Friday Gen Eds MS12: The Forces of Motion

This is the twelfth post in the math/science part of my "Gen Eds in a Nutshell" series. The Gen Ed series consists of ten subjects you might study in a general education or "liberal arts" core at a university or college. I've already done the subject of philosophy, and I'm over half way through the world history subject on Wednesdays. I'm combining the last two on math and science into one series on Fridays.

Thus far in the math/science subjects:

• Math/Science Overview
• Basic Types of Numbers
• The Atom and Quantum Physics
• The Periodic Table
• Molecules and Ions
• Chemical Reactions
• The Basic Tools of Algebra
• Heat and Thermodynamics
• Basic Geometry and Trigonometry
• The Basics of Calculus
• The Physics of Motion

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Four Fundamental Forces
1. At present, physics talks about four basic forces in nature. The one most familiar to us is gravity, although we will ask in a later post if gravity is really a force or rather the curvature of space around massive objects. Some suggest it is based on an as yet undiscovered particle, the "graviton."

The second force we recognize the most is the electromagnetic force, which is the basis for electricity and magnetism. These are the forces that hold atoms together. These are the forces that cause friction. Ultimately, this force is behind how we move things around or how things react chemically with each other.

The other two forces have to do with the nucleus of atoms and so, while they are absolutely essential to existence, they are completely foreign to our experience. The strong nuclear force is what holds the protons of the nucleus together, even though they have the same charge. The weak nuclear force is what causes a nuclear process by which a neutron decays into a proton. [1]

Newton's Three Laws
2. In the 1600s, Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727) set forth three "laws" relating to force and motion. We mentioned the first law in the previous entry. A body at rest wants to stay at rest, and a body in motion wants to stay in motion. The reason this does not happen is because of gravity (the things we throw forward fall to the ground and so cannot continue forward) and friction. We mentioned in the previous entry that the reason we fly off a merry-go-round or slide to the side in a car is the fact that our bodies want to stay in motion in the direction they were headed.

3. Newton's second law is often summarized in the formula F = ma. Force equals mass times acceleration. Another way to express the second law is that force is the instantaneous rate of change in the momentum of an object. We know momentum as the fact that our bodies want to stay in motion. If we are running down a hill, we may find it hard to stop because our body has momentum.

Momentum can be expressed by the formula p = mv, momentum equals mass times velocity. Another quantity is known as impulse, which is force multiplied by the amount of time the force is applied.

Another law is the conservation of momentum. The amount of combined momentum before a collision, for example, equals the combined momentum after a collision.

4. Newton's third law is often captured in the statement--"For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." So when a bug hits the windshield of your car, the force it acts on the windshield equals the force the windshield pushes back on it. But because the car is so much more massive than the bug (F = ma), it experiences a negligible deceleration (negative acceleration). But the bug experiences a massive deceleration with its tiny mass, causing it to go splat.

Although it may be counterintuitive, the floor is pushing back up on us (the "normal" force) to the same extent as our weight is pushing down on the floor. That is why we do not fall through. This might be a good point to mention that weight is a force and is technically different from mass. Mass has to do with how much "stuff" something consists of. Weight, on the other hand, is the force of gravity on that mass.

So our weight will be different on different planets because the force of gravity will be different. This is why we can jump farther distances on the moon. If we substitute g (the acceleration due to gravity) for a in the formula F = ma, we have the formula that our weight = mg.

Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation
5. Newton discovered that every object in the universe exerts a gravitational force on every other object in the universe. In particular, he discovered that this force decreased in relation to the square of the distance between the two objects. And it increased in relation to the two masses times each other. The formula looks like this:

F = Gm₁m₂/r²

The force of gravity between two bodies equals a constant (the number 6.67 x 10^-11) times the product of the two masses, divided by the distance between them squared.

So the reason the earth holds us to the ground is because it is so massive. The moon is less massive, so its gravitational pull on us would be less.

Work, Power, and Kinetic Energy
6. In terms of motion, physics defines work as the distance for which a force is applied, so W = Fd. The standard unit of force is the newton, named for the scientist, so a unit of work might be the "newton-meter," which is also called a "joule" of work.

7. Another distinction often mentioned at this point in your physics journey is the distinction between potential energy and kinetic energy. Potential energy has to do with a situation where work is "waiting" to be done, where energy is on the verge of being set in motion. Let's say I am holding a rock in the air. If I let loose, it will fall. We might say it has a certain potential energy that can easily be put into motion as kinetic energy, the energy of motion. Similarly, if I have a wound up rubber band, it is ready to exchange its potential energy for kinetic energy and work done.

The formula for kinetic energy is 1/2mv².

The relationship between kinetic energy and work can be expressed in what is called the work-energy theorem: the total work done equals the change in kinetic energy at the beginning and end or W_tot = K₂ - K₁ = ∆K. This also embodies another law, the law of conservation of energy. The total energy before and after any event or process will always be the same, even though some of the energy is effectively "lost" as heat (see entry covering the second law of thermodynamics).

8. Power is another category in this discussion, often expressed in watts. One watt is one joule of work being done per second. So power is the change in work done per time or P = W/t . Another way to express this is force times velocity.

Rotation and Force
9. The same basic rules apply to rotational motion as to straight line motion. For example, if we substitute the "angular" distance covered (θ) for the straight line distance and we substitute the "angular" velocity (ω) for the straight line velocity, we find the same distance and velocity equations apply to circular motion as to straight line motion. E.g., θ₂ = θ₁ + ω₁t + 1/2at².

By angular distance, I mean the angle in radians that a point has moved along the circle (in effect, the number of "radiuses" traveled along the circumference of the circle). Angular velocity is usually just the number of radians per second. The formula for the kinetic energy of a rotating body is directly analogous to the formula for straight line motion K = 1/2Iω², where I is called the "moment of inertia." It is basically a way of expressing how the mass of a body functions in relation to it spinning on some axis. There are formulas for calculating what it would be depending on the shape of the body and where the axis is that you are rotating it around

10. Torque refers to a force exerted on something you are causing to rotate, such as when you exert force on a wrench to try to turn a bolt. The torque is the force you exert times the "lever arm," where the lever arm is the distance between the point of rotation and the "line of action" where you are exerting the force.

Summary of Formulas

• momentum: p = mv
• impulse: J = Ft
• kinetic energy: KE = 1/2mv²
• work: W = Fd
• power: P = W/t

Next Week: Math/Science 13: Electromagnetism

[1] In the early history of the universe (about 10^-12 seconds after creation), the electromagnetic and weak forces were probably merged in an "electroweak" force. Even earlier than then (10^-34 seconds after creation), the electroweak force was probably combined with the strong force in a grand unified force of some kind. The search for this grand unified force continues.

Gadamer - Introduction 2

Previously on Gadamer

... These questions may seem to be invalid in the face of the upper hand that modern science has in the current delineation and philosophical basis for the concepts of knowledge and truth. And yet even within the sciences it cannot be avoided. The phenomenon of understanding not only pulls through all human relations to the world. It also has independent validity within science and contradicts the attempt to reinterpret it in terms of a scientific method. The investigations that follow are based on these contradictions, which assert themselves within modern science against the universal claim of scientific methodology. Our concern is to search everywhere for the experience of truth, which exceeds the realm under the control of scientific methodology, and to ask where and on what [experience] finds its own legitimation. Thus the "spiritual sciences" [1] are connected with areas of experience which lie outside science--with the experience of philosophy, with the experience of art and with the experience of history itself. These are all areas of experience in which the truth is revealed but cannot be verified with the methodical means of science. [2]

[1] Geisteswissenschaften, the studies of the arts and humanities, as it were, the non-sciences which would include philosophy, theology, etc.

[2] I perceive Gadamer here to be locating the humanities and the arts outside the realm of scientific methodology. In fact, he seems to be subsuming the sciences within experience in a way that anticipates Kuhn and others.

