In lots of historic creation myths, the whole lot was born of an excellent cosmic ocean with no starting and no finish, lapping matter and spirit into life. Within the cosmogony of classical physics, a partial differential equation referred to as the wave equation describes how water waves ripple the ocean, how seismic waves ripple rock, how gravitational waves ripple the material of spacetime. In quantum physics, a likelihood amplitude referred to as the wave perform describes the conduct and properties of particles on the quantum scale. Virginia Woolf described the connection between consciousness and creativity as “a wave in the mind.”
Waves lap on the bedrock of being, past the size of atoms, past the size of stars, to scrub up one thing elemental about what that is and what we’re.
This dialogue between the fundamental and the existential comes alive in a splendid poem by the astronomer and poet Rebecca Elson (January 2, 1960–Might 19, 1999), composed as she was dying within the prime of life, included in her excellent posthumous assortment A Responsibility to Awe (public library), and browse right here by Amanda Palmer to the sound of “Optimist” by Zoë Keating:
SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT THE OCEAN AND THE UNIVERSE
by Rebecca ElsonIf the ocean is just like the universe
Then waves are stars.If house is just like the ocean,
Then matter is the waves,
Dictating the rise and fall
Of floating issues.If being is like ocean
We are waves,
Swelling, touring, breaking
On some shore.If ocean is like universe then waves
Are the darkish wells of gravity
The place stars will develop.All waves run shorewards
However there isn’t any centre to the ocean
The place all of them come up.
Couple with Rachel Carson on the ocean and the meaning of life, then revisit Elson’s poems “Antidotes to Fear of Death,” “Theories of Everything,” “Explaining Relativity,” and “Let There Always Be Light (Searching for Dark Matter).”
