Documentation
Dialogue With LaRouche:
Tensors, Counterpoint, and Creativity
July 16, 2010
 Harley Schlanger, left, and Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. |
HARLEY SCHLANGER: Hi, I'm Harley Schlanger, and I'm joined here today, by Lyndon LaRouche, and we're going to be discussing the revolution that you've launched in the last week to ten days, to take up this whole question, of what has to be done, to save the country from the assault of the British Empire, and that British puppet, Barack Obama. And it's always the case, that when you fight these kind of political battles, you have to go beyond what most people think of as politics. And, of course, Lyn, that's what you've been doing for 50-something years, 60-something years — maybe even 88 years!
LYNDON LAROUCHE: Not quite, not quite. There was a diaper period. I think close to the diaper period was pretty much that.
SCHLANGER: Okay. Well, so, eight decades: You've been challenging the axioms and the way people think. And what you've done this last week, is almost breathtaking, in pulling together some threads that you've been dealing with for a long time. So, I'd like to start with what you've initiated with the Basement.
LAROUCHE: Well, the first thing to understand, we've used the idea of a tensor, as an approach — it's a tactic, it's a strategy. It's also an intellectual strategy. It is not a principle of physical science: It is a technique which was used to circumvent some of the difficulties the human mind has, today, in trying to deal with certain kinds of scientific problems. The typification of this, of course, is the case of the Asteroid Belt, the case of Gauss's discovery of the Asteroid Belt, in which Gauss actually used the tensor concept to do it, but did not reveal that, in full detail to his contemporaries. What he did, instead, is, he gave the result, and then gave an example of how it might have happened, as an illustration. It was only later, with the work of Bernhard Riemann, that the concept of the tensor was developed as a full system. Today, we look back to what Gauss actually accomplished, with the Asteroid Belt, and we look back at that, and we trace the idea of the tensor from that period.
But, really, to understand the tensor, you have to go to a still-higher level than the tensor itself. Because it is not a principle of physics. It's a principle of how the mind can be induced to trick itself, into understanding what it would otherwise not understand. The true expression of this, is Riemannian physics, Riemannian physical geometry: same thing.
Now, the other issue here, is that, compared to another point I'll make, which will shock some people, on music, but the problem here is that, most people think of creativity, today, as having something to do with mathematics. And that's a fraud. No principle of physical science, was ever defined by mathematics. The example of this, is the attack on Leibniz after his death, by this whole crowd of clowns, who denied the existence of the infinitesimal, the Leibnizian infinitesimal. Which meant that, for them, the very factor of change, which determines the organization of the physical universe, for them, did not exist. And therefore, they started a process, in modern times, of a completely mathematical interpretation of physics.
SCHLANGER: And in a sense, they're starting with a dead universe, because —
LAROUCHE: Well, it's even worse: Because you have the case of David Hilbert, who was morally one of the least objectionable of these characters, as compared with that filthy piece of crap, Bertrand Russell, that Hilbert was of that school, and his effort, at the turn of the last century, he failed, completely! His essential arguments were proved, by failure, to him, in his time! And all people who depended upon mathematics, as a standard of physical science, have failed, inherently. Like the Bertrand Russell followers are the very worst.
Now, you have to understand a couple things about the human mind, first: What is the method, which is responsible for the dominant trends in mathematical physics, as taught, today? It essentially is the belief that science is essentially mathematical, that physical science is mathematical.
Now, since, in terms of economics, no economist who believes in the liberal system, can possibly explain economics from a physical standpoint, they use a statistical method, to explain, and every time they have forecast, against what I have forecast, I've been correct and they've failed. Why did they fail? Because they're stupid? No — they're stupefied. They're stupefied by the admiration of this kind of mathematics. They hate Leibniz: They believe that mathematics is the determinant of physics.
Now, here's where the fun comes: There is no mathematics, which will ever give you, generate a discovery of a physical principle, and never has been. Always, you go outside mathematics to discover physical principles. You discover them in the area of artistic creativity. That's where creativity lies, in the artistic creativity.
 Johann Sebastian Bach |
Now, to understand this connection simply, for the purposes here, you have to say that a tensor, and a Bach series of Preludes and Fugues are one and the same thing. The music does not lie in the tensor. Because if you play — as many people perform Bach fugues, they're mechanical.
SCHLANGER: Well, there are people who say that the counterpoint can be reduced to a mathematical system.
LAROUCHE: It can't be.
SCHLANGER: Of course not, but that's the problem.
