Good Vibrations
Before Tesla was a car, he was a clever engineer, and he said a lot of cool stuff. Some of which was decipherable.
Before I commence with this week’s bloviation, let me take a moment to thank two friends; one who brought up the subject in an email, the other, a reader of this blog, who thought the email might be worth sharing. I will let you be the judge of that. But, in the meantime, I would like to emphasize a greater concern: That of the role of “Science” over the past century (including its practitioners). And that of our society’s understanding of the “Science” in general.
In hindsight, it is clear now that the “Science” offered by the pharmaceutical industry is not as pure as it may have once been thought. Those who have been following the astrophysics of ‘Dark Matter’ and ‘energy in empty space’ might now be realizing that the hard physics of simple inertia and speed are a little softer than the experts assumed.
Nikola Tesla, to his great credit, was first among his kind to point out the silliness of the ‘proof by formula’ and ‘truth by modeling’ of the Einstein-Bohr era. He knew that an idea confined to paper was ultimately of little importance without proof that was verifiable and capable of duplication. That virtually nothing in cosmology or evolutionary biology meets those simple criteria should be concerning.
But, evidently, it’s not.
Dear Reader
Recently you wrote me to relate some fascinating things you’ve apparently learned about the famous engineer, Nikola Tesla. It was his contention, you explained, that ‘energy, frequency and vibration’ were the keys to understanding all of science. Given that every scientist born since Pythagoras would agree with him wholeheartedly, we will easily cede his point.
You then went on to contend that the numbers 3, 6, and 9 were ‘special’ and that they were involved in a series of calculations broadly defined as ‘Vortex Math’. This is where the waters muddy a bit and demand further detail.
Doubtless, Tesla was a genius who said a lot of things I don’t quite understand, and his statement about frequency and such is just general enough to be true, or at least incontestable in context.
But you have to remember that — like Newton, Bohr, Pythagoras and Oppenheimer — he had his share of eccentricities, some of which bled into his work, such as his propensity for walking 3 times around the block or only being able to stay in a hotel room with the number ‘3’ in it.
Granting that the numbers 3, 6, and 9 appear in many mathematical relationships and that the “Vortex Math” espoused by Tesla yields very interesting geometric patterns (including the cardioids central to the working of microphones), they are also central to various less than scientific theories involving numerology and alchemy. That doesn’t mean he’s wrong, it just means that I don’t get all of his science.
If you really want to understand the mathematical roots of his 3, 6, 9 theory, you (unfortunately) really have to watch (or at least skim) this video:
The real takeaway, to me, is not that some of Tesla’s theories might have their roots in numerology, alchemy and eastern mysticism, but that a real lot of theory from twentieth century physics—from Heisenberg to Oppenheimer— has its roots in numerology, alchemy and eastern mysticism.
Witness the Double Slit Experiment:
Or Quantum Entanglement:
Or, for that matter, that silly Darwin thing they’re still going on about:
The video you shared in your original email is really cool.
