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In the 1970s, Harry W. Schmitz wrote a treatise, modestly titled ?The Physical and Philosophical Nature of the Universe,? in which he summarized the main results of his lifetime of research. He passed away suddenly in November 1979, a few weeks before his fifty-sixth birthday. He estimated that he was fifty years ahead of his time. He might be about right. After all, the times have changed. There is more talk than ever before of ?multiverses? and dreams of a ?unified field theory? or a ?theory of everything? are still very much alive. The end of physics is nowhere in sight, yet it is widely acknowledged that not much more progress is possible without the introduction of radical ideas followed by a major paradigm shift.
Many of these ideas about the fractal cosmos originated more than 50 years ago with Harry Walter Schmitz (1923-1979). HWS served in the U.S. Army 12th Armored Division from December 1944 to May 1945 in France and Germany and was awarded the Bronze Star. He was graduated from Syracuse University in 1949 and worked as an engineer for the next 30 years obtaining eight patents. During that period, in his spare time, he extended and tested his theory against the theories and experimental results available to him. He left behind a considerable body of notes, including a remarkable treatise summarizing his major results.
HWS first attempted to teach his radical ideas to me approximately 35 years ago. My contribution here has been to simplify and generalize the model in part by describing some of the basic ideas in terms of a fractal object. I am grateful to my brother David Schmitz for his artistic rendition of several key concepts.