LAROUCHE: Because the essence of the fugue, of course, is a discontinuity: You take an overlay of development, of what you might call, a scale; now, you counterpose it to another scale. Now, if you think of these scales in terms of the ranges of the respective human singing voices, down from soprano, through tenor, alto, and so forth, down to double-bass, essentially — basso profundo — all the way down there, and you find out, that these, like we were having fun with this the other day, in the Opus 69 of Beethoven: The uniqueness is, of course, it's the A Major key. The A Major key has certain anomalies vis-à-vis the piano, which are crucial in making this thing work.
SCHLANGER: When played against the cello.
LAROUCHE: That's exactly it, the piano against the cello: Because the piano has a different logic in its construction, even when it's well-tuned.
SCHLANGER: Yes.
LAROUCHE: And the A Major is not C Major. And when you have an instrument which is tuned, and it's designed to A Major, and it has the peculiarities of A Major, and you play that against a piano, which is essentially a C Major instrument, then you get ironies.
SCHLANGER: And it's in these ironies, or the anomalies, that you actually begin to see the development of singularities, which is where the creativity lies.
LAROUCHE: How did Beethoven understand this? To understand this A Major principle, in respect to that Opus 69, which is an absolutely unique piece, in its own implications. It goes back to Bach's Suites, which also give you a hint. And the Bach Suites are actually a development of the well-tempered system.
SCHLANGER: Now, this has another precondition, which you've insisted upon, which is the proper tuning, and registration, as physical properties of the voice, but also as existent in creativity, or discoverable by creative —
 LaRouche Youth Movement chorus sings Ave Verum Corpus at a celebration of Robert Schumann's 200th birthday, Leesburg, Virginia, June 20, 2010 |
LAROUCHE: Ah! That's where creativity comes in. And we had a lot of fun with the Ave Verum Corpus, where our singers, who were singing the notes properly, where not singing the music! And the idea that you sing the musical score, is where the mistake comes in, often. Because you have to transport yourself from the score to the self, and to say, "What is the intention which underlies, this use of scores?" And now, you have to stop singing the notes: Now, you have to sing the music. And the music does not appear in the printed notes, in any way.
So, this is where creativity comes in. And the best example of this, of this principle, of the relationship of the tensor, as a mathematical procedure, to music, lies exactly in the Bach Preludes and Fugues. That's the most explicit working-through of this.
Now, people who play the notes, on the 24 etc.—
SCHLANGER: The Well-Tempered Clavier and Fugues.
LAROUCHE: Yeah, fine. Don't make a mess of it. Everyone who plays the notes, makes a mess of it, because they don't see the irony! They don't see what lies between the notes, as every great composer and every great performer, understood: You sing between the notes!
SCHLANGER: And the counterpoint, then, is not mathematical relations, but it's actually that process of change, that the mind has to pick up.
LAROUCHE: Well, that's the reason why I insisted, that our people who were working on music, clean up their act, on the Mozart Ave Verum Corpus. Because, a mechanical performance of that, according note by note, and voicing by voicing, ends up in a dead end. Because you are simply recycling a statement, with some little touch here and there, and there's no conclusion! It's repetition, not conclusion. And yet, if you do it properly, and understand Mozart's intention, there's a conclusion, and the last part, is the conclusion.
SCHLANGER: And it's highly ironic.
LAROUCHE: Exactly. There are other things like that.
So, they were missing the point. My point was, to get people to get away from, this so-called "literal singing of notes," to understand the intention of the composer of a great piece of work. And Mozart was one of the greatest composers, because of his skill in doing just exactly this.
SCHLANGER: What is it — you talk about creativity per se, when you're looking now at the tensor, and also in questions of counterpoint, physical chemistry — where does this insight come from?
LAROUCHE: It comes from art: It comes from Classical art. The human imagination, the organized, validated form of human imagination, and you have to live through this process; it has to become a part of you, and then you know what to do: Well, when Gauss faced a problem, a challenge, with the orbit of Ceres — what is this little thing, that he'd got a few observations on? How does it work? Nobody could figure out how to do it!
Now, because of his training, which is actually a reflection of Abraham Kästner, who was an advocate of both Bach and Leibniz! — when Kästner graduated from university in Leipzig, he devoted his life, by declaration, to furthering the work of Leibniz and Bach, Johann Sebastian.
SCHLANGER: And this was the fight of the 18th century, where you had after Kästner, his students, Lessing and Mendelssohn, joined in the same fight, to defend Leibniz and Bach from the takeover in the court of Friedrich the Great, by this French crowd of perverts.
LAROUCHE: This continues through Brahms, through the Classical composers, as opposed to the Romantics, who were pieces of crap.
