Recently I had a brief email exchange with a scientist friend of mine. He is a computational physicist and I am a dreamer, so you can imagine the questions I have for him. We were discussing symmetry and perfection as it relates to the ideas of the Greeks. Plato saw symmetry as a reflection of perfection. This comment came from my questions as to why the Greeks held the Platonic solids to a near mystical status. It was becaus of symmetry and beauty. Then it made me think of the beauty and design of our universe.
Then my friend commented that "advances in fractal mathematics and chaos theory have rejuvenated the concept of magnificent order in the universe. Even in the most chaotic of systems there is mathematical predictability. Order implies intention or design. Design requires a Designer". I wrote back and told him his comment of ‘Design requires a Designer’ is so apt with many of the historical (and current!) ideas waiting for us to explore. Like the celestial crystal spheres of the Ptolemaic times, eventually shattered by Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler, the atomic theory of Bohr is a perfect example of the “As above, so below” principle. His atomic model of the atom was the macrocosm in microcosm. A perfectly ordered world at the atomic level.
Like the scientific revolution that occurred near the time of the Renaissance, there was another revolution that occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century of equal importance. Sommerfeld, Pauli, Heinrich, Einstein, Bohr, et. al. were discovering an ever smaller universe at the atomic level. Pauli postulated the neutrino 30 years before it was proven. He believed there to be a fourth quantum number, but could not visualize it. He likened himself to be similar to Kepler. Both shared what was newly termed by Jung in 1913 the “collective unconscious” and each had an intuitive sense that there was more than they were able to prove. For Kepler, it was the force of gravity (or the ‘fifth element’), but his work laid the path for Newton. Pauli was obsessed with the fine structure constant his mentor Sommerfeld had discovered. This obsession lead him into treatment with Carl Jung, in whom he found a soul of similar light and passion, but with the intuitive aspects that he had been missing, but suspected were there in his work.
Wolfgang Pauli was very unlucky in love. By day he was a brilliant physicist, admired by his colleagues, and celebrated by Einstein. Pauli made huge contributions to his field, challenged his contemporaries (Niels Bohr among them), and worked relentlessly to solve some of the most intriguing mysteries of the universe. By night he caroused the bars, haunted the red light districts, and fell into the arms of dance hall women. He was so tormented at his lack of success with women he eventually became a patient of Carl Jung. As they got to know each other, they became friends and eventually collaborated on a book. Both were fascinated by the number 137, the fine structure constant of the universe. A number without dimension. A number, that if changed by even four percent, life as we know it could not exist. This slight change could destroy all of the carbon and oxygen in every star of the universe and life on our planet could not exist or would be dramatically different.
How amazing it all is, really. The term Elegant Universe definitely applies.
Here is a secret wish of mine. I want to go study at the University of Toronto. They offer a degree called the “History and Philosophy of Science and Technology”. I have wanted to take that course of study for the past 15 years, but it is not in the cards for me. So, I just read a lot about it all. It would be nice to have someone to talk about these things with to hear other opinions outside of my own. Plus, need someone to help me understand the importance of numbers and why the work they way they do.
Like the scientific revolution that occurred near the time of the Renaissance, there was another revolution that occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century of equal importance. Sommerfeld, Pauli, Heinrich, Einstein, Bohr, et. al. were discovering an ever smaller universe at the atomic level. Pauli postulated the neutrino 30 years before it was proven. He believed there to be a fourth quantum number, but could not visualize it. He likened himself to be similar to Kepler. Both shared what was newly termed by Jung in 1913 the “collective unconscious” and each had an intuitive sense that there was more than they were able to prove. For Kepler, it was the force of gravity (or the ‘fifth element’), but his work laid the path for Newton. Pauli was obsessed with the fine structure constant his mentor Sommerfeld had discovered. This obsession lead him into treatment with Carl Jung, in whom he found a soul of similar light and passion, but with the intuitive aspects that he had been missing, but suspected were there in his work.
Wolfgang Pauli was very unlucky in love. By day he was a brilliant physicist, admired by his colleagues, and celebrated by Einstein. Pauli made huge contributions to his field, challenged his contemporaries (Niels Bohr among them), and worked relentlessly to solve some of the most intriguing mysteries of the universe. By night he caroused the bars, haunted the red light districts, and fell into the arms of dance hall women. He was so tormented at his lack of success with women he eventually became a patient of Carl Jung. As they got to know each other, they became friends and eventually collaborated on a book. Both were fascinated by the number 137, the fine structure constant of the universe. A number without dimension. A number, that if changed by even four percent, life as we know it could not exist. This slight change could destroy all of the carbon and oxygen in every star of the universe and life on our planet could not exist or would be dramatically different.
How amazing it all is, really. The term Elegant Universe definitely applies.
Here is a secret wish of mine. I want to go study at the University of Toronto. They offer a degree called the “History and Philosophy of Science and Technology”. I have wanted to take that course of study for the past 15 years, but it is not in the cards for me. So, I just read a lot about it all. It would be nice to have someone to talk about these things with to hear other opinions outside of my own. Plus, need someone to help me understand the importance of numbers and why the work they way they do.
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