The Physics of Heaven and Hell.pdf (708.46 kB)
On the Physics of Heaven and Hell
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journal contribution
posted on 2017-11-17, 22:00 authored by John SmithJohn SmithIn Manichaeism, a religion founded by the Persian Mani in the third century, both light and dark, and good and evil, are eternal principles involved in an eternal struggle. The idea is an old one - Heraclitus born 535 BC says for example that "the path up and down are one and the same". In The Marriage of Heaven Hell, William Blake illustrates the Manichean view that these principles are mutually dependent:
Without Contraries there is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate are necessary to Human existence. From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.
These philosophical/religious ideas can be re-cast in the language of mathematical-physics in such a way as to reveal their falsity, to reveal that darkness and evil are, not an eternal principle, but a finite interruption of an eternal principle, not an eternal principle in themselves, but privations of an eternal principle.