Gen Eds H8b: The Roman Republic

Oath of the Horatii, by David

The eighth unit of world history in this series is "The Age of Rome." This is my second post in that unit.

This is part of my "General Education in a Nutshell" series. The series consists of ten subjects you might study in a general education or "liberal arts" core at a university or college. The first topic in the overall series was philosophy. So far in the world history section:

• World History Overview
• From 9-11 to the Present
• From the Cold War to the Millennium
• From Waterloo to World War II
• 5a. The French Revolution
• 5b. The Enlightenment to the American Revolution
• 5c. From Cromwell to the First Industrial Revolution
• 6a. Reformation and Scientific Revolution 
• 6b. The Renaissance and a New World
• 7a. Church Schisms in the Middle Ages
• 7b. Kings Rising in the Middle Ages
• 7c. Medieval Arabia, India, China, and South America
• 8a. The Roman Empire

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The Founding of the Republic
1. According to legend, Rome was founded in the year we would call 753BC. In the Aeneid, Virgil has his hero, Aeneas, flee the defeated city of Troy with the destiny of coming to the area where Rome would be founded. [1] Aeneas has a vision of his descendant Romulus founding the city. He thus gave Rome a heritage as old as that of the Greeks, and made the dominance of Rome a final victory of the Trojans over Greece.

Romulus and his brother Remus, were said to survive after being abandoned as infants by suckling with a she-wolf. [2] Later they would return to those hills overlooking the Tiber River to found a city. But they disagreed on which hill to found the city on, ending with Romulus killing Remus. The founding of the city is dated from that time, when Romulus declared himself king.

According to legend, Romulus established the first three tribes of Rome, each of which was further divided into ten curia or wards each. Each tribe had a "tribune," and each curia had a "curio" as its leader. These divisions became the basis for taxation and for enlisting soldiers for battle. According to tradition Romulus also picked one hundred men to constitute the Roman senate. These "fathers" became the "patrician" class of Rome, while everyone left became the "plebs."

2. It is hard to know how much of these origin stories are historical, but they nevertheless give us a picture of how Rome understood itself at a very early stage. According to legend Rome had seven kings until Tarquin the Proud was expelled from Rome in 509 BC, the legendary beginning of the Roman Republic.

After Romulus there had been Numa Pompilius (ca. 700BC). He was said to have built the temple of Janus, whose doors were open when Rome was at war and closed when Rome was at peace. He is said to have established the office of pontifex maximus, the high priest of the Roman people, as well as the "Vestal Virgins," virgin priestesses who kept a sacred fire that was never to go out.

Tullus Hostilius and Ancus Marcius (600s BC) fought against neighboring tribes and extended Rome's rule over the immediate area. Tarquin the Elder was an Etruscan. According to tradition he established the circus maximus, where horse races took place. He also brought Etruscan customs for patrician clothing like the toga, as well as various Roman rituals.

After the elder Tarquin's assassination, Servius Tullius ruled in the mid-500s. He is said to have incorporated three more hills into Rome, completing its number at seven. He also expanded the number of tribes by thirty. The number of tribes was set at twenty at the beginning of the Roman Republic. [3] Then Servius himself was murdered.

The murderer became the final king, Tarquin the Proud, known for being a tyrant. His son infamously raped Lucretia, a virtuous wife who ended up committing suicide. Tarquin was finally deposed by Lucius Junius Brutus. Almost five hundred years later, his descendant Brutus would participate in the murder of another dictator, Julius Caesar--invoking the family precedence. [4]

3. The Republic was run by two consuls, who were elected by the Roman Senate to rule for a year. Outside of Rome they commanded armies, which were required to disband before crossing the Rubicon River. Every five years, the elected consuls became "censors" who took a census of the Roman people and adjusted the membership of the Senate appropriately.

In its fully developed form, ambitious Roman men would follow a path known as the cursus honorem, a "course of honor," a path that could lead to the highest offices of Rome. [5] It might start with notorious service in the military, becoming a tribune who commanded in the Roman legions. Once achieving senatorial status, a person might serve as a quaestor who served administratively in some way, such as directing certain games or being a paymaster.

Next one might become an aedile and given even more responsibility, such as running a temple. [6] Then there was the role of a praetor, which next to consul was the highest position a Roman male could have under normal circumstances. This was primarily the role of judge.

4. The Roman system did not develop overnight, and there were civil wars from time to time. As we would expect, the privileged often abused their power at the expense of the plebs, which occasionally led to revolt and civil war. Around 450, ten men (Decumviri) were appointed to draft a code of laws to create official boundaries and rights for the people. These "Twelve Tables" became the basis for Roman law.

Conquering Italy
5. By about the year 400BC, Rome more or less possessed the central area of Italy. But in 390, Celtic tribes from the north sacked the city. These were the Gauls who gave the name Galatia to the region Paul would later visit in Anatolia (Turkey). These were the Gauls who would wander first into the area of present day France, whom Julius Caesar would later fight. And these were the Celts who would migrate into Great Britain, the ancestors of the Scots, Irish, and Welsh.

Interactions would continue with the Gauls for the next two hundred years.

Rome would have three Samnite wars in the 300s, which extended Rome's territory southward in Italy. At the beginning of the 200s, Rome would war with the Greek colonies in the very south of Italy. These Pyrrhic Wars were waged with the king of Epirus, on the west coast of Greece, who technically won a couple battles with the Romans. But Pyrrhus experienced such massive casualties that we now use the phrase "Pyrrhic victory" to refer to a win that is involves such substantial loss that it can hardly be called a victory.

These Greek colonies in southern Italy are the location where the famed philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras had a somewhat religious community in the late 500s BC.

The Punic Wars
6. The three Punic Wars took place between Rome and Carthage during the years 264-146BC. Carthage is on the northern coast of Africa, where Tunisia is today. Carthage was a city of Phoenician origin and a major sea power. It was the Roman conflict with the Carthaginians that led it to develop its own fleet of ships.

The first war (264-41BC) was over the island of Sicily. In what would become a pattern for Rome, one party in a conflict called on Rome for help. Then by the end of it, Rome had annexed its territory. Soon Rome controlled not only Sicily but the islands of Corsica and Sardinia as well.

The second Punic War (218-201) is the one when the famed Hannibal crossed the French Alps on elephants and soundly defeated the Romans repeatedly in northern Italy. However, he lost so many soldiers and elephants in the process that he was not able to take Rome itself. Scipio Africanus would ultimately defeat Carthage on its own ground, reducing Carthaginian territory mostly to the city itself.

Rome largely provoked the third and final Punic War (149-6). Carthage had paid its debt to Rome. It was rebuilding its military. After a visit, Cato the Elder began ending each of his speeches in the senate with "Carthage must be destroyed." Rome made some unreasonable demands, which Carthage refused. They went to war, and Rome thoroughly destroyed the city, making it uninhabitable. It dismantled and then burned all its buildings to the ground, and sowed its fields with salt.

Rome was now in complete control of the western Mediterranean.

The Macedonian Wars
7. Rome's wars with Macedonia, to the north of Greece, overlapped with the Punic Wars. During the second Punic War, the king of Macedon allied himself with Hannibal, drawing the Macedonians into the conflict. This was the first Macedonian War.

Rome intervened again (200-196BC) when Macedon ignored its demand that it stay away from some of the Greek islands off the coast of Anatolia (Turkey). With Rome's honor at stake, it pounced until Macedon was back in line, then withdrawing to Rome again. Then the Greek Seleucids tried to expand into Greece and were again repulsed by the Romans (192-88BC). [8] This was the first time that the Romans had entered Anatolia.

There was a third and fourth Macedonian war. After the third, Rome became convinced that it needed to divide up the Macedonian kingdom and have a permanent presence in Greece. The fourth ended with the destruction of Corinth by Mummius in 146BC, the same year Carthage was destroyed. [8]

Rome was now in control of Greece and the Aegean Sea.

