The World According to Physics | The Greatest Physicist of our Age | The Science of Reality [ Superb Explorations for the Layperson]
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
From: New Scientist Events <no-r...@newscientist.com>
Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2020 at 12:48
Subject: The World According to Physics | The Greatest Physicist of our Age | The Science of Reality
To: <toyin....@gmail.com>
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Dear Oluwatoy-in,
I hope you'll be there in time .
With regard to our place in the universe/multiverse, I guess that these kinds of theoretically scientific peeps into transcendence and the vast vastness of God in and out of space and time being anchored in the understanding of the little ego brain known as ”i” is a fitting rejoinder to any disagreeableness or disagree-able anti-thesis from e.g. Alagba Agbetuyi in that his last critical put-down of your humble efforts at opening up our minds, if not our souls.
For some of us, an interest in those kinds of questions started with the popular bestseller “The Tao of Physics” by Fritjof Capra circa 1975, easy enough for dudes without a grounding in theology or theoretical physics or Hindu mythology, to read and understand.
Nowadays, there’s no excuse for not understanding everything when we have gurus and popularisers such as Neil deGrasse Tyson and Michio Kaku in addition to whom we have had Stephen Hawking at hand, to teach the common man and to stimulate our sense of awe and our not so mundane imagination.
You may believe that it’s the year 2020 A.D. and we’re back to “The Roaring Twenties” but with regard to the Hebrew Scriptures and the Hebrew Calendar which postulates that we are now living in the year 5780 after the creation ( before dear Sister Gloria in Excelsis Emeagwali starts getting excited about the age of the pyramids, the Pharaonic dynasties and the roots of Scottish freemasonry, may I kindly refer us to Gerald Schroeder, in particular, his “ The Science of God” in which he sets out to explain how the year 5780 may not be a too farfetched time reckoning, after all…
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Thank you for constantly reminding us about the waḥdat al-wujud and the marriage/ confluence of metaphysics and physics
In my humble opinion, if one doesn't already exist, a special chair should be created for you to take a serious look into the various schools of African - Nigeria-based spirituality, Ibadan, Ife, not just a research position...
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Cornelius Hamelberg
Dear Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,
May all your dreams come true!
“May you always do for others
And let others do for you”
In the past, I have charged you with Islamophobia and will still do so if and when you give me no alternative but to do so. This, in spite of understanding your frustration with the fundamentalist Brethren and Sistren of Boko Haram and that certain ancestral jihadist strain in some of the Fulani Brethren including the herdsmen, often in the spirit of self-defence, if not of dawah and expansion.
In Islam, after all, every level of Jihad is a fard , the militaristic aspect, as and when the situation may dictate. I mean Islamic fundamentalism in the sense of the fundamentalist wanting to restore everything to some earlier, supposedly pristine, golden age. In the case of Christian fundamentalism , I think that they are looking forward to the resurrection of John the Baptist, whose head is buried in Damascus.
There’s also Hindu fundamentalism and certain strains of fundamentalism in the so-called Judaism and Zionism. I am not aware of fun-da-mentalism in Buddhism, because Buddha was not a fundamentalist!
N. B: The concept waḥdat al-wujud is rejected by the five legal schools of Islam, that is, by both the Shia and the Sunni. It conflicts with legal Islam’s uncompromising understanding of monotheism designated as TAWHID.
Waḥdat al-wujud is nothing short of Pantheism.
Re – your words: “i would love to combine depth and breadth of research and writing in African, Western, Asian and Islamic thought at the intersection of the visual and verbal arts, philosophy, spirituality and science.”
So modest you are too! These are not meant to be mere words of encouragement and support. In my humble opinion what you would love to do is what you have been doing for quite some time now even if you may in some wistful humility regard what you have been doing so far as merely tentative explorations and short excursions into inner and outer space situated as you may think that you are in the embryonic stages of what should one day be a more final and complete last say on some of these matters - when we know fully well that only The Omniscient has and is capable of having the first and the final say on anything ( and we know that as far as knowledge of certain specific fields go, especially the little blips and time frames of the awesome past, it is in the nature of some of the species known as “homo sapiens” such as Alagba Falola to be quite close to His Omniscient Majesty in some respects, at least in some little matters of history and that’s why he occupies the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities. There is also your other contemporary idol of course in the person of Nimi Wariboko, very much alive and who occupies the Katherine B. Stuart Professor of Christian Ethics.
