[Congratulations] An Epic Event in Modern History

by Professor Yu Shen

(Professor Shen Yu, Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences; Board Member of the Beijing Institute of Frontier Science and Director of its Center for Cosmology and Gravitation; and Distinguished Professor at the International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics (ICRA) in Italy.)

Thank you so much for your reply and it's a first time I have a bird's eye view of your Epochal publication! It is an epic event in modern history! It is an interdisciplinary publication embracing almost all human knowledge. What an ambitious undertaking!

The Western Cosmology regards the Universe as an inorganic material object to be studied by humans who stand outside it. At best it is an intellectual perception.

Because of the continuous transition from the very small to the very large, there's an inevitable interaction between Quantum theory and Einstein's General Relativity. As a consequence, Roger Penrose, a recent Nobel Prize winner for Physics, speculated that when a man dies, his soul must melt into the Universe like a Quantum wave function. I suspect that he might have read the Dao DE Jing.

Nevertheless, because of this view, he has been regarded by the mainstream scientist as a maverick or outsider.

Whilst I think Dao is the ultimate existence and the origin of the universe, it would be good if Daoism could be expressed in Mathematical language since Western Cosmology is all mathematical. That is because that mathematical Cosmology has value as a material Science.

If the origin of the universe is the Taichi, say, then it must contain within itself Ying and Yang: Matter and Spirit.

The Western Cosmology has the shadow of the Ying and Dao contains both.

That's where Daoist Cosmology comes in.

Sorry I have been going on for too long. But I must congratulate you once again for your most ambitious project, the Epochal Monthly.

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Above: A photo taken in the late 1990s during a conference at the International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics in Italy.

To the left of Professor Shen Yu is Professor V. Sabata, the Director of the Center. Among the group are two professors who would later be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. Also present were Peter G. Bergmann, a close collaborator of Einstein, and other world-renowned scientists.

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On October 12, 2024, Professor Shen Yu was invited to attend International Taiji Day, where he delivered a keynote speech and followed it with an impromptu Taiji performance.

From left to right: Hugo Lam, Shen Yu, and Wu Chaohui.