Poetry In Motion: Why Neil Young's LincVolt Matters - Page 3

Holton has well explored the art of the scientific imagination, and in fact talks much about how scientists “feel” something before they can prove it. How they just “know.” About the scientist’s “willing suspension of disbelief, analogous to that which Samuel Taylor Coleridge identified as the task of the poet, and not far from what John Keats referred to as the ‘Negative Capability’ of great authors (their ability of ‘remaining content with half-knowledge.’)" [3] In other words, just as poets feel something before they ever put pen to paper, so do scientists have a powerful feeling before they ever set out on their path of great discovery.

Remember that Einstein’s theory of the expanding universe — something that Einstein knew but could not prove more than 90 years ago — was proven just three years ago, with Einstein long dead. In 2007, Gravity Probe B, one of NASA's most complicated satellites, confirmed to a precision of better than one percent that an object such as the Earth does indeed distort the fabric of space and time, the newly identified “dark energy,” eerily resembling the “cosmological constant” which Einstein felt, but could not prove, existed. [4] In conversation Einstein often referred to his inner voice, and indeed seemed to rely more heavily on it than any facts that did or did not present themselves. Albert Einstein had a passionate belief in his own intellectual intuition.

Perhaps the same might be said of us all. That sometimes, important times, we just know something before we can explain or articulate it. This could be, should be one of those important times. Change is afoot. So far traditional methods to change the behaviors of the people and policy makers to bring about significant and necessary change to save our planet from imminent disaster haven’t been working, last month’s Copenhagen climate talks the most recent, most expansive, most disappointingly horrifying case in point. Things have to be done differently. We need more power. It’s time for imagination and reason to start dancing again.

Scientist-philosophers are useful at a time like this, and scientist-philosopher Hans Christian Oersted has become a sort of hero of mine vis a vis this car, not only because of his unique relationship with electricity which laid the groundwork for the discovery of a useable electric current (LincVolt is currently part electric, and may wind up all electric before she’s done), but also because in his time he was, to quote Gerald Holton, “a striking example of the fruitful interaction of science and the greater culture, which nowadays is rarely attended to but which is all around us.” [5]

Article Author: Karen Barry

Karen Barry writes to you from the middle of a laundry pile and a sink full of dirty dishes somewhere in Connecticut. Right now she is probably letting the dogs out. Or in. She loves writing more than housecleaning, and music more than anything. …

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