So, what you're doing with the tensor, you have a complicated structure, typified by the way, actually Gauss, solved the problem of defining the orbit of this body which became known as Ceres. And what he did, was — the way we can describe what he did, today, is a tensor. But the concept of the tensor, is elaborated, later, by a successor of his, Gauss.
SCHLANGER: So you see Gauss's method through Riemann's eyes.
LAROUCHE: Exactly, yeah.
Now, we go back, and we understand what Gauss did, systematically; we can understand what Gauss did in one sense, but, you have to understand, the motivation, the germ of the creativity which led to that solution, you have to realize that Gauss already had a mind that was going in the same direction as Riemann's, and some other people of the same group.
Now, what you have today, you have, toward the end of the century, you have a completely reductionist conception of science, with a few exceptions. So, what happened, particularly, in the 1920s, with Bertrand Russell's influence, science died, and the corpse is still stinking! So, today, the typical mathematical specialist, is an idiot, when it comes to real science.
So, the key to this, is that all creativity is expressed, not in mathematics, but only in Classical artistic composition: This is true in painting, it's true in poetry, it's true in music! It's true in other respects.
SCHLANGER: Now, in this, you also talk a lot about having to escape the limitations of sense-certainty, and actually develop the quality of hypothesis that exists outside of the senses, and —
LAROUCHE: Ah!! Now, this comes to another thing, that will shock many of our audience!
SCHLANGER: I think they need it.
LAROUCHE: This is all true. So they can relax, they don't have to worry about anything. This is all true: You may not understand it, but it's all true! And, sooner or later, if you're fortunate in life, you'll live long enough to understand this. And, we've come into a time where it's very necessary that you quickly catch up, and understand this!
SCHLANGER: And this is not an abstract, or a theoretical issue: This is life and death!
LAROUCHE: Right. Okay: The whole world is about to go into a long Dark Age, for several generations, unless we can change it. And it's the kind of — creativity, we have to understand, lies only in what we call the Classical artistic mentality. Mathematics is a useful thing, but it's useful like a cloth is useful for polishing your shoes. [Schlanger laughs] You want the shoes to be polished? Use a rag!
SCHLANGER: So, you've been distinguishing, then, between the qualities of the mind, and sense-certainty. I'd like you to pick that up. Yeah.
LAROUCHE: That's exactly the thing, I think you have to get to: Because, what's the problem? Why is this the case? Why does creativity exist only in the form of what we call Classical art? It may be expressed in a form that's not called art, but it's the same principle which is the essential principle of Classical artistic composition, a successful one, hmm? The point is, people don't understand their own mind: They think of the mind in terms of sense-perception. They say, "I think, because I feel this, I feel this, I feel this." They're talking about sense-impressions.
Now, if you look at this process, and you say, "wait a minute, what's going on here?" There is no sense, no sense-perception, quality of sense-perception, which actually shows you the truth of the universe. It shows you your passion: What you get is a unilinear kind of reaction to a sense-impression.
Now, where's creativity come from? You have to imagine yourself, as in a sealed spaceship, and you're travelling in a sealed spaceship between the Moon and Mars. You can't see what's going on out there, and I don't think you should see it — you're not prepared to see it. Because it's a storm of cosmic radiation, beyond any belief: It'll drive you mad, until you're prepared to understand it.
So anyway, what does the person, who's piloting this craft, what does he know about the real world that he's travelling through — the real universe? Well, what he has, is meter readings. He doesn't have a direct sense of what's out there, he can't see anything, but he has all these meter readings. And we can call this, smell, sight, hearing, and touch, and so forth. He has these senses available to him. But these are only senses, they don't show you reality. They're a shadow of sense-perceptions. Therefore, how do you know reality?
 Johannes Kepler |
Well, you take the case of Kepler's discovery of gravitation, which is the original foundation of a systematic physical science, despite some idiots who don't think so. And therefore, you have two, in the case of Kepler's discovery of gravitation, you have two items of sense-perception. Now, you imagine, here's Kepler in the equivalent of a sealed container. So he has sense organs, he can sense sight, which is essentially the view of space. He visualizes the planetary orbits, which he now understands, he's proven that they are planetary orbits, they're not just inconsistencies, hmm? So, he looks at this with sight: His first effort, before he gets into the solution, in the Harmonies, he assumed that — he finds that the order of the planetary orbits, corresponds pretty much to a principle of Platonic solids, the ratio of Platonic solids.
At a later point, he doesn't drop that, he puts it to one side.
