Nikola Tesla's countless admirers, not least the multi-billionaire Elon Musk, consider him to be the most brilliant inventor of all time and envelop him in a glittering aura that radiates the superhuman. In contrast, he is seen as a fantasist who has failed grandiosely with a wide variety of high-flown and speculative, but also visionary projects. At times it seems as if Tesla's life and work had come to us from another world. His "world system", which he designed theoretically and explored experimentally, was reflected in his stubborn and unique being-in-the-world, which was driven by cosmic forces and threatened to burst at the excess of radiating light and ethereal energy.
Manfred Geier has followed the conflicting tensions to understand how Nikola Tesla, that man who understood himself as a man-machine driven by cosmic energies, functioned. And so Alternating Currents of the Mind alternates equally ingeniously between science and fiction, between careful research and narrative inventiveness, thereby offering an electrifying approach to the obscure individual and his futuristic work.
Biography
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Manfred Geier, born in Troppau in 1943, received his doctorate with a thesis on Noam Chomsky's linguistic theory. His work focuses on philosopher biographies and cultural-political currents. Manfred Geier lives as a freelance nonfiction author in Hamburg.
