. Undergraduate point-set
> topology doesn't really require calculus either (and some texts
> won't even assume you know what a set is), though it's helpful to
> have some calculus, linear algebra, and analysis as a source of
> concrete examples for all the abstract concepts.
> [...] -- Kevin Buhr
And also:
not just *what* you know, but *how to apply* it is important!
And next to studying the basic stuff, try to read the history of
how and why it came about: read the original papers, like George
Boole "The Laws of Thought" (1854) where you see his motivation
(as son of a preacher, interested to check the God-existence 'proofs'
of Spinoza and Clarke - his model of the Aristotelean logic they used
is a simple form of arithmetic ('idempotent' : x^2 = x --> x=0 or x=1)
which much later became the basis of set theory, as fundament of math.
His book is available from Dover publications, which publish many
original books in science & math.
Or (I'm doing research in synthesis of logic circuits & State Machines)
read Claude Shannon's original paper (AIEE 1938) as MSc student in MIT,
where he proposes to use Boole's (binary) algebra, then 90 years old
(!), to model the behaviour of combinational logic (relay-) circuits.
A marvelous book, qua motivation & insight (for math up to 1945;-)
is E.T.Bell: "The Development of Mathematics".
In general, go to the source, study the history of _how and why_,
prefer multi-focus over narrow single-focus (although that takes
more time, yet worth it;-) and you'll be much better motivated
to contribute and work constructively. Success.
The clue is 'zelf-denkzaamheid' (think for yourself)
and give your intuition a chance:
"It is a miracle that curiosity survived formal education"- A.Einstein
-- NB - http://home.iae.nl/users/benschop/search.htm
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