General relativity cannot be formulated as a perturbatively renormalizable quantum field theory. An argument relying on the validity of the Bekenstein–Hawking entropy formula aims at dismissing gravity as non-renormalizable per se, against hopes that d-dimensional GR could turn out to have a non-perturbatively renormalizable d–dimensional quantum field theoretic formulation. In this note we discuss various forms of highly problematic semi-classical extrapolations assumed by both sides of the debate concerning what we call The Entropy Argument, and show that a large class (...) of dimensional reduction scenarios leads to the blow-up of Bekenstein–Hawking entropy. (shrink)

In this paper, we present a non-geometrodynamic quantum Yang–Mills theory of gravity based on the homogeneous Lorentz group within the general framework of the Poincare gauge theories. The obstacles of this treatment are that first, on the one hand, the gauge group that is available for this purpose is non-compact. On the other hand, Yang–Mills theories with non-compact groups are rarely healthy, and only a few instances exist in the literature. Second, it is not clear how the direct observations of (...) space–time waves can be explained when space–time has no dynamics. We show that the theory is unitary and is renormalizable to the one-loop perturbation. Although in our proposal, gravity is not associated with any elementary particle analogous to the graviton, classical helicity-two space–time waves are explained. Five essential exact solutions to the field equations of our proposal are presented as well. We also discuss a few experimental tests that can falsify the presented Yang–Mills theory. (shrink)

Buddhist concepts of personal life and responsibilities.

QUALITY AND QUANTITY are fairly generally regarded as complementary terms, although the profound reason for their comple- mentarism is often far from being understood, this reason lying in the 'polar' correspondence referred to toward ...

A study of the constitution and development of the human being from the metaphysical point of view, with special reference to Vedantic doctrine.

The Reign of Quantity gives a concise but comprehensive view of the present state of affairs in the world, as it appears from the point of view of the 'ancient wisdom', formerly common both to the East and to the West, but now almost entirely lost sight of. The author indicates with his fabled clarity and directness the precise nature of the modern deviation, and devotes special attention to the development of modern philosophy and science, and to the part played (...) by them, with their accompanying notions of progress and evolution, in the formation of the industrial and democratic society which we now regard as 'normal'. Guénon sees history as a descent from Form (or Quality) toward Matter (or Quantity); but after the Reign of Quantity-modern materialism and the 'rise of the masses'-Guénon predicts a reign of 'inverted quality' just before the end of the age: the triumph of the 'counter-initiation', the kingdom of Antichrist. This text is considered the magnum opus among Guénon's texts of civilizational criticism, as is Symbols of Sacred Science among his studies on symbols and cosmology, and Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta among his more purely metaphysical works. (shrink)

The concluding chapter lays down the essential conditions for any genuine understanding between East and West, which can only come through the work of those who have attained, at least in some degree, to the realization of 'wisdom uncreate' ...

Description: Contents: Preface 1. General Remarks on the Vedanta 2. Fundamental Distinction Between The Self and the Ego 3. The Vital Centre of the Human Being, Seat of Brahma 4. Purusha and Prakriti 5. Purusha Unaffected by Individual Modifications 6. The Degrees of Individual Manifestation 7. Buddhi or the Higher Intellect 8. Manas or the Inward Sense : The Ten External Faculties of Sensation and Action 9. The Envelopes of the Self ; The Five Vayus or Vital Functions 10. The (...) Essential Unity and Identity of the Self in all the States of the Being 11. The Different Conditions of Atma in the Human Being 12. The Waking State or the Condition of Vaishwanara 13. The Dream State or the Condition of Taijasa 14. The State of Deep Sleep or the Condition of Prajna 15. The Unconditioned State of Atma 16. The Symbolical Representation of Atma and its Conditions by the Sacred Monosyllable Om 17. The Posthumous Evolution of the Human Being 18. The Reabsorption of the Individual Faculties 19. Differences in the Posthumous Conditions According to the Degrees of Knowledge 20. The Coronal Artery and the Solar Ray 21. The Divine Journey of the Being on the Path of Liberation 22. Final Deliverance 23. Videha-mukti and Jivana-mukti 24. The Spiritual State of the Yogi : The Supreme Identity. (shrink)

The objective of this study is twofold: to examine the patterns that govern social reporting with reference to an Islamic framework and to identify the moral legitimacy factors that influence them. We select 146 publicly listed Sharia‐compliant companies and classify the disclosures in their annual reports according to an Islamic framework that categorises items as either Required, Expected or Desired to indicate the degree of importance each item carries from an Islamic perspective. Based on this framework, we then analyse moral (...) legitimacy factors, specifically the type of Sharia screening body and the proportion of Muslims in the population, that may influence the prioritisation of the different categories of social reporting. We find that disclosures that fall into the Required category of our framework—especially those that relate to companies’ involvement in “haram” activities (activities not permissible in Islam)—are still few among the companies studied. Our research also reveals that both moral legitimacy factors under investigation influence the three categories of social reporting, although in different ways. This research contributes to the existing literature by empirically examining how organisations prioritise their disclosure of virtues and the moral legitimacy factors that influence that prioritisation. (shrink)