SCHLANGER: But this is initially in the realm of hypothesis; it's not what he sees.
LAROUCHE: That's right, exactly. So, then, when he gets into his experiment, he now looks a two things: He looks at not only sight, he looks at harmonics. And he discovers that the planetary orbits have harmonic characteristics: And that the rations among the various orbits, is in that order. So, now there are two kinds of orbiting characteristics, which are contradictory: On the basis of finding a conjunction, of the ironical juxtaposition, of the image of the planetary system as an image of sight, as against an image of hearing, that is, harmonics — he now solves the problem, and discovers universal gravitation.
So, every discovery we make, of truth, goes beyond sense-perception to find an irony, a conjuncture of irony, which reveals to us, what the reality is, for which sense-perception is merely a shadow. And you have to have two shadows to find a reality, or three shadows, whatever.
Now, today, we have many shadows. We have not only the given senses which are just instruments, like barometers and so forth, and thermometers and whatnot; and we also have extended kinds of sense-organs, which we call microphysics: We can't see anything there, you have no sense to reach it, you can't understand it. So we have many kinds of synthetic sense-perceptions, which are like scientific instruments, which enables also to get a shadow of reality. Like, say, the typical idiot will look some mathematics of atomic structure, or something, or subatomic structure, and they will assume that these correspond to a visual image of the atom.
Now, we know — today, we know that the idea of the vision, or the imagined vision of an object, is false. Actually, what you have is a singularity. And in reality, you don't have phenomena which are isolated to the phenomena, of sense perception. But you find that there is an aspect of reality, which has no sense-perception attached to it. But you can discover it, which is real science.
SCHLANGER: And then, to make the connection between science and Classical culture, one of the best training methods of developing these qualities, is irony.
LAROUCHE: Yes. And the best kind of irony for scientific education, is the one used by Einstein: Classical musical composition, and its performance.
SCHLANGER: And this gets at what we've been looking at, on the whole question of celebrating the 200th birthday of Schumann. We did a series of work here, to get people into looking at the Lieder, and at the way that poetry, irony in poetry — for example, Heine — can be enhanced by Schumann. But this is where you get into the Romanticism, which tries to say that the real feelings, are these emotions and — again, the sense-certainty, the whole launching with Liszt and Wagner of an operation to destroy the tradition of Bach and Beethoven.
LAROUCHE: Really, this is hypocrisy. Because, you attribute reality to what you "like." The object, you like that object —
SCHLANGER: What makes you feel good at the moment.
LAROUCHE: Yeah, that's right. And this has nothing to do with reality. Therefore, you are irrational.
But, on the other hand, in respect to great art, great Classical art, great Classical art evokes great passion in the person who is cultivated.
SCHLANGER: Well, here's a question I have for you, Lyn: How do you get across these principles of great art? Because, as you say, it's not in the notes —
LAROUCHE: With great difficulty.
SCHLANGER: Yes! [laughter] All right. But you had people, the LaRouche Youth Movement, starting with the choral principle, the choral dynamic, to begin to get a sense of the four or more voices.
LAROUCHE: Well, that's how I did it: I had a meeting with John Sigerson, who is quite capable, as you know, as a musician. And John had done, of course, the Mozart Requiem, which is a great challenge for any director, and he'd done it with almost exclusively, with a few exceptions, with non-professional singers.
SCHLANGER: And instrumentalists.
LAROUCHE: Yeah, they were also not professional, but who were "schooled," shall we say, and could do the job. And by management, you got an effect. But, the problem is that, we don't have this knowledge, generally, in the population.
What I did with John, I said to John: Look, I've got a Youth Movement on my hands. It's developing. I don't want to produce another replica of the Boomer movement. That is a bad experience! We've been there, it doesn't work! Despite the fact, that back in 1986, many Boomers, before they were terrified into becoming animals, by the government torture, that they were decent people, and they made a serious effort, they became qualified as amateur singers. They produced a chorus which was well-trained, and performed very well. Anyone, today, can hear that performance; there are still recordings exist of it. And this is one of the better public performances of the Mozart Requiem.
Well, what I was concerned about, I said: We have to realize that scientific thinking, which is what we require, with my work — you can't understand what I do, if you don't have qualifications in scientific thinking. But on the other hand, you can't have scientific thinking , without Classical art. And the key form of the universal form of Classical art, is music, Classical music — Classical music conforming to a Bach standard.
SCHLANGER: Right.
LAROUCHE: Strictly Bach standard. And you play not the notes on the score, you play the music! And the music and the notes on the score are never the same, as any good musician knows!