The Civil Wars
8. The late second and early first centuries BC were tumultuous for Rome itself. From about 134 to 44BC we have the "Crisis of the Roman Republic." In the 130s and 120s, two brothers known as the Gracchi tried to distribute much of the the land of wealthy patricians to the poor and to veterans. Both were killed, the first violence in Rome since the 500s. This drive to grant more rights to the "populares" stood at the heart of the conflicts--one side fighting for them, the other strongly resisting.

The next decades would see three slave wars and the slave revolt that ended with the death of Spartacus (in 71BC). Sulla would break the rules in 81 and bring his army across the Rubicon, setting a dangerous precedent that Julius Caesar would repeat a few decades later in 49BC. [9] The senate then understandably voted him dictator. As dictator, Sulla was empowered to undo some of the populist reforms that the Gracchi and others had made and reinvigorate the power of the upper class.

9. Then there was Pompey. Pompey distinguished himself as a general in the wars against Mithridates in Anatolia. At the end of those wars, Rome would effectively control the land we now know as Turkey. In the year 64, Pompey would intervene in a dispute between brothers in Jerusalem, and effectively Rome would now control Palestine as well. In 64, Pompey walked into the Most Holy Place of the temple, inspiring the writing known as the Psalms of Solomon.

The powerful Pompey was part of an informal and at first secret pact between three men--himself, the wealthy Crassus, and the popular Julius who would soon be declared Caesar. Julius also was pushing popular reforms, which the powerful senate had been able to resist since Sulla. But with these three in agreement--the first "triumvirate"--Julius was able to push some reforms through.

Crassus died in battle against the Parthians in the east in 53BC. Then Pompey and Caesar became enemies, and their armies fought against each other, with Caesar defeating him in 48. He was assassinated later that year in Egypt.

10. In 49BC, a year before he finally defeated Pompey, Julius Caesar followed the path of Sulla and crossed the Rubicon with his army. Now in control of the capitol, he set out to defeat Pompey, and was declared Caesar for ten years by the senate in his absence in 47BC. Then in early 44BC he was declared Caesar for life, leading to his assassination on the "Ides of March" that year, March 15.

Then Caesar's adopted son, Octavian, took to revenge. A second triumvirate formed with Octavian (who would become Caesar Augustus), Mark Antony, and Lepidus. While the first triumvirate was unofficial, the Senate made this second triumvirate an empowered unit more powerful than the consuls.

Brutus was pursued by Octavian, who defeated him at the Battle of Philippi in 42BC. Brutus committed suicide.

Eventually, tensions between Octavian and Mark Antony erupted into civil war between Roman armies as well. Antony had been having an affair with Cleopatra in Egypt (after marrying Octavian's daughter to create peace between himself and Octavian). Octavian had the senate declare war on Egypt, with Antony declared a traitor. Then Octavian defeated Antony at the Battle of Actium in 39C. Antony and Cleopatra then fled back to Egypt, where they committed suicide. From that point on Egypt was a client kingdom of Rome, a kingdom allowed to rule itself as long as it obeyed Rome.

In 27BC, Octavian was given the title "Augustus" by the Senate.

Take-Aways

• Foundation legends, symbols, and rituals are incredibly powerful, even though they are often historically dubious. 
• If you turn to a bully in your hour of need, they will probably be your next oppressor.
• Sometimes the cost of winning is so great that it is really losing.
• If a state does not take care of the ordinary person, that person will eventually revolt against the system.
• Sometimes an enemy provokes you so that, if you bat an eye, he has an excuse to destroy you.
• When the cat's away, the mouse will play.
• Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. Watch your back.

Next Week: History 9a: Greeks and the Hellenistic Age

[1] The Aeneid was written in the early years of Augustus' reign (late first century BC) as propaganda to portray his reign as destiny, as fated.

[2] These tribes were geographical rather than based on ethnic or family relationships.

[3] The primary source for the legend is Livy, who wrote a history of Rome at about the same time as Virgil, Books from the Foundation of the City. The expression "from the founding of the city" was the way the Romans marked time. So Jesus was born about 747AUC (ab urbe condita, "from the founding of the city"), 6BC.

[4] Shakespeare has Brutus cry out, "sic semper tyrranus" as he kills Caesar--"thus always [to] a tyrant."

[5] The cursus honorem was not finalized until the time of Sulla's dictatorship in 81BC.

[6] Romans 16:23 seems to indicate that Erastus was an aedile in the city of Corinth.

[7] This is the same Seleucid thrust during which the Maccabean crisis took place in Israel.

[8] Corinth lay in ruins until 44BC, when Julius Caesar refounded the city. Commentaries on 1 Corinthians often quote passages about how immoral the city of Corinth was. Although it no doubt had its fair share of immorality at the time of the New Testament, it is at least worth knowing that the passages being quoted come from the earlier period of Corinth's history, before it was destroyed by the Romans.

[9] The expression, "crossing the Rubicon," refers to a decision that commits you to a certain course of action, whether you regret it or not. It's all or nothing now. Or as Caesar is thought to have said, "the die is cast."

6. The Art of Propaganda

The next chapter of Konrad Heiden's 1944 book, Der Fuehrer. is titled, "The Death of Money." The first six chapters were:

• How to Take Over the World
• Bands of Restless Men
• Hitler was a Loser
• Rallies with the Rabid
• Waging War against His People

1. It is History 101 that it is easiest to bring about change when there is a crisis. The Romans gave away their republic in a time of civil war. FDR was able to create social security and other government programs in the wake of the Great Depression. The most devilish of leaders know that one way to get people to accept change is to manufacture a crisis. Of course if the people find out you have manufactured a crisis (or come to think that you have), you're toast.

Hitler did not invent the financial crisis of Germany in the early 1920s. People would get paid in millions of marks and rush to the lines at the grocery store to buy basics as soon as possible because the value of their currency might go down in half while they were standing in line.

Heiden actually seems to place a bit of the blame on a man named Hugo Stinnes, a mammoth industrialist who used his access to foreign money to buy up massive amounts of German property and industry. He would borrow a certain amount to buy, which then because of inflation became almost nothing to pay back.

Stinnes feared a Bolshevik revolution so much, he effected more or less the same thing--a government take over of the economy. As Heiden says, "socialism was the aim of the workers as well as the capitalists" (128). In Germany, money was dead.

Hitler surely would not have risen to power had it not been so. The economic misery into which Germany was descending was an opportunity for his agenda of a single, powerful German state.

2. Hitler was thus able to rise to power because he was able to bring together the "disinherited" of both the right and the left together (146). The spirit of his movement grew from the "uprooted" of right and left. He also knew that good-for-nothings are sometimes the best fighters. Hitler "led the uprooted proletarians and the uprooted intellectuals together" (147).

3. But the most interesting part of the chapter to me were the reflections Heiden had on Hitler as a successful propagandist. I will merely quote some of his statements from 1944:

• "Insults aroused the enthusiasm of the masses" (134).
• Hitler quote: "The German people is... a people passing little by little into decay" (135).
• "He could deal in endless contradictions without becoming entangled, because he was able to put power into every contradiction" (135). Heiden gives two quotes from Hitler two days apart: "The spirit of resistance must be kindled from above" and "Salvation must come from below."
• Hitler quote: "We are suffering from overeducation... But the bookworms are enemies of action... We have a class of people who are intellectually high, but they are poor in energy" (136).
• Hitler would say hateful things off the cuff, which they would then edit in their later versions of them (138).
• *** Propaganda is not the art of instilling an opinion in the masses. "It is the art of receiving an opinion from the masses" (139).

This is by far the most striking idea in this chapter. It is the idea that Hitler would say any number of different contradictory things, listening for an echo from the masses. His great skill was to be able to sense which statements resonated. He could sense the inner vibration of the things he said.

• "It is the art of the great propagandist to detect this murmur and translate it into intelligible utterance and convincing action" (141).
• "He did not have a plan and act accordingly; he acted, and out of his actions a plan arose."
• "Rather than a means of directing the mass mind, propaganda is a technique for riding with the masses. It is not a machine to make wind, but a sail to catch the wind."

