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Physics Today

Mr. Eliot's Guide to Quantum Theory

J. Lowell

Published Apr 1, 1989• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Last year was the centenary of T. S. Eliot, perhaps the most influential of 20th-century poets writing in English. That Eliot pursued careers in publishing and banking in addition to his literary work is widely known, but many of his readers will be astonished to learn of the discovery last year of manuscripts that suggest he might at one time have been a student of physics. Published here for the first time, the poems are strongly influenced by the quantum theory that was growing vigorously when Eliot was a young man. They exhibit unmistakable echoes of “The Waste Land,” “Four Quartets” and Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. (They also show remarkable physical prescience: Several of the ideas hinted at postdate Eliot's death in 1965.)

DOI
10.1063/1.881166

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Last year was the centenary of T. S. Eliot, perhaps the most influential of 20th-century poets writing in English. That Eliot pursued careers in publishing and banking in addition to his literary work is widely known, but many of his readers will be astonished to learn of the discovery last year of manuscripts that suggest he might at one time have been a student of physics. Published here for the first time, the poems are strongly influenced by the quantum theory that was growing vigorously when Eliot was a young man. They exhibit unmistakable echoes of “The Waste Land,” “Four Quartets” and Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. (They also show remarkable physical prescience: Several of the ideas hinted at postdate Eliot's death in 1965.)
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Mark Rudman has been editor of Pequod Magazine for 10 years and is one of America's brilliant young poet-essayists. He has received numerous awards and a fellowship from the Poets, Essayists, and Novelists translation center. His essays have appeared in Best American Essays, 1991 and conversant essays, as well as American Poetry Review, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, and the Times Literary Supplement. Mr. Rudman has published a book of criticism on Robert Lowell and two books of poetry, By Contraries and The Nowhere Steps. His poetry can be found in many magazines, including The New Yorker. Mr. Rudman lives in New York City where he teaches at Columbia University and New York University.
n 1959, when Charles Percy Snow lamented the gap between natural sciences and humanities in his lecture "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution" 1 , it was followed by persistent debates about the two cultures and many responses that attempted to find a mediation.Some scholars were looking for a third culture that could provide the missing link.One of them is John Brockman, who in 1995, -40 years after Snow's lecture -, announced popular sciences (that were continuously growing over the last decades) as the crucial synthesis.2 This does not seem out of place, considering the mass of new books about the development of natural sciences in the 20th century, written in a commonly comprehensible manner, that are published annually and see their second edition as soon as the second year.Popular scientists like Stephen Hawking, Brian Greene, John Gribbin and Paul Davies have long since been placed in the average home's bookcase and are definitely read by non-scientists.Meanwhile it is almost part of a successful career as a famous physicist to write a popular scientific book (which by the way is on no account a phenomenon of I
The forty-nine papers collected here illuminate the meaning of quantum theory as it is disclosed in the measurement process. Together with an introduction and a supplemental annotated bibliography, they discuss issues that make quantum theory, overarching principle of twentieth-century physics, appear to many to prefigure a new revolution in science. Originally published in 1983. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
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