Richard Feynman:

[scottopic]

"Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is 'mere'.
I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination
— stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light.
A vast pattern — of which I am a part... What is the pattern or the meaning or the why?
It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more
marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it.

Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?"

This is poetry...and I'm not even a skeptic :)

Comments

[murnkay.livejournal.com]

*grin* That man was so amazing.

[scottopic.livejournal.com]

Ah, why didn't I run across him sooner? :)

[morbid-o.livejournal.com]

I feel that the poet has perhaps missed a little.

It's no surprise to many to find that the most schooled physicists may also be the most convinced of a higher power.

[scottopic.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Also, further, that they've often included the capacity to understand 'higher power' in a capacity other than 'old bearded man on a throne.'

[morbid-o.livejournal.com]

One dares to hope... ;)

Although, we could use a good King!

[birdofparadox.livejournal.com]

Have you read his memoirs? I think you'd like him EVEN MORE if you read them.

[scottopic.livejournal.com]

No, but I now officially have them wishlisted - thanks for pointing them out!

[fairyhead.livejournal.com]

Hey, why is your mood hurty?

[scottopic.livejournal.com]

emailed :\

[beachsomewhere.livejournal.com]

I guess Feynman doesn't read too much poetry, then. Rather, didn't. That's okay, though, because I still read him.

Speaking as a poet, I find the natural world to be hugely inspirational. I don't believe in an art vs. science dichotomy, because one can only be enhanced by the other.

[scottopic.livejournal.com]

Oh, he did - it was just the comparisons that were essentially made at him that he wasn't capable of seeing these things as a scientist.

[jamy.livejournal.com]

You'd love Willaim H. Gass.

He's my homeboy.

[scottopic.livejournal.com]

I'll look him up.

We're out of town Mar 8 - 18, but are you in the SE still?

[jamy.livejournal.com]

I'm in Harrisburg, PA. Must suggest 'On Being Blue' (the book in my silly-narcissistic icon picture) and I wouldn't make the suggestion if I didn't think it was really important you read him--I know that you are like me in that your 'really want to read' list is greater than the time you can possibly allot.

[scottopic.livejournal.com]

I'll grab it. The good/bad thing about that neverending reading list is that I usually end up bumping more recent recommendations by friends.

[jamy.livejournal.com]

Problems arise with recommendations being subsumed by what you find by yourself through these sort of chained reactions with your own personal sphere. This is what I find. A recommendation becomes only nominally important unless somebody you really respect as a reading-mind is arduous. So, your opinion of my reading-mind notwithstanding, I strenuously suggest William H. Gass. And David Foster Wallace. (And Aldo Leopold, and Georges Perec and Julio Cortazar) And now I'm done.

[jamy.livejournal.com]

Urp...ardent.

Don't know if a person may/can be arduous...esp. w/r/t suggesting books.

[d0minique.livejournal.com]

It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it.

Indeed. And sometimes knowing a little more enhances the mystery, when you realize how little you do know.