Gadamer - Introduction 1

I've taken to try to translate a sentence or two a day of Hans-Georg Gadamer's Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik, Truth and Method: Basic Principles of a Philosophical Hermeneutic. Each time I finish a paragraph, I plan to post an installment here, possibly with a little commentary. Here's the first paragraph of the introduction.

Introduction
The following investigations have to do with the problem of hermeneutics. The phenomenon of understanding and its proper interpretation is not only a problem particular to the question of how to study the non-sciences. From of old it has also applied to theological and legal hermeneutics, which have not so much had a "scientific" character in their theories. Rather, they have functioned and related much more to the practical behavior of a judge or a pastor formed through such study. Accordingly, the hermeneutical problem already pushes beyond the boundaries of its historical origins, which were set by the modern idea of how to study them. Understanding and the interpretation of texts is not only the concern of a type of study, but it obviously belongs entirely to the human experience of the world. The phenomenon of hermeneutics overall is originally not a problem of methodical study. It is not a method of understanding that is subject to the texts of scientific knowing in the same way as all other objects of experience. It is not at all in the first place a construction of visible knowledge, which ideally suits the idea of science--and still it is about a knowledge and truth just the same. In the understanding of tradition texts are not only understood but insights are acquired and truths known. What is this criterion for understanding and for truth? [1]

[1] Gadamer in effect is suggesting that there is a different "way of knowing" in the sciences and in what I have translated as the "non-sciences." This is a very difficult distinction to translate. The difference in German is actually between the "Naturwissenschaften" and the "Geisteswissenschaften." The first term translates easily enough as the "natural sciences," but English does not have a term "spiritual sciences," which is the other term. The "arts" is how we would classify this group of subjects--to some extent the liberal arts not including math and science. But he includes theology and legal understanding.

It seems to me that the Indiana Strategic Transfer General Education Core dabbles a little with Gadamer's categories when it distinguishes between "scientific ways of knowing" and "humanistic and artistic ways of knowing."

New Year's Resolutions 2017

It's that time again.

Looking Back
1. As usual I didn't reach all of last year's resolutions. I'm still working on those two academic books I wanted to finish. I still haven't published any more of my theology in a nutshell series. I put the Fitbit back on last week. :-)

2. I did finish my "Theology in a Nutshell" series in the summer. If you want to know my perspectives on a topic in theology as a Wesleyan, this is your go-to site. Still planning to self-publish the rest of the series.

3. Books I read this year:

• Probably the most impactful book I read this year was Jonathan Haidt's Books The Righteous Mind. I suspect there will be more posts applying his insights this year to politics and religion. 
• Since I ended up as Interim Dean of the School of Theology and Ministry this fall, I dabbled in some leadership books in the summer. In particular, I blogged through Jim Collins' Great by Choice and Sticky Teams by Larry Osborne.
• Until the fall hit, I was reading through a book someone gave me called How I Changed My Mind about Evolution.  
• I read some science this year too. I read some of The Road to Reality, some of The Fabric of the Cosmos, most of A Most Incomprehensible Thing.

4. Last year at this time, I had just started a "Seminary in a Nutshell" series. I did half of the first subject by mid-March ("The Person and Calling of a Minister.") I need to go back and finish the second half of that one, "The Contexts of a Minister."

I'm now almost done with the second subject in that series, "The Pastor as Leader." I'll probably move from it to "Biblical, Theological, and Historical Foundations" next. [1]

5. On May 4, I started a "General Education in a Nutshell" series. I finished a mini-course in philosophy by July 27. I'm now most of the way through a series on world history. Then I'm over half-way through a combined math and science series on Fridays. Plan to self-publish all of these too.

6. I'm very close to finishing the editing of my reflections on the first years of Wesley Seminary so that I can self-publish those: Six Years a Dean: Reflections on the Founding of Wesley Seminary.

Looking Forward
Pretty much the same goals as every year.

7. Read some stuff.

• I'm in the middle of Der Fuehrer on Tuesdays and hope to finish it by summer. 
• I hope to translate a sentence or two a day of Gadamer's Truth and Method and then post the translation here about a paragraph at a time. You'll understand why so slow.
• This spring I'm scheduled to skim The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East and Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. I may post some summaries.

I might rotate around a little in some of the same old same old:

• Paul and the Gift, by John Barclay
• Paul and His Recent Interpreters by N. T. Wright
• Framing Paul by Doug Campbell
• The Culture Map by Erin Meyer
• Paul's New Perspective by Woody Anderson
• The Mind of the Spirit by Craig Keener

8. Write some stuff.

• I'm nearly done with a book I've been writing for several years now: A New Perspective on Hebrews. I'm in the last chapter. Very, very late.
• Supposed to be finishing up a method of Bible study book too. About a year late. Have an interesting angle, at least to me. 
• Other books have been sitting in my "to do" box for over a decade--writing up the Greek approach I used this year, "Four Jewish Afterlife Traditions," "Salvation in the Making." I suppose there's some universe where I'm at a research university teaching two courses a semester without worrying about fundamentalists.
• All the self-publishing projects mentioned above: the rest of the theology stuff, the philosophy in a nutshell stuff. When they're done--the Pastor as Leader stuff, the world history stuff, the science and math in a nutshell stuff, the "Person and Context of the Pastor" stuff
• Novel? Every year I tell myself I will finish one of some sixty novels I've started. My current goal is a short one called, "The First Day," which I mentioned here. I've also started one again on Paul on Mondays.

9. Fitbit, Run, and Diet.
I'll leave it at that.

10. Schenck App
Since the summer, I've been dabbling in coding. We'll see. :-)

11. Bucket List
For the last decade I've been slowly working my way through some math and science books. Usual unreasonable page goals (708, 383, 209).

See you next year, d.v.

[1] Here's the working outline for the next series:
1. The Law
2. The Prophets
3. The Writings
4. NT Context
5. Mark and the Historical Jesus
6. Acts
7. Paul’s Writings
8. The Synoptic Gospels
9. The Later Writings of the New Testament
10. Johannine Literature
21. Summary of First Century Church History
22. Ante-Nicene Period
11. The Doctrine of God
12. The Doctrine of Creation
23. The Age of Nicaea
13. The Doctrine of Christ
24. The Trail of Augustine
14. The Doctrines of Sin and Salvation
25. East versus West
26. The Roman Catholic Church
27. The Protestant Reformation
15. The Doctrine of the Church and the Sacraments
28. European Multiplication and Colonization
16. Doctrine of the Holy Spirit
29. The Roots of American Christianity
17. The Doctrine of Eschatology
18. The Doctrine of Revelation
19. Contemporary Theologies
30. The State of the Church
20. Christian Ethics Today

6.4 Troubleshooting Parallel Circuits

This is the final section of Module 6 in the Navy Basic Electricity and Electronics series, a module on parallel circuits. The sections so far are:

6.1 Rules for Voltage and Current
6.2 Rules for Resistance and Power
6.3 Variational Analysis

This final section is on troubleshooting problems with parallel circuits and is rather short. It consists of five experiments.

1. The first experiment involves voltage and shows that the voltage drop in each parallel branch is the same as the applied voltage at the source.

2. The second experiment has to do with current and shows that the total amperage is the sum of all the branch currents.

3-4. The fourth experiment has to do with a short in one of the branches of a parallel circuit. "Current follows the path of least resistance" (104). Accordingly, if there is a short, then all the current will go through that path. This will blow a fuse if one is in play.

If there is an open in one branch, it effectively disappears from the system. The voltage and resistance in other individual branches stays the same, but the total current will drop (and thus total resistance will go up).

5. A short can cause considerable damage to the other components of a circuit. The ohmmeter function of a multimeter can help locate a short, as there will be no resistance in that branch. (Fire and smoke may also help :-) De-energize circuit before measuring.

