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...so this one can be considered early for next Monday instead of late for this. On a theme I noted yesteday on reading my first intimations of Kabbalah:
The first and only scientific query
Is whether things discovered are just so
Before discovery, or whether theory,
Belief, or faith conditions what we "know."
Suppose the Dogon didn't know their star
Was double; that the first Greek atomist
Just wildly guessed; that Borges's Uqbar
Could never in a concrete sense exist
(Which, if it did, would suit its folks just fine!);
Yet physics' primal singularity—
Itself an asymptote to the divine—
Was first glimpsed in the 16th century
By Luria, who thought it mighty odd
That from a void could spring the mind of God.
The first and only scientific query
Is whether things discovered are just so
Before discovery, or whether theory,
Belief, or faith conditions what we "know."
Suppose the Dogon didn't know their star
Was double; that the first Greek atomist
Just wildly guessed; that Borges's Uqbar
Could never in a concrete sense exist
(Which, if it did, would suit its folks just fine!);
Yet physics' primal singularity—
Itself an asymptote to the divine—
Was first glimpsed in the 16th century
By Luria, who thought it mighty odd
That from a void could spring the mind of God.
