Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 202

Revision 6.6 “Gunpowder Empires” (A)

    The Period of the Gunpowder Empires (1500-1800)   As might be guessed from Hodgson’s title for this period, the impor­tant fact about the time was gunpowder. This new technology, bor­rowed from the West (but, ultimately, from China), allowed the existence of greater states and thus permitted greater centralization of power. Putting it less […]

“Dr. Ross, I could dance again.”

    Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926-2004), the famous Swiss-American physician and psychiatrist, the author of (among many other things) the pioneering 1969 book On Death and Dying, was very well-known and quite influential during her lifetime — not for her views on life after death but for her study of the dying process, which led to […]

Revision 6.5 “Setbacks and Advances” [Needs Considerable Expansion]

    As the Arabs declined, however, new Islamic powers were on the rise. Prominent among these was the Ottoman Turkish Empire. In 1453, the Ottoman sultan Mehmet II conquered the city of Con­stantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. Importantly, he used gunpowder and artillery to do so—an omen of things to come. The […]

“I of Myself Am a Wicked Man”

    No, I’m not announcing the publication of my autobiography.   ***   I’m a bit slow in noting this, but the latest installment of my bi-weekly column in Salt Lake City’s Deseret News appeared yesterday:   “What does ‘a wall of separation between Church and State’ mean exactly?”   ***   Written by Professor […]

“Governed in completely precise detail by mathematical principles”

    On Tuesday, 6 October, Roger Penrose was awarded one half of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity.  The other half-share went to the German astrophysicist Reinhard Genzel (co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, a professor […]

Revision 6.4 “Of Mamluks and Mongols”

    In time, the Turkish overlords of the Arab world lost their grip on power. In 1220, the Mongols poured out of the steppes of central Asia and began the process of substantially destroying the central lands of Islam. The irrigation canals of the Iranian plateau, on which the rul­ers of Persia had lavished […]

“And that was past believing.”

    I was unaware, I think, that this had been posted.  If I knew, I had forgotten.  But it seems that it may only have gone up recently.  Anyway, some of you may perhaps find it of interest:   “‘Idle Tales’?  The Witness of Women”   It’s my presentation to the 2019 FairMormon symposium, […]

“Holy mystery, heaven’s daughter!”

    I had already read several things from Michael Denton, an Anglo-Australian scientist who holds a medical degree from Bristol University in the United Kingdom and a doctorate in biochemistry from King’s College London.  But I had never actually heard him before.  So I was pleased when a commenter on this blog who goes […]

Personal

    Today is my brother’s birthday.  We were close, although technically he was my half-brother, he was ten years older than I, and we often lived at considerable distances from each other.  (Except for a senior year at BYU, he was always based in our native southern California.). He died suddenly in March 2012, […]

“If they are not true, then there is no truth”

    This document is cited at Edward L. Hart, Mormon in Motion: The Life and Journals of James H. Hart (1825-1906) in England, France, and America (Windsor Books, 1978), 216:   August 21st, 1883, Richmond Missouri I met David Whitmer and his son David and had a pleasant conversation with them. He (David Whitmer, […]