Immortal Ideas
Shared by Art, Science, and Nature

We live in the greatest scientific age of all time; yet we live

in the most innumerate of times. Our science writers need to

inspire us with the beauty and power of their art, the same stirring

splendor found in literature and music. We need writers

like Shelley whose description of the mundane water cycle in

the final stanza of "The Cloud" can rouse a class from somnolence.

We need to touch people with the profound beauty common

to art and science. This is my motivation!

Today we have journeyed to a distant place far removed

from C. P. Snow's The Two Cultures where he described how

art and science speak mutually incomprehensible languages.

Now the world is even more fractured - we need to be healed.

Each chapter is built around a single idea that's common to

art, science, and, nature. The last chapter is a summary of the

previous nine. Although this book is nonfiction, sections of

each chapter and the climax are developed by two semihistorical

characters: one from the Iliad, the other from the

Odyssey - the two blessed men of Odysseus. The older is

Epius the engineer/scientist who with the sanction of Odysseus

built the Trojan horse and ended the war. The younger is

Phemius the poet/minstrel compelled to entertain the suitors in

Odysseus' absence. On his return the hero slew the suitors but

spared and blessed Phemius as a man inspired by god. Both

scientist and poet have been alive for three millennia, interacting

with history's great ideas through famous men and women.