#Polymath

[cosmicportal]

In May 1921, American polymath Walter Russell entered a 39-day coma-like state, during which he claimed to have accessed “the source of all knowledge.” Upon awakening, he frantically wrote down what he had seen — pages filled with philosophical, scientific, and spiritual revelations that would later form the foundation of his manuscript *The Universal One*. Though he sent his findings to 500 leading minds of the time, nearly all dismissed him as mad — except one. Nikola Tesla, the visionary inventor, was so struck by Russell’s insights that he urged him to seal the work away for a thousand years, insisting that humanity was not yet ready for its truths.

Walter Russell’s revelations reimagined the very structure of reality. He argued that matter was not solid but crystallized light slowed by thought — that everything around us, from rocks to human bodies, was composed of light patterns, shaped by consciousness. He believed the universe was fundamentally mental, not material, and that all things moved in rhythmic cycles — expansion and contraction, like breath. He dismissed opposites like good and evil as illusions, asserting instead that everything sought harmony and balance. To Russell, death wasn’t an end but the release of compressed light returning to its source. Even time, he claimed, wasn’t linear, but a spiral where past, present, and future coexisted.

These ideas were radically ahead of their time, blending metaphysics, wave dynamics, and a deep sense of universal unity. He believed electricity was a living spiral of energy, not merely electrons in motion, and that the vacuum of space was in fact a vibrant sea of untapped potential. Health, in his view, was the natural rhythm of the body, and disease was simply a disruption of that flow. Though ignored or ridiculed during his lifetime, Russell’s work now draws new attention in an era where quantum physics and consciousness studies begin to echo the same questions. To many, he is no longer a forgotten eccentric, but a prophet of a paradigm yet to come.

[diana-andraste]

A bat known as a flying cat, from China Illustrata, Athanasius Kircher, 1667

[illustratus]

John Dee performing an experiment before Queen Elizabeth I by Henry Gillard Glindoni

[blondebrainpowered]

Isaac Newton's Self-made Telescope, 1671

This self-made telescope, also known as the “Newtonian reflector” used a concave mirror instead of lenses to gather light, which allowed for clearer, sharper images.

[projectbatman193]

[scotianostra]

April 25th 1710 saw the birth of James Ferguson at Rothiemay near Keith in Banffshire.

James Ferguson is almost forgotten about nowadays, yes he gets a mention from me a couple of times a year and a limited audince on my Facebook group and Tumblr page, but in the 18th century he was a phenomenon, a self-educated astronomer and philosopher whose books sold widely and whose lectures on various subjects were the equivalent of the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures today.

His father was a farm labourer, but Ferguson rose from abject poverty to become the greatest populariser of science of his day, and much of his success derived from the fact that he was able to explain complex matters such as Newton’s laws in language that was clear and easily understood, perhaps a legacy of his own self-taught, which is much more than me, I’ve said before much of Mathematics is way over my head, don’t even start me on algebra or logarithms!

Sometimes referred to as the “wheelwright of the heavens”, showing remarkable intelligence and keen interest in all things mechanical, his only formal education was at the age of seven for three months to the grammar school at Keith.

In 1734 he went to Edinburgh, where he began to make portraits in miniature, by which means, while engaged in his scientific studies, he supported himself and his family for many years. Subsequently, he settled at Inverness, where he drew up his Astronomical Rotula for showing the motions of the planets, and places of the sun and moon.

He went to London in 1743, making mechanical devices and publishing the odd paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society , of which he became a Fellow in November 1763. Throughout his life, he devised astronomical and mechanical models. His breakthrough came with the publication of Astronomy explained upon Sir Isaac Newton’s Principles in 1756,, which was so popular it required a second edition a year later.

James Fergusson died aged 66 in London on 17th November 1776 and was buried in St Marylebone churchyard,London.

[kentucky-cried-fricken-123]

when studying no longer feels like a chore but becomes something you actively look forward to doing>>>

[mimibytes]

gonna have to apply this to real life ig.

[allthedesiredusernamesaretaken]

A Study of a Woman's Hands, 1490

- Leonardo da Vinci

charcoal drawing

" Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen. "

[indeedgoodman]

[thepastisalreadywritten]

"Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen.

These two arts, you may call them both either poetry or painting, have here interchanged the senses by which they penetrate to the intellect."

— Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)

[internationem]

the feminine urge to be a mathematician, philosopher, historian, doctor, poet, artist, writer, scientist and diplomat, know french and russian and arabic and italian and greek and a bunch of dead, uncommon and/or dying languages, become a diplomat, be a weightlifter and a pilates girl and a runner and a swimmer and read every book ever written

[a-lady-and-her-quill]

My personal fig tree

[blondebrainpowered]

Ginevra de' Benci, ca. 1474–78

Artist: Leonardo da Vinci

[scotianostra]

Born on May 15th 1857 in Dundee, Williamina Paton Stevens Fleming became one of the leading lights in astronomy.

Her father had died when she was seven; at 14, she had become a student teacher to help support her mother and siblings.

At 20, she had married a Dundee bank employee and widower, James Orr Fleming, 16 years her senior—who would abandon her and their unborn child shortly after her arrival in the United States a year later.

Willamina worked as a maid in the home of Professor Edward Charles Pickering, who was director of the Harvard College Observatory. The story was told that Pickering was often frustrated with the performance of the (all-male) “computers” at the observatory and, reportedly, would complain loudly: “My Scottish maid could do better!” And so it was she went to work for him at Harvard.

Fleming became a full time employee at the observatory in 1881 despite a lack of any math, astronomy, or physics background. She eventually became the first woman to be designated Curator of Astronomical Photographs in 1899. This was the first corporate appointment of a woman at Harvard ever.

Fleming contributed to the cataloging of stars that later were published as the Henry Draper Catalogue. In nine years’ effort she cataloged more than 10,000 stars. During her career she discovered 59 gaseous nebulae, over 310 variable stars, and 10 novae. In 1907 she published a list of 222 variable stars she had discovered.

In 1888, Fleming she made her most well known discovery, the Horsehead Nebula.

The second phot is a depiction of the lady by Greg Moodie, artist and writer, you can see his work in the Scottish newspaper The National, there is a gallery of his work at the Torphichen Inn, West Lothian, where I took the photo.

Read more about her in this Harvard Magazine article here. http://harvardmagazine.com/2017/01/williamina-fleming

[evelynhugosthings]

"Those who look for seashells will find seashells; those who open them will find pearls."

Al-Ghazali, Polymath