Now, therefore, you take the Bach fugue system, Bach Preludes and Fugues, you look at that, and you use that as a point of reference. And most who perform these things, have no idea what they're doing!
SCHLANGER: And this was a point of reference for the change with Mozart, and then Beethoven, came right out of the Bach.
LAROUCHE: It did: All competent modern music, comes directly out of Bach. Because Bach made a scientific discovery, in terms of tuning, based on 256 cycles for C. And you violate that 256, you screw everything up in the natural capabilities of the human singing voice, particularly in terms of registration.
SCHLANGER: And your wife has just initiated a call, again, in Europe, and I think we have to pick it up in this country, also, to get back to that scientific tuning.
LAROUCHE: What happened is, we had an old contact — not old, really; but, back in the 1980s, we had established a pretty good musical program, and I had defended, and had been joined in support by many of the leading musicians in the world, especially leading singers, but also others. The whole repertoire, go through the repertoire of the great singers who were still alive in the early '80s —
SCHLANGER: They all signed our call for returning to 256.
LAROUCHE: One of the directors, who signed for the 256, our tuning, popped up and volunteered to direct a finished version of the Chorale section of the fourth movement of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, which had already been rehearsed up to a certain point, by one of our musically qualified directors in the organization, among the youth. And he did a job. And now, what's happened as a result of that, we have, around our own movement, other musicians who have joined these efforts to combine forces, to do some more music, of this basis. And enhance the process of the development of the performance at the same time — and he's involved in that.
My view was: You have to develop the creative powers of the mind. The most natural development of the creative powers of the mind, for an audience in general, for a population in general, is Classical musical composition. And learning how to perform it, so you're not performing the notes — "Aw! This note's here! This note... I'll play it this way!" Wrong!
SCHLANGER: Yeah, this is why the chorus is so useful, because you can take any of the voices of the chorus and they can master the notes. Then you put them —
LAROUCHE: Oh! Oh! [laughs]
SCHLANGER: Well — if they do, then you put them with the other voices, and you find out that you didn't really master the music!
LAROUCHE: Exactly. Because in order to distinguish a voice in a chorus, you have to tune each voice. Otherwise, you don't know which voice they're singing.
SCHLANGER: Yeah. The same thing with your friend Brainin in a string quartet.
LAROUCHE: This man was a genius: Norbert Brainin was an absolute genius. He was probably, in a sense, one of the greatest violinists in his time. I compared his performances of certain works, with those of other "leading" performers. Unbelievable! Unbelievable. The Amadeus Quartet was a gem. Unfortunately, one of the members died, of a heart attack, while they were completing a recasting of the entire Beethoven cycle of quartets. And therefore, it was never really produced publicly.
Now, this was a lapse of over 20 years, and during this period, this quartet had made great progress. So the death of this violist — who had actually been a violinist in the first place; and since he gave way to take the viola, because Norbert was taking the lead in the first violin, as the director of the quartet.
SCHLANGER: You can hear the changes from the earlier Mozart quartets, the earlier recording of the Mozart, with the later. So you're saying they were working on the Beethoven.
LAROUCHE: Oh, they were — and I mean, Norbert was a genius. He was running around in London. He came out of — he was a refugee from Vienna. They were first put in prison, by the British when they got there, because they were German, German-speaking! And then, they decided to get them out of prison, and turn them loose under qualified conditions. But in this period, he was actually perfecting his tuning. He had the most perfect sense of pitch of any violinist, any string player around. By far. His sense of intonation, his sense of insight into the music was absolutely tremendous.
And his loss — he was about a year younger than I am, and he's dead! We lost one of the great thinkers in music, when we lost him.
SCHLANGER: But I think one of the interesting points you're making then, is that even with the perfect intonation, as you bring in the other voices, you sometimes have to have a slight modification to make the counterpoint function.
LAROUCHE: What you have to understand, you have to now look at the tensor: And if you take the Bach system, well-tempering system, with all the keys, and if you look at the way that has to be performed, because most people make a mess of the performance of the Preludes and Fugues — because they play the notes! Then they interpret the notes as they play! Which merely complicate the mess. Better they should only play the notes, without trying to interpret the notes. Because they make a worse mess of everything. And most of the recordings of this kind of work from Bach is a mess! It has no coherence. It has freakishness, and people go for the freakishness of the performance, not for its intent.
Because you have to intonate, based on the peculiarities of the irony of counterpoint! Now, if you look at the Bach fugue in that way, as from — look at the whole series, of the two sets of the Preludes and Fugues, you see that that's the principle. You have to perform these things, with irony, the natural irony in it.
