The Last Picean

When I first saw this notebook and manila envelope with this title, I thought this meant that Al believed in or followed horoscopes and astrology. That would be very unusual for a person dedicated to science. Perhaps seeing this button title you did also. But I found that was not the case in talking with Sharon Kocher, perhaps his closest and constant companion in the later years.

She clarified, “Al wasn’t really interested in horoscopes in the ordinary way, but he was fascinated with cycles both large and small (see Systems/SysSci:Isomorphies/Cycles), and the numbers inherent in them. The Piscean Age, which we have just moved out of, like all cycles, had a certain temperament or quality, and attitudes about it (called the Piscean Man). This is what Al focused on, especially the underlying language of numbers which influenced, encoded, and defined everything contained in it. The horoscope is one teeny bit of the vast resource of materials in Ancient Wisdom that gives insights into the present (and all) moments of time in the context of the much larger periods, ages and yuga’s, and their mathematics, and that’s what interested him…(in other notebooks and envelopes)…he’s taken (these aspects) of the topic in dozens of other directions too. That’s why none of us could really ever keep up with him.” To provide additional evidence of this Sharon relates how Eleanor, another close friend, remembers once when he was going into one of his discussions, she just blurted out, “Forget it Al, I just don’t understand a word you’re saying.” Sharon adds, I think we all felt that way to some degree (!). Since many of us are not open to such a range of diversity as he, we limit ourselves or consider ourselves limited. In doing so, we confirm our limitations and lose our inherent and inborn potential.

This is one of the clues to Al’s personality and openness. He was capable of being a hard scientist in a diversity of roles while at the same time being deeply interested in religion/philosophy and alternative worldviews (see the other major pull-down buttons). This is what makes this website covering his Lifework so immensely rich and diverse. He was always seeking bridges between what seemed to be opposite tribes of thinking.