| Philosophymagazine
The Great Cosmic Accounting Blunder I want to know God’s thoughts. The rest are details. —Albert Einstein The speed of light in a vacuum is one of nature’s few universal constants. Special relativity established that the speed of light is the universal speed limit. No material object can actually reach this speed. Since any object gains apparent mass as it goes faster, gaining an infinite amount at the speed of light, it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate to this speed. By the same token, this would become zero if light could slow down. —Ian Marshall and Danah Zohar Planck’s constant is one of the two most important constants in the whole of modern physics, the other being the speed of light. Max Planck was one of the early founding fathers of quantum physics. His main contributions were the theory that electromagnetic radiation happens in discrete quanta, and the discovery that the size of each quanta is associated with a universal constant, a physical ratio or proportion that stays the same in all circumstances and in all frames of reference. —Ian Marshall and Danah Zohar |
René Descartes (1596-1650) was a French scientist, mathematician and father to modern philosophy. He began his philosophic quest for certainty by tearing down the medieval house of knowledge and then building again from the ground up. Descartes employed the method of radical doubt when asking the simple question—What do I know for certain?—to which he concluded that he certainly knew of his own existence—which he then immortalized with his celebrated cogito—cogito, ergo sum—I think, therefore I exist. And following Descartes’ lead, The Theory of One takes the reader on a fantastic quest for cosmic certainty. Here the responsibility of the reader lies simply in embracing the theory as the null hypothesis for the brief time that it takes to read this essay. After having accepted the theory for a time, the prudent reader will then be properly positioned to accept or reject the theory with certainty once and for all.
Descartes expressly advocates the option-based approach to reading. Accordingly, the first pass is strictly experiential—as if driving a convertible sports car along a mountain road on one of the last days of summer. The goal here is simply to keep the car on the road. The second pass requires a more careful reading and asks that the reader mark pertinent passages and make plenty of notes in the margins. The third and final pass calls for the rereading of notes and marked passages. The Cartesian method provides the option of forgoing the second and third readings while, at the same time, still affording the reader a good basic sense of the book. This book has been carefully written for the cultured public. It is intended as a one hour luxury vacation through the brave new world of onespace for both students and managers alike. For convenience, the book has been specifically designed to comfortably fit into an inside coat pocket.
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