Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

Autumn in mid-Sweden 2016.
Text & Photo © CM Cordeiro, Sweden 2016

The reflections in this post stem as part of a theme I’m currently reading on the democratisation of education, based on literature reads Biesta [1], Leathwood [2], Martinsson [3] and Kalonaityté [4], followed by Lekebjer et al. [5]. Amongst the reads, I and was immediately drawn back to Biesta’s life’s work in academia that revolved around education philosophy, only after he began a decade’s work into teaching physics [6]. Continue reading ”Connecting ideas in theoretical physics and the language of education” →

Candidate Higgs boson event from collisions in 2012 between protons in the ATLAS detector on the LHC. Image: ATLAS/CERN [1]

Dionysius the Areopagite

Mystical Theology

Chapter I

These things thou must not disclose to any of the uninitiated, by whom I mean those who cling to the objects of human thought, and imagine there is no super-essential reality beyond; and fancy that they know by human understanding Him that has made Darkness His secret place. And, if the Divine Initiation is beyond such men as these, what can be said of others yet more incapable thereof, who describe the Transcendent Cause of all things by qualities drawn from the lowest order of being, while they deny that it is in any way superior to the various ungodly delusions which they fondly invent in ignorance of this truth? [2,3,4]

References
[1] CERN 2015. ATLAS and CMS experiments shed light on Higgs properties. Internet resource at http://goo.gl/DSznjP, retrieved 27 March 2016.
[2] Stanford University, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, First published Mon Sep 6, 2004; substantive revision Wed Dec 31, 2014. ”Ch. 1: Introduction, and allegory of Moses’ ascent up Mt. Sinai.” Internet resource Continue reading ”Introduction to quantum physics 5th century: Dionysius the Areopagite” →

Quantum reality. Fractals that appear and disappear as probabilities, when the observer is standing teetering from left to right to peek at the sunset between. ”Classical systems are supposed not to be disturbed by measurement, for the state of a quantum system measurement is crucial” [1:1174]. By ’measurement’ it is also understood that what is being measured depends upon the position from where the measurement takes place, as when Heisenberg suggests ”I believe that one can fruitfully formulate the origin of the classical ’orbit’ in this way. The ’orbit’ comes into being only when we observe it. [13:73 in [1]]
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro, Sweden 2016

As the field of quantum physics advanced in theory and discoveries in the past century, what scholars have noticed was just how inadequate language is to frame what Robbert Dijkgraaf calls ’the study of nothing’ [2]. It is this very topic of language and reality that was addressed in Brigitte Falkenburg’s [1] paper on Peter Mittelstaedt’s contributions to the philosophy of physics. His works addressed a constant quest for semantic self-consistency in the field of quantum mechanics.

Mittelstaedt’s quest for semantic consistency has to do with how relativity and quantum theory get into conflict with traditional philosophical assumptions about the structure of the physical world. Continue reading ”Quest for semantic consistency in relativity” →

View of Boat Quay, Singapore.
Text & Photo © CM Cordeiro, Sweden 2015

SG50: Singapore at 50, 2015

I read with inquisitive delight the introductory paragraph cited below, in a book entitled Reframing Singapore: Memory – Identity – Trans-Regionalism, a collection of scholarly articles in exchange of ideas of the different narratives of Singapore, edited by Derek Heng and Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied published by the Amsterdam University Press, 2009.

“Any tourist who strolls along the Singapore River will find picturesque cityscapes that evoke paradoxical mental images in the mind. Skyscrapers are juxtaposed with shop houses that have been synthetically pre- served so as to suggest memories of the island’s past. Painted black and raised high on a concrete pedestal, the statue of the colony’s British ‘founder’, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, stares at the modern, durian- shaped Esplanade Theatres on the Bay. Colonialism was here, and so were the Japanese. A tour of the Asian Civilizations Museum adds to the sense of confusion and ambivalence. Impressed by high-tech dis- plays of the tapestry of cultures that evolved over the last two centuries and the migration of men and women from far-off lands, the tourist wonders why Chinese, Malays, Indians and ‘Others’ are the only categories, which have been accorded demographic significance. She would be informed later of the authoritarianism and the technocracy. But the orderliness, security and comfort she has enjoyed thus far tend to disguise the assertions of injustice. Continue reading ”The Singapore identity beyond SG50: an integrated systemic approach” →