It is with Blaise Pascal that the drumbeat of the infinite becomes to loud to ignore. He eerily echoes Cusanus when he talks of: “The two infinites which are to be found in all things, infinite largeness and infinite smallness.” The absolute maximums and absolute minimums of Cusanus, or, as I prefer, the opposites that aren’t. We can contemplate but not fully conceive the potential infinities in the old Aristotelian sense, but the double infinity is the hallmark of nature. Descartes carries the same idea even further forward but prefers the word ‘indefinite’ thus getting ever closer to string theory.

There were some other major contributions to mathematical theory by Pascal. Some were particularly germane to our discussion, and others a little less so. Early on he contributed to the study of fluids and vacuums resulting in the barometer. Some other primary examples are the foundations of probability theory with Fermat, his work on conic sections which so influenced Leibniz, and of course the Pascaline. The latter, for good or ill, was one of the world’s first digital calculators in 1642. He also was responsible for one of the clearest statement of scientific method in the 17th Century.

Blaise Pascal was a child prodigy and, like many other prodigies, he burned out young. After the age of 18, ill health dogged his relatively short life. There was however an aspect to this youth that still resonates for us going forward into the future. His father. Etienne Pascal, was a member of a group of perhaps the most eminent thinkers and scientists of Europe at the time (including the likes of Descartes and Desargues). Every Thursday or so they met at Marin Mersenne’s home to discuss the latest in mathematics, science, philosophy, and theology. From the age of 14 on his son quietly attended those sessions. Mersenne himself contributed the Mersenne Prime that is intimately connected to the so called perfect numbers from Euclid to Euler. Even today it is vital to encoding, and the Pascaline, in its latest distributed computing form, bears on that also.

Mersenne though, as ‘the Father of Acoustics’ may have influence way beyond what is currently attributed to him. His oscillating frequencies and their relationships to various harmonies begin to have a tone in string theory. I don’t pretend to understand the math, I just hear the music. But it is the dance – the math and the music – that ultimately will be key (should I say chi?) to comprehending the vibrations. There, and probably only there, will the X Factor shimmer into relative focus.

13/10/2008 / December 2007 / Blaise Pascal / 1623 – 62 / Physics / Best / AFW, 812, © 2007 / CIP / OAR

John Barrow in his The Infinite Book, under the heading, A Little Kant quotes a little Nicholas of Cusa – it’s from On Learned Ignorance. It is hard to get a straighter thread than that: “For the intellect is to truth as an inscribed polygon is to the inscribed circle. The more angles the inscribed polygon has the more similar it is to the circle.” The infinite, the circle, reality and pigeon holes – it all seems to end up, adding up to, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Okay I took liberties in the juxtaposition, and the fit is not pure congruence, but the parallels between perceived reality and actual reality are. They are both parallel and real. These two then, were on a line that ran in circles.

Pascal’s infinite largeness and infinite smallness, echoes Cusanus. The shadow of ideas is carried forward by Bruno from Cusanus to Kant. All here, all interweaving elements – they lead across the centuries. And how about the progressive universe with a center of high density and matter thinning out as one moves away from the center. Many common elements here. Still it is the infinite, and the nature of knowledge that suffuses all. Here is where Kant is the fulcrum. I don’t pretend to comprehend the elements of sensibility; the understanding of the categories; the giving of synthesis through the act of imagination and apperception. Nor do I fully grasp the seeing and reproducing; a priori deduction, noumenal and phenomenal, empirical and ethical, transcendental idealism – the list goes on and on. Sometimes it becomes the parsing of words to the level of absurdity. I must admit though I liked his term Categorical Imperative – even stole it years ago and named one of my games after it.

There are a couple of phrases I jotted down once. I don’t know where from – maybe I stole them too, maybe I wrote them. “Pigeon hole is a shade of black” was one of them, “Organize enough, and you will forget why” was the other. They seem to me to sum up Kant. Of course he loved pigeon holes, and perhaps he foreshadowed black holes. Certainly the two led to uncertainty. With a little luck the latter might save us from the former. Otherwise we may know too much one day, and then know nothing at all. That is what ties it all together. We’re edging closer to a singularity. Of course our next candidate took some giant leaps. His was a kind of synthesis one could eventually grasp. It just took most of a century.

13/10/2008 / April 2008 / Immanuel Kant / 1724-1804 / Physics / Best / AFW, 816, © 2008 / CIP, Oct 13 / OAR

The idea that in a few years of your spare time, while working at the Swiss Patent Office, you could rewrite the whole of scientific history is ludicrous. Produce the papers on Brownian motion, Special Relativity, mass-energy equivalence, photoelectric effect and the photon, all while gainfully employed on other projects – absurd and impossible, but true! It was the start towards his Nobel Prize in 1921, but even that may end up not being his main claim to fame. His General Theory of Relativity, a short time later, was closer to the mark, as well as a 1919 solar eclipse. But actually it was his failures that may end up being his greatest legacy. His lonely quest for a unified theory, and his musings on a cosmological constant are what animate 21st Century physics.