Top Ten Posts of 2016

1. This is the best accounting I can give of my top ten posts for this year. It's often surprising to me what is widely read and what isn't.

• #10 Leadership and the Gentile Mission (from my seminary leadership series) 
• #9 Church Schisms in the Middle Ages (from my world history series) 
• #8 Athanasius: No Compromise (from my seminary leadership series) 
• #7 My Grandfather's 1960 Prophecy Book (several posts were very well read) 
• #6 Happy Reformation Day 
• #5 Whom Should I Vote for? 
• #4 Navigating Disputable Issues (from my seminary leadership series) 
• #3 Initial Take-Aways from Election 
• #2 Who to Vote For (it was a "psych" post, in reality a prayer for God's help) 
• #1 Paul Tillich's Protestant Principle (from my seminary leadership series) 

2. Going by hits, I went back five years and these are the top ten posts since 2011:

• #1 Skinny on Wesleyans and Baptism from 2011
• #2 Sermon in Shoes Song from 2012
• #3 Research on Supposed Saying of Socrates from 2012
• #4 Mourning the Passing of Ross Hoffman from 2013
• #5 Richard Feynman: New Laws of Nature? from 2015
• #6 The Fourfold Sense of Scripture from 2012
• #7 How Hebrews and Philo Connected Scripture from 2013
• #8 Free Wesleyan Commentary Online from 2013
• #9 Your Daughters Will Preach from 2015
• #10 Summary of Northouse Leadership Text from 2011 

Here was last year's top ten post.

3. I looked at my top tweets this year. Aside from a mocking political one in September ("She started it"), my number one tweet of the year was in November after the election: "The term evangelical should now be abandoned by any group wanting to bring millennials or non-whites to Christ."

4. As far as YouTube is concerned, my top ten watched videos by minutes watched this year were:

• Sounds of Ancient Greek Letters (15,084 views)
• Connecting Words in Hebrew (5,368 views)
• The Basic Ancient Greek Verb (6490 views)
• Distance, Displacement, Speed, and Velocity (8668 views)
• Hebrew Verb Tenses (3914 views)
• Greek Participles (2471 views)
• Philosophy of History (2085 views)
• Greek Alphabet and Sounds (3622 views)
• Exegetical Research (1341 views)
• Hebrew Verb Stems (2619 views) 

Friday Gen Eds MS11: The Physics of Motion

This is the eleventh post in the math/science part of my "Gen Eds in a Nutshell" series. The Gen Ed series consists of ten subjects you might study in a general education or "liberal arts" core at a university or college. I've already done the subject of philosophy, and I'm over half way through the world history subject on Wednesdays. I'm combining the last two on math and science into one series on Fridays.

Thus far in the math/science subjects:

• Math/Science Overview
• Basic Types of Numbers
• The Atom and Quantum Physics
• The Periodic Table
• Molecules and Ions
• Chemical Reactions
• The Basic Tools of Algebra
• Heat and Thermodynamics
• Basic Geometry and Trigonometry
• The Basics of Calculus

______________________________
1. Physics is the study of the "laws" of nature as they relate to matter and energy. We can roughly divide it into 1) mechanics, which has to do with motion and its related forces, 2) thermodynamics, which has to do with heat and its associated dynamics, 3) electromagnetism, and what I might call 4) fundamental physics, such as relativity and quantum mechanics.

Mechanics also roughly divides into two basic types of discussion: 1) the description of motion (kinematics) and 2) the forces of motion (dynamics). This entry has to do with the first--kinematics, the description of motion. The next entry will deal with the forces of motion.

Straight Line Motion
2. If you have been driving for a while, you will know that if you are driving 60 miles/hour for an hour, you will have driven 60 miles. We can put this into a formula: d = vt. You can find the distance you have traveled by multiplying the velocity at which you are traveling by the amount of time you are going at that velocity.

There are some details we might mention. First, you have to use the right units for this equation to work. So if you are using "miles per hour" for the velocity, you have to use hours for the time. Otherwise, you're not ready to multiply the two together. What you're trying to do is cancel out the "per hour" part with the number of hours. So if you had minutes or seconds in one place and hours in the others, it wouldn't cancel right.

A physicist might also want to clarify that there is technically a difference between speed and velocity. When we talk about "speed," we don't care what direction you're moving in. Who knows, you might be driving back and forth between two points for an hour. In physics, when we talk of velocity, we are talking about speed in a specific direction. [1]

We might also make the formula a little more detailed by adding a starting point d₁, the place where you started. Then the formula is d₂ = d₁ + vt .

3. Acceleration is the change in velocity over time. We know it from driving in a car or taking off in a plane. So if speed is distance per time, then acceleration is distance per time per time or distance per time squared. Just as we easily derived an equation for distance in relation to velocity, we can imagine a similar one for velocity in relation to acceleration"

v₂ = v₁ + at

So if you had an acceleration in meters/second squared and you multiplied it by seconds. One of the seconds in the bottom would cancel with the seconds you were multiplying by. And you would be left with meters/second, which is a velocity.

4. If you understood calculus and integration in the previous entry, we can integrate this equation to get another equation for distance traveled when an object is not moving at a constant speed but at a constant acceleration. It turns out to be:

d₂ = d₁ + v₁t + 1/2at²

Another equation finds the distance by multiplying the average velocity by the amount of time. It looks like this:

Finally, if we take this last equation and move the variables around to come up with an equation for t and then substitute this into the second equation above, we end up with the last of the primary motion equations of physics:

5. These are the primary equations for motion in a straight line, such as if you were driving on a straight road, a line in what we might think of as a horizontal direction. A falling body is another kind of "straight-line motion." As it turns out, when a body is relatively close to the surface of the earth, the acceleration due to gravity is constant.

The acceleration of any body near the surface of the earth is 9.8 meters/second squared (or 32 feet/second squared). If we give this constant (meaning a value that doesn't change) the symbol g , we can express the equations above in relation to a body falling in a straight line.

So the distance something will drop in a given amount of time (treating the initial distance and velocity as zero) is

d = 1/2gt²

Implied in this equation is the fact that all objects fall at the same rate of acceleration, no matter how much they weigh. [2]

6. Projectile motion is a motion in two dimensions. If you hit a baseball into the air, there is motion going on in two different directions, driven by two different forces. First, there is a motion in a horizontal direction, an "x" direction. Then there is a motion in the vertical or "y" direction. Gravity is the force at work in the y direction. The force of the bat drove the ball initially both forward and upward.

You can analyze the initial trajectory of the ball in terms of these two components, the x and y components, using trigonometry. So you hit the ball at a certain angle from the horizontal. If you know the velocity at which the ball leaves the bat at this angle, then you can find the "component" of that velocity that is vertical and the component of that velocity that is horizontal.

The "sine" of that angle is the ratio of the opposite side or y component to the hypotenuse or overall velocity. The "cosine" of that angle is the ratio of the adjacent side or x component to the hypotenuse. The bottom line is that if you multiply the sine of the angle by the overall velocity, you will know the initial vertical velocity component for the ball. And if you multiple the cosine of that angle times the initial velocity, you will know the initial horizontal velocity component for the ball.

Now you can analyze these two components of the ball's trajectory separately. For the horizontal component of the ball's trajectory, we have Newton's first law, which we will discuss in the next post: "a body in motion wants to stay in motion." So the ball would continue forward indefinitely if it could (leaving wind resistance out of consideration for the moment).

What makes the ball's time in the air limited is the fact that gravity will pull the ball back down to the ground. By using the velocity equations above, we can figure out first how much time it will take for the ball's upward motion to stop and for it to start falling back down (v₂ = v₁ - gt), remembering that v₂ will be zero. We know v₁, the initial upward velocity. We know g which is -9.8 m/s (negative because it's pulling downwards). So we can solve for t, the time in the air.

