Sci­en­tists want hob­bies. The gru­el­ing work of nav­i­gat­ing com­plex the­o­ry and the pol­i­tics of acad­e­mia can get to a per­son, even one as laid again as Brown Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor and astro­physi­cist Stephon Alexan­der. So Alexan­der performs the sax­o­telephone, although at this level it might not be accu­charge to name his avo­ca­tion a spare time pur­swimsuit, since John Coltrane has grow to be as impor­tant to him as Ein­stein, Kepler, and New­ton.

Coltrane, he says in a 7‑minute TED discuss above, “modified my complete analysis direc­tion… led to basi­cal­ly a dis­cov­ery in physics.” Alexan­der then professional­ceeds to play the famil­iar open­ing bars of “Giant Steps.” He’s no Coltrane, however he’s a really cre­ative thinker whose love of jazz has giv­en him a singular per­spec­tive on the­o­ret­i­cal physics, one he shares, it seems, with each Ein­stein and Coltrane, each of whom noticed music and physics as intu­itive, impro­visato­ry pur­fits.

Alexan­der describes his jazz epiphany as occa­sioned by a com­plex dia­gram Coltrane gave leg­endary jazz musi­cian and Uni­ver­si­ty of Mass­a­chu­setts professional­fes­sor Yusef Lateef in 1967. “I believed the dia­gram was relat­ed to anoth­er and appear­ing­ly unre­lat­ed discipline of examine—quantum grav­i­ty,” he writes in a Busi­ness Insid­er essay on his dis­cov­ery, “What I had actual­ized… was that the identical geo­met­ric prin­ci­ple that moti­vat­ed Einstein’s the­o­ry was replicate­ed in Coltrane’s dia­gram.”

The the­o­ry may “imme­di­ate­ly sound like untestable pop-phi­los­o­phy,” writes the Cre­ators Project, which present­cas­es Alexander’s physics-inspired musi­cal col­lab­o­ra­tion with exper­i­males­tal professional­duc­er Rioux (sam­ple under). However his concepts are way more sub­stan­tive, “a com­pelling cross-dis­ci­pli­nary inves­ti­ga­tion,” pub­lished in a ebook titled The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Struc­ture of the Uni­verse.

Alexan­der describes the hyperlinks between jazz and physics in his TED discuss, in addition to within the transient Wired video fur­ther up. “One con­nec­tion,” he says, is “the mys­te­ri­ous manner that quan­tum par­ti­cles transfer.… Accord­ing to the foundations of quan­tum mechan­ics,” they “will actu­al­ly tra­verse all pos­si­ble paths.” This, Alexan­der says, par­al­lels the way in which jazz musi­cians impro­vise, play­ing with all pos­si­ble notes in a scale. His personal impro­vi­sa­tion­al play­ing, he says, is nice­ly enhanced by suppose­ing about physics. And on this, he’s solely fol­low­ing within the big steps of each of his idols.

It seems that Coltrane him­self used Einstein’s the­o­ret­i­cal physics to tell his underneath­stand­ing of jazz com­po­si­tion. As Ben Ratliff experiences in Coltrane: The Sto­ry of a Sound, the bril­liant sax­o­phon­ist as soon as deliv­ered to French horn play­er David Amram an “incred­i­ble dis­course in regards to the sym­me­attempt of the photo voltaic sys­tem, discuss­ing about black holes in house, and con­stel­la­tions, and the entire struc­ture of the photo voltaic sys­tem, and the way Ein­stein was in a position to cut back all of that com­plex­i­ty into some­factor very sim­ple.” Says Amram:

Then he defined to me that he was attempt­ing to do some­factor like that in music, some­factor that got here from nat­ur­al sources, the tra­di­tions of the blues and jazz. However there was a complete dif­fer­ent manner of look­ing at what was nat­ur­al in music.

This may increasingly all sound somewhat obscure and mys­te­ri­ous, however Alexan­der assures us Coltrane’s technique may be very very like Einstein’s in a manner: “Ein­stein is known for what’s per­haps his nice­est present: the abil­i­ty to tran­scend math­e­mat­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions with phys­i­cal intu­ition. He would impro­vise utilizing what he known as gedanken­ex­per­i­ments (Ger­man for thought exper­i­ments), which professional­vid­ed him with a males­tal pic­ture of the out­come of exper­i­ments nobody may per­kind.”

Ein­stein was additionally a musi­cian—as we’ve not­ed before—who performed the vio­lin and piano and whose admi­ra­tion for Mozart impressed his the­o­ret­i­cal work. “Ein­stein used math­e­mat­i­cal rig­or,” writes Alexan­der, as a lot as he used “cre­ativ­i­ty and intu­ition. He was an impro­vis­er at coronary heart, identical to his hero, Mozart.” Alexan­der has fol­lowed swimsuit, see­ing within the 1967 “Coltrane Man­dala” the concept “impro­vi­sa­tion is a char­ac­ter­is­tic of each music and physics.” Coltrane “was a musi­cal inno­va­tor, with physics at his fin­ger­ideas,” and “Ein­stein was an inno­va­tor in physics, with music at his fin­ger­ideas.”

Alexan­der will get into a couple of extra specifics in his longer TEDx discuss above, start­ning with some per­son­al again­floor on how he first got here to underneath­stand physics as an intu­itive dis­ci­pline shut­ly linked with music. For the actual meat of his argu­ment, you’ll like­ly need to read his book, excessive­ly praised by Nobel-win­ning physi­cist Leon Coop­er, futur­is­tic com­pos­er Bri­an Eno, and lots of extra bril­liant minds in each music and sci­ence.

Be aware: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this submit appeared on our website in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Physics Cours­es

The Musi­cal Mind of Albert Ein­stein: Great Physi­cist, Ama­teur Vio­lin­ist and Devo­tee of Mozart

CERN’s Cos­mic Piano and Jazz Pianist Jam Togeth­er at The Mon­treux Jazz Fes­ti­val

Bohemi­an Grav­i­ty: String The­o­ry Explored With an A Cap­pel­la Ver­sion of Bohemi­an Rhap­sody

Josh Jones is a author and musi­cian based mostly in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness