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I Will Love You, Forever! --The Quantum Mechanics of Love

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Professor Williams, certainly firmly grounded in the conventions of modern science, cosmology and quantum physics, nevertheless poses the enigmatic concept of 'lovions' or 'quanta of love'. He assigns to these quanta of love an astonishing reality, durability and persistence. In his Epilogue, Williams writes: "Lovions uniquely unite the God of Spirit and the God of Matter . . . The God of Spirit is the ethereal, intangible God of unpredictable miracles . . . The God of Matter is the physical, rational God of scientific axioms and principles . . . the reductionist God of quantum forces and energies."

One may argue that since the concept of lovions exists, therefore lovions exist - at least in a transcendental sense. Williams studiously avoids explicit detailing of the quantum mechanics of lovions. Still, he might well assert that lovions are transmittable entities, that is, are memes that mediate between bodies and souls. Lovion memes may be among the affinities described by Dawkins in The Selfish Gene and elaborated on by Narby in Intelligence in Nature. Dawkins originally introduced the idea of the meme as a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes.

In The Emperor's New Mind Roger Penrose writes: "I imagine that whenever the mind perceives a mathematical idea it makes contact with Plato's world of mathematical concepts. . . . When one 'sees' a mathematical truth, one's consciousness breaks through into this world of ideas, and makes direct contact with it. . . with the same eternally existing Platonic world!" Following Penrose, we may admit other ideas as resident in the Platonic world, not just mathematical ideas but also an idea such as eternal love. Like mathematical ideas it is pure and perfect. Like perfect mathematical figures eternal love is an ultimate reality not found in this mundane world but an ideal, a guiding concept. Professor Williams illustrates with four instances of his life experience the worldly guidance from and the ultimate reality of eternal love. This ultimate reality can appreciated only by leaping beyond the bare words of Williams' memoir.

In his Epilogue, Professor Williams casts himself as a hopeful, optimistic romantic: "This is our world; this is a world shaped by free will; this is a world in which we can choose. You may. We may. As human beings, we can. We can choose to love. We can love as we choose. We can choose to express love to those who are living, and in return to resonate with and to accept their love. Human beings choose to commit to vows of loyalty, fidelity, generosity, compassion, charity, fairness, mercy, and tolerance; even patriotism and science. . . . We can choose to love; as the essence of our being, as the surrender of our borders, as the strength of our yielding. We can choose to capture love, and let love capture us. We can choose; for as long as our love will allow: forever!" This echoes his Prologue ". . . here's the essence of what I have concluded: mutually intense love can be eternal." His conclusion follows because 'love memes' are by definition eternal, refinable Platonic templates for interpersonal and collective affinities.

One might ask whether Professor Williams has departed from the straight and narrow path of scientific inquiry, he has not. It is well that scientific inquiry has lead us to discovering disease-causing microbes and away from attributing plagues to astrological omens. Among the vast host of benefits bestowed, science has given us spectacular suspension bridges and terabyte memory chips. Williams has intimately practiced that science and the engineering based upon it. In his memoirs, he tacitly invites us to innovatively apply scientific inquiry to explore the intangible aspects of our innermost being.

I'm not surprised that this book is great. Everything Dr. Williams has ever done has been great. I highly recommend this book and all of his work.