Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Science and Numinousness
Is science coldly rational -- utterly devoid of the human spirit -- as our friends on the Christian right would have it? Here's an elegant answer from PZ Meyers over at Pharyngula.
RSR also thinks Keats' "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer" captures the wonder of discovery that can come from unlocking the mysteries of the natural world:
Then I felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific -- and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise --
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
RSR also thinks Keats' "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer" captures the wonder of discovery that can come from unlocking the mysteries of the natural world:
Then I felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific -- and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise --
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
