My personal aim in writing astrophysics software has been to understand practically a strange, wonderful notion of J.G. Bennett:
In our usual modes of thought we assume that being comes before doing or that being is somehow independent of action ... The truth is just the opposite. We are nothing at all, it is the action that makes us. Our being is an illusion; it is the action that is really there ... We can hardly bring ourselves to see that there are doings who be things ...
And it was A. N. Whitehead who supplied a key to understanding our creative role in a process-centered world:
... Creativity achieves its supreme task of transforming disjointed multiplicity, with its diversities in opposition, into ... unity, with its diversities in contrast ...
If I have produced anything of value, most of the credit must be given to the practical wisdom contained in these ideas. That I so often fell short is, of course, solely my responsibiity.
Eric Mandel
July 1, 2022