"You must have felt this, too," remarked the physicist Werner Heisenberg, in a conversation with Einstein: "the almost frightening simplicity and wholeness of the relationships which nature suddenly spreads out before us and for which none of us was in the least prepared." 

Newton, like Einstein, was also repeatedly astounded by the simple elegance of math's relationship with the universe. For Einstein and Newton, math was the language of god and nature and if the proof or equation was too complicated, they derived, then it could not be true because nature was always elegant and simple, breath-takingly so.

Another thing that Newton and Einstein seemed to share was that they thought in images. For example, they would both do these thought experiments in their heads, mini movies of how an experiment might go. If a human could run as fast as the speed of light what would they see, thought experiments like that, feats of imagination or magic that allowed for them to think really expansively. Einstein was known for asking simple questions. And as the mathematician Bronowski said, "and what his (Einstein's) life showed, and his work, is that when the answers are simple too, then you hear god thinking." Take Pythagorean's Theorem- a squared + b squared= c squared... every time. It's just how triangles work in this world. James Watson who discovered the double-helix of DNA described it as, "too pretty to be true." When these mental giants found themselves overthinking it, they would re-direct and often find that the answer was simple and beautiful and right there. 

I feel like that is a useful life lesson. Human relationships can be so complex. Children are much better at cutting through all of the crap and manipulation. Children don't speak that language, they just give and receive love freely and play and are curious about the mysteries of life. I feel like, as humans, we can make things so hard on ourselves. A friend of mine's father said to him just before he died, very urgently, in that space between living and dying where all things can become very clear, he said, "Follow the love." I have thought about those words a lot since he died, their simplicity. He just cut through the crap. He saw it very simply and clearly. 

Another thing... music... Einstein was obsessed with Mozart. Whenever he became stuck, he would play Mozart on his violin or listen to it. He felt like it was perfect simplicity, that it was also a form of math and symmetry and therefore God's language as well. The Greeks shared this view that truly beautiful music was so because it tapped into some perfect symmetry and simplicity of the world, of god and the universe. 

So it turns out I've got a few more biographies to read. It's been a while since I've lost myself in study. It makes the writing flow more easily. I feel like I am on a scavenger hunt, people that lead to ideas, that lead to other people and other ideas. I think I am only going to take it as far back as Aristotle though. And really it is mostly their life stories that fascinate me. They were on the ultimate truth journey; they were fearless. Some even jailed and lost their lives in this pursuit.Fear and truth are so inextricably bound. The truth is always there though and often quite simple, not necessarily convenient, but often simple. These guys were quirky and fearless though.

The book about Isaac Newton arrived and I am well into it. I am finding the story of the development of Calculus far more interesting than Calculus. I remember Carl Sagan saying that learning about astronomy and looking through powerful telescopes made him more spiritual, like looking towards God. Isaac Newton felt the same about math. He felt that the mathematical symmetry of the universe was perfect and perfectly beautiful and that it explained everything. Math, he felt, was the secret to the universe, it's code so to speak. It was a spiritual journey for him. And he never left a 100 miles radius his whole life. He never saw the ocean. He figured out that white light was made up of all of the colors of the rainbow, he figured out the tides, but he never saw the ocean. It really shows the expansiveness of the mind, to think that his mind could know so much having explored so little of the world. It's all so consistent and right there if we just are willing to see it. The same truth is in the grain of sand, that's in the movements of a fish, that's in a leaf or a tree, that's in the sunset, the small or the large, it's all just right there, it seems. It also seems that those people who were into alchemy were also really into Calculus, which is how it is for the character in my book, so I am glad that is consistent. They seemed to go together in my heart and mind, and it looks as though they do historically as well... phew...

