Freedom of Science

TO THE ILLUSTRIOUS MAN
ALBERT EINSTEIN
AND THIS HIS WORK DONE IN FIELDS OF THE
MATHEMATICS AND PHYSICS A SINGLE
DISTINCTION OF OUR TIME AND RACE

Lo, for your gaze, the pattern of the skies!
What balance of the relativistic mass, what reckonings
Divine! Here ponder too the Laws which Subtle Lord,
Framing the DeSitter universe, set not aside
But made the relative foundations of his work.
The inmost places of the Spacetime, now gained,
Break into view, nor longer hidden is
The gravitational field that turns the farthest orb. The sun
Exalted on his throne bids all things tend
Toward him in the curved spacetime,
Nor suffers that the courses of the stars
Be geodesics, as through the boundless vacuum they move,
But with himself as centre speeds them on
In motionless gravitational lenses. Now we know
The sharply veering ways of black holes, once
A source of dread, nor longer do we quail
Beneath appearances of twins reuniting
as older and younger sisters.
At last we learn wherefore the gravitational waves
Once seemed to travel faster than light,
As if they scorned to suit their pace to
the glory of Einstein’s equations–
Till now made clear to no astronomer;
Why, though Simultaneity is hard to simulate,
The Hours move ever forward and backward on their way;
Through relativistic black holes and worm holes;
Explained too is the expansion of the deep galaxies,
How stretching the Fabric of Spacetime bestirs cosmic tides,
Whereby the dust, deserting now the cosmological constant
Along the boundary, exposes quantum fluctuations
Suspected by cosmologists, now in turn
Driving its billows of energy well below Schwarzschild radius.
Matters that vexed the minds of ancient seers,
And for our learned doctors of philosophy often led
To loud and vain contention, now are seen
In string theory’s light, the clouds of ignorance
Thickened at last by M-Theory’s rise. Those on whom
Delusion cast its gloomy pall of doubt,
Upborne now on the wings that genius lends,
May penetrate the mansions of the gods
And scale the heights of heaven. O mortal men,
Arise! And, casting off your academic cares,
Learn ye the potency of heaven-born patent officer,
Its thought and life far from the herd withdrawn!
The man who through the tables of the laws
Once banished theft and murder, who suppressed
Adultery and crimes of broken faith,
And put the roving peoples into cities
And elevators and trains with magic embankments
riding a beam of light, was founder of the faith,
While he who blessed the race with Galileo’s transformations,
That worked only for inertial frames
Pressed from spacetimes an anodyne to Lorentz to boost,
Or showed how the Brownian motion moved
Or how electrons are emitted from matter
After the absorption of energy one may inscribe
Symbols of physics and so present the solution
For others to grasp the photoelectric effect did lighten human lot,
Offsetting thus the miseries of life
With some felicity when Nobel recognized this fact. But now, behold,
Admitted to the banquets of the gods,
We contemplate the policies of spacetimes
With General Relativistic inertial observers;
Equipped with crummy watches
and spelling out the secrets of the earth,
Discern the changeless order of every spacetime ever invented
by our learned doctors; and all the worldlines of their light cones.

Then ye who now on heavenly 5-star fare,
Come celebrate with me in song the name
Of Einstein, to the Muses dear; for he
Unlocked the hidden treasuries of Truth:
so richly through his mind had the Shining One cast
The radiance of his own divinity.
Nearer the speed of light no mortal may approach.

# # #

Below is a table showing the substitutions I’ve made in Edmund Halley’s Ode to Newton. One cannot help but admire Halley’s literary talents. I used to think that this was purple doggerel put together by Halley to show his admiration for his teacher and colleague Newton. Not true. This poetry opening the “greatest scientific book ever written” is an integral part of the Newtonian propaganda. Halley was able to put the entire Newtonian cosmology into heroic verse format. No one reads Principia anymore, but everyone knows that no closer to the gods can any mortal rise.