Reading poetry provides an odd but interesting way of learning how science is perceived by non-scientists in various cultures, or alternately, how the world is interpreted in personal terms as trained by current popular views of science.

Edna St. Vincent Millay (American, 1892-1950) seems in this poem to have a surprisingly mathematical sense of aesthetics:

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.
Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
And lay them prone upon the earth and cease
To ponder on themselves, the while they stare
At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere
In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese
Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release
From dusty bondage into luminous air.
O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,
When first the shaft into his vision shone
Of light anatomized! Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they
Who, though once only and then but far away,
Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.

In his book  The Copernican revolution; planetary astronomy in the development of Western thought, T. S. Kuhn mentions a poem by John Donne, namely "An Anatomy of the World: the First Anniversary".  Donne (1572-1631) was a contemporary of Galileo.  The poem commemorates the anniversary of the death (in 1610) of the fifteen-year-old daughter Elizabeth of the poet's friend Sir Robert Drury.  As a way of describing the emotional devastation of her family, Donne describes a general malaise which he attributes to the increasing popularity of the Copernican world view.  See especially lines 205 to 219.  Kuhn gives a very interesting explanation of the role that "atomic theory" began to play at that time (referred to by Donne as "atomies".)  It is also interesting that apparently more than one person accused Donne of blasphemy because of this poem.  If you read lines 220 to the end, you will perhaps understand how this could happen, and perhaps also appreciate more deeply the religious sensitivities of Europe in the seventeenth century.

It is not clear that Donne personally was upset by Copernican thought.  He used astronomical, optical, and other physical metaphors in much of his poetry.  Notice for example, line 221 of "Anatomy."  Another example is the poem "A Lecture Upon The Shadow," which describes the hourly progress of a shadow and uses this as a metaphor for love.  A third example is Donne's poem "The Ecstasy" which on line 7 describes "eyebeams" as physical emanences from the eyes, and on line 11 mentions reflected images of each other in the eyes of the lovers.

         Neutrinos: they are very small
         They have no charge; they have no mass;
         they do not interact at all.
         The Earth is just a silly ball
         to them, through which they simply pass
         like dustmaids down a drafty hall
         or photons through a sheet of glass.

The full poem, originally published in the New Yorker, is found on the web page <http://www-numi.fnal.gov/public/neutrinophysics.html>.

1. Macassar oil was a popular hair dressing in the 19th century, named after the Indonesian port where the oil purportedly came from.  An "antimacassar" is the decorative fabric used on chairs or sofas to protect the upholstery.
2. AEC=Atomic Energy Commission, now replaced by DOE=Department of Energy.  The AEC (like the DOE today) funded most of the National Laboratories, including Teller's Livermore Laboratory.
3. This is a puzzle I have not been able to solve; however, I recently learned that an alternate version of the poem uses the word lentils in place of gentils.  Then there is not really a puzzle.  A lentil is a type of pea and this is a way of saying "like as peas in a pod."

    Incidentally, Edward Teller's recently published memoir, "Memoirs: A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and Politics" was reviewed in the Sunday NY Times Book Review section, Nov. 25, 2001.  The illustration with the review is inspired, I suspect, by this poem. Harold P. Furth was director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory from 1981 to 1990.  The mission of this laboratory is to develop controlled fusion using "magnetic confinement."  Teller's name is intimately connected with fusion.  He is often called "father of the hydrogen (or fusion) bomb".  Teller's associates at the Livermore lab have been pursuing a rival scheme of controlled fusion which uses "inertial confinement."  This means that the deuterium fuel is held in a compressed state only during the time that inertia allows before outward acceleration takes over.  The compression is caused by a simultaneous blast from many focused laser beams.
    Furth is the one who asked the key question of Stanley Pons ("what happens in your experiment if ordinary water is substituted for heavy water,") at the otherwise adulatory American Chemical Society meeting in Dallas, April 12, 1989.  Edward Teller, on the other hand, is reported to have said that cold fusion "sounds right." (R. Park, Voodoo Science, p.26.)  Teller has been known for overly optimistic statements in the past (William Broad, Teller's War, Simon and Schuster, 1992).  Of course, he is not unique in this, but he has been uniquely persuasive as a result of his personal charm and excellent scientific credentials.