Hello! I'm very interested in the fact you've studied physics yet are still so into the arts and languages! I adore both subjects and am trying to find some sort of link between them as they seem such different entities and I feel I should be fitting into the stereotype of each (i.e not being able to enjoy literature and physics), I think I need to be able to realise that both can fit into my personality, but anyway I'm wondering how you did that and what you're perspective is on this? Thanks!
Hello! Yes, I studied physics in university (and plan to study medical physics in the future). It was and still is very difficult to find a balance between my love of physics and my love of literature. When I was in high school, I planned to go into English, but eventually chose physics because to have a career in the physical sciences, I needed a formal education in the subject. In that sense, I’ve spent the last four years not choosing between literature and physics – in the back of my mind, I still see myself somehow juggling a writing career with whatever physics-related job I end up in. In practice, I’ve had to make physics my priority. Running this blog, however, has been hugely important in helping me make time for poetry. Interacting with literature on a daily basis keeps me sane. The only way to fit both into one’s personality, in that sense, is to make time for both.
Perhaps, though, you aren’t looking for practical advice so much as the connections I see between poetry and physics. What could possibly unify the two? I’m still looking for a satisfying answer to that. The stereotypical physicist and the stereotypical poet have very little in common. I’m reminded of Dirac’s comments to Oppenheimer:
… when Oppenheimer was working at Göttingen, Dirac supposedly came to him one day and said: “Oppenheimer, they tell me you are writing poetry. I do not see how a man can work on the frontiers of physics and write poetry at the same time. They are in opposition. In science you want to say something that nobody knew before, in words which everyone can understand. In poetry you are bound to say… something that everybody knows already in words that nobody can understand.” (x)
At my most optimistic, I disagree. Physics, to me, is all about taking complex and seemingly incomprehensible processes and finding a way to simplify them – breaking them down into understandable interactions. It’s about finding the relationships which govern physical reality. The language in which this is conducted is mathematics. In the same way, poetry is to do with taking this incomprehensible chaos called life and breaking it down into meaningful interactions. It’s about finding the relationships which govern spiritual reality.
One can see the two as opposite: the physical vs. the spiritual, the (aspiring to be) objective vs. the subjective, the external vs. the internal. But I try to see the two as parallel endeavors, and to delight in the ways both derive meaning from the world. There’s a quote by Feynman on my about page that has helped me reach this perspective:
“Which end is nearer to God; if I may use a religious metaphor. Beauty and hope, or the fundamental laws?… To stand at either end, and to walk off the end of that pier only, hoping that out in that direction is the complete understanding, is a mistake. And to stand with evil and beauty and hope, or to stand with the fundamental laws, hoping that way to get a deep understanding of the world, with that aspect alone, is a mistake.”— Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law
Whether I can find a way to have a meaningful career in both poetry and physics remains to be seen, but I wouldn’t give up either for anything.