Segre Lecture - How Did the Universe Begin?

viernes, 25 de octubre de 2013

Segre Lecture: How Did The Universe Begin?

Andrew Lange nos habla, desde la física, de las leyes que ordenan y generan el universo. En el minuto 30 se detecta alguna coincidencia de vocabulario con la versión del Big Bang—evolucionismo cristiano—que nos narra Abraham Cowley en Davideis, un poema épico escrito en la década de 1640. Este es un pasaje sobre la creación del cosmos, la música de las esferas y el orden en el universo.

 
Tell me, O Muse (for thou or none canst tell
The mystic powers that in blest numbers dwell,
Thou their great nature knowst, nor is it fit
This noblest gem of thine own crown to omit),
Tell me from whence these heavenly charms arise;
Teach the dull world t'admire what they despise.
     As first a various unformed hint we find
Rise in some godlike poet's fertile mind,
Till all the parts and words their places take,
And with just marches verse and music make,
Such was God's poem, this world's new essay;
So wild and rude in its first draught it lay;
Th' ungoverned parts no correspondence knew,
And artless war from thwarting motions grew;
Till they to number and fixed rules were brought
By the eternal mind's poetic thought.
Water and air he for the tenor chose,
Earth made the base, the treble flame arose;
To th' active moon a quick brisk stroke he gave,
To Saturn's string a touch more soft and grave.
The motions straight and round and swift and slow
And short and long were mixed and woven so,
Did in such artful figures smoothly fall,
As made this decent measured dance of all.
And this is music: sounds that charm our ears
Are but one dressing that rich science wears.
Though no man hear't, though no man it rehearse,
Yet will there still be music in my verse.

Quizá conozca este pasaje el físico, y de ahí su uso de los términos "bass" y "treble", y la analogía musical. Si no, se trata de una coincidencia, digamos, natural. Y sumo este pasaje de Cowley a mi colección de nociones protoevolucionistas.



El orden natural y la complejidad: Paley, Lamarck, Vico, y el Génesis