The way human history has been perceived through the ages - by historians, theologians, philosophers, and ordinary mortals - is itself a topic for a historical study. Our attempt will be more modest, as we shall try to analyse some prominent examples of such perception. Our approach will be illuminated by the notions of the transient and the absolute, as they are attributed, in various ways, to the historical manifestations by historiographers and historiosophers.

And I will give you shepherds after mine heart and they shall feed you knowledge and understanding(Jeremiah 3:15)To talk about leadership in our times evokes the spectre of those leaders in the thirties and forties who led their nation to disaster, without any consideration for the cost in human suffering and moral degradation which their course involved. Yet, despite the distasteful association, we talk about the need for leadership in various domains of life—education, business, politics—and we look for individuals who (...) are capable of providing such leadership also in civilizations which are committed to the principles of liberalism and democracy. Obviously, there is more than one sort of leader and more than one kind of leadership. (shrink)

While democracy is usually perceived as a Greco-European development, it is note-worthy that some of its roots can be found in the Bible. The Covenant between God and the tribes of Israel at Mount Sinai is based on the people’s consent. God is seen as the King of Israel: theocracy means the rule of God literally, and not the rule of priests. The earthly kings are the people’s brethren and must submit to the divine law. Freedom of speech is practised (...) by Abraham when he argues with the Almighty about His resolve to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Such freedom became part and parcel of the Israelite tradition, exemplified by the prophets and in subsequent ages. Indeed, the vitality of democracy in the modern state of Israel may be largely due to its biblical antecedents. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to compare and contrast some salient, though not always clearly recognized and acknowledged, aspects of the ethical perception characterizing the Judaic and the ancient Greek civilizations. To allow a succint treatment, a topic of this range imposes selectivity which, in turn, involves a subjective judgement in making the choices of representative expressions of these vast cultures. While this limitation is readily admitted, our selections are not made from marginal or esoteric texts, but rely on (...) central and mainstream sources that are well known or easily accessible. (shrink)

It is common knowledge that the Jews have shown an unusually persistent emotional attachment to their fatherland, notably when they were exiled and dispersed. The sentiment has found many expressions throughout Jewish history and is too well known to require repeated documentation, but a few examples may remind us of its ardent nature.“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yes, we wept, when we remembered Zion,” opens a well-known Psalm (137). And the weeping does not meander into a (...) passive nostalgia, but leads to an active determination expressed in the oath: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.” When the moment of return from Babylon arrives, the experience transcends the confines of reality: “When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream.” (Psalm 126). (shrink)

This paper deals with three guiding principles of contemporary Western civilization. It explores the compatibility of Toleration, Pluralism and Truth, as well as their application to diverse domains of cultural activity and creation. There is no place for toleration, let alone pluralism, in the realm of logic and mathematics. Scientific conclusions allow diverse degrees of certainty. The realm of monotheistic religions excludes pluralism, but necessitates toleration. The domains of ethics and its related social institutions allow diversity in secondary matters, but (...) essentially should be guided by universally valid principles. In the case of aesthetics, a diversity of taste suggests a virtually unlimited pluralism. Yet, a universal basic principle of aesthetic evaluation is suggested which would greatly reduce tolerable pluralism, although this assertion is made with less confidence than the insistence on basic norms in ethics. (shrink)

THE CONCEPT OF FREEDOM CAN BE A USEFUL FRAMEWORK FOR A\nCOMPARATIVE STUDY OF CIVILIZATIONS. ASSUMING THAT FREEDOM\nIS NOT AN ABSOLUTE CONDITION, BUT MOVES IN A SPECTRUM\nBETWEEN OSSIFIED FORMS AND TOTAL ANARCHY, THE ACTUAL\nPRACTICE OF FREEDOM VARIES FROM CULTURE TO CULTURE.\nMOREOVER, THE NOTION OF FREEDOM IS RELATED TO RESTRICTIVE\nNORMS - SUCH AS LAW, MORALS, AESTHETICS, CUSTOM, VOGUE. IN\nRESPECT OF EACH SUCH NORM THE DEGREE OF FREEDOM MAY VARY.\nTHUS, THE PROFILE OF FREEDOM OF A SOCIETY MAY BE STUDIED BY\nCOMPARING ITS DEGREE IN (...) RESPECT OF DIVERSE NORMS, AS WELL\nAS BY MAKING CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISONS. (shrink)

This volume offers a unifying view of the great diversity of human experience, based on the author's insight into man's self-perception.

