Raphael (1483-1520), The Parnassus (1511), Vatican Museum Poets Dante, Homer, Virgil to the left of Calliope, Muse of Epic Poetry

The Way to Truth: Science or Poetry?     "There can only be a seeing which itself is Truth."       — Wei Wu Wei, All Else Is Bondage (1964), p. 2 At Stanford's "Another Look" book discussion on J.A. Baker's The Peregrine, Werner Herzog says "This book is not about bird watching but seeing." A week later, ornithologist Hans Peeters lectures on "Discovering Raptors" and says "Baker's book is poetical but it's all wrong." Having done biochemical research and written poetry with renowned mentors in both fields— What is the way to Truth: science or poetry? If truth is defined as that which cannot be contradicted, then scientific truth is on shaky grounds for it has changed throughout time. The indivisible atom of the Greeks was shattered by Rutherford's finding that proton, neutron, and electron are inside. Cyclotron and accelerators discovered mesons, positrons, neutrinos, and quarks, with Higgs-Boson by the Hadron Collider. Ptolemaic system of planetary motion overthrown by Copernicus after 1400 years, germ theory of disease reversed by Pasteur. Newton's gravitation laws yielded to Einstein, yet we know only 5% of our universe with dark matter & dark energy still a mystery. Poetic truth fared better over the ages— Views from Homer to Virgil to Dante to Blake on the human condition have remained the same. I agree with Herzog on what constitutes deep truth— "Facts create noise not truth. Truth illuminates and carries us to ecstasy." Baker has done it in The Peregrine, writing "The hardest thing to see is what is really there" as Dante did when uplifting us to Paradise.   — Peter Y. Chou       Mountain View, 4-11-2016

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) Discoverer of Heliocentric Planetary Motion Germany DR 1461 (issued 2-13-1973) Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) Discoverer Germ Theory of Disease France B59 (issued 1938) Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1726) Discoverer of Gravitational Laws Germany 1771 (issued 1-14-1993) Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Discover of Relativity Israel 117 (issued 1-3-1956) Dante & Beatrice to Paradise Italy #919 (issued 10-21-1965)