“Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine; lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again, and rend you.“
So counsels one who should know in the Gospel According to Saint Matthew. That’s why today’s post is going out to subscribers only. Because some wisdom is so rarefied and fine, so esoteric and celestial, that only the non-porcine Elect get a shot at it. That’s you. That’s today. Read on. If you dare.
********
I probably should have narrowed it down to The Elect plus Theoretical Physicists. In the current issue of the New Yorker, Natalie Wolchover has written an article titled “A Different Kind of Theory of Everything.”
It begins this way:
In 1964, during a lecture at Cornell University, the physicist Richard Feynman articulated a profound mystery about the physical world. He told his listeners to imagine two objects, each gravitationally attracted to the other. How, he asked, should we predict their movements? Feynman identified three approaches, each invoking a different belief about the world. The first approach used Newton’s law of gravity, according to which the objects exert a pull on each other. The second imagined a gravitational field extending through space, which the objects distort. The third applied the principle of least action. This holds that each object moves by following the path that takes the least energy in the least time. All three approaches produced the same, correct prediction. They were three equally useful descriptions of how gravity works.
And it ends this way:
The ultimate goal of physics is figuring out the mathematical question from which all answers flow. The ascension to the tenth level of intellectual heaven would be if we find the question to which the universe is the answer. The nature of that question in and of itself explains why it was possible to describe it in so many different ways. It’s as though physics has been turned inside out. It now appears that the answers already surround us. It’s the question we don’t know.
And in between?
Well now, that’s the mystery, isn’t it? You can read all about it here.
The good news? It’s short, by New Yorker standards.
The bad news? Porkers – and non-subscribers – need not apply.