Now, what're you doing? You're overlaying these voices, so it's a progressive buildup. And that the conclusion, you have completed the orbit! Huh?
SCHLANGER: Ha!
LAROUCHE: You've defined the composition! You haven't defined the composition, until you get to the conclusion. Because the composition is based on progressing, to a certain idea, which is not located in the notes! Because, what's more important, is you have to look at the geometry, and when you make a shift from one instrument to the other, which have a different intonation, the first violin must be different from the second; and so forth.
SCHLANGER: And this is what, then, Mozart saw — he came to Bach — he was already a composer, a very good composer, when he first encountered the full range of Bach fugues with van Swieten and Haydn. And then you can see the total transformation in Mozart's composition —
LAROUCHE: It's rapid, absolutely rapid. It occurred, when he was invited by Haydn, who was already in the van Swieten Sunday salon meetings. He took to that — he just took to it like a duck to water! He was composing fugues, from the beginning, and he became a fanatic at composing fugues. We never have had an accumulation of a record of the actual number of fugues, Mozart composed in this period. And he got his sister involved, and taught her to play fugues, and compose fugues!
SCHLANGER: And his wife said, this is the only thing you should work on.
LAROUCHE: Exactly.
SCHLANGER: And then you have, if you look at — when you talk about the rapidity, if you look at the difference between the Haydn Opus 20, and then Haydn's Opus 33, which he did when he was in the salon, then you look at Mozart's six Haydn quartets, the quartets dedicated to Haydn — Haydn, who said that his Opus 33 was new music, heard Mozart's and said, "This is really new music!"
LAROUCHE: Yeah, but remember, the difference was, a ten-year difference with Haydn, between the Opus 20 [the Sun Quartets] and Opus 33. The Sun series was essentially — used a bass, not a cello. The standardization of the introduction of the cello, into the concept of the quartet was the big difference.
SCHLANGER: With the Haydn Opus 20.
LAROUCHE: Yeah.
SCHLANGER: And you hear in the Opus 20, the use of all four voices, so the cello is not just a thorough-bass underneath it, but it actually becomes an additional voice.
LAROUCHE: Exactly. That's it. Because the thorough-bass function of the bass — which is still used for the bass viol — it was actually a distraction. You couldn't complete the thing properly. You needed the cello voice: Bach was right in inventing the cello! [laughter] His first, early cello piece, was an invention, actually, and this being incorporated in the idea of the string quartet, was actually a return to Bach. Because Bach had been persecuted in the last years of his life. Therefore, his sons and other pupils had been dispersed, to spread the good word throughout Germany.
SCHLANGER: He had his own youth movement, although he did it in the hard way!
LAROUCHE: [laughs] Right! Well, he made them!
SCHLANGER: But, it's interesting, because you see the attack was on fugal counterpoint, the kind of developed polyphony with precisely this quality of irony, which was attacked, by those people, the same people who were attacking Leibniz.
LAROUCHE: Well, you see, the point was, the idea of vulgar simplicity.
SCHLANGER: Yeah.
LAROUCHE: You wanted to please a vulgar audience, as by a drunken dance party, or something. And it was tended in that direction, it was "entertainment," it was "dance music."
SCHLANGER: Yeah. But then you see how that's transformed, by people like Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and others.
LAROUCHE: Right.
So, now, you get back to what actually is Leonardo da Vinci, and what went before him: You actually got back to that in this period. And the Bach family was a product of that revival of what Leonardo da Vinci had represented in terms of music, in his De Musica, or what we have left of it. So now, you have a sense.
The point is to understand, is that the tensor is identical in conception, and function of the brain, to the Bach Preludes and Fugues.
SCHLANGER: That's a creation of the human mind, a unique creation.
LAROUCHE: Exactly. Because the human mind can not understand problems, such as those which require the tensor treatment, can not understand it by itself: It needs help. It needs a crutch. So therefore, you have these crutches, which the mind is able to organize and construct a system of testing. You know that you're looking for a certain curvature, hmm? So now, you try to find out by approximation how that is generated. And you go through a succession of steps, of self-critical steps. But the point is, that creativity does not lie in mathematics.
SCHLANGER: Right.
LAROUCHE: You'll find that in any tensor design, design as we're doing now, you're not looking just at mathematical magnitudes, you're looking at qualities of things! So now, you're trying to see how a different combination of qualities of things, are determining a result. For example, in the way we organize economics today, by stupid people who are called "economists" — there are a few economists out there, who are exceptional, who are not stupid. But most of them, of the Wall Street persuasion, are stupid, or worse, they're criminal, criminal stupidity. So this is not understood.
