The Olympic Torch of a Living Culture

The tradition of the Olympic games carries with it a deeply symbolic ritual, that of the Olympic torch. The Olympic torch is never allowed to be extinguished. Myth has it that Prometheus stole the Olympic flame from the
gods. Extinction of the flame was considered a great tragedy for it was not in the power of humans to rekindle it. According to Carl Jung, myths arise from the archetypes of the collective unconscious and signify truths meaningful in the alpha, theta and delta brain states. In these lower frequency brain states, rational language gives way to a symbolic, intuitive, mythical one that is, nevertheless, completely meaningful to the human psyche.

Each brain state has also a kind of lock-in mechanism so that when one is in a particular state, that state seems to be the only real one and others as derivative of that. In the beta state that is the normal conscious state, for instance, the dream state appears unreal. However, when one has moved to the alpha state whether by a creative immersion or by a hypnotic trance or by other means, the beta state may appear unreal likewise. Culture is an immixture of experience in several such states.

To illustrate, the motives that lead one to the pursuit of a scientific domain are often non-rational, emotional and intuitive. They may arise due to the sense of curiosity, surprise, wonder, awe, mystery and magic of Nature and her workings. Or they may be due to the feeling of order, harmony, majesty, the perception of mathematical beauty or a sudden sense of the hidden unity behind all appearances. These rationally and perhaps, non-justifiable feelings have passionately driven many a great inquirer into scientific inquiry.
 Johannes Kepler. In his "Mysterium Cosmographicum", is indignant at the need to justify the scientific pursuit,  

"We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens. The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment."

In "Brighter than a Thousand Suns," Robert Jungk writes how the physicist James Frank, "would tell his pupils that only one who was entirely absorbed by physics and actually dreamed about it could hope for enlightenment. He spoke of his own inspirations in the language of a medieval mystic.
"The only way I can tell that a new idea is really important is the feeling of terror that seizes me.""
The great mathematician Henri Poincare speaks of how 

"A scientist worthy of his name, about all a mathematician, experiences in his work the same impression as an artist; his pleasure is as great and of the same nature."  and that,

"The scientist does not study nature because it is useful. He studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing then life would not be worth living. Of course, I do not here speak of that beauty that strikes the senses, the beauty of qualities and appearances. Not that I undervalue such beauty, far from it, but it has nothing to do with science. I mean that profounder beauty which comes from the harmonious order of the parts, and which a pure intelligence can grasp."

A perfect illustration of Poincare's words is captured by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar as he writes about the discovery of the rotating solution of the Einstein field equations by the New Zealand mathematician, Roy Kerr,

"This shuddering before the beautiful, this incredible fact that a discovery motivated by a search after the beautiful in mathematics should find its exact replica in Nature, persuades me to say that beauty is that to which the human mind responds at its deepest and most profound."

In the above stirrings of deep emotion are to be found all that one speaks of as the culture of a domain. This culture provides the indomitable energy, enthusiasm and drive to pursue first the domain then enter the field and contribute creatively to inquiry and research.
When the culture is living, it sparks the tinder minds and hearts into a flaming aspiration to discover and explore, inquiry and engage in research, to learn, to teach, to share the joys of learning, to bring the fruits of inquiry to enrich and ennoble humanity, to look upon the whole of existence with that deep and exalted feeling. 

 When the culture is absent, learning becomes rote, education reduces to training, teaching gets relegated to mere lecturing irrespective of meaningful communication between the teacher and the taught. Wonder and beauty disappear from life. Day to day existence becomes a chore.

There are times, however, when the culture becomes obscured and retreats into the subterranean tracts. A pall of routine descends on the domains. The flame almost dies down and yet, here and there, some embers continue to smolder. It is then that all efforts to fan and rekindle the flame become significant. This is aided especially by those great visionaries of the past whose works can be most understood and appreciated by posterity. In Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, at least, Paul Dirac, Julian Schwinger, David Bohm and John Bell, and Henri Poincare, David Hilbert, Elie Cartan, Alexander Grothendieck,  and Alain Connes to name a very few, are such personalities who impact their posterity more than their present times. Today, their writings and contributions act like beacons to rekindle the flame. It is as if they envisaged our present need in the words of Percy Bysshe Shelley,   

"Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!"  

Fortunately, their thoughts are alive and already in the throes of quickening a new birth.  It is for all inquiring individuals to fan the sparks into the blazing flame of a living culture and derive warmth and nourishment from it. The CFRCE Theoretical and Mathematical Forum invites such individuals to come forward to rekindle the flame.