In my first year of undergrad, I was given a great gift. I had the chance to meet regularly with a man I considered to be one of the best particle physicists in the country. The actual purpose of our meetings was to achieve competency doing Physics in his native language, but it became something altogether more valuable to me. Over several weeks, we worked through Schrödinger’s solution to the Hydrogen atom. Remarkably, after a bewildering sequence of long equations and abstract mathematics anchored to the world apparently only by the boundary conditions Nature demands of us, we at length reproduced the correct solution.

Having taken a brief pause to recover ourselves after this involved satisfying exertion, I raised my eyes from the notepad and asked: “But, how can you be sure we’re right?”.

His wry chuckle barely hid his surprise: I hardly think such a question was his expectation for his next thought. Yet, that surprise is exactly what stuck with me since that day. Not only was I now confronted with the question of how we know our abstract mathematics is trustworthy for knowledge of the world, but added to it was how little even the best science professors contemplate it! The questions I began to ponder were natural extensions: how we can even know mathematics, and indeed, what mathematics even is as abstract entity. I was falling from Physics into Metaphysics (here perhaps Hypophysics) and Epistemology, and I would not easily find my way out.

After leaving University, my energy was devoted to other areas. It wasn’t until around the time of the modern Great Plague that I flirted with a return to the questions I had never fully answered. I began a separate, formal branch of study bearing more relation to philosophy once more. Part of my studies required that I go back and read the ancient philosophers as well as their mediæval and contemporary recipients. I cannot say I read them all equally diligently, but having sought out what I understood to be the more vital works I was able to grant many of them significant attention. I bought my first bookcase bookcases. I noticed and wrote, for instance, on parallels between some Platonic dialogues and Pauline turn of phrase, and the lack of an analogue in Aristotle. I was already spinning several plates and had an eye on more.

I am a lover always of synthesis and have always admired the polymath. They are rare to find today as every science and every discipline is so specialized it is difficult to become skilled even in one, let alone multiple (apparently) unrelated fields. Yet the polymath, almost without exception an autodidact in most of those proficiencies, is a great inspiration. Indeed, it is not uncommon for the self-educated—that is, one not quite so indoctrinated in the traditions of the target field—to bring new and valuable insights to which the ordinary practitioners and researchers were unwittingly blind. Historical examples abound, but have we not witnessed a significant example in the recent works of Nassim Taleb?

My studies in philosophy, theology, and history also drew me to that well-lauded worthy of historical Physics, the towering Isaac Newton. His intelligent engagement with ancient and then-contemporary thought birthed his empirical and radically sane mathematical philosophy of nature. His approach was proven by its impressive explanatory potential overturning both then-modern (æther) and well-established dogmata. The innovation of the vis intertiæ, about which I will write more soon, is a remarkably interesting example. I still cannot fathom how he produced calculus essentially inside the Euclidean mould.

Newton is famous not only for his mathematical discoveries and rather odd personality, but also his theological writings. I was led to his largely forgotten observations on Daniel and the Apocalypse, and was so impressed that I began to re-edit that work from his handwriting. It was reading Newton after having recently done some contemporary study on the Apocalypse where, for the first time, I realized that just because an argument is presented as innovative, it does not mean it truly is. Together, we have forgotten much. Just as Newton had engaged in isolated study during his Great Plague, so I was in a ridiculously faded manner reflecting his action in my own home. In undertaking that work, I was challenged by the books he was citing. They were often original works or contemporary chronicles, and so were almost without exception in Latin or Greek. I was pressed to begin a more intentional study of those languages to aid the project. It is quite a thing to open those darkened odd-fonted tomes Newton referenced and no longer stare intimidated but rather to use them productively in a modern project. I maintain the aim to pursue that project to its completion when a few other growing structures have received their own capstones.

The linguistic spark Newton flicked my way became its own self-sustaining flame. In search of reading material for Latin practice I inevitably stumbled upon the copious cheap and often (probably not-unjustly) forgotten pre-Vatican II moral theology manuals. These litter bookshops and sell for pennies as many Roman priests used to own multiple editions. I initially picked these up with no interest in their specific content. More than that, I completely lacked any frame into which to situate them. I specifically recall first opening my knock-down price seven volume “Busenbaum”—a name at the time as foreign to me as likely to you. My satisfaction at being able to read one book’s title, “De Actibus Humanis in Genere” (of human acts in general), quickly turned to bemusement. What had this to do with theology? What am I going to do with this cryptic useless book set?? But I pursued their reading. From the joy of a successful, if very very painful, reading of a single whole page of Billuart (another unknown writer I acquired on the cheap), to the completion of three volumes of Noldin (ditto), to the enjoyable consumption of St. Thomas’s Summa, this pinball has been bounced far down the table. Even in Busenbaum I was to find much Gold which I couldn’t help but treasure.

And with the reading inevitably came gradual understanding. At times, synthesizing this new understanding with what I already thought I knew came at real cost. How often our dear personal opinions are held in ignorance! This drove my inquiries backwards in the fields of ethics and dogmatics even as they were moving forwards in philosophical domains. It was a joke of nature that they would conjoin just as I was scheduled for formal studies of the mediævals. The inclinations to linguistic and philosophical studies, as well as a willingness, or inveterate desire even, to hold the original sources between my hands (and under my pencil) were not, I think, unappreciated by the professors. What they did for me most importantly was to straighten out the wrinkles in my development which are inevitable for any untrained amateur. I am greatly appreciative to those men for their patience, support, and of course their openness to strike at my more jagged edges. Yes, work remains!

I never particularly intended to pursue the path above. However, since my youngest days I have desired a more complete apprehension of things. It thus transpired that I was armed with an unusual toolkit and was on the cusp of real potential in all areas of interest to me. I was soon to realize, however, that there was one significant gap in that nascent encyclopædic understanding of the world: the one relatively overlooked influence of Western philosophy. Knowing this, I couldn’t help but be drawn to it.

I am speaking, of course, of the “Arabs” (the majority were actually Persian).

Thus has begun the next great stage in personal and academic development for me. Initially, “begun” was more of an aspiration than reality. After all, zero to hero in Arabic philosophy is not something many Westerners can achieve, and pretty much none can alone.

Well, would you know it! By another clumsy fall-out of nature, around that time I stumbled across the path of a Greek-Lebanese native Greek and Arabic speaker, incredibly also possessing a Physics education. This man has since become a close friend and exceptional help for obvious reasons. I said to my wife, These doors just don’t open very often: I am sorry, I simply must grasp the opportunity, throw myself at it! I am hardly one to believe in القدر , but this is the closest I existentially approached it. While it is necessary and exceptionally fruitful to study the Latin translations of the Arabic works used by the scholastics, there is even more to be gleaned by hopping over the language divide. For instance, the bare existence of translated works grants no insight to the question of how that foreign field generated those works which would end up in translation. The story there is significant indeed.

With my approaching emergence from a significant investment in formal studies in a new domain, many possibilities are open to me. I intend to pursue a select few of them with purpose. This calls for renewed dedication to the written word as a method of communication as much as the training of one’s own mind. It calls for more disciplined and directed studies even if the ultimate orientation is not certain.

I have specific grander aims, though I sense they are not just yet available. With this post I signify my readiness to change that.