We can then find the distance the ball will travel upward by using the equation d₂ = d₁ + v₁t - 1/2gt². We now know t. We know the initial vertical velocity. We know g. d₁ is however far above the ground the bat hit the ball. After we solve for d₂, then we know how high the ball will go before it starts to fall back down.

Circular Motion
A special kind of motion is circular motion. In popular language, we talk about "centrifugal force," which we relate to the way a body wants to fly off of a merry-go-round or the way our bodies crash into the car door if the driver takes two sharp of a curve or the way a rock flies off a sling if you are spinning it around.

Technically, this is not a force but Newton's first law in action--a body in motion wants to stay in motion. Our body wants to continue in the same direction off the merry-go-round or into the car door or off the sling. Therefore, in order to stay on our circular trajectory, we need a force pulling us toward the center of the circle, called a "centripetal" force.

It turns out that a constant acceleration toward the center of a circle is necessary to keep an object moving in constant circular motion. If you spin a yo-yo in a circle, you must constantly apply a centripetal force with your hand. The formula for that constant "radial" acceleration equals v²/r, where r is the radius of the circle and v is the velocity of the object as it would fly tangentially off its circular path if you were to let go.

Periodic Motion
Another kind of motion that has become extremely important for our understanding of electromagnetism and the quantum world is periodic motion. This is a recurring motion such as when a weight is bouncing back and forth on a spring. It is fundamental to clocks of many kinds, such as when a pendulum swings back and forth or the old watches with springs in them. This back and forth motion is called "oscillation."

Some basic terms here are the "frequency" of the back and forth motion (e.g., how many "cycles per second") and the "period" of one back and forth motion (how much time it takes for one cycle). There is also the "amplitude" of the cycle, how big the displacement is from the resting point.

As it turns out, periodic motion can be quantified in terms of circular motion, since the back and forth happens in a cycle, like a point traveling around a circle. The relationship in its simplest form turns out to be:

x = A cos ωt

In this equation, x is the amount of displacement from the rest point at any time t. A is the amplitude or the maximum displacement. "cos" means the cosine of ωt. ω is then something called the "angular frequency." It is 2π times the frequency (cycles per second). [3]

Next Week: Math/Science 12: The Forces of Motion

[1] We say that velocity is a "vector" quantity because it implies motion in a particular direction, while speed is a directionless "scalar" quantity.

[2] Of course not taking into account the fact that something like a feather will experience an air resistance that will make it fall slower than a truck. However, in a vacuum, a feather and a truck would fall at the same acceleration.

[3] The reason for the 2π is to get the frequency into "radian" units, which measure a circle in terms of how many radiuses along the circle you are. The angular frequency ω is thus measured in radians traveled per second.

The Unending Israeli-Palestinian Puzzle

1. With the recent US abstention at the UN firmly in mind, the Israeli-Palestinian debate is back in the news. The US abstained on a vote condemning Jewish settlements on Palestinian land. The US has always vetoed those sorts of votes before.

If there were a simple solution, someone would have brought it about a long time ago. My own sense is that the Palestinians and their advocates have stubbornly persisted in an all-or-nothing approach, which has not only left them consistently with nothing, but with increasingly less than they had to begin with. In the meantime, Israel slowly creeps deeper and deeper into Palestinian territory with settlements, having found ways to keep Palestinians from succeeding with terrorism.

2. Historically, the beginnings of this situation go back to 1918, when the Ottoman Turks were defeated in World War I, and Britain became the protector of what today is Syria, Palestine, and Iraq. Britain was to watch over these territories "until such time as they are able to stand alone." This territory was known at that time as the "British Mandate," set to expire in 1948.

The British got it from both Arab and Jewish sides in this period. From 1936-39 there was an Arab Revolt against the British and the increasing Jewish population. [1] From 1939-38 especially there were underground Jewish groups that carried out actions against the British, the most famous of which was the bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946. [2]

1947 UN Partition Plan

As early as 1937, a two state solution was proposed, at first by Britain. The Jews supported it as a first step; the Palestinian Arabs refused. This has been the perennial problem on the Palestinian side. It continually refused to compromise at first on the existence of Israel and then later on realistic boundaries. In consequence, it has lost more and more territory to Israel.

3. Partitioning increasingly seemed the only viable option. After World War II, the United Nations proposed a Partition Plan for Palestine: two states, one Jewish and one Arab, with Jerusalem and Bethlehem under international oversight. But the day after the Mandate came to an end, on May 15, 1948, there was a scramble.

The Jews were prepared and organized. They immediately declared themselves a state and moved to occupy parts of Jerusalem. Palestinian Arabs fled central Palestine in large numbers. The Arab League launched the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. A year later, Israel had 60% of the territory that the United Nations had intended for an Arab state.

4. In 1967, as Egypt was amassing forces in the Sinai peninsula, Israel launched a preemptive strike that was incredibly successful. After this Six-Day War, Israel effectively occupied the Sinai peninsula, the West Bank, and the Gaza strip. Most calls for a two-state solution since have pushed Israel to return to its pre-1967 boundaries and yield these occupied territories to the Palestinians.

In 1973, Egypt and Syria fought back in the Yom Kippur War. Egypt sought to regain the Sinai Peninsula, while Syria tried to restore the northeastern Golan Heights. Although the war largely ended with the Israelis still in control of this territory, it helped drive both sides to the negotiating table.

In 1978, Jimmy Carter negotiated the Peace Accords that resulted in a planned withdrawal of Israel from the Sinai peninsula and its return to Egypt (Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt, was assassinated by his own as a result), which was completed in 1982. Egypt became the first Arab state to recognize Israel as a nation. The Golan Heights were incorporated into Israel.

In 1994, the country of Jordan finally recognized Israel as a country, the second Arab state to do so.

5. An "intifada" was launched by Palestinians against the Israelis in 2000. From 2000 to 2003 there were some 73 suicide bombings. As a result, the construction of a wall was begun. From 2003 to 2006 there were only 12 attacks. The wall cuts at points into what was considered Palestinian territory before 1967, that is, across the green line.

6. In 2005, Ariel Sharon unilaterally withdrew Israelis from settlements in the Gaza strip back to the 1967 green line, and Israel abandoned four settlements in northern Samaria. Then in 2007 Hamas took over Gaza, resulting in mortars and rockets frequently being fired into Israeli territory.

7. In the last decade, Israel has effectively been expanding its territory by building settlements all over the West Bank and to the east of Jerusalem. The triangles in the map to the left show all the settlements for which the UN resolution reprimanded Israel with the US abstaining.

You can see what John Kerry was thinking when he said that the UN resolution is the only hope for a two-state solution. Many would consider there now only a one state eventuality likely--Israel in control of all these lands. Jimmy Carter has urged Obama to unilaterally recognize the Palestinian state before leaving office.

8. Christian theology and pre-millennial interpretation has played a dominant role in US support for Israel over the Palestinians, even though there are far more Palestinian Christians than Israeli ones. Nazareth is within Israel but is primarily Palestinian Christian. Bethlehem is outside Israel, outside the wall, but is predominantly Palestinian Christian.

Nevertheless, the re-establishment of Israel is often considered a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. This could certainly be true. Others would say it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. God sometimes "reinspires" Scripture with new meanings too, so it could be a fulfillment even if it wasn't an original meaning to various biblical passages.

What does the Bible teach?

9. Old Testament Scriptures relating to the reestablishment of Israel were originally dealing with the Babylonian captivity, not with the present day. These were fulfilled in 538BC when Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem (e.g., Isa. 45:1; Ezra 1). Similarly, the temple was already rebuilt in 516BC. The wall was rebuilt in the 400s by Nehemiah.

It is not clear that any prophecy about the temple in the OT remains to be fulfilled, not least because Jesus has atoned for all sins. The Jerusalem of eternity will have no temple (Rev. 21:22).

There is no straightforward prediction of a rebuilt temple in the New Testament. Again, Hebrews indicates that there is no need for an earthly sanctuary. If Hebrews dates to the time after the temple was destroyed, one of its purposes would actually have been to tell Christians not to grieve over the absence of a temple because no earthly sanctuary was ever really able to take away sin.

