A Glass of Wine
A
poet once said, "The whole universe is in a glass of wine."
We
will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not
write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a
glass
of wine closely enough we see the entire universe. There are
the
things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on
the wind and weather, the reflections in the glass, and our imagination
adds the atoms. The glass is a distillation of the earth's
rocks,
and in its composition we see the secrets of the universe's age, and
the evolution of stars. What strange array of chemicals are
in
the wine? How did they come to be? There are the
ferments,
the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine
is
found the great generalization: all life is fermentation.
Nobody
can discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis
Pasteur, the cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret,
pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches
it! If
our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this
universe, into parts -- physics, biology, geology, astronomy,
psychology, and so on -- remember that nature does not know
it!
So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it
is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and
forget it all!
-- Richard Feynmann, Six Easy Pieces,
Perseus Books (1995).
Updated: October 17,
2021