We have two aims. The main one is to expound the idea of renormalization in quantum field theory, with no technical prerequisites. Our motivation is that renormalization is undoubtedly one of the great ideas—and great successes--of twentieth-century physics. Also it has strongly influenced in diverse ways, how physicists conceive of physical theories. So it is of considerable philosophical interest. Second, we will briefly relate renormalization to Ernest Nagel's account of inter-theoretic relations, especially reduction. One theme will be a contrast between (...) two approaches to renormalization. The old approach, which prevailed from ca. 1945 to 1970, treated renormalizability as a necessary condition for being an acceptable quantum field theory. On this approach, it is a piece of great good fortune that high energy physicists can formulate renormalizable quantum field theories that are so empirically successful. But the new approach to renormalization explains why the phenomena we see, at the energies we can access in our particle accelerators, are described by a renormalizable quantum field theory. For whatever non-renormalizable interactions may occur at yet higher energies, they are insignificant at accessible energies. Thus the new approach explains why our best fundamental theories have a feature, viz. renormalizability, which the old approach treated as a selection principle for theories. That is worth saying since philosophers tend to think of scientific explanation as only explaining an individual event, or perhaps a single law, or at most deducing one theory as a special case of another. Here we see a framework in which there is a space of theories. And this framework is powerful enough to deduce that what seemed “manna from heaven” is to be expected: the good fortune is generic. We also maintain that universality, a concept stressed in renormalization theory, is essentially the familiar philosophical idea of multiple realizability; and that it causes no problems for reductions of a Nagelian kind. (shrink)

A possible way out of the conundrum of quantum gravity is the proposal that general relativity (GR) emerges from an underlying microscopic description. Despite recent interest in the emergent gravity program within the physics as well as the philosophy community, an assessment of the general motivation for this idea is lacking at the moment. We intend to fill this gap in the literature by discussing the main arguments in favour of the hypothesis that the metric field and its dynamics are (...) emergent. First, we distinguish between microstructure inspired from GR, such as through quantization or discretization, and microstructure that is not directly motivated from GR, such as strings, quantum bits or condensed matter fields. The emergent gravity approach can then be defined as the view that the metric field and its dynamics are derivable from the latter type of microstructure. Subsequently, we assess in how far the following properties of (semi-classical) GR are suggestive of underlying microstructure: (1) the metric's universal coupling to matter fields, (2) perturbative non-renormalizability, (3) black hole thermodynamics, and (4) the holographic principle. In the conclusion we formalize the general structure of the plausibility arguments put forward. (shrink)

Singularities in general relativity and quantum field theory are often taken not only to motivate the search for a more-fundamental theory (quantum gravity, QG), but also to characterise this new theory and shape expectations of what it is to achieve. Here, we first evaluate how particular types of singularities may suggest an incompleteness of current theories. We then classify four different 'attitudes' towards singularities in the search for QG, and show, through examples in the physics literature, that these lead to (...) different scenarios for the new theory. Two of the attitudes prompt singularity resolution, but only one suggests the need for a theory of QG. Rather than evaluate the different attitudes, we close with some suggestions of factors that influence the choice between them. (shrink)

This paper proves that it is possible to build a Lagrangian for quantum electrodynamics which makes it explicit that the photon mass is eventually set to zero in the physical part on observational ground. Gauge independence is achieved upon considering the joint effect of gauge-averaging term and ghost fields. It remains possible to obtain a counterterm Lagrangian where the only non-gauge-invariant term is proportional to the squared divergence of the potential, while the photon propagator in momentum space falls off like (...) k −2 at large k which indeed agrees with perturbative renormalizability. The resulting radiative corrections to the Coulomb potential in QED are also shown to be gauge-independent. The experience acquired with quantum electrodynamics is used to investigate properties and problems of the extension of such ideas to non-Abelian gauge theories. (shrink)

We revisit the implications of Haag’s theorem in the light of the renormalization group. There is still some lack of discussion in the literature about the possible impact of the theorem on the standard (as opposite of axiomatic) quantum field theory, and we try to shed light in this direction. Our discussion then deals with the interplay between Haag’s theorem and renormalization. While we clarify how perturbative renormalization (for the sub-class of interactions that are renormalizable) marginalizes its impact when the (...) coupling is formally small, we argue that a non-perturbative and non-ambiguous renormalization cannot be built if there is any reference to the interaction picture with free fields. In other words, Haag’s theorem should be regarded as a no-go theorem for the existence of a non-ambiguous analytic continuation from perturbative to non-perturbative QFT. (shrink)

The asymptotic safety program strives for a consistent description of gravity as a non-perturbatively renormalizable quantum field theory. In this framework the gravitational interactions are encoded in a renormalization group flow connecting the quantum gravity regime at trans-Planckian scales to observable low-energy physics. Our proceedings reviews the key elements underlying the predictive power of the construction and summarizes the state-of-the-art in determining its free parameters. The explicit construction of a realistic renormalization group trajectory describing our world shows that the flow (...) possesses two characteristic scales. The Planck scale where Newton’s coupling G becomes constant is generated dynamically. The freeze-out of the cosmological constant \ occurs at a terrestrial scale fixed by the observed value of the dimensionless product \. We also review the perspectives of determining the free parameters of the theory through cosmologicalobservations. (shrink)