Mark 13 in context was primarily about the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70 rather than end times. Some material relates to the return of Christ, but this is unexpected, since Jesus was clearly talking about the temple of his day, not in the future (13:1-4). Revelation says nothing about a rebuilt temple or Jerusalem, other than the heavenly Jerusalem that comes down at the beginning of eternity.

10. The only possible hint about a rebuilt temple is 2 Thessalonians 2:3, but anyone reading this verse originally would have thought Paul was talking about the temple that was still standing at the time in his day. Nothing is said about a rebuilt temple, although I won't say it won't happen. We generally understand fulfillments in hindsight, not in foresight.

11. The clearest statement about Israel's future is Romans 11:26, which probably implied that, around the time of Christ's return, there will be a mass conversion of Jews to Christ. This obviously hasn't happened, since Israel is not Christian in belief (about 2% of Jews in Israel are Christian). About 40% of the Jews in Israel are secular Jews even in relation to Judaism. So current Israel is not yet the fulfillment of this statement.

Nevertheless, we do get a hint that Jerusalem will not always be in the possession of Gentiles. Luke 21:24 speaks of Jerusalem being trampled on the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. That suggests that Luke believed there would come a time when Jerusalem would be in Jewish control again. But he was surely thinking it would be in Christian Jewish control at that time.

Revelation 21 speaks of a new Jerusalem coming down from heaven. In the meantime, Hebrews 12:22 contrasts the true Mt. Zion and Jerusalem in heaven with any earthly Jerusalem or earthly sanctuary (cf. Heb. 13:14). Similarly, Galatians 4:25 compares the earthly Jerusalem to Hagar, while Paul distances the earthly Jerusalem from the heavenly Jerusalem, which compares to Sarah (4:26).

12. All that is to say that it is quite possible that the reestablishment of Israel was part of God's plan. It is quite possible that Israel will become Christian. But the key prophecies haven't happened. Biblically speaking, current Israel remains the unbelieving Israel of Romans 9 and Acts 28.

[1] Jewish emigration to Palestine had been taking place as part of the Zionist movement that started in 1898.

[2] These groups were reacting particularly to the British "White Paper of 1939," which reduced the number of Jews who could immigrate to Palestine and the amount of land that could be purchased by Jews in Palestine.

Gen Eds H8a: The Roman Empire

Arch of Titus,
celebrating victory over Jews

The eighth unit of world history in this series is "The Age of Rome."

This is part of my "General Education in a Nutshell" series. The series consists of ten subjects you might study in a general education or "liberal arts" core at a university or college. The first topic in the overall series was philosophy. So far in the world history section:

• World History Overview
• From 9-11 to the Present
• From the Cold War to the Millennium
• From Waterloo to World War II
• 5a. The French Revolution
• 5b. The Enlightenment to the American Revolution
• 5c. From Cromwell to the First Industrial Revolution
• 6a. Reformation and Scientific Revolution 
• 6b. The Renaissance and a New World
• 7a. Church Schisms in the Middle Ages
• 7b. Kings Rising in the Middle Ages
• 7c. Medieval Arabia, India, China, and South America

___________________________
Caesar Augustus
1. After some five hundred years as a republic, the Roman elite traded in their right to self-govern for the security and potential peace of an emperor. [1] In 27BC, Augustus became the first emperor of Rome. After decades of civil war, he ushered in a peace that came to be known as the Pax Romana or the Pax Augusta, the "peace of Augustus."

Augustus did largely clear the Mediterranean of pirates and the Roman roads of thieves and highwaymen. He extended the Roman roads which shot straight as an arrow around the empire. Under his reign, the Romans added Egypt to their control and completed the conquest of Spain. They also inched northward into Germania.

Perhaps of most interest to Christians is the fact that Jesus was born during his reign, in about 6BC.

2. The first five emperors of Rome were Augustus (27BC-AD14), Tiberius (14-37), Caligula (37-41), Claudius (41-54), and Nero (54-68). [2] These are probably the five kings mentioned in Revelation 17:10. Jesus conducted his earthly ministry under the reign of Tiberius, as did John the Baptist. He was the specific Caesar in view when Jesus said, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's" (Matt.22:21).

Caligula was assassinated. In 39 he had the insane idea of setting up a statue of himself in the temple of Jerusalem. The Roman governor wisely procrastinated. The order for Petronius to commit suicide only arrived after Caligula was dead.

Paul's mission took place under the rules of Claudius and Nero. Under Claudius, Christian Jews were expelled from Rome, including Priscilla and Aquila, who were part of the Pauline mission. 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, and Galatians seem certainly written during Claudius' reign. His other writings would then have come during the reign of Nero.

Nero is likely the king that Revelation refers to as one who had a fatal wound that had healed (Rev. 13:12; 17:11). [3] The title "Caesar Nero" adds up to 666 if you treat the letters as numbers rather than letters (Rev. 13:18). It was Nero that crucified the apostle Peter and beheaded Paul. And Nero was emperor when Paul wrote Romans 13:1. And anyone reading 1 Peter 2:17 would have initially thought of Nero.

He committed suicide in the year 68.

The Flavians
3. The Jewish War took place from 66-72. It was a revolt of the Jews against Rome, an attempt to free themselves from its rule. It failed of course, effectively ending in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70. [4] Much of Mark 13 likely refers to various events of this war. There is a tradition, for example, that the believers of Jerusalem did flee to Pella in keeping with Mark 13:14. Luke understands this verse to refer to the destruction of Jerusalem (Luke 21:20). [5]

After the death of Nero, 69 was the Year of Four Emperors. Two were murdered and one committed suicide. This made way for Vespasian to become emperor (69-79), who at the time had surrounded Jerusalem with the Roman army. His son Titus would complete the siege and destroy Jerusalem and the temple. Mark and Matthew were likely finished during the time of Vespasian, Hebrews also in my dating.

Titus then reigned after his father (79-81), and then his other son Domitian (81-96). Luke-Acts was likely written during these reigns. John and Revelation are traditionally dated to the reign of Domitian (or we might suggest they reached their current form at that time). 79 was the year when the volcano Vesuvius erupted, freezing the city of Pompeii in time.

From Nerva to Commodus (96-192)
4. The next five emperors enjoyed relatively peaceful reigns (the Five Good Emperors), although it is during this era that we begin to see a rise in the martyrdom of early Christians. Ignatius of Antioch was put to death around 110 by Trajan (98-117). A governor by the name of Pliny the Younger would write Trajan about that time about how Christianity had permeated the countryside of Pontus where he was governing. He put to death those who were too stubborn to renounce their allegiance to this competing king, Christ.

The early Christian Polycarp died during the reign of Antoninus Pius (138-61), although he was put to death by a governor for refusing to burn incense to the emperor. He was 86 years old at the time. Emperor worship had become standard during this time and is possibly alluded to in Revelation 16:2.

Hadrian's Wall (AD122)

Justin "Martyr" was put to death under Marcus Aurelius (161-180). Marcus Aurelius is famous for his grand Stoic philosophy in the secular world, but we might know him better for his actions toward this famous Christian. The reign of Commodus (177-92) is often thought to be a turning point in the history of the empire, perhaps the beginning of its decline. [6]

Under the emperor Hadrian (117-38), the famed "Hadrian's Wall" was built in Britannia. The Romans had ruled southern Britain from the days of Claudius. They would continue to dominate there until 410, the year when Rome was sacked by the Visigoths.

Severus
6. Commodus was strangled to death. After him, twenty-five of the next twenty-six emperors died violently, mostly by murder, although a small number were either executed, died in war, or committed suicide. One of the only ones to die of natural causes was Septimus Severus (193-211). [7]

This political instability clearly was part of Rome's decline. In addition, it was overstretched, with an empire that stretched from Britain to Egypt. It's population began to decline, not least because of plague in the 200s. In 212, the emperor Caracella granted Roman citizenship to everyone in the empire, in an attempt to increase the Roman base. Many soldiers were foreigners, who lacked the loyalty or chance of advancement leading them to fight as earlier generations had.

