David Birnbaum is a forerunner in the two diverse fields of metaphysics and jewelry. He has made significant breakthroughs and touched major milestones in both the fields through the incorporation of groundbreaking Asian elements. His official site can be found at www.DavidBirnbaum.com.
Rare 1 is Birnbaum’s world-class firm offering premium jewelry to the prosperous and famous, having established a global standing for its unique and magnificent gems. Elle Choi, the Korean-American at Rare 1 is David’s deputy and an expert gemologist. Most of the staff at the jeweler is fluent in Korean as well as Chinese.
Birnbaum is a revolutionary conceptual theorist, who countered the “Theory of Randomness” supported by the British academic world with his “Theory of Potential.” Nora S. Frydman is his Editorial Associate and head of academic affairs with his staff and a Malaysian-American veteran.
Birnbaum studied at the Queens, New York and the Modern Orthodox Jewish Day School, and was drawn to architecture and the legendary Frank Lloyd Wright. As a curious student, he was deeply interested in the field of astrophysics and metaphysics. It was during the college years in the 60s and early 70s that he started showing more interest in Asian elements. He went on to earn a Green Belt in Karate and started a 20-year personal relationship with James Clavell’s books focused on Asia.
It was the works of Clavell that introduced Birnbaum to the uniqueness of the East. This included everything from the feudal system in Japan during the 17th century, to the World War II POW camps in Singapore, to the 19th and 20th century Hong Kong.
Starting in 1978, Birnbaum began his extensive travels across Asia. He went on to have a clientele including and extending from the royal families in the Persian Gulf to the Japanese Imperial Family. He traveled across the United Arab Emirates, India and China with his children and taught them about the traditions and philosophies of different Asian cultures.
Birnbaum is well known in the world of academics as the creator of the revolutionary Summa Metaphysica series. His first work in the series was the God and Evil published in 1988, which was renamed later as Summa Metaphysica I. The book is today an academic textbook at more than a dozen global institutions offering higher education. Overall, more than 58,000 copies of God and Evil have been sold as individual copies and as part of the dual-volume, Summa Metaphysica along with God and Good.
Besides jewelry, the “Theory of Potential” provides Birnbaum the most important recognition that he has received at the global level. The theory is detached from the linear aspects of the Western beliefs and traditions, and the circular traditions of the East, yet having an Eastern soul to it. His hypothesis goes that the Quest for Potential is the core force in the cosmic order, and that this “Quest” both works as the catalyst and sustaining power of life. This is the hypothesis on which the traditional God of Creation is based upon.
It goes further and states that it is rooted in Natural Selection and drives evolution, taking homo sapiens to an ever higher level of awareness. In simple terms, Birnbaum’s hypothesis claims that the central driving force of the universe is for achieving optimum potential in everything. The theory eventually provides an explanation for the entire universe – that it is moving towards its optimal potential.
While many have attempted suppressing Birnbaum’s Quest for Potential theory in the academic world, it has received notable applause and support from many notable scientists. Claude Levi-Strauss, renowned anthropologist for example, has called this theory to be both “Remarkable and Profound” because it offers a “simultaneous solution” within just one construct to the important questions in metaphysics.