The only way you can solve the design of an economy and its functioning, is with a tensor approach. It's the only way the human mind can understand, and deal with the complexity: See, you're not dealing with one industry competing with another. Money has no value. A value of money is an approximation, taken for purposes of lending: Because it's loans that determine the capital, that create capital. So now, but the physical values are what determine that, and the most important of the physical values is human creativity, human scientific creativity, which is not mathematical!
SCHLANGER: Right.
LAROUCHE: So therefore, you need a system of organization of this complexity of different so-called "factors."
SCHLANGER: And constant change in modulation.
LAROUCHE: Exactly. This is exactly, when you look at what we posted — it was posted on the website, this past month, this model of the Ceres model, done by our member — this shows exactly how the mind of Gauss, discovered the asteroids!
SCHLANGER: Mm-hmm. Which is what you'd been looking for over the last five, six, seven years, with the work that's been done on Gauss and Kepler. Now, we're at a point where people are able to take that up and make new original discoveries.
LAROUCHE: Yeah. See, because my particular skill lies in the work of Bernhard Riemann in particular. By 1953, I'd become a follower of Riemann on every principle — I didn't know everything about Riemann, but I knew all the principles. So I knew that you have to go to Riemann for the concept of physical principles required. Now you find that all the great modern physicists from that time, such as Pasteur, implicitly, with the discovery of life. Pasteur did not claim to have discovered life — he was very careful about that. But actually, he did go into the anteroom of the discovery of life. And those who followed his work, got into that. Of course Vernadsky is the epitome of that.
So now Vernadsky gives us a really complete possibility of a tensor of the type we require! The tensor is a Riemannian tensor. All of these guys, including Einstein and others, who are competent, hated the mathematical physicists, despised them, as incompetents! And understood, that the concept of the tensor, is a way the mind is able to approach a problem in physical science.
SCHLANGER: And that's why it's needed for physical economy: Because you're not dealing with quantities of money or statistical correlations, you're dealing with how man acts through the three phase-spaces to transform his environment.
LAROUCHE: Exactly. Because now you have Vernadsky with the three phase-spaces, as the whole phase-space. And you have, now, today, the idea of cosmic radiation, and particles. You have singularities, rather than particles. All you do, is you take the periodic table, and switch it around from a particle-based system to a cosmic radiation-based system, and you have the picture! This is important, because you find that there is no empty space, between Earth orbit and Mars orbit: It's loaded, saturated with stuff! The stuff is cosmic radiation from every corner of the universe, and out of the Earth and every place else! You are radiating, cosmic radiation! You are absorbing it!
SCHLANGER: And this is the precondition for getting from the Earth to Mars, from an operational standpoint.
LAROUCHE: Exactly. This is the problem that has not been addressed in dealing with the Mars problem.
But, so, that's the way we have to approach this. We have to get into the tensor method, which is the method of using the brain, in the same way that we can prove today, that Gauss's brain discovered the Asteroid Belt.
SCHLANGER: Well, let me just, to bring this to a close: I know, recently you've been talking about one of my favorite operas, Don Giovanni, and how this shows Mozart's particular genius, in being able to have an "economy of musical action," you might say, to demonstrate a principle of tragedy. I'd like you to just comment on that.
LAROUCHE: Well, I can tell you, if you look at the opening scene in Don Giovanni, and look at the final scene in Don Giovanni, you find in between, you say, "something went wrong here." And it was not Mozart's composition that went wrong: It was the opportunism of many singers and people who did not understand the opera, or didn't wish to understand it!
What you have: First of all, one of the problems, people think of art, "who's the hero?" This sort of thing, Romanticism — "Oh! Romanticism! It's supposed to be lovely" — it's hateful! It's disgusting! Romanticism causes fewer marriages, than it causes divorces, or assassinations in lieu of divorces! [laughter] This is the old Italian system of divorce, Italian-style.
SCHLANGER: You go to the Mafia, because you can't go through the Church!
LAROUCHE: That's right. That's right: You go to the priest to get married, you go to the Mafia to get divorced. (You gotta watch out, these days!)
