Tag Archives: Science

Little Flower, If I Could Understand

By Robin Bates | Published: April 23, 2017

In celebration of Earth Day and as scientists protest anti-science measures in Washington, Tennyson’s “Flower in the Crannied Wall” is a good poem to revisit. Tennyson holds the tiny flower as a scientist might but then honors its immense complexity.

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Rakunks & Wolvogs & Pigoons, Oh My!

By Robin Bates | Published: April 13, 2017

As gene splicing becomes more common, we need novels like Margaret Atwood’s “Oryx and Crake” to point out the dangers. By making connections, good dystopian fiction serves to wakes us up.

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Gulliver, Recommended for Scientists

By Robin Bates | Published: March 31, 2017

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson’s favorite book to recommend is not a book of science but Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels.” This shows him to be a very wise man.

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Using Lit to Discover Purpose in Science

By Robin Bates | Published: May 22, 2016

My Intro to Literature students, few of whom are English majors, are often startled to discover that literature understands them better than they understand themselves. Today’s post describes the encounters between two science majors and, respectively, Wordsworth’s “Intimations of Immortality” and Kingsolver’s “Flight Behavior.”

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Donne’s Lovers, Spooky at a Distance

By Robin Bates | Published: December 1, 2015

Tuesday Adam Gopnik makes some nice literary allusions in a recent New Yorker essay-review of George Musser’s Spooky at a Distance, which is about the history of quantum entanglement theory. Entanglement, also known as non-locality and described by Einstein as “spooky at a distance,” claims that two particles of a single wave function can influence each other, even […]

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Milton Cautions vs. Scientific Arrogance

By Robin Bates | Published: May 28, 2015

One of my science students found a way to examine her frustrations at her limited knowledge by looking at Satan and Eve in “Paradise Lost.”

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The Unassailable Thankfulness of Life

By Robin Bates | Published: February 8, 2015

In this wonderful poem Robert Barasch steps beyond sterile evolution-creationism debates to insist on the wonder of life.

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Student Learns from Learn’d Astronomer

By Robin Bates | Published: May 16, 2014

One of my students took profound lessons from “When I Heard My Learn’d Astronomer.”

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Prospero’s Magic, a Model for Fantasy Lit

By Robin Bates | Published: February 27, 2014

“The Tempest” fits magically into a fantasy course.

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