I got side-tracked and curious about the story of Isaac Newton's life. I bought a book but also I looked on-line to see what I could find. Somehow, I already knew that he had virtually no friends and never married. And it was largely speculated that he suffered from mercury poisoning (causing madness) from all of his alchemy, a definite down side to being an alchemist:) What I discovered that I thought was sort of fascinating and unexpected was how The Great Plague of 1665 sent him home from the university and it was during this quarantine period that he developed most all of his greatest theories. That is what I love about history, how some chance encounter or turn of history allows for something so unexpected. For example, Franklin Roosevelt's polio gave him the great lens of compassion through which he led the country through the Depression and the better part of WWII. The welfare system is in place because FDR had polio and understood what it meant to suffer and be helpless. Newton developed calculus; he set foundations for his theory of light and color, and gained significant insight into the laws of planetary motion. His famous apple falling on his head gravity revelation was also supposedly during this time. 

He wasn't traditionally successful in school and needed to do it in his own way. Once he got that space, he was able to flourish. I know so many people like him with brilliant minds who never excelled in school. For Newton, the plague set him free from the constraints of school to begin what is known as the Scientific Revolution. He found his path and went for it. It sounds like he was a very difficult person too, so maybe he needed to be alone. I am curious to read his biography. 

It wasn't a total diversion for me though because I added something to the book today because of what I read. I added a part where one of the main characters loses his mind because of mercury poisoning. It's in the alchemy section. I hadn't quite figured out what happened to him and that is it. In the pursuit of mixing sulphur and mercury to make gold, he actually poisoned himself, that happened to a lot of people in the 17th and 18th century. In pursuit of eternal life (the making of the legendary philosopher's stone) and gold, they poisoned themselves and lost their mind. It's sort of a parable I guess. 

I really believe that we have such a limited scope of visions as humans. We follow our hearts to try to find truth; to me it seems to be pretty much the best resource as far as the blindness/limited vision we have as humans. And we do the best we can.  

"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

Isaac Newton

I was never very good at Calculus. I think it was because of the abstract nature of it. After all, it is, as I understand it, the study of change. I was quite good at Geometry, shapes and fixed object, the transitive and associative properties of math. I loved that. Because I was stubborn and I felt for some reason that it was really important to learn Calculus, I took three separate courses on it over the years. And, to be honest, I never really got it. Still don't. Fortunately, it doesn't come up a lot...

And so perhaps just to torture myself I've decided to include a chapter about Calculus in my book. My main character needed to learn something old and I thought about an ancient language, but I changed my mind and I decided on Calculus. It actually works perfectly with some of the main themes of the book. I just have to make it believable. Once again, Isaac Newton figured it out. It allows for the understanding of relativity, infinity, the law of motion, etc... Before that, there was no mathematical representation of these principles. I think it's about time to find a good biography on Newton. Maybe if I don't ever quite get the concepts of Calculus, at least I can understand more about the man who created it. 

This morning at field day today, I spoke with my son's teacher for a long time about how she was learning ancient, Biblical Greek as a means of becoming an Episcopal minister. This is her last year teaching. After that, she will find a job as an Episcopal priest and move there, wherever that place is. Her life has already had a very high rate of change up to this point, a very interesting story that I don't have time to get into, she's already had some very major life transitions, etc... Now, she plans on moving to this new place alone, leaving her high school kids here with her partner. She said her calling to this work was that strong for her. Wow. That is some major life Calculus. You wouldn't guess it from looking at her, but she is so unafraid of change... People's choices and life stories never cease to amaze me. I wish Calculus came as easily for me. 

A good friend of mine was telling me recently about a funeral of this amazing woman who had died. She was in her 70s and had run a camp for years and years. Apparently the woman who had died was famous for saying that "you might not be able to stop the bad things from happening to your in life, but you can stop the good things from happening." I liked that. I liked that a lot. I asked my friend to repeat it to me again and again.
 
Sadly, we all know the sadness of the bad things, the ones you can't avoid, the ones that bring you to your knees- violence, sickness, death, etc... I was so sad the other day to hear about the death of Dean Potter, one of the most inspiring climbers of my generation. He was an incredible spirit, a person who seemingly lived at the bittersweet edge. No ropes, no fear. But what about the good things? God forbid we miss out on the good things, the ones that balance out the inevitable limitations/bad stuff of life. Earlier I wrote about my friend Andrew who was the master of 'yes' to life's good things, so much so that he created goodness and love out of bad things, the laughing Buddha incarnate in a way. He had depth but also levity, really depth through his levity.