John Mattox

I am a retired experimental astrophysicist

I grew up in Deadwood, SD, and then enrolled at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, intending to major in physics. During my one year there, I was on the varsity wrestling team, and came across Eckankar, which lead me to stop out of college for five years to seriously pursue mysticism.

I…[Read more]

I’d like to suggest that another definition of autocosmology is, the cosmos writing about itself!

Here is an interesting example of autocosmology that I was involved in. In 1997, I was the lead author on a paper in the Astrophysical Journal (1997ApJ…476..692M) about a quasar in the blazar class named PKS 1622-297. We observed its gamma-ray flux…[Read more]

Please ccontribute, but be

Careful what you add – I don’t think we have the functionality to delete!

Thank you John for initiating this discussion. I also wanted to draw attention to a more general problem, the “ethical responsibility of scientists”. Sadly, ethics is a subject often overlooked in the education of today’s scientists. One of the founders of the Pugwash movement (Sir Jozef Rotblat), encouraged the young scientists he met to take the…[Read more]

Thanks John! Paddling the Grand Canyon sound wonderful!! Living a life that is “dense” in enjoyable experiences is something worth striving for however long we live:)   I read the article you referenced and enjoyed it. However, I would like to add a little to the discussion.  Although the article gives a nice overview of some current ideas ab…[Read more]

David,

Thank you for this great contribution!

I also feel a yearning to extend my lifespan. During my annual medicare-sponsored checkup, two weeks ago I told my general practitioner that I hope to live to be 140 (I’m 71 now). He laughed and responded that this puts a lot of responsibility on his care! He is a great fit for me. He’s from South…[Read more]

All participants are encourgaged to add new topics to this discussion.

As of 3/13/26, the text entered to describe new new topic now sticks (and it appears that it cannot be edited).

During our initial zoom meeting. we discussed environmentalism. David (who serves on the Pugwash Council – an international group of scientists concerned about nuclear war, founded by Bertrand Russel and Albert Einstein) lamented the now diminished effort of scientists to prevent nuclear war.

Sarbmeet suggested that rationale and motivation for…[Read more]

Dear John,

Thank you for starting this discussion and including a transcript of Brian’s response to your question. My personal thinking on this is that our understanding of death is closely related to our understanding (or lack thereof) of time. After all, agency is rooted in time. Time is the great mystery, and I think we all find ourselves much…[Read more]

I wrote the following script to present at an event in Asheville on 3/14/26 called Death on Stage. This was not selected for inclusion in the program…

Einstein wrote in 1931 about death: …an individual who should survive his physical death is – beyond my comprehension… Such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls. I am sat…[Read more]

During our course Zoom meeting on Radiance (Session 9 on 3/10/26), John asked Brian about death. This 4 minute dialogue occurs in the recording from 1:32:38 – 1:36:55. Here is John’s transcript.

BrianThomasSwimme: Welcome. John!

John Mattox: So I’ve been thinking about what happens after we die. Does what we’ve created live on through eternity…[Read more]

I love that John. I’ve been thinking of additional cosmological powers as human/cosmic dynamics such as sensitivity (the capacity to both sense and also be sensed by another, from atoms’ electrical sensing of each other to mammalian sensory nervous systems) and space (capacity to be open to new possibilities and interconnections).  I’ll consider…[Read more]

It seems that the 11 powers of the Universe that Brian has enumerated have an compelling analogy to something that is of human concern.

There are many additional behaviors in nature without such analogy, e.g., sublimation, the transformation of a solid material directly into its vapor form.

Are there others that do have a compelling human…[Read more]