2
" A number of years ago, when I was a freshly-appointed instructor, I met, for the first time, a certain eminent historian of science. At the time I could only regard him with tolerant condescension.I was sorry of the man who, it seemed to me, was forced to hover about the edges of science. He was compelled to shiver endlessly in the outskirts, getting only feeble warmth from the distant sun of science- in-progress; while I, just beginning my research, was bathed in the heady liquid heat up at the very center of the glow.In a lifetime of being wrong at many a point, I was never more wrong. It was I, not he, who was wandering in the periphery. It was he, not I, who lived in the blaze.I had fallen victim to the fallacy of the 'growing edge;' the belief that only the very frontier of scientific advance counted; that everything that had been left behind by that advance was faded and dead.But is that true? Because a tree in spring buds and comes greenly into leaf, are those leaves therefore the tree? If the newborn twigs and their leaves were all that existed, they would form a vague halo of green suspended in mid-air, but surely that is not the tree. The leaves, by themselves, are no more than trivial fluttering decoration. It is the trunk and limbs that give the tree its grandeur and the leaves themselves their meaning., 'it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants. "
7
" Peeling an OrangeBetween you and a bowl of oranges I lie nudeReading The World’s Illusion through my tears.You reach across me hungry for global fruit,Your bare arm hard, furry and warm on my belly.Your fingers pry the skin of a naval orangeReleasing tiny explosions of spicy oil.You place peeled disks of gold in a bizarre patternOn my white body. Rearranging, you bend and biteThe disks to release further their eager scent.I say “Stop, you’re tickling,” my eyes still on the page.Aromas of groves arise. Through green leavesGlow the lofty snows. Through red lipsYour white teeth close on a translucent segment.Your face over my face eclipses The World’s Illusion.Pulp and juice pass into my mouth from your mouth.We laugh against each other’s lips. I hold my bookBehind your head, still reading, still weeping a little.You say “Read on, I’m just an illusion,” rollingOver upon me soothingly, gently unmoving,Smiling greenly through long lashes. And soonI say “Don’t stop. Don’t disillusion me.”Snows melt. The mountain silvers into many a stream.The oranges are golden worlds in a dark dream. "
8
" Chloroplasts bear chlorophyll; they give the green world its color, and they carry out the business of photosynthesis. Around the inside perimeter of each gigantic cell trailed a continuous loop of these bright green dots. They spun . . . they pulsed, pressed, and thronged . . . they shone, they swarmed in ever-shifting files around and around the edge of the cell; they wandered, they charged, they milled, raced . . . they flowed and trooped greenly . . . All the green in the planted world consists of these whole, rounded chloroplasts . . . If you analyze a molecule of chlorophyll itself, what you get is one hundred thirty-six atoms of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen arranged in an exact and complex relationship around a central ring. At the ring’s center is a single atom of magnesium. Now: If you remove the atom of magnesium and in its place put an atom of iron, you get a molecule of hemoglobin. The iron atom combines with all the other atoms to make red blood, the streaming red dots in the goldfish’s tail. "
― Annie Dillard , Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
