Sometimes partial insights are more confounding than no insight at all. I repeatedly refer to the same artists, physicists and mathematicians, because I’m inspired by skeptical seekers whom stumble into infinity, rather than believers whom seek to affirm their own beliefs.
Have I discussed my favorite mathematician? Srinivasa Ramanujan had no formal training in mathematics. Ramanujan is quoted as saying, ”An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God.” Professional mathematicians of the early 20th century couldn’t be bothered with his novel work. It was too weird for them. Ramanujan passed away at age 32 in 1920, having opened up fields of study which still haven’t been fully understood in the 21st century.
Nearly a hundred years after Ramanujan’s death, 21st century mathematicians realized he had written equations which explain the behavior of black holes. Decades before humans acknowledged that black holes existed or could exist, there was an Indian guy who “intuited” it “from God.”
Forgive me for being blunt, but it seems that common, run-of-the-mill mathematicians and physicists are almost wholly left-brained rationalists, logical, deductive and fully convinced of the truth in their logical, deductive realities. But it seems that the genii at the top of their respective fields tend to “intuit” insightful revelations about the inconclusiveness of their respective fields of study.
Your local math teacher might say, “Numbers don’t lie. With numbers, there is always a definitive answer.” But if you take a closer look, you might find the illogical, irrational behavior of the repeating decimal to be completely mind-boggling. What is 1/3 of the number one? A repeating decimal? And that means it goes on forever? So, a trillion number three’s come after the decimal? More than a trillion? One thousand trillion? More than that? You mean to tell me one thousand trillion threes after the decimal point is no closer to infinity than the first three after the decimal? I dare say, that’s most indefinite.
The irony of the smallest number mathematically deductible is that it requires infinite zeros after the decimal point, but it’s still no closer to zero. The smallest number mathematically calculable is zero point zero, zero, zero infinitely zero, zero, zero, one. [0.000∞0001 > 0]
In fact, the number zero was created in India. Zero can only be understood existentially, experientially. For millennia, the western world didn’t have a number for zero, because it makes no logical sense. Using deductive reasoning, how can “No Thing” exist? “No Thing” is the opposite of existence, right? Zero was invented by a culture of people whom embrace the unity of opposites.
As a fraction, if one were to slice the number one in half and then slice that half in half, then half of that, and onward, one never seems to get any closer to zero. In fact, the bottom number of the fraction gets infinitely more complex. And there it is, the infinite moment. There’s the nature of existence, spelled out in its most perfect existential language of mathematics.
In between every number, there is infinity. In between here and there, there is infinity. In between this and that, there is infinity. In between each particle, there is infinity. In each moment, there is infinity. Deductive reasoning leads only to infinity, because infinity cannot be deduced.
So, there’s infinite space between 0 and 1? How is that possible?
Infinity exists between all space and all time. Is that logical? That’s physics. Rather, that’s quantum physics. Any piece of timespace may be split infinite times without ever revealing the true nature of timespace. The quantum reality is that infinity exists in every moment, in its entirety. This isn’t logical. This isn’t rational. But this is the nature of timespace. Not only that, but every particle in the universe is reacting with every other particle. The particles which make up my being are in constant communication with particles on the other side of the universe! This is the incalculable nature of reality. This is the improbability of life. This is the divinity of nature hiding in plain sight.
This is why Schrödinger is so inspiring to me. He realized the poetry of physics. He realized that the logical may reveal the illogical and the illogical may reveal the logical. He realized that the ultimate conclusion is left to the observer himself or herself. He realized that the experiment reveals more about the experimenter than it does about the thing upon which is being experimented. And he became poetic in his attempts to share his scientific revelations, because he realized poetry’s the only language worthy of infinity.
And so, just as the artist intuits creation through right-brained insight, so too does the true mathematician and the true scientist. Truth reveals itself through insight, not through the repetition and redundancy of memory through left-brained calculation, deduction, logic and reason. Hence, the stereotype of the mad scientist who has his “Eureka” moment while sitting on the toilet. “Eureka” moments only happen when the left brain shuts up.
Perhaps though, the artist, the mathematician and the physicist only gain partial insights. Perhaps only mysticism reveals the total insight. But that’s just my intuition.