"A poet once said, "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood.
But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe.
There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflections in the glass, and our imagination adds the atoms. The glass is a distillation of the Earth's rocks, and in its composition we see the secrets of the universe's age, and the evolution of stars. What strange arrays of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization: all life is fermentation. Nobody can discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts — physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on — remember that Nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for.
Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!"
Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I, 3-10, The relation of Physics to other sciences.
A bit More: Richard Feynman – Pleasure of Finding Things Out
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out was filmed in 1981 and will delight and inspire anyone who would like to share something of the joys of scientific discovery. Feynman is a master storyteller, and his tales – about childhood, Los Alamos, or how he won a Nobel Prize – are a vivid and entertaining insight into the mind of a great scientist at work and play:
Compiled by Subhodeep Sarkar.
Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I, 3-10, The relation of Physics to other sciences.
A bit More: Richard Feynman – Pleasure of Finding Things Out
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out was filmed in 1981 and will delight and inspire anyone who would like to share something of the joys of scientific discovery. Feynman is a master storyteller, and his tales – about childhood, Los Alamos, or how he won a Nobel Prize – are a vivid and entertaining insight into the mind of a great scientist at work and play:
Compiled by Subhodeep Sarkar.
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This is one of my favourite quotes. If anyone who reads it enough passion, I guess, he would readily devout his life to the study of physics and mathematics! Glad, to see that it is like by so many of you. Thanks!
Subhodeep