The Tempest
by William Shakespeare
The Tempest is one of my favourite Shakespeare plays; it is all about imagination and conjuring worlds, which is also what science does.
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“Ariel sings a song about the death of the king in the storm and the transformation of his body in the shallows into a kind of treasure. ‘Of his bones are coral made/Those are pearls that were his eyes,/Nothing of him that doth fade,/But doth suffer a Sea-change/Into something rich, & strange.’ No lines are more famous but everything about the edge of the sea, which is both full of destruction and rich with a wonderful glimmery glamour, is in those lines.” Read more...
“There is a kind of allegory about scientific endeavour in The Tempest which I enjoy. It’s magical, and it is an allegory of human knowledge.” Read more...
The best books on The Emergence of Understanding
Peter Atkins, Scientist
