LOVE THIS BEAUTIFUL MUSICAL MATHEMATICAL UNIVERSE

A radical revision of modern physics offers profound spiritual implications for human life. 

According to debut author Capapas, people’s interpretation of the world has been radically revised by the “triumph of quantum theory,” the “most accurate among all theories that physical science has ever advanced.” But the current state of modern physics still suffers from two grand, interrelated problems: one is the obsessive quest for an “elusive theory of everything,” a “prolonged, futile search based on particle physics.” Secondly, at the heart of contemporary cosmology is a schism between “scientific discoveries and everybody’s shared experience of reality,” or to put it differently, between “scientific rationality and the wisdom gained from experience.” To this end, the author provides a panoramic survey of the fundamental principles of modern physics and culls her own theory of reality. She begins with the common ground of all things: vibration (“Everything vibrates”). As a result, all things have a recordable frequency and these frequencies dictate the “harmonic order” that readers ultimately experience as phenomenal objects of perception, including space and time itself as well as gravity. Moreover, that vibration constitutes the unity of all things, the “unfathomable singularity of pure light.” That pure frequency can also be understood as love, the “pure vibration that holds us all as one,” “the fundamental energy,” the “one infinite light permeating everything.” Capapas furnishes an uncommonly accessible, almost informally storylike account of the intellectual drama that ultimately spawned quantum theory as well as an erudite summary of the history of pre-modern cosmology, which, she argues, anticipates it. In addition, the author astutely points out the many ways in which, despite its extraordinary success, quantum theory still fails to capture the wholeness of human life. Capapas is not a physicist but rather a physician, and ultimately takes some scientific leaps based on her “gut.” Even if she’s right about the “vibratory interconnectedness” of all things, it’s never empirically clear why this means love is the lynchpin of the universe or why “consciousness is the fundamental element of the universe.” These are intriguing and even inspiring conclusions, but that’s not the same thing as being persuasive. 

A remarkable and readable account of modern physics even if its ultimate positions remain unconvincing.