Extraordinary San Francisco Philosophical Incubator

The quantum theory pioneers of the 20th century are great examples of this, having visions of mathematical patterns which explain reality, and which in their case, led to the existence of the nuclear chain reaction which revealed a hidden pattern in matter.

Critical to remember that before it was recognized that a powerful weapon could be built by liberating the energy locked in matter, someone had to imagine that there was a quantifiable amount of energy locked in the story of matter,

This was the mathematical equation which dominated my own childhood and which seemed if anything as mysterious and incomprehensible as the Riemann ever could.

As a child I relied on books to explain the intricate details of mass–energy equivalence — that there was quantifiable energy locked within matter.

I felt an early affinity with the early quantum engineers, which led to several unique intersections of teenage reading: Richard Rhodes’s The Making of the Atomic Bomb, alongside the convoluted intellectual ping-pong of Piet Hein and the streetwise sensibility of Eric Hoffer in The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements.

Combine these with the small group of San Francisco friends who walked a similarly complex territory and brought me into drama such as Waiting for Godot and the imaginary world of a Sam Shepherd, and the philosophical imagineering of San Francisco Zen Center and the mix became incendiary.

I couldn’t help but notice that some of these quantum pioneers reached beyond physics for a language adequate to what they perceived. Erwin Schrödinger drew on Vedanta in My View of the World; J. Robert Oppenheimer studied Sanskrit and read the Bhagavad Gita. Their interests in Indian philosophy were real, though not shared by every pioneer, and not evidence that quantum mechanics proves a religious tradition.

After all the revolutionary math/physics which demonstrated the sheer amount of energy locked within matter itself was a major paradigm shift.

Here we take a decidedly different off ramp, diverting our thoughts into the weeds if we are not careful.

Because nothing prepares the biological or electronic brain for what follows.

The whole edifice of superimposed patterns on superimposed patterns more resembles Stranger in a Strange Land and the dystopian allegory of Alice in Wonderland than the physics of Albert Einstein.

“Curiouser and curiouser!” — Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

“You’re my witness, I’m your mutineer” — Warren Zevon, “Mutineer”

“I can follow the path, I can read the signs” — Bob Dylan, “Most of the Time”

“I got on this airplane just to fly” — Emmylou Harris, “Boulder to Birmingham”

“If I can just get off of this L.A. freeway without getting killed or caught” — Guy Clark, “L.A. Freeway”

I take from these voices a willingness to follow an unfamiliar path; I do not take the songs or the stories as evidence for the physics.

Once this book comes to a logical pause, Vivaldi steps into the room.

For it is the supreme quantum architect of resonance itself which the slight pale image of Vivaldi represents.

His architecture of resonance: composed of harmonies superimposed upon harmony, his time signatures as unexpected and dynamic as the illuminated mind of human consciousness itself.

This is the unexplored territory we enter now, and as Dante once warned: Beware All Who Enter.

For one thing may be assured: the reader who enters will not be the same reader who exits the end of the book.

Thankful for the work. We enter here the resonant territory of Cum Dederit where the carpet on the floor becomes the moveable feast of the bass line.