Nous, la particule et le monde - Signed Inscribed Association Copy Basarab Nicolescu

NICOLESCU, Basarab. Nous, la particule et le monde. Le Mail, Paris, 1985. First edition. Signed and inscribed by the author. With the author's personal calling card, also signed and inscribed. 245 pp. Original printed wrappers. ISBN 2-903951-01-2. Inscribed by theoretical physicist and philosopher Basarab Nicolescu on the title page, and with Nicolescu’s autographed calling card laid in. Covers and spine toned from sun exposure; staining to first and last free endpapers. Otherwise very good, with a sound binding and clean text; no tears or markings apart from the author's presentation inscription. A remarkable association copy, warmly inscribed by Nicolescu to “Jerry,” most likely fellow physicist and collaborator Jerome (“Jerry”) Finkelstein. Nicolescu and Finkelstein had co-authored the 1982 paper “Topological Compositeness of Quarks, Leptons and Electroweak Bosons” with Geoffrey Chew and Valentin Poénaru. Dated Paris, April 24, 1985, Nicolescu's substantial inscription recalls a previous philosophical exchange with Jerry and a quotation from Meister Eckhart—“I advise you to search for God exactly where you lost Him”—and presents the book as Nicolescu's own “search for meaning” and “a very preliminary answer.” An unusually revealing inscription given the book's attempt to bridge theoretical physics, philosophy, and questions of meaning. In Nicolescu's handwritten calling card, laid into the book, Nicolescu asks whether Jerry knows of an American publishing house that might be interested in a translation of the book. He also inquires about an unimplemented correction to the first edition: he had asked that American philosopher Jacob Needleman be described in the acknowledgments as “philosophe” rather than “historien des religions,” but the correction was not made, adding that perhaps it could be corrected in a second edition. The association with Finkelstein is strongly supported by their documented scientific collaboration and Finkelstein's position in the Berkeley/San Jose particle-physics community, although the recipient is identified in the inscription only as “Jerry.” An exceptional copy preserving both a personal intellectual exchange between two theoretical physicists and contemporary evidence of Nicolescu's effort to secure an American edition, together with an unpublished authorial correction concerning Jacob Needleman.…