Hesse’s Melting Beads: A Multiverse Game with Strings and Gestures

Summary

A critical review of Hermann Hesse’s idea of a Glass Bead Game in the light of recent developments in mathematics, music theory, and theoretical physics is presented. The common denominator of these new dynamics is the shift from Wittgenstein’s world of rigid facts to an ocean of elastic gestures. In such a soft architecture of knowledge production, the ultimate principle of uniqueness as conceived in the idea of a singular universe breaks down to a multiverse, a multiplicity of worlds that terminates the historical breakdowns of uniqueness principles from geocentricity (Copernicus) to anthropocentricity (Darwin), chronocentricity (Einstein), and ratiocentricity (computers). We discuss contributions from eminent mathematicians Alexander Grothendieck and Yuri Manin, theoretical physicist Edward Witten, music theorist David Lewin, and philosophers Tommaso Campanella, Paul Valéry, Gilles Châtelet, Jean Cavaillès, and Charles Alunni. We complement their positions with our own contributions to topos-theoretical concept architectures and theories in gestural music theory, and offer realizations, both by means of gestural composition software and with examples from contemporary free jazz. The chapter concludes with a reconsideration of the game concept as a synthesis of artistic and scientific activity in the light of gestural fluidity.

A critical review of Hermann Hesse’s idea of a Glass Bead Game in the light of recent developments in mathematics, music theory, and theoretical physics is presented. The common denominator of these new dynamics is the shift from Wittgenstein’s world of rigid facts to an ocean of elastic gestures. In such a soft architecture of knowledge production, the ultimate principle of uniqueness as conceived in the idea of a singular universe breaks down to a multiverse, a multiplicity of worlds that terminates the historical breakdowns of uniqueness principles from geocentricity (Copernicus) to anthropocentricity (Darwin), chronocentricity (Einstein), and ratiocentricity (computers). We discuss contributions from eminent mathematicians Alexander Grothendieck and Yuri Manin, theoretical physicist Edward Witten, music theorist David Lewin, and philosophers Tommaso Campanella, Paul Valéry, Gilles Châtelet, Jean Cavaillès, and Charles Alunni. We complement their positions with our own contributions to topos-theoretical concept architectures and theories in gestural music theory, and offer realizations, both by means of gestural composition software and with examples from contemporary free jazz. The chapter concludes with a reconsideration of the game concept as a synthesis of artistic and scientific activity in the light of gestural fluidity.