The apparent nonlocality of quantum theory has been a persistent concern. Einstein et al. and Bell emphasized the apparent nonlocality arising from entanglement correlations. While some interpretations embrace this nonlocality, modern variations of the Everett-inspired many worlds interpretation try to circumvent it. In this paper, we review Bell's "no-go" theorem and explain how it rests on three axioms, local causality, no superdeterminism, and one world. Although Bell is often taken to have shown that local causality is ruled out by the (...) experimentally confirmed entanglement correlations, we make clear that it is the conjunction of the three axioms that is ruled out by these correlations. We then show that by assuming local causality and no superdeterminism, we can give a direct proof of many worlds. The remainder of the paper searches for a consistent, local, formulation of many worlds. We show that prominent formulations whose ontology is given by the wave function violate local causality, and we critically evaluate claims in the literature to the contrary. We ultimately identify a local many worlds interpretation that replaces the wave function with a separable Lorentz-invariant wave-field. We conclude with discussions of the Born rule, and other interpretations of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Parallel lives is an ontological model of nature in which quantum mechanics and special relativity are unified in a single universe with a single space-time. Point-like objects called lives are the only fundamental objects in this space-time, and they propagate at or below c, and interact with one another only locally at point-like events in space-time, very much like classical point particles. Lives are not alive in any sense, nor do they possess consciousness or any agency to make decisions—they are (...) simply point objects which encode memory at events in space-time. The only causes and effects in the universe occur when lives meet locally, and thus the causal structure of interaction events in space-time is Lorentz invariant. Each life traces a continuous world-line through space-time, and experiences its own relative world, fully defined by the outcomes of past events along its world-line, which are encoded in its external memory. A quantum field comprises a continuum of lives throughout space-time, and familiar physical systems like particles each comprise a sub-continuum of the lives of the field. Each life carries a hidden internal memory containing a local relative wavefunction, which is a local piece of a pure universal wavefunction, but it is the relative wavefunctions in the local memories throughout space-time which are physically real in PL, and not the universal wavefunction in configuration space. Furthermore, while the universal wavefunction tracks the average behavior of the lives of a system, it fails to track their individual dynamics and trajectories. There is always a preferred separable basis, and for an irreducible physical system, each orthogonal term in this basis is a different relative world—each containing some fraction of the lives of the system. The relative wavefunctions in the lives’ internal memories govern which lives of different systems can meet during future local interactions, and thereby enforce entanglement correlations—including Bell inequality violations. These, and many other details, are explored here, but several aspects of this framework are not yet fleshed out, and work is ongoing. (shrink)

The history of John Dewey’s leadership of the progressive People’s Lobby. John Dewey (1859–1952) was a preeminent American philosopher who is remembered today as the founder of what is called child-centered or progressive education. In The Philosopher-Lobbyist, Mordecai Lee tells the largely forgotten story of Dewey’s effort to influence public opinion and promote democratic citizenship. Based on Dewey’s 1927 book The Public and Its Problems, the People’s Lobby was a trailblazing nonprofit agency, an early forerunner of the now common (...) public interest lobbying group. It used multiple forms of mass communication, grassroots organizing, and lobbying to counteract the many special interest groups and lobbies that seemed to be dominating policymaking in Congress and in the White House. During the 1930s, Dewey and the People’s Lobby criticized the New Deal as too conservative and championed a social democratic alternative, including a more progressive tax system, government ownership of natural monopolies, and state operation of the railroad system. While its impact on historical developments was small, the story of the People’s Lobby is an important reminder of a historical road not traveled and a policy agenda that was not adopted, but could have been. (shrink)

