Monday and a Whimsical Poem About the Higgs Boson

[nightdog_barks]

Watching the Olympics, wondering if Mitt Romney is telling Polish jokes in Poland. I wouldn't put it past him, not after his assholish behavior in Israel, where he managed to insult both Israelis and Palestinians in one stupid speech. And there are actually people thinking about voting for this dipshit, just because he's not black Obama.

OH WAIT I AM ON MY HIGH HORSE AGAIN.

Let's calm down. The new issue of The New Yorker came today, so here's a small poem about the Higgs boson. :D

The Evidence of Things Not Seen

How strong the lens, how keen the eyes
To see what we hypothesize,
To watch so small a thing in motion
As what we've christened the "Higgs boson,"
A tiny, massive thing that passes
For what can best explain the masses
Of other things we cannot see
But somehow, nonetheless, must be.
A thing so small is surely cute,
Though weirdly shaped, perhaps hirsute,
And just as real as any wraith
Imagined with the eyes of faith.


~ Jay Curlin
From The New Yorker, July 30th, 2012

Comments

[damigella]

I'd call that a science-less poem. The people in Geneva have seen the Higgs Boson the same way we all see everything around us - by catching particles bouncing on it. Unless the big difference is that they didn't do it with the naked eye, which I never do anyway but possibly the poet isn't shortsighted.

I'm sad for the author, and sadder for the New Yorker. Couldn't they find someone to write a poem involving a level of understanding beyond a five-year old? Or as Feynman said, What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
PS Feynman was of course sexist, possibly a bit more than average for his birth year, but not much.

[nightdog_barks]

The poem is a flight of fancy, and is not meant to be taken seriously. It most reminded me of John Updike's poem about neutrinos, Cosmic Gall. It too was a flight of fancy.

Do not be sad for the author, and do not be sad for The New Yorker. Poetry does not always equal science, but sometimes, science = poetry.

[damigella]

No. I am and stay sad, because there could be so much flight of fancy in what happened, and we got instead something that sounds like they just discovered a new, smaller gnat.
The poem completely misses the key point of the Higgs boson, namely that if it hadn't been there we would have to throw away half of the physics we have. This is not a victory for experimental science: it's a triumph of theory, of the power of the mind.
I'm sorry, but I can't care for a poem, when its subject matter so upsets me. In light of the current, ongoing attacks on science and science education (they had an op-ed on the NYT advocating making algebra non mandatory) comparing a fantastic scientific discovery to superstition is more than I can tolerate.

At least Updike's poem reflected current status of physics when written (neutrinos in 1960 were pretty new, and they're still mysterious).

[flywoman.livejournal.com]

Oh my gosh, that article in the NYT. I can understand not requiring calculus, but algebra? It's not esoteric - it's what allows us to frame and solve mathematical problems of all kinds in everyday life.

And I agree with you - I'm not a physicist, but the end of that poem pissed me off.

[lovelythings]

Well, I have to say that that poem was written by an English professor who's not a scientist, and I'd also like to posit that it does take a certain kind of faith to keep looking and keep doing experiments in hopes of proving the existence of something like this. I don't think it was intended to belittle the science, just to illustrate the wonder of a lay person at the perseverance of scientists.

Also, I think he had a certain number of vocabulary words to slip into this poem.

[damigella]

it does take a certain kind of faith
Actually, it doesn't. But it is true that this might not be clear to the layperson, due to the current standards of science education.

[lovelythings]

I'll put it another way that will perhaps make more sense: it takes perserverance to believe that this time, when you turn on the LHC, you'll find the Higgs boson, despite not finding it all the previous times. Or this combination of drugs will stop that virus, when 200 other combinations haven't. Or this variant of this crop will be resistant to a particular disease, when all the previous crops succumbed. I think there are days when it takes more than a love of science to overcome the wearying effect of negative results. Some might call that faith. I'm not calling it religious faith, mind you, but a kind of faith (although I happen to know that the person who wrote that poem is a person of faith, in addition to not being a scientist).

As a teacher, I have to agree that science education standards (in the U.S., which is mostly what I can speak for - I taught in a French school but never experienced the science curriculum) are lacking. Perhaps the implementation of the Common Core standards will help us create thoughtful, innovative, dedicated scientists again.

