Jump to ContentJump to Main Navigation
The Poetry of Everyday LifeStorytelling and the Art of Awareness$
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content.
The Poetry of Everyday Life: Storytelling and the Art of Awareness

Steve Zeitlin

Print publication date: 2016

Print ISBN-13: 9781501702358

Published to Cornell Scholarship Online: May 2017

DOI: 10.7591/cornell/9781501702358.001.0001

Show Summary Details
Page of

PRINTED FROM Cornell University Press SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.cornell.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright University of Cornell University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in Cornell for personal use. date: 28 June 2022

The Poetry in Science

The Poetry in Science

Metaphors to Explain Mysteries

Chapter:
(p.132) 13 The Poetry in Science
Source:
The Poetry of Everyday Life
Author(s):

Steve Zeitlin

Publisher:
Cornell University Press
DOI:10.7591/cornell/9781501702358.003.0014

The author reflects here on the poetry of science and the ways scientists use homespun metaphors to make the mysteries of the universe as comfortable to lay audiences as a well-worn coat. The author marvels at the enormity of what was accomplished by men such as Thales, Democritus, Euclid, Archimedes, Galileo, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein, as well as the many scientists who collectively devised quantum theory. He says human beings used to look up into the sky and imagine stories about the gods written in the constellations; science and storytelling were one and the same. In modern times, storytelling and science appear to be different realms entirely. Nonetheless, scientists still turn to storytelling in order to explain the mysteries of the universe. Beyond their discoveries, scientists share an evolving body of stories—a kind of folklore of science—that conveys their ideas in lay terms.

Keywords:   poetry, science, scientists, metaphors, universe, Albert Einstein, storytelling, mysteries, folklore, constellations

Cornell Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.

Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.

If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.

To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.