But the emperors could not administrate the empire's wide holdings, and Germanic tribes increasingly became a preoccupation to the north. Trade declined significantly. The historian Edward Gibbon (1737-94) controversially suggested that Christianity weakened the empire because it undermined traditional devotion to the state. Many, however, disagree with this hypothesis.

In general, this part of Roman history is sometimes called the "crisis of the third century." In 284, the Roman empire was more or less split into three different empires: Gaul (France), Palmyra (Turkey, Palestine, Egypt), and the Roman center (including Spain). Aurelian (270-75) reunited it in 284, marking what is sometimes considered the dividing point between the time of classical and late antiquity.

An important year from a Christian perspective was 250, when the emperor Decius (249-51) made an edict requiring all Romans to offer a sacrifice to the gods in the presence of a Roman magistrate. Decius was trying to restore traditional Roman values, attempting to revive the empire. It of course created a crisis for Christians, who could not in good conscience do so. The result was the worst persecution of Christians yet. Decius was killed in battle the next year against the Goths.

Diocletian
7. Christians enjoyed about 40 years of tolerance until the emperor Diocletian (284-305). In 303 he initiated the last and most intense of the Roman persecutions. He purged the Roman military of all Christians, burned copies of Scriptures, forbade public worship, and demanded sacrifices to Roman gods. Perhaps some 3000 Christians were put to death.

One effort Diocletian made to try to save the empire was to divide it into two administrative jurisdictions. In 285, he appointed Maximian as a subordinate co-ruler in Rome, while he focused his his rule from Byzantium in the east.

Constantine the Great (306-337)
8. Constantine was in Britain on a military campaign when his soldiers acclaimed him as emperor in 306. In the year 312 at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, Constantine is reputed to have seen a vision of the cross in the sky with the words, "In this sign you will conquer" written beneath. After the battle, he had solidified his status as emperor in the west. In 324 he beat the claimant to rule in the east, becoming the sole emperor of the whole empire.

He shifted the capital of the Roman empire to Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople in 330. This half of the Roman Empire would become the Byzantine Empire and continue to exist until the Ottoman Turks took the city in 1453.

Constantine is perhaps better known for the imprint he left on Christianity, although whether that impact was ultimately more positive or negative is a matter of dispute. On the one hand, he made Christianity a legal religion with the Edict of Milan in 313. In the year 325, he summoned the Council of Nicaea in hope that Christians might come to some agreement on the relationship between God the Father and Jesus Christ. The result would become official in the Nicene Creed that was finalized in 381 at the Council of Constantinople.

Constantine himself was not baptized until his deathbed, perhaps because he was unsure whether sins committed after baptism could be forgiven.

9. In 381, Theodosius 1 (379-95) made Nicene Christianity the only legal religion of the empire. Contrary to popular belief, Constantine did not force the Roman empire to become Christian. It was Theodosius, 44 years after his death, who did so.

For a brief time, Julian the Apostate (360-63), half-brother of Constantine, tried to reverse the Christian trajectory of the empire. He revoked all the monies and lands Constantine had given to the church and forbade "Galileans" (Christians) from being teachers of rhetoric and grammar. In Julian is the lesson that often before a trajectory of history reaches its final destination, there is a final gasp of the dying resistance. So it was that after Nicaea, Arianism had a massive resurgence before it finally lost the historical battle.

Fall of Rome
Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410. The sacking would not stop until the final emperor (at least in name), Romulus, was overthrown by Odoacer. This event, in 479, is often considered the end of the Western Roman empire.

A final push to restore the Roman empire took place under the eastern emperor Justinian I (527-65), who is sometimes called "the last Roman." His soldiers retook Italy from the Visigoths, North Africa from the Vandals, and even the southernmost part of Spain. But the problem of over-extension simply returned, and these lands fell away again in the years after his death.

Justinian enacted legal reforms that are still part of civil law in the modern age, the so called Code of Justinian. At the same time, Justinian is known for finally closing Plato's Academy in 529, considered by some to be the beginning of the Dark Ages. An outbreak of bubonic plague largely ended the cultural flourishing of his reign in the 540s.

Take-Aways

• In times of great danger or conflict, people will often surrender their freedoms or core values for security.
• Over-extension, especially when coupled with oppressive taxation, is a frequent characteristic of empires and organizations right before their final decline.
• Persecution sometimes strengthens your enemy. What doesn't kill them makes them stronger.
• If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
• There is often a final gasp of opposition before a historical trajectory is definitively established.
• A comfortable movement often becomes a weak movement.

Next Week: History 8b: The Roman Republic

[1] The imagery of Star Wars partially comes from this transition from republic to empire.

[2] The Julio-Claudian line.

[3] Anyone reading Revelation 17:9 initially would have thought of Rome when it mentions a city of kings with seven hills. Similarly, "Babylon" was a well-known cipher for Rome after Rome destroyed Jerusalem as Babylon had six hundred years earlier (cf. Rev. 18).

[4] Although technically we might say it officially ended with the taking of Masada in AD72.

[5] There are a number of places where I consider some evangelical scholarship to come up lacking on obvious conclusions because of putting tradition over evidence. In my opinion, no one putting the emphasis on the evidence will conclude that Luke-Acts was written before the destruction of the temple. Similarly, the way Matthew 22:7 is presented seems to confirm that Matthew was also written after the destruction of the temple.

[6] The movie Gladiator fictionally has Commodus poison his father Marcus Aurelius. However, there is no evidence of this.

[7] I feel quite confident that the character Severus Snape in Harry Potter was named after him.

5. Waging War against His People

I'm reading through Konrad Heiden's 1944 book, Der Fuehrer. The first five chapters were:

• How to Take Over the World
• Bands of Restless Men
• Hitler was a Loser
• Rallies with the Rabid

1. The chapter this week roughly covers the period till 1923. We have been flying around this period in the last few chapters. It is the period when Röhm's "patriotic murder clubs" were going around murdering people while the leadership of Bavaria was turning a blind eye. These were the "storm troopers" (SA). Meanwhile, Hitler's rallies were meant to work the German people up into a frenzy.

It was a civil war of sorts. You had these bands of angry men conducting war against their own people. Locally, they made "enemies" of their Germany disappear. Nationally, they meant to get rid of the democratic government, which they thought allowed for communism and was controlled by Jews.

Hitler said in 1922, "We want nothing to do with parliaments. Anyone who goes into a swamp sinks into the muck... A minority suffices to overthrow a state when the majority of the population has gone soft and lost its direction... We do not want the thing they call unity" (112). He compared himself to Jesus going into the temple with a whip, and he thought of himself in such grandiose terms.

In a time of chaos, public opinion is the true source of power. Hitler expressed the speechless panic of the masses. "His speeches are day-dreams of this mass soul; they are chaotic, full of contradictions" (106).

2. One of the leaders of Germany as a whole, for a short while, was actually Jewish--Walter Rathenau. He was actually making strong inroads to decreasing dramatically the amount of war reparations the Allies were expecting from Germany. He was killed by some petty racists in a drive by. If he had lived, perhaps Germany would have turned around.

There were some laws passed as a result against extreme agitation from the right. After a change in the administration of Bavaria, Hitler himself was put in jail for a month for beating a speaker off a platform with a club. His greatest fear was deportation, since he was an Austrian and not a German by citizenship. Deportation was what he feared the worst.

In all of his agitation, Hitler was obsessed with the Jews, calling on Aryans and anti-Semites of all nations to unite in a struggle against the Jewish race, whom he saw as exploiters and oppressors.

3. As a final note, we are introduced to Hermann Göring in this chapter, who would become Hitler's second in command. At the time Hitler met him, he was a morphine addict.