/lit/ - Literature

>>21999170
The web of relationships, words, and links that I am weaving is evolving to become the song of tomorrow.
>Of course, Wordsworth is a poet writing a poem, and is not concerned with dry philosophical statements. But it would hardly be possible to express more clearly a feeling for nature, as exhibiting entwined prehensive unities, each suffused with modal presences of others:

>‘Ye Presences of Nature in the sky
>And on the earth! Ye Visions of the hills!
>And Souls of lonely places! can I think
>A vulgar hope was yours when ye employed
>Such ministry, when ye through many a year
>Haunting me thus among my boyish sports,
>On caves and trees, upon the woods and hills,
>Impressed upon all forms the characters
>Of danger or desire; and thus did make
>The surface of the universal earth,
>With triumph and delight, with hope and fear,
>Work like a sea? . . .’

>In thus citing Wordsworth, the point which I wish to make is that we forget how strained and paradoxical is the view of nature which modern science imposes on our thoughts. Wordsworth, to the height of genius, expresses the concrete facts of our apprehension, facts which are distorted in the scientific analysis. Is it not possible that the standardised concepts of science are only valid within narrow limitations, perhaps too narrow for science itself? - Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World