Wolfgang Smith (1930-2024) : Requiescat in Pace

Wolfgang Smith: 18 February 1930 – 19 July 2024.  

Following the death of this most remarkable man on the 19th of July this year, I am posting an excerpt below which is taken from the Philo-Sophia website and will give you some idea of his extraordinary achievements and range of interests:

Born in Vienna in 1930, Wolfgang Smith graduated from Cornell University at age 18 with degrees in physics, mathematics, and philosophy. In a few short years he took his master’s degree in physics at Purdue University, climbed the Matterhorn, and published the first theoretical solution to the re-entry problem for space flight.

Finding himself irreconcilably at odds with the prevailing Zeitgeist, he decided to forego a professional career in the fields of his primary interest—physics and philosophy—in favour of pure mathematics, and after taking his doctorate at Columbia University, he served as professor of mathematics at M.I.T., U.C.L.A., and Oregon State University until his retirement in 1992.

At heart a philosopher in the most traditional sense, Dr. Smith became deeply attracted to the Platonist and Neoplatonist schools early in life, and ultimately took extensive sojourns in India and the Himalayan regions to contact such vestiges of ancient tradition as still could be found. One of the basic lessons he learned from these encounters is that there actually exist higher sciences in which man himself plays the part not merely of the observer, but of the “scientific instrument”: becomes himself, as it were, the “microscope” or “telescope” by which he is enabled to perceive invisible reaches of the integral cosmos.

Over the years, Dr. Smith came to recognize the stringent limitations to which our contemporary sciences are subjected by virtue of their “extrinsic” modus operandi: the folly of presuming to fathom the depths of the universe, having barely scratched the surface in the discovery of man himself.

It is no wonder, then, that when he finally confronted the so-called quantum reality problem, Dr. Smith perceived the issue in a very different light than his peers. The problem actually never was of a “technical” nature to begin with! It was not a question to be resolved by way of differential equations, nor primarily a matter of finding something new—but one of jettisoning the entire Weltanschauung of the modern West. And the key to the latter is to be found in the long lost cosmology of antiquity, which conceives of the integral cosmos as tripartite—even as man himself is traditionally viewed as a composite of corpus, anima, and spiritus.

But Wolfgang Smith is no obscurantist: he neither rejects nor advocates rejecting one iota of legitimate science. He does, however, insist that we distinguish actual scientific facts from counterfeit scientistic beliefs masquerading in the hallowed name of “Science.” And the latter condition is endemic, afflicting every segment of modern civilization: it is this widespread delusion that Dr. Smith has missioned himself to combat.

In 2020, the Philos-Sophia Initiative produced a feature documentary on the life and work of Dr. Smith, The End of Quantum Reality, which is available on disc and digital platforms worldwide.

The length and the breadth and the height of Wolfgang Smith's knowledge and insight were quite remarkable and probably unique. Let us pray not only for the repose of his soul but also for the dissemination of his work and its continuation by worthy successors.

 R.I.P. 

+       +        +

 

The Vladimirskaya Icon. >12th century.

SUB tuum præsidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genitrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta. Amen.

 

 

 

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.