So, this is basis we're working from, is to understand humanity. In this case, you can not solve problems, like Gauss's solution, without going to the concept of the tensor, expressed in one way or the other. Whether Gauss himself actually fully understood the tensor, in the way we understand it today, is not clear. Because he was so shy about revealing certain things about his work. But, when you look at Riemann, there's no question, that Riemann's insight into Gauss, is accurate and that Riemann's conception is accurate. And that every bit of modern science that's worth anything, comes from Riemann — not because it eliminates people who went before him, but because it's the track you have to go through to resolve this problem. And the problem of the tensor, is that it requires a mental development: Because it's not a physical principle, it's a principle of the way the mind can deal with a problem of this type of complexity, and come out with a precise solution.
SCHLANGER: And this is what we're going to have to do over the next months, because, as you've indicated, we've reached a physical boundary condition in the economy, now, where you can not go any further, without massive devastation — we already see it, in terms of the destruction of cities in the United States, counties, state governments; but we're also seeing whole sections of the world. We just had a report on the Sahel region in Africa, with incredible death rates, because of the lack of food — and the European Union is trying to get the little bit of food that's produced there, exported to Europe, to give them some "income," while the people are starving! So, this is what you mean by a Dark Age.
And the topics we've been discussing today, will be elaborated on the website in the weeks and — hopefully, the weeks ahead. And this is a life-and-death question for civilization.
LAROUCHE: Exactly. And, you know, people should not be so pessimistic. Most of the Boomers, today, are very pessimistic. And they are afraid to admit that they're pessimists. That's the worst kind of pessimist: the one who's a die-hard pessimist, and won't admit it! And the Boomer says, "we can never win." So therefore, if you say, you're going to make a revolutionary change, or an attempt at a revolution change, they shy, and stop functioning. They shiver, they freeze. Like a rabbit freezes when it's frightened.
SCHLANGER: At the moment boldness is required, they're saying, "Don't bother me."
LAROUCHE: So therefore, when I say, the system is coming down — which it is coming down, it's coming down now; this system is collapsing. This system, this world system, in its present form is doomed and it's doomed before the year is out! The only thing that's not certain is what date. And if we don't get this President out, we are doomed! If we can get this President out in time, we can make it. If we don't get this President out in time, we won't make it!
But the typical Boomer is terrified! "You will never get him out! Ohhh!! You will never get him out! Ohh! What a foolish thing, what're you trying to get us to do? You're trying to get us into TROUBLE!"
SCHLANGER: That's right!
LAROUCHE: And they would rather die, than get into trouble! They would rather die a horrible death of starvation, then get into trouble! And that's the problem I have to deal with: Therefore, you need the tensor structure, the approach to this question, to give an organized sense of confidence, to these scared bunnies, called Boomers and others! Who are afraid to fight!
We could win! We have today, we have 60% of the population, according to survey, wants the President out! About 30%, in addition, would like to have him "scat!"
SCHLANGER: [laughs] And 13%, according to a CBS poll, only 13% think they've benefitted from an Obama Presidency. It's another way of saying 87% know they're going down the drain.
LAROUCHE: It means, that those who have the courage — even who don't have the courage — want this President out! And they're absolutely correct! If we don't get this President out by the mid-summer, the United States is finished, and the world is finished! To a large Dark Age. The problem I have with the Boomers, will say, "You're going to get us into trouble!"
"You mean we're going to war?"
"Yes! Yes! We're pacifists, don't send us to war!"
"But if you're a pacifist, you're going to die, Buster. You're going to be ruined, you're going to die a horrible death. And if there are any survivors of your family, they're going to hate your guts, for being a coward." Therefore, you've got to give these poor guys, an instrument which convinces them, that despite their fears, and despite their cowardice, that victory is still possible. It's like getting some soldiers to fight in World War II: They had no — "What am I doing here?" [laughter] But then they found out that they were going to die, if they didn't do something. And they were impressed, that if they weren't going to be shot by the enemy, they would be shot by the army! And that convinced them to do something.
And we have the same thing with Boomers, today. They're more draft-dodger inclined, than they are war inclined!
SCHLANGER: Even in their 60s.
LAROUCHE: That's right, absolutely! They're worried about their life, when it's being taken away from them. They don't want to have somebody "disapprove" of them!
SCHLANGER: Well, Lyn: You've been a troublemaker, I guess we could say, for eight decades.
LAROUCHE: I'm a trouble-fixer, as well. You have to make trouble, to fix it.
SCHLANGER: Okay. And you are the perennial optimist.
LAROUCHE: I'm determined to win, that's why. I'm not an optimist, I'm determined to win!
SCHLANGER: Okay. Well, thank you, very much for joining us, today. We're going to be continuing this discussion. There's a lot of working that's going to be coming out of the Basement, and it'll be on LPACTV.
So, Lyn, thank you very much.
LAROUCHE: Have fun.
