Because researching, writing, and editing A Concise Theory of Truly Everything consumed a significant portion of my life, I want to acknowledge the key people who helped me get started, inspired me, warned me when I was veering off track, and encouraged me when I lost traction.
My wife Nila originally propelled me down the path of documenting and contextualizing my existential insights by sharing her own fundamental questions, with an unwavering belief that I could answer them. She was there throughout this journey and was the first to embrace the final product.
The existential satirist Douglas Adams inspired the central conceit around which this book is structured. My dear friends Andrea M and Karen K, who made vital contributions by listening, questioning my answers, and encouraging me to make them better. My cousin Darren, for the Crunch heard round the world. Greg P, whose forty-five years of value exchanges enriched me more than he will ever know.
The late Kurt Gödel whose Incompleteness Theorem triggered the emergence of my Existential Duality Postulate, the core axiom of this framework; which in turn validates his belief in the transmigration of the soul, and his reluctance to accept the existence of an external reality. Immanuel Kant for his pivotal intolerance of mysticism. David Lewis, whose modal realism begat my modal idealism.
Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, and the rest of the more philosophically inclined of the original quantum mechanics, whom we can forgive for allowing a couple of World Wars to distract them from uncovering these answers sooner.
The immortal Dr. Nathaniel Thomas, who convinced me that even American Untouchables can do anything they set their minds to, including uncovering these rational existential answers. Artie, Spencer, Marc (both of them), Danny, and Mike C, who blazed my particular trail. Mr. M, Mr. R, Fr. N, Mr. C, Br. S, Prof D, Dr. Z, and Dr. K, who assured me it was permissible to walk it.
The staff at the Seminary Co-op and 57th Street Books in Hyde Park, Chicago, who respectively made many primary sources and popularizations of existential knowledge available to me.
The organizers, lecturers, and other attendees of the University of Chicago’s Compton Lecture Series (from 1996 to the present) who respectively facilitated, answered, and asked questions that paved the way to some of my answers.
The cohort of philosophers, scientists, and theologians who followed me on ResearchGate.net, whose skepticism, criticism, eventual acceptance, and endorsements, crystallized my insights and honed them to a fine edge.
My personal Trinity of Lorris Gray, Marianne Mason, and Ann Yarber, without whom neither this book, nor its author, would have happened. Finally, the succeeding generations, embodied in Akilah and Kamaal.