World upside down: Leverett Pond, Brookline
Went out this week to see the American Repertory Theater production of Michael Frayn's "Copenhagen" with buds Bronia, Jason, and Michelle.
I love this play, and yet it hurts my heart. And my head.
There is something extremely lovable about Werner Heisenberg to a humanist. He is one of the few famous modern scientists who not only clearly saw an underlying continuity in the search for truth in the sciences and that in philosophy and the humanities--but was able to convey the connections he saw in beautiful language.
Long ago, when I was an instructor in composition at Johns Hopkins, I used a sample of Heisenberg's essays to get into discussion with my (mostly science major) students about beauty and clarity in language, about how to swim against the professional and cultural trends that tend to kill off any hopes and passions that students have for writing with those qualities.
He wrote:
We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