[topaz_eyes]

(Icon is pointed at the algebra op-ed.)

they had an op-ed on the NYT advocating making algebra non mandatory

I showed this "op-ed" to my daughter. She wants to study pure mathematics in university. "Appalled" doesn't begin to describe her reaction. Her first comment was along flywoman's lines, that algebra underpins everything--every time you need to solve a problem, in any field, you use algebra even if you don't realize it. Her next comment was that it smacks of a "Algebra's too HAAAARD! Let's get rid of it!" dumbing-down mentality.

(Another sign of the times of the War on Math: she's having huge trouble trying to find universities hosting a pure math program. Schools are dropping pure math in droves to focus on "applied" math, e.g. math for business/finance, statistics etc. We fear for the state of knowledge.)

[damigella]

Feel free to PM me, here or on lj, if your daughter (or you) wants input from a professional (I don't have any maths icon on dw except for this truncated dodecahedron).

[peoppenheimer]

Unlike damigella, I am not a mathematician, but if your daughter knows that she has a particular interest in mathematical logic, I might have some useful suggestions.

I'm a little puzzled, though. At the undergraduate level, most math departments I'm familiar with include plenty of pure math in their curriculum. Are we talking about finding a graduate program?

In any case, hearing about someone who is going to become a mathematician always brightens my day. Please convey my best wishes to her.

[damigella]

I've tried to calm down a bit, see it in "it doesn't mean what you think it does" light, but it's just not possible. It's like Goethe's poem, Schubert's Lied about rape from the viewpoint of the happy, successful rapist. I know other interpretations are possible, but it still makes me sick.

[namaste]

Favorite Polish joke: Did you hear Poland bought 350,000 septic tanks? And when they learn to drive them they're going to invade Russia.

[pwcorgigirl]

That's awful and hilarious at the same time. :D

[blackmare]

LOL

Yeah, I grew up hearing that joke, and many others like it, from the side of the family whose name ends in -ski.

[namaste]

I used to live near a heavily Polish heritage town, and there were lots of jokes. But having grown up in an area called the Dutch Triangle, I heard even more Dutch jokes. Like, how do you get a Hollander to wash his hands? Tell him there's a penny under the bar of soap.

[blackmare]

I smiled at the poem, but then I think that both science and faith require humor, without which both inevitably harden into dogmatism.

Shedding some light, plus a defense

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry to re-awaken this thread but I thought for the benefit of the poem's author I might explain a few things, just to shed a little light on the subject and throw it into context.

I initially came across this thread when I googled the poem in order to memorize it, which is a hobby of mine that the author actually inspired me to take up (Jay Curlin actually has memorized the all of the Shakespearean Sonnets). And when I saw that I couldn't access it from the New Yorker's website without a subscription, I started looking around on the listings underneath the first one. They were largely forums and I got to reading some of the posts written about it and lo and behold here I am. But I digress.

Jay Curlin is actually a professor of mine and a good friend. He's very talented. This poem about the Higgs Boson, although published last July, was written several years ago. At Ouachita, where Jay teaches, there's a lexicon of sorts going on. Some of the professors got together in the 90's (I think) with the idea of having a daily word that they'd write on their boards before class in hopes of expanding many students' vocabulary. They would select the words by simply going down the list in a massive Random House dictionary. And with over 540,000 words in the English language, this naturally takes a very long time. This poem was written a few years ago when we were still in the "H's (the words featured in this one were "Higgs Boson" and "hirsute"). "We're only just now getting into the "M's". And Jay Curlin, having a deep love for poetry, decided to write a poem almost every week that featured two of these words. For the sake of example, here's one that Curlin wrote just the other day. The words are matriculated and myrmecology."

Although the young man patiently had waited,
Had studied hard and been "matriculated",
And thus in ivied buildings now could sit
As, since a noun, a new matriculate,
He told us sadly that he never knew
What we had done to him he couldn’t do.
We promised him it hardly should disturb
To be the subject of a passive verb,
That he had come to grammar somewhat late,
But soon would learn to use “matriculate.”
But like poor Whitman in the lecture hall,
He grew confused and weary of it all,
And wandered out of class and to a wood
That crawled with what he knew he understood,
A wisdom that required no degree
Or knowing it as "myrmecology".

