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