From the late Twenties till his death in 1955 Einstein was on an increasingly solitary mission to unify the widest possible range of natural events under the rubric of the fewest possible physical principles. He had already unified space, time and gravity, but that was not enough. He wanted to unite general relativity and quantum mechanics. His search for a unified field theory went unfulfilled. It was often seen by young physicists at the time as a quixotic voyage by a great, but old man, who was past his prime. From the Forties through the Seventies that was the status quo.

With the advent of String Theory the search gradually became au courant again. With it’s fuzzy math the raison d’être worked both ways. The obscuring of 0 and 1 by quivering solved many of the difficulties encountered by contemplating the infinite. Fairly certainly many current physicists would characterize that assertion as an over simplification. They would be right, but string theory is essentially a simplification to make the math work. God may not have played dice, but he did the math. General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are not quite so foreign when you take an oscillating average. Okay, they are right! It is an over simplification.

But the grandest of ironies is the ‘Cosmological Constant’. Originally it was conceived in order to maintain the myth that the universe was static. Of course, at the time, everyone, including Einstein, thought the myth was true. It represented the possibility that there is density and pressure in empty space, to balance the attractive force of gravity and prevent matter and energy from forcing the universe to collapse in on itself. The net effect of a negative pressure cosmological constant was to create a repulsive gravitational force. With Hubble’s discovery that the universe was expanding, Einstein was only too happy to jettison his cosmological constant, and even called it his biggest blunder. Now the universe just oscillates between the spatially open, the spatially flat and the spatially closed. The age problem of the universe is another compelling reason to believe in the existence of a cosmological constant. Now, as a marriage of convenience the constant is reborn and his biggest blunder may end up as his greatest legacy. Again it is a simplification that my simple mind can’t fully comprehend.

Let’s not forget the thread from Cusanus. Einstein is reputed to have once said: “Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.” Of course my favorite quote from him is: “Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.”

13/10/2008 / April 2008 / Albert Einstein / 1879-1955 / Physics / Best / AFW, 817, © 2008 / CIP, Oct 13 / OAR

And so the journey arrives in the here and now – Cusanus, Bruno, Pascal, Kant, Einstein, and Witten. Edward Witten is the last in our line – and the first to be contiguous with his immediate predecessor. For four years, between 1951 and 1955, they actually shared our little globe. He is also alive today. I suppose it would be fair to ask is Witten now, where Einstein once was. In the late Twenties, or early Thirties Einstein would have been, oh let’s say 52-53. Witten today is about 57. For certain the locale is the same. Both led The Institute for Advance Study, Princeton, New Jersey. The search is similar – one sought and the other seeks a unified theory of everything. The latter is still producing, but has the rate slowed?

Awhile back I wrote about me: “A younger mind than mine can compute differently by holding more facets clearly in context. Does that automatically make his product superior to mine? Is he always closer to the truth?” I didn’t answer then, still can’t – but I do wonder if it’s germane. Perhaps it is possible that, with experience, we get better at synthesis. Youth generally doubts it. On such a question rests the possibility of Witten succeeding where Einstein failed. Let’s at least see how far he has gotten.

He won a MacArthur Genius Grant in 1982, The Dirac Medal in 1985, A Fields Medal in 1990, The National Medal of Science in 2003, and an Honorary Doctor of Science, from Cambridge University, 2006. He is primarily a mathematical physicist - the Fields Medal is the highest honor for a mathematician. He marries math to Quantum Field Theory. Of course his math is way beyond me – actually beyond almost everybody – but way, way beyond me. However he has never won a Nobel Prize, maybe never will. That’s at least partly because the technology to prove some of his theories won’t be invented for a long, long time. Still the terascale of the Large Hadron Collider, just about to come online at CERN, could help. Of course he could win in 2021, as a fitting centennial to Einstein’s.

Some of his concepts such as anomaly cancellation, theory equivalence, mirror symmetry and gauge invariance are almost comprehensible to a layman, even if the math is not. Some of them, under varying names and degrees of applicability, trace back to Cusanus, Bruno, Pascal, and Kant. Even more go back to Einstein. Man, it seems, has been struggling with infinity under various guises almost forever. If the one dimensional trajectory becomes a two dimensional orbit, is that different in kind from the debate between a point and a wave? Little loops of vibrating string oscillating in varying harmonies are a way of looking at things that can resonate in the mind, if not yet under the macro microscope. It is successful primarily because of the fuzziness it produces. Space-time itself becomes fuzzy. Thirteen/WNET used the expression “Quantum experiments were more actuarial than actual.” Maybe solid things became fuzzy waves, but produced good vibrations. Is that the extra dimensions? Maybe, maybe not, or maybe sometimes on average, if it’s a Planck length or universal.

