3,165 research outputs found
Hans Jonas' Feeble Theodicy: How on Earth Could God Retire?
In this paper, we criticize Hans Jonas’s analogy between God’s power and the operation of physical forces. We wonder why, if omnipotence had proved to be "a self-contradictory concept", does Jonas still need to invoke the occurrence of horrendous evils to support the view that "God is not all powerful". We suggest that "God’s retreating into himself in order to give room to the world, renouncing his being and divesting himself of his deity" are beautiful but inconsistent metaphors of creation. Our central claim is that God’s alleged retirement, even if it were conceivable, would not the least diminish his responsibility in the occurrence of evi
Non-affine horocycle orbit closures on strata of translation surfaces: new examples
We investigate specific examples of locally-defined real vector-fields on
strata of translation surfaces. Integrating SL(2,R)-loci of Veech surfaces
along these vector-fields yield interesting new examples of horocyle-invariant
ergodic measures. These measures are supported on closed immersed manifolds
with boundary that approach the boundary of strata in a novel way.Comment: 48 pages, 27 figures. Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School
of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the
Degree of Doctor of Philosoph
Atheists’ Challenge to Cosmological Arguments
In this paper I intend to identify some points of disagreement between theism and atheism. I will try to point out three epistemological clashes occurring in the controversial treatment of cosmological arguments. I am not assessing the arguments pro and contra, which have been thoroughly studied and discussed, but just trying to understand the misunderstanding
Enumeration of nilpotent loops up to isotopy
We modify tools introduced by Daniel Daly and Petr Vojtechovsky in order to
count, for any odd prime q, the number of nilpotent loops of order 2q up to
isotopy, instead of isomorphy.Comment: 20 pages; important typos corrected (section 6
The Space of Geometric Limits of One-generator Closed Subgroups of PSL2(R)
We give a complete description of the closure of the space of one-generator
closed subgroups of PSL2(R) for the Chabauty topology, by computing explicitly
the matrices associated with elements of Aut(D) = PSL2(R), and finding
quantities parametrizing the limit cases. Along the way, we investigate under
what conditions sequences of maps transform convergent sequences of closed
subsets of the domain into convergent sequences of closed subsets of the range.
In particular, this allows us to compute certain geometric limits of PSL2(R)
only by looking at the Hausdorff limit of some closed subsets of C.Comment: 28 pages, 6 figure
Higher Order Corrections to the Asymptotic Perturbative Solution of a Schwinger-Dyson Equation
Building on our previous works on perturbative solutions to a Schwinger-Dyson
for the massless Wess-Zumino model, we show how to compute 1/n corrections to
its asymptotic behavior. The coefficients are analytically determined through a
sum on all the poles of the Mellin transform of the one loop diagram. We
present results up to the fourth order in 1/n as well as a comparison with
numerical results. Unexpected cancellations of zetas are observed in the
solution, so that no even zetas appear and the weight of the coefficients is
lower than expected, which suggests the existence of more structure in the
theory.Comment: 16 pages, 2 figures. Some points clarified, typos corrected, matches
the version to be published in Lett. Math. Phy
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