Homo economicus’ Weblog

While in Oxford last weekend went to the Museum of the History of Science which has a “Small Worlds” project on (though it looks like the Small Worlds website is a work in progress). In the exhibition Will Holloway has written a range of poems while you look at things from the cellular level – you even get a digital player to listen to them being read out while looking at the exhibit that inspired the poem and often incorporate what scientists have said. Erasmus would have approved.

If you get the chance while in Oxford, watching the well heeled students walk by (I have never seen so well dressed students cobbled together nor looked at ladies’ shoes so closely), and find yourself on Broad Street do have a look.

 My favourite poem at the exhibition is the Centre of Everything which is as follows:

There’s nothing specially special

about your specific species.

The Lesser Spotted Woodpecker

has its own evolutionary history.

The Wintry Diatom and the Queenly Threepearl

are as unique.

All species are equal.

In the Republic of Creatures

our people are not King.

There’s nothing specially special

about your specific planet.

It’s just another shining globe.

It’s another part of Heaven,

we don’t need a ladder up.

All worlds are equal.

In the Republic of Space

our Earth is not the Pope.

There’s nothing specially special

about your specific size.

There’s nothing big

about being big.

The clouds think they are the masters

and we are algae, a stain on the surface

to be washed away in the rain,

while plankton think we are a race of eyes,

all-seeing but misguided.

Everyone’s a mesobe to themselves

and someone else is always the extremist.

All sizes are equally medium.

In the Republic of Measurement

our scale is not The Truth.

There is no Universe, only a loose federation

of mutually suspicious appearances.

The mystics were wrong.

Everything’s not One.

So welcome to the microverse.

Welcome to the invisible cabaret.

Welcome to the Small Worlds

by Will Holloway