Science and Poetry

So much of science consists of things we can never see: light “waves” and charged “particles”; magnetic “fields” and gravitational “forces”; quantum “jumps” and electron “orbits.”  In fact, none of these phenomena is literally what we say it is.  Light waves do not undulate through empty space in the same way that water waves ripple over a still pond; a field is only a mathematical description of the strength and direction of a force; an atom does not literally jump from one quantum state to another, and electrons do not really travel around the atomic nucleus in orbits.  The words we use are merely metaphors.  “When it comes to atoms,” wrote Niels Bohr, “language can be used only as in poetry.  The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images.”

K. C. Cole

Posted from Aswan, Egypt