(January 2, 2014 at 3:01 pm)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: I feel like Paul Dirac captured my current mindset well when he said: "The aim of science is to make difficult things understandable in a simpler way; the aim of poetry is to state simple things in an incomprehensible way. The two are incompatible."I think both aim to capture the essence of some aspect of reality, in the face of the obvious truth that totally encapsulating reality is impossible.
Science aims to find a shorthand to describe the infinitely complex physical reactions around us. But it is in fact a shorthand-- when we some up the characteristics of say a gram of zinc, this is shorthand for a near-infinite number of particles and interactions. What is represented simply is also incalculably complex-- and the simplicity is more a function of our lack of interest in properties that we can't measure or interact with than a representation of reality.
