John Deming

The intellectual odyssey that has consumed my life began on a porch in Pass Christian, Mississippi, in 1954. My father and I were each reading a book when he turned to me and said, “John, the most important thing a man can do is pursue knowledge for its own sake.” I adored my father, so that sentence seared itself into my mind and became the guiding principle of my life.

It led me to begin sorting out what is important to know and what is not. In my pursuit of “ultimate truth,” I discovered there is no such thing. After pursuing various pathways that initially looked promising, I stumbled upon physics and free market economic theory and found the subjects I would spend the rest of my life pursuing. Around that time, two friends, Evan Root and John Fountain, introduced me to the greatest instructor I could have ever hoped for in both subjects: astrophysicist Andrew J. Galambos. Starting at twenty-four, I spent the next five years as Galambos’ student.

After studying with Galambos at his institute, I pursued an autodidactic self-education in three principal subjects: (1) scientific epistemology, (2) the historical development of social theory in Western culture, and (3) the history of science and scientific innovation from Thales and Pythagoras in 6th century BCE Greece to the present including the 20th-century revolutions in relativity and quantum physics.

It is my hope that writing this book (and others to follow) will stimulate a deeper interest in Galambos’ work and that of his associates, such as Jay Snelson and Alvin Lowi Jr. My further goal is for his theories to gain traction in the world of technological entrepreneurship. For it is entrepreneurs and real scientists who will build the cosmic civilization of the future.