The set of 60 real rays in four dimensions derived from the vertices of a 600-cell is shown to possess numerous subsets of rays and bases that provide basis-critical parity proofs of the Bell-Kochen-Specker (BKS) theorem (a basis-critical proof is one that fails if even a single basis is deleted from it). The proofs vary considerably in size, with the smallest having 26 rays and 13 bases and the largest 60 rays and 41 bases. There are at least 90 basic (...) types of proofs, with each coming in a number of geometrically distinct varieties. The replicas of all the proofs under the symmetries of the 600-cell yield a total of almost a hundred million parity proofs of the BKS theorem. The proofs are all very transparent and take no more than simple counting to verify. A few of the proofs are exhibited, both in tabular form as well as in the form of MMP hypergraphs that assist in their visualization. A survey of the proofs is given, simple procedures for generating some of them are described and their applications are discussed. It is shown that all four-dimensional parity proofs of the BKS theorem can be turned into experimental disproofs of noncontextuality. (shrink)

This collection of eight essays plus Introduction challenges many of society's most fundamental ideas about the world and ourselves with reasonable, original alternatives. Written from an unapologetically Jewish viewpoint, these essays will be of interest to any intellectually inquisitive person. Is economic gain a universal drive? Is it reasonable to say that the world is the result of chance occurrences? Does humanism understate the value of humanity? These questions and others are considered.

A diagrammatic representation is given of the 24 rays of Peres that makes it easy to pick out all the 512 parity proofs of the Kochen-Specker theorem contained in them. The origin of this representation in the four-dimensional geometry of the rays is pointed out.

It is shown how the 300 rays associated with the antipodal pairs of vertices of a 120-cell (a four-dimensional regular polytope) can be used to give numerous “parity proofs” of the Kochen–Specker theorem ruling out the existence of noncontextual hidden variables theories. The symmetries of the 120-cell are exploited to give a simple construction of its Kochen–Specker diagram, which is exhibited in the form of a “basis table” showing all the orthogonalities between its rays. The basis table consists of 675 (...) bases (a basis being a set of four mutually orthogonal rays), but all the bases can be written down from the few listed in this paper using some simple rules. The basis table is shown to contain a wide variety of parity proofs, ranging from 19 bases (or contexts) at the low end to 41 bases at the high end. Some explicit examples of these proofs are given, and their implications are discussed. (shrink)

Recently highly-efficient quantum engines were devised by exploiting the stochastic energy changes induced by quantum measurement. Here we show that such an engine can be based on an interaction-free measurement, in which the meter seemingly does not interact with the measured object. We use a modified version of the Elitzur–Vaidman bomb tester, an interferometric setup able to detect the presence of a bomb triggered by a single photon without exploding it. In our case, a quantum bomb subject to a gravitational (...) force is initially in a superposition of being inside and outside one of the interferometer arms. We show that the bomb can be lifted without blowing up. This occurs when a photon traversing the interferometer is detected at a port that is always dark when the bomb is located outside the arm. The required potential energy is provided by the photon even though it was not absorbed by the bomb. A natural interpretation is that the photon traveled through the arm which does not contain the bomb—otherwise the bomb would have exploded—but it implies the surprising conclusion that the energy exchange occurred at a distance despite a local interaction Hamiltonian. We use the weak value formalism to support this interpretation and find evidence of contextuality. Regardless of interpretation, this interaction-free quantum measurement engine is able to lift the most sensitive bomb without setting it off. (shrink)

The unique wisdom of Judaism comes from the Talmud and the Judaic sages' other ancient writings that preserve the tradition of the originally oral Torah, or Teachings of Moses. Sometimes surprising - "better sincere sin than hypocritical virtue" - and always penetrating and helpful - "who are rich? those who are happy with their lot" - the wisdom of the oral Torah is set forth on more than one hundred subjects, arranged alphabetically, in their sources' own words, here rendered in (...) clear and easily readable English. This is the "how-to" book for people who think deeply about everyday life: facing death of a loved one, the duties and rights of women and men together, busy-ness versus real achievement, deceit, gossip, discretion, virtue, honor, forbearance, forgiveness. (shrink)