However, the Chair that we have in mind for you is something much more adventurous than the latter even though I’m feeling a little peeved that you want to limit yourself to “African, Western, Asian and Islamic thought” - the mere mention of which leaves me howling about your great omission: What about Judaic thought after all, the Almighty’s Hebrew Prophets are the mother and father and foundation of Christianity and al-Islam!
Once again, in my humble opinion, we will have to give your chair a fitting name, but your chair is yours and you are already sitting on it, as many people here and elsewhere can already testify.
But what I (and I’m sure many others) have in mind is the institutionalization of your chair. I suppose that it already exists in one form of the other, is located in university departments of comparative religion, comparative mysticisms, and as you say, at places and spaces where revelatory poetry, your comparative analogues that don’t have to correspond exactly ( like Jesus’ parables), analects of Confucius, music, “the visual and verbal arts, philosophy, spirituality and science” - and if I may so add - and the beauty of big booty and sex intersect ( smile).
For you, I suppose that there are outstanding bread and butter issues, practical matters such as money, an enabling and supportive environment in which to continue to conduct your research ( not necessarily an Ivory Tower somewhere in Denver Colorado or North Carolina) contacts, opportunity, material, travel - lots of travel expenses.
Spinoza didn’t have all of the above
If I were the humble provost of some University in Cuba or Nigeria I would set you up and name the Chair the Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju Chair of Ifa and Allied Studies & Investigations - at the Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju Research Institute – which could be started easily enough the formalization of which is a fait accompli overnight – by some generous grants from all kinds of donor agencies - more donor agencies than you can imagine - seek and ye shall find – ask and ye shall be given ( even by Bloomberg) especially when your ain is that of “Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge”
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
You did well by mentioning Baruch Spinoza, emblematic of the culture of Independent Scholars who worked in non-academic contexts or who supported themselves outside institutional contexts, as Spinoza did by grinding lenses while creating his masterwork of philosophical probing, as Desiderius Erasmus did in laying foundations of European humanism, declaring 'I spend what money I have on books, the rest can go to other necessities', as Rene Descartes did in contributing to centralizing the epistemic turn in Western philosophy, working as a soldier at the time, as Ludwig Wittgenstein also did while laying foundations for what would become Analytical Philosophy, as Ibn Arabi lived in creating his everlasting works of poetry, theology and philosophy, as Albert Einstein did during the period covering the miraculous year of 1905, when working at the now iconic patent office in Berne, Switzerland, having been unable to secure an academic position, he published, in his 20s, the three papers that revolutionized physics, as Dante Alighieri did in exile from his native Florence, having revealed to him by God one day in a dream the significance of the precise place in the scheme of the universe of the great project he was working on and which would be published after his transition, the epic poem, the Commedia, a creation at the frontiers of human possibility,understanding leading Dante to praise the bitterness of his life, but upon waking he forgot he dream, a dim echo leaving him with the feeling that "he had received and lost an infinite thing, something that he would not be able to recuperate or even glimpse", the mind of God being too complex for understanding by a human mind, as narrated by Jorge Louis Borges in the fictional but insightful 'Inferno 1, 32'.
a chair to take a serious look into the various schools of African - Nigeria-based spirituality within the context of comparative religion, comparative mysticisms, revelatory poetry, [unifying] “the visual and verbal arts, philosophy, spirituality and science” - and if I may so add [intersecting with] the [ aesthetics of ] big booty and sex ( smile), along with with generous funding, an enabling and supportive environment in which to continue to conduct your research [providing] contacts, opportunity, [research] material, travel - lots of travel expenses, started by some generous grants from all kinds of donor agencies - more donor agencies than you can imagine
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