Some few notes on the quite impressing work found at
http://www.speakeasy.org/~hattons/asatru/my-edda/orlags-thread.html
"...and the German 'Schuld' meaning both debt and guilt. [...] The
modern Norwegian word 'skuld' means guilt."
-- In Swedish 'skuld' means both debt and guilt. The
adjective 'skyldig' means both that you are in debt with someone and
that you are guilty.
"It also suggests 'being a source' as is found in the modern
Icelandic preposition 'úr' meaning 'out of, from'. "
-- Modern Swedish preposition 'ur' means also 'out of, from'. The
greek prefix 'proto-' can in many cases be changed into 'ur-' in
Swedish: 'prototype' > 'urtyp', 'proto-germanic'
> 'urgermanska', 'proto-language' > 'urspråk'.
The word 'Ørlög' would be 'urlag' in Swedish, which in my opinion
would be translatecinto English 'the law beyond everything and that
has existed for ever'. This is quite close to your interpretation
of 'Ørlög': "...best understood as the underlying laws which
determine our lives."
I think the concept 'urlag' would be found in any introducing
Philosophy book in Swedish.
"General relativity is a very difficult subject to explain, and, for
the most part, will not be part will not be addressed fruther in this
chapter."
-- I'm presently working on this subject in my academical life, so I
agree with this: it is hard to explain. But the mathematics behind it
is crystal clear.
On the concept of continuum I would prefer the definition "as a
collection of points all of which have at least one other point of
the collection contained in any arbitrarilary small neighborhood."
This definition will in deed give the continuous spaces all the
properties that we are used to attach to them. You just need a little
bit of mathematical intuition to understand its power.
Your definition "a continuum is a thing that isn't made of pieces,
and is bigger than a point." have a weak part. You don't define what
a 'piece' is. I agree that a continuum is bigger than a point, but in
my eyes all continuums are made of pieces - I call them subsets of
the the continuum if the continuum is considered to be a set.In fact,
one can "calculate" that the set of pieces of a continuum
is "incredibly" large compared to the continum itself. According to
my view of the concept of pieces of a set at least.
"In set theory set theory continuum is defined as 'The nondenumerable
set of real numbers, denoted C.' This definition isn't very helpfull
or informative." In fact, it's a lousy definition. It's just an
example of a continuum. With the other mathematical definition one
can show that the set of real numbers (in fact usually denoted R; the
letter C is the set of complex numbers in the eyes of a
mathematician) is a continuum, not that it is THE continuum...
Working with General Relativity at the moment, one thinks or have
been thinking some of these concepts.
/Arnie
--- In norse_course@..., "Steven T. Hatton" <hattons@...> (by way
of Steven T. Hatton <hattons@...>) wrote:
> Thanks for the feedback. You are about the first person to reply
to this.
> I've found there are quite a few expositions of Nornic philosophies
on the
> net. I believe I sould build a page simply dedicated to Norn-links.
>
> On Wednesday 04 September 2002 20:56, Lazarus Freyjasgodhi wrote:
> > The name-word "Urð" is related (maybe even a cognate of) "Ur"
which means
> > 'before/origin of' and is often us as a prefix in the same
instances where
> > one may use the Greek prefix 'Proto'.
>
> Ãr-lög. Ur-ox, etc. However, see my page linked below.
> [snip, thanks for the observations]
>
> Can you provide a source on this. It is not consistent with the
Zoëga who
> gives 'urðr' as 'weird'.
> http://www.northvegr.org/zoega/h453.html
>
> And Meriam Webster gives:
> http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary
>
> > "Verdandi" is more literal and means 'happening right now'. It's
more
> > immediate than the word 'Present' has in our 'present' English
speaking
> > society. (interestingly, the word Verða
means "happening/occuring" while
> > Verð means "worth/price/value" - this is interesting because of
the
> > following...)
> >
> > Zoega and Gordon translate "Skuld" to mean 'Debt'. Precisely how
the Norn
> > 'Skuld' represents 'Debt' I can only conjecture. Probably related
to how
> > the future is an emptiness that requires filling. Hey - that
sounds pretty
> > good.
>
> Here, take a look at the results of several nights of my armchair
> linguistics:
> http://www.speakeasy.org/~hattons/asatru/my-edda/orlags-thread.html
>
> If you find something wrong with this, pleas go easy on me, I've
put a lot of
> work into it, and it isn't easy.
>
> > -Laz
>
> Steven