There are a few techie sorts, a few nerds, and a lot of communists who would like to do away with God in all H. guises. For the rest of us – Buddhists, Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Hindus and a host of others – we know there is a PBU. From Cusanus to Einstein and maybe Witten too – we don’t really know his views on this subject. He was raised in a Jewish family – beyond that we don’t know, and perhaps shouldn’t. Some years ago on a physics forum they asked the question: “Does the world’s smartest man, Edward Witten, believe in God?” The overwhelming response was who cares? What does it matter? It is not his area of expertise… and other such comments. They had a point, but since it was a physics forum, they might also have had a bias. There was an article in National Geographic (March, 2008) entitled The God Particle by Joel Achenbach. It was a fascinating piece on the LHC at CERN. Still, I thought it a bit presumptuously titled. Journalists and physicists, both it seems, have to sell magazines and colliders respectively. At any rate that brings us back to Cusanus and full circle.

13/10/2008 / April 2008 / Edward Witten / 1951 – / Physics / Best / AFW, 818, © 2008 / CIP, Oct 13 / OAR

I do not subscribe to the false pride of the fully knowledgeable. Science and knowledge is a morphing, oscillating, blurry blob, that takes on the coloration of its age and simply awaits re-tinting again. That of course includes this treatise, as it does virtually everything else ever written. Some writings include a few pearls that stand, at least for awhile, the test of time. Most simply contain grains of sand that are difficult to distinguish between. These are my grains of sand and hopefully a pearl or two. Words are just grains of sand made up of particular letters in various languages. A particle physicist might be able to relate. The scaling and the fractions and the fractals are all that remain.

Speaking of particle physicists I am not one. At most I am a particle. I am neither a physicist, nor a scientist, and certainly not a mathematician. I am a dabbler and an occasional synthesizer. I suffer the incomprehension of too little knowledge, but also the freedom from a straight jacket. I find almost everything a double edged sword, and from that perspective I often gain an insight. Some of them are dead flat wrong. Quite a few have an element of truth. One or two might be right on. Still, most physicists would call it philosophy. I don’t. It’s not that elevated.

13/10/2008 / December 2007 / Knowledge / Physics / Best / AFW, 807, © 2008 / CIP / OAR

She was a brave woman who fought, furiously fought, with grace, beauty and courage almost beyond compare. She knew the odds and still she made her last year her best year. She started weak with an epileptic seizure, but only grew stronger. Day by day, by week, by month – 2007 was her year. The cancer grew, but she grew too. She won 365 battles. She started on the floor and slowly raised herself to heights seldom seen in the human experience.

She lived her beliefs. All of her life she grew towards this role, but in 2007 she lived it. Optimism and a smile lit the way. Her strength was her constant companion. Her bravery shone through. Her light was bright. She fought the good fight. She was rightfully proud. It’s never been done better. In the end she won when she lost the war. She was at peace and had succeeded in everything. Her children were grown. Her husband was proud. Her friends and family finally truly knew her mettle. She showed us all how close a human being can come to perfection.

04/08/2008 / July 19, 2008 / The Good Fight? / Minou / Mixed / AFW, 733, © 2008 / CIP / SHE

It started on February 23rd and we are almost there. The next six months. The slow and gradual silence of sinking into the French morass, where everything slowly expires. The French quicksand that agonizingly inches, with normal French procrastination, till death do us part. We are almost there, and perhaps we will survive. No, sadly, not near my Minou. Not two floors above my beloved’s spirit, as I had envisioned. Not even in Paris. I don’t fit anymore. Many of the adults were nice, but the kids needed their space. I have to leave. The six month journey to that realization was exceedingly difficult. Six months and two weeks, to the day, and I will be gone.

On August 7th 2008 I will arrive back in the United States. Some years before, on that very same day, she had originally arrived in the United States to live permanently with me. That day worked beautifully for me. Yes, it took us 23 years to get to that day (we originally met July 1st, 1976) and another 9 to complete our sojourn. Those years are our story. Those years, especially the latter ten, are the magnificent memories that I will take home with me.

But it is the horror of the last six months that I want to leave behind. I’ve always had the capacity to eventually forgive and forget my failures. To learn and move on. It gets more difficult as you get older. I failed in the last six months and I have to accept responsibility for my failure. If I had been smart I would have taken my son’s very strong urgings, on the day a week after she died, to get on the plane and return with him. Right then! Sadly I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t do it. I should have. But I hadn’t yet learned.

The story of the next six months is failed communication. I failed in my efforts to communicate with her children. Utterly failed with one of them, semi failed with another, and just barely, ever so slightly, succeeded with the third. Oddly, the slight success was the only place where I had originally expected failure. Part of the problem was cultural, a little bit was political, and a much larger part generational; but the largest part was simply my failure. I could not overcome my pain fully enough to understand theirs. I could not put myself deep enough into their shoes to understand their yearnings and needs – their hurt and their reactions.

Too late I learned and now I leave. I’m ready. Five years of heaven, five months of hell. Finally I’m ready to move on. The next (and last) six months are over!

04/08/2008 / July 18, 2008 / The Next Six Months / Minou / Mixed / AFW, 732, © 2008 / CIP / SHE

It’s a little hidden away – many, many things in Paris are a little hidden away. Still, it is on an outer wall for all to see. There are often plaques on various structures in Paris – quite a few worth reading. En ce bâtiment …. it begins. In this building …. My brother-in-law Antoine, a kind and gentle soul, specifically steered me to the site. He thought I might be particularly interested. He knew I was A Cowboy in Paris. He didn’t know then, though in an hour or two he would, that I was leaving Paris. He couldn’t know what a fitting end he was providing me. We were on the Left Bank, fairly near Saint-Germain-des-Pres in the 6th Arrondissement – 56 rue Jacob actually. The plaque read, in French:

In this building, in bygone days the York Hotel
On September 3rd, 1783
David Hartley for the King of England
Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, & John Adams for The United States
Signed the Definitive Treaty of Peace
Recognizing the Independence of
The United States of America

04/08/2008 / July 2008 / 700 – A Fitting End … Independence / Place / Best / CIP, 700, © 2008 / EUS

Daughter Desi,

This will come as an email, but I wrote it in After-words because I wanted it retained. I even changed the salutation because you have, in the last few months, become the best daughter a man ever had. I was, and am, broken; but it appears you will get me home in one piece. If I survive the next 10 days my primary family will have saved me. Minou got me through the last 10 years. Danny got me through the next two weeks. Christine got me through the following two months. You and your Mom managed to transport me through from then until today. Christine and you will get me through the next week. We will see if I can make it on my own the last two days. No matter what the outcome I’m supremely grateful to all of you. But especially to you Daughter Desi.
I am very scared of this trip. That is one of the reasons I know I am broken. I have always traveled well, I have always had a good time and I have always been confident that, no matter what, I would come up quickly with a right answer. Actually I still expect the first two to happen, and I hope that is enough to get me through. I couldn’t save my sweetheart and I am not sure I can save myself. I need to get home to heal. I need to be able to cry, to walk a dog, to see a tree, to hear English and know again that people are mostly good.

04/08/2008 / July 27, 2008 / Journey Home / Minou / Mixed / AFW, 735, © 2008 / CIP / SHE

The fateful day began with a rattle. The rattle of the bars of the cage my love was now confined to. The bars of the hospital bed we had finally brought into the apartment two days before. It was her second night in the contraption. I was sleeping on the floor right next to her. It was just after 5:00 AM when I heard another rattle. She was trying to climb out again. Strangely enough it was almost exactly 30 hours before the 30 hours would begin. The final chapter had begun.

The situation had deteriorated rapidly in the last six weeks. There had been erratic but general progress for the first 11 months of 2007, but then a decided lull in December. It wasn’t exactly a regression, more like a lack of progression and possible slight slippages. Still Christmas was good and there was hope. In January it became clear we were headed downhill and the pace was quickening. February left no doubt. By now I knew the end was coming into play, though I did not expect it today. I knew her doctor was due at 10:00 and her best friend was due at noon. I had written them both notes while she slept to appraise them of the latest conditions and reiterating her last wishes. It had to be clear.

The rattling was louder. For weeks now I had helped her in her increasingly frequent trips in the middle of the night to the bathroom. At first it was simply guiding her down the hall and waiting outside the door just like during the day. Precautionary really, but occasionally the necessary intervention to steady her. Lately her steps had faltered more and the lurching increased. She had occasionally fallen, but always I was able to catch her and at least break the fall. Still I had known for weeks my physical strength was seriously ebbing. For the first time ever I banged on the wall and woke her daughter to help. I knew this time it would take two. Her daughter was young and strong and I was weak and old. It was time to pass the baton.

We managed, really she managed. We got her there, we got her back, and we got her settled. I told her daughter I couldn’t handle her alone anymore. I asked her to stay until the friend arrived at noon. She was due at work at 8:00 but agreed to stay till 10:00. I was petrified because I knew the situation was beyond me now. I too was disintegrating. The worst day had begun, but still not yet the 30 something hours.

04/08/2008 / February 22, 2008 / Thirty Something Hours (3) / Minou / Mixed / AFW, 734, © 2008 / CIP / SHE