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A poem this month – a 14 line sonnet on the way science sometimes reduces the deep mystery of the universe to dry facts. See also the miserable fate of young Louisa Gradgrind in Charles Dickens’ Hard Times – her father rears her to be ‘regulated and governed by fact.’
Henry Vaughan’s great poem, The World, begins ‘I saw Eternity the other night’ and includes the understanding of the universe as it was known at his time – about 1650. Think Copernicus (died 1543, posited the sun in the centre of the [known] universe), Tycho Brahe (died 1601, made precise measurements of solar system and many stars), Kepler (died 1630. His ‘celestial physics’ included 3 laws of planetary motion), Galileo (died 1642, championed heliocentricity and improved the telescope).
I compare with some of our current theories – the Kelvin (measurement of temperature extending the degree Celsius down to absolute zero), infinite multi-universes we can never access, the inter-relatedness of chance (as in mutations) and law, the original hot big bang and universe expansion into a cold dead nothingness, the arrow of time (Eddington’s one way direction of time at the macroscopic level, and the increase of entropy) and string theories (attempts to reconcile quantum mechanics with general relativity, requiring a universe of many unobservable dimensions, not just the usual four of space/time.)
Homage to Henry Vaughan
I saw Eternity the other night,
immense, immensely dark, bleak, Kelvin cold.
Her multi-universes, infinite,
hid from us in her cloak’s mutating folds,
since chance and laws of nature rule, united.
Her clashing galaxies fled their origin
into eternal zilch, where life’s negated.
Tell those who hear the singing seraphim
they’re schizoid; there’s no heavenly harmony,
nor’s there a bridal ring of calm and light.
Out, briefest candle! Let the music die!
Time’s arrow points one way – into the night.
We taste the bitter fruit that knowledge brings
in a universe composed of tuneless strings.
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