Light That Contains Thought

Why is the revolution of string theory a counter-revolution to the Cartesian revolution, and what is the connection between this development and the Sabbatean paradoxes of matter and spirit? On parallel developments in Kabbalah and theoretical physics

The Empty Space (Source)

The Cartesian revolution and the secular scientific revolution as a whole was the creation of space-time - the void. Descartes' dichotomous separation between thought and existence and between soul and body, which began the psycho-physical problem of modern philosophy and the theory of knowledge, was made possible by the purification of the spiritual from the material - through Cartesian doubt. This separation was also at the basis of the scientific revolution, as it allowed the dichotomous separation between the mathematical abstract and the physical existence, in the first stage, and then, in the second stage, the expression of the physical within the mathematical. The coordinates and their quantitative perception - Descartes' invention that linked physics to mathematics - were made possible thanks to the idea of a point in space, which parallels the idea of the cogito: a point lacking spatial substance, which is a pure I (=the point of connection between the mathematical thinker and the physical existent, a kind of conceptual pineal gland). Descartes was very drawn to the idea of a point-like connection after a dichotomous separation between worlds, and the idea of scientific measurement is identical to the idea of cognition - perception of the material in terms of the spiritual, and perception of the physical in the tools of abstract mathematical space. God, on the other hand, was increasingly distanced from the material to transcendence, and from immanent existence to nothingness.

But today, physics has already moved on to negate something even more fundamental than matter, as at each stage space-time has become more unstable and distant from the Cartesian worldview, as a mathematical space in which the world occurs, and has become a physical object. And so the conceptual process occurred: from special relativity (negation of an absolute coordinate system in space-time), through general relativity (curvature of space-time itself and the coordinate system, at the macro level) and quantum theory (vibrations in space-time at the micro level), to its explosion in modern astrophysics (accelerated and inflationary expansion of space-time, and its filling with dark energy that pushes its expansion) and in string theory (adding many dimensions to space-time due to the vibration of matter), until physics moved to its complete disintegration. There is no more space-time, it is no longer a more fundamental phenomenon, there is something underneath. What creates it is something within it. This is a complete reversal of the Cartesian, secular idea, to the point of approaching the transformation of physics into the basis of mathematics, and not vice versa. Mathematics resides within physics, and not physics residing within mathematics.

All this was done by a Jew named Witten, the Einstein of our time, who took the ideas of the breaking of the vessels and the creation of empty space and turned them into the basis of physics. Thus with symmetry breaking (which occurs during the process of emanation, like the breaking of the vessels), and only they allow the imperfection of our world, that is, the creation of something in the world. And so with the understanding that space-time is created and is not a fundamental phenomenon in the universe, but a symptom, and perhaps even an illusion (just as the empty space is itself part of the divinity that contracted itself - to create an empty place from God for the world - but in truth is not empty of God, but a world in the sense of concealment of God. The world occurs within God, and transcendence is an illusion that hides immanence). Witten also won the Fields Medal and not the Nobel Prize after, in an interesting reversal, he solved difficult mathematical problems using physical insights from the basic equations of matter, and not vice versa. Descartes is turning in his grave.

All this parallels the Kabbalistic discovery that the most secular secularism is built in its infrastructure on religiosity (of a higher order). Darkness and space are created from within the lights and within them, and not that darkness and space were before the lights and light passes through them. Rather, darkness is invisible light, light that has been ignored and disappeared in the higher realms, precisely because it is too high for our vision. In other words, we see the development of the spirit: from the idea of the Ari, to the Sabbatean idea, to the secular idea, to the scientific idea. From "I think therefore I am" - to light that has no thought in it. A God who does not think - and therefore appears as darkness and as space, but within its interiority, in a Sabbatean reversal, lies the highest light. Thus mysticism can benefit physics. The increasingly intensifying paradoxical thinking - which becomes more and more immanent - is a similar dynamic of the most spiritual spirit and the most material matter.