-- Jay Curlin

As can be seen, Curlin puts them to meter and more often than not, they are rhymed. And as one would imagine, not all of these poems flow very smoothly and any knowledge that he may have of the words themselves comes either from his own experience or from the dictionary definition that is provided. Given that he's not a scientist but an English professor, it is only natural that there might be some element of misconception.

Now, how the Higgs Boson poem actually ended up in the New Yorker is actually very fascinating story, especially given the fact that Curlin never submitted it to them in the first place. But I'll try to keep it short. Curlin, and another professor at Ouachita, Johnny Wink (who is also one of my professors and a dear friend) became friends with Douglas Hofstadter, a professor of cognitive science and a very decorated scholar. Hofstadter being the person he is, is pretty high up in some intellectual circles and he knows people at CERN, where the LHC is.

Hofstadter, along with myself, and a drove of other students, professors, and friends are on an emailing list that Dr. Johnny Wink sends out with Curlin's lexical rhymes. This past July, when the Higgs Boson was spotted, Dr. Wink remembered this poem from a few years ago and sent it out on the email list. Hofstadter received it, sent it to his friends at CERN who worked on and with the team that spotted it where it was well received by them. One of them enjoyed it so much that they sent it to one of their friends, Paul Muldoon, the poetry editor for the New Yorker who really enjoyed it and because the it was newsworthy, he then rushed to contact Curlin and asked if he might publish it. This in itself is rare for any poem, as "vendors" for the New Yorker are scarce. It might also be worth mentioning that Dr. Curlin, as talented as he is and with the hundreds of poems he's written (not just featuring lexical rhymes), has never really aspired to publish his work. But Curlin obviously accepted Muldoon's offer and he here we are today.


Now, I'll let the poem speak for itself. I happen to enjoy it. I've seen a lot of people respond to it negatively, but only because they disagree with the poem's "message," which is itself often misinterpreted. It goes against what they think is true and don';t even give it a chance to stand on its own as a work or literary art. As far as people here have responded to it, I think Lovelythings has the right idea, based on what Curlin has told me himself about the poem. He's not a scientist and he knows that there are better people out there than he who understand these things.

Now Curlin is a Christian, and no doubt we see the influence of his faith in this poem. I don't want to spark up a debate about religion or anything but even the people at CERN who were working on this team agree that there is an element of faith (not religious faith) involved in there work. In my opinion, this war between science and religion shouldn't even exist, which is something that people seem to miss.

Now I’m not saying anything against science, nor am I saying anything against religion, but I will say the more scientific a person is then I believe the more he would agree with me that the statements like "there is no God" or "there is a God" are neither statements science can make based upon Christian beliefs. And real scientists do not make those statements. It’s usually journalists, novelists, and people who have picked up a few odds and ends of half-baked science from elementary textbooks that make them. If someone goes in trying to prove something of this nature in science, then they aren’t doing things scientifically. They are bringing in there biases and assumptions.

Many people fall prey to this mindset and Damigella up there, although I don't know him/her personally and I haven't had any interaction with him/her on these forums, seems to have done just that. With sincere respect, I think you miss the point of the poem, rather than the poem missing the point of the Higg's Boson. Or maybe I'm missing the point of everything altogether because I am guilty of bringing my own biases and assumptions and have therefore read those assumptions into your comments, and this is all for naught. But you said: "The poem completely misses the key point of the Higgs boson, namely that if it hadn't been there we would have to throw away half of the physics we have." Maybe I'm not getting this right, but it seems that you contradict yourself here, given what the poem says. Your statement that without the Higg's Boson "we would have to throw away half of the physics we have" itself implies that many assumptions have been made about the way the universe works. These assumptions, not having the Higgs Boson itself to go off of, but still assuming that there exists a Higgs Boson, were made with an element of faith, even when it was first hypothesized about. And that is what the poem is praising.

Anyways I hope that this serves to shed some light on the subject and I hope that some of you were able to read what I had to say, even if it is seven months later.