Lucretius Redux

We learn in elementary school science that centuries ago in ancient Rome the seeds of modern atomic theory were expressed in what would become an immortal poem : "On the Nature of Things " by Lucretius ( - 54 B.C. ) .

But for most of this century it seemed that ultimate realities -like atoms and quarks and mass-energy and chemical bonds ( " the glue of molecular existence " ) - were best conceived as mathematical constructions - highly abstract.

But new imaging techniques are replacing mind-boggling abstraction with REAL images that are almost pure poetry . Headline in this week's New York Times : " Glue of Molecular Existence Finally Unveiled ".

Said a Dr. Spence : " I want to emphasize that these pictures are ... like photographs - true images of real objects . "

Among the shapes revealed by these images: "butterfly wings"! In a philosophical essay the French humanist writer Albert Camus wrote about just this - abstruse scientific explanation being reduced to poetry. (He also spoke of the "benign indifference of the universe )

Many great scientist had an intuition that at bottom Nature must be elegant and beautiful - words also used to describe famous geometric proofs.

Is it not silly to talk about the "End of science "? Can there ever be an end to beauty -or a last poem ?

Even that rather unpoetic dialectic materialist Lenin wrote that the tiny electron was inexhaustible. To be sure, we do live in interesting times. Let us not exhaust HOPE -which keeps the world going.

I recall a poignant image in a famous anti-war movie: a young German soldier in a stinking foxhole reaching out for a beautiful butterfly - before perishing in an explosion.

"To hold infinity in the palm of your hand!" ( William Blake )