Physics and Poetry

: Exploring Physics through the Medium of Poetry

Abstract

This thesis is in two parts: Part I is a collection of 39 poems which use a range of visual and digital techniques to explore, express and explain key concepts in contemporary physics. The poems are presented in three major sections, devoted (respectively) to themes of light, probability & uncertainty. Part 2 is the commentary, comprising four chapters: the first is a strategic overview of the relationship between poetry and science, focusing on major indicative instances and moments, concerning Lucretius, Pope, Blake, Keats, MacDiarmid, and Morgan, and then moving on to consider a series of explorations of how physical principles bear striking similarities to the mechanics of digital poetics. The remaining three chapters address in turn the scientific issues which form the subject matter of each of the three sections of poetry, as well as providing poem-specific commentary and procedural analysis for each one, arranged as follows: Chapter 2 discusses poems 1-13 inclusive, Chapter 3 poems 14-28 inclusive, and Chapter 4 poems 29-39 inclusive. Within each of these chapters, further thematic sub-divisions of the three major themes are employed, as indicated in the list of contents. In the procedures, imagery, metaphors, and motifs they employ, the poems draw upon and develop some of these used in a range of prose works written by scientists and science writers to explain and elucidate the complex theories and concepts of contemporary physics to a lay audience. The poems are intended to work cumulatively in combination with each other, and also in juxtaposition with the poem-specific commentaries and the broader explicatory parts of the commentary to explore the scientific concepts and familiarise readers with them.

Date of Award	2016
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Aberystwyth University
Supervisor	Peter Barry (Supervisor)