Herr Biedermeier

“Albert Einstein” by Aaron Kizer

Using only the eyes of a beautiful mind
Through the lens of theoretical physics
He discerned mathematical expressions
Of existence, of power, of motion
He sought out among the heavenly orbs
For invisible forces that impel them
That arrange control of their synchrony
He imagined a rule-governed universe
Of interdependent elements captured
By one simple Grand Unified Theory
Whose equally simple equation would solve
Every What? Where? When? How? and Why?
Compelled by persistent unsleeping reason
Alas his astonishing intellect never
Did reach that one theory of everything

But in course his magnificent affluent failure
Revealed secret arcane apparatus of nature
Whose exposure forever altered all science
He found and stepped right through a powerful door
To an undulant space-time continuum
Treading upon the Lorentzian intervals
Challenging Minkowski symmetries
He discovered systemic distortions that pushed him
To reshape the world with his stunning
Theories of Special and General Relativity
Among vast phenomena his work informed
Are quantum mechanics and nuclear fission,
String particle waves and thermodynamics,
Cosmological constants, space-warping of time,
Wormholes and black holes and bending of light

In fact, every postulate physicists frame
Still feeds on the fruits of his Annus Mirabilis
Yet he always believed he had failed in his quest
For essential connection that unified all
But successors continue nearing his goal
With new confident formulae joining
Weak nuclear force to electromagnetics
In seductive electroweak symmetry
While continuing search for a still farther bridge
Between outlying strong forces binding the fate
Of gravity with quantum chromodynamics
But science progresses with untidy spasms
That clench or release unpredictably timed
To splatter its knowledge on spatial and temporal
Manifestations of human ideas

Physics was born of mathematics and philosophy
Two-thousand years from Ptolemy to Copernicus
Two hundred more brought the polyhistor Newton
Another two fifty till Einstein arrived
No one else in those spans mattered much if at all
These four were the founders of order, reorder
And structure, restructure of all the known world
They gave their bright lights to the gods of the sky
Each more dazzling in turn chasing more and more
Darkness from the precincts of human endeavor
But beyond all the others what Einstein achieved
Gave a light so exquisitely bright it reveals
Those invisible paths his successors now follow
Theoretical thoroughfares leading to truth’s
Complete wisdom God enabled man to acquire

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“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
– Albert Einstein, in “Science, Philosophy and Religion: a Symposium”, 1941

Books by Einstein recommended for reading:

On the Special and General Theory of Relativity
On the Method of Theoretical Physics
Einstein’s God
The World as I See It
Out of My Later Years

 

 

(originally posted March 2013)