Quantum Logic + Exclusive Truth with Lincoln Carr
About the Episode
If school cost you nothing, and you had all the time in the world—and maybe if you didn't have any term papers to write—have you ever felt like you'd choose to just stay in class forever? Maybe you'd dabble in one thing one month, and then move on to something else that sparked your curiosity the next month? First, you'd explore quantum mechanics. Then, you'd wander over into human-centered design. You'd follow that up with some poetry. Then, pick up a course on all of the ancient mystics—jumping from Shamanism to Buddhism—only to follow it with a summer of travel, immersing yourself in breathwork and improving your emotional intelligence.
Wouldn’t that would be the most amazing life? Actually, don’t you wish school were like this, in general? Don’t you wish you could branch out across lots of different disciplines and traditions, learning bits of wisdom from all of them, only focusing on one thing for as long as it compelled you?
Well, Lincoln Carr, a professor at the School of Mines, teaches classes a class just like this—it covers everything from silence, to quantum logic, to dreaming, to technology, to Shamanism. I had the chance to audit it a few years ago, which helped change the course of my work. In today’s conversation, I talk with him about the intersections of Quantum Logic + Exclusive Truth, and—as you might imagine—it’s pretty poetic.
Episode Details
About Lincoln (he/him)
Lincoln D. Carr is a Professor of Quantum Physics at the Colorado School of Mines and a Jefferson Science Fellow of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Between the songs of sperm whales hunting deep canyons under the seas and the roving eye of the lucid dreamer laying prone in his bed, poetry and physics meet. In this multiverse of possibility, he writes quantum thoughts to a reflection of himself reborn again and again through inner and outer space-time, each choice and each moment another universe. He believes that one day, the science we do now will seem like alchemy, and we will wonder how we did not fuse poetry and equations as naturally as the savants of that future age. And hopes his work presents a moment on the path to that future embrace.
What We Discuss
Different kinds of thinkers
Lincoln’s childhood
Schrödinger, gender, & sexuality
How I wound up auditing Lincoln’s class and details about the class itself
Intersections with city planning
The frequent career changes of synthesists
Humility + Foolishness
How science can become a religion
The brilliance of Lincoln’s students
How poetry can play a role in the sciences
How Lincoln thought in quantum logic before he knew what it was
How and why Lincoln uses dreaming in his work
Lincoln’s possibility models
Judaism
Finding your place in the world
Sources Mentioned
Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman, as mentioned in the intro to this episode, and which David Epstein and I also referred to in our interview together. I originally found out about it through Lincoln’s class.
I couldn’t find much online regarding Schrödinger’s polyamory, at least as far as it saved him from being drafted into the war, but I did find this short thing online. Aside from a few unfortunate ways of referring to both polyamory (“mistresses”) and women, it’s still fun to hear about what sounds like a “triad” to me, plus some additional lovers amongst all three participants.
Alex Gorodinski and his different “Types of Thought” (.docx download)
Dr. Guy T. McBride, who started the Honors Program at the Colorado School of Mines, which is where Lincoln’s class is housed.
Brown University & Reed College, the small Liberal Arts schools that Lincoln refers to.
Pyrrho, fourfold logic, & the Buddhist Catuṣkoṭi
Call Your Girlfriend podcast
Ed Catmull co-founded Pixar and was also the President of Walt Disney Animation Studios. The book I refer to of his is called Creativity, Inc. and it’s actually one of my favorite business-related books, ever.
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Credits
Audio engineering by the team at Upfire Digital.
All of my music is provided by the in-house musicians at Slip.stream.
Episode Transcript
Coming soon, hopefully! Would you be willing to help? Email me at brandi@thisplusthat.com!
