Thought experiment: imagine hundreds of physicists, in lectures and physics journals, recounting endlessly varied episodes — car crashes, swaying bridges, one tells of a cranky refrigerator his family had when he was a child, which they eventually pushed off the roof — to demonstrate the same few formulae over and over, which they all share and agree upon. Force equals mass times acceleration, simple harmonic oscillation takes the form F = -kx, heat cools. In fact, everyone reading or listening also knows these formulae that are being demonstrated with exemplary narratives, from which they can learn nothing and experience only cosmetic difference. This happens year after year; decades pass. Surely the publications and talks would just stop?
And yet, isn't the most popular poetry like this?
Posted by jane at May 27, 2006 01:31 PM | TrackBack