Stuck on your science? Unclog your brain with poetry, advises scientist and poet Sam Illingworth in Nature.
And why not?
Although one might at first think that science and poetry are antitheses, Erasmus Darwin, grandpa of the famous Charles, tended, in his reflections on natural history, to versify. And, yea! It was none other than the great Johann Wilhelm von Goethe -- novelist, playwright, philosopher, scientist and general all-round egghead -- who wrote that 'science arose from poetry... when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.'
Perhaps times have changed?
Notwithstanding inasmuch as which I offer my own contribution, which came to me spontaneously after a heavy session at the Empress of India when I paused for a short rest with my head pressed up against the glass of the 'Orsemeat Shop in the Balls Pond Road, on the occasion of the discovery of the Higgs Boson. I make no excuses for the fact that one or other of you might have seen it before. Good verse deserves repetition.
Ahem (clears throat).
The Boson
(with apologies to Hilaire Belloc)
The Boson is so very small
You cannot make it out at all,
Though physicists have money on
Its presence in the Tevatron.
Notwithstanding the concern
Of colleagues beavering at CERN
All hoping that it might emerge
Triumphant from a mighty splurge
Of hadrons which, when they collide
Reveal their secrets, locked inside.
Why all this fuss, I say? Alas!
Without it we can have no mass.
No Higgs, and we'd be thistledown
Floating high above the ground.
The ground itself would fly away
And nothing much would deign to stay
Attracted to its bounden mate,
We'd be in such a sorry state!
But hold! One cannot be so free.
There is still much uncertainty.
For science tells us we must wait
For sigmas to accumulate.
Oh! Let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about!
No comments:
Post a Comment