“This is the highest musicality of thought”.

A.Einstein on the thinking of N.Bohr

This is a question that I’ve been thinking about for years, and I can’t seem to grasp the “driving gear” that would immediately and “automatically” connect these two completely different forms of human thinking.

Some hints appeared a long time ago, even when he was writing my first novel, “I See something Strange…”. There, the hero conveys his feelings and thoughts when listening to Bach’s Chorale Prelude, which is offered below to the attention of readers-listeners.

I have specially taken several versions of it. Some are more successful (in my purely personal and purely unprofessional opinion-hearing), others are less so.

J.S.Bach, Choral Prelude BWV 639 V

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9Dh43kVL1Q *

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMnrjQK2Z8Y *

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6tepR0Vwgc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZC3u4TrG7Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrNLJKPqgB8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXlroaovi3M *

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNhcU1mzIuM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbUSbl1BohA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4bhxy5a1a4

Organ – yellow

Bach Choral prelude BWV 639 ^

So, the hero, listening to this prelude, “sees” in his mind’s eye a kind of slowly rotating double helix of DNA. In the prelude, we clearly hear how the leading melody and the accompaniment “SWITCH places” – one goes into the accompaniment, and it becomes the leading theme.

This is a fairly “transparent” image of foreplay. Let’s say it’s more obvious.

And here’s the question: Is it possible to associate some other physical or other process, phenomenon, or event with this prelude?

For example, slow–motion reproduction of very fast and short–term alpha or beta or other decay radiation of the nucleus?

The nucleus is a low musical element. The main, higher, leading melody is the outgoing light particle Alpha or Beta or Neutron or Gamma quantum.

Then, for a short time, our attention is drawn specifically to the emitted particle, and only by the end of the prelude do we return to the nucleus again.

But there is one detail that remains UNDISCLOSED: After all, the nucleus, having lost any of the listed particles, ALSO CHANGES ITSELF. Means. and his theme SHOULD ALSO UNDERGO some tonal collisions!

In general, there are questions, but there are almost no answers to them, although I find the problem itself interesting. If only because it is possible to find some kind of reflection of scientific topics in music, then there is a FEEDBACK, isn’t there – to get some phenomena and effects UNFORESEEN by scientific thinking from musical themes?

One name is – Esprit the Visionary!

Faciant meliora potentes.

4 III 2025

P.S. Here is an example of feedback: The fission of the uranium nucleus when it captures a neutron occurs after ten to minus the fourteenth power of a second, while the so-called instantaneous neutrons are emitted. This duration is equal to one hundred trillionth of a second. A massive nuclear explosion develops in just two millionths of a second!

And the whole Bach prelude lasts a few minutes! That is, musically, we have “stretched” the process of nuclear fission or particle emission by millions of billions of times! And thus, an instantaneous physical process has become quite perceptible to our senses and thinking in music!

P.P.S. Esprit seems to have completely speculative ideas in his head.

But, here comes the thought.

What is OUR PERCEPTION of, say, music?

These are nothing more than chains of BIOCHEMICAL REACTIONS in our brain.

What is OUR PERCEPTION of certain physical phenomena, laws, and theories?

These are ALSO chains of biochemical reactions in the same brain.

Of course, they differ in the number of neurons involved, their specifics, and other parameters. But since it all boils down to certain combinations of connecting neurons through synapses, in which the neurotransmitter acetylcholine acts to connect neurons and the enzyme cholinesterase to destroy acetylcholine and thus close the chain, there is no fundamental difference at the neurophysiological level between the perception of music and some physical, chemical or, even more so, biological process!

And, therefore, it is possible to connect both processes of music and physics-chemical-biological in our thinking!

It follows from this that the representation of a certain phenomenon in the form of music is not at all such a heresy or fantasy. If Vivaldi wrote the symphonic suite “The Four Seasons”, if Beethoven wrote “The Tempest”, if in many musical works the sounds of natural phenomena or human activity are clearly heard (The sea in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, and in it you can hear not only waves developing and crashing on the shore, but even water FLOWING back into the sea, and the war of 1812 with the thunder of cannons, in Tchaikovsky’s “The Solemn Overture of 1812” and his other overture “The Thunderstorm”), then why can’t music express the phenomena of nuclear fission when it captures a neutron, or the emission of a gamma quantum from the nucleus, or, say, the acceleration of particles in a synchrotron and their bombardment of a target.

In general, ANY PHYSICS-CHEMICAL EFFECTS AND PHENOMENA!

That is, from the point of view of principle – such analogies are quite acceptable and can be very useful – to perceive something not only with the cold logic of a researcher, but also to bring a significant share of emotions into this process!

You can argue about the SELECTION of music and its correspondence to some effect, but that’s where all the arguments end.

6 III 2025