In between reading Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl and Bling (both I totally recommend), I've picked up A Sense of the Mysterious by Alan Lightman. The author is both a physicist and a novelist, and this book discusses the spiritual struggles of the most famous scientists of the past century.
When I studied microbiology, I must admit, I wasn't that into it. For so long I wanted to get as far away from science as I possibly could. Although it was a fabulous way into publishing, and believe me, I worked it. While employed at Cell, where I met my friend, the cinetrix, I would read reviewers' comments on new manuscripts (always over the copy machine). They would make remarks such as "beautiful" and "elegant." I used to marvel at what they could possibly mean. A few years later, my friend, Denise, a geneticist, described one of her experiments to me, and I finally understood . . .
A simple example of scientific elegance is Galileo's observation of the changing appearance of Venus. Using one of the first telescopes he discovered that Venus changes sizes and goes through phases as it moves along its orbit. This effect could not be supported by the Ptolemaic system, and Galileo's observations provided proof that the Earth is not the center of the universe. I love that Galileo made this discovery not by observing the physical properties of Earth, but by an indirect study. Observing Venus in orbit, presumably around the Sun, eventually led to a new discovery that the Earth was not static but in orbit as well. It was a discovery that showed how nature is connected. Contemporary scientists can pursue this in ways we cannot even imagine.
I really think that science and poetry (I use poetry and cinema interchangeably) are two sides of the same coin. In Apollinaire's lecture "L'Esprit Nouveau et les Poetes" in November of 1917, he discussed the miracles achieved by contemporary science and to rival those achievements, he emphasized how poets must embrace invention, prophecy, and surprise. In the Intro to Apollinaire's Calligrammes, this idea is described so beautifully: "Through prophecy the artist will constantly be able to look into the unknown and anticipate the mysteries of the future; through surprise the new will constantly be created and recreated."
Maybe it's really true what people say, that there is a fine line between love and hate, and maybe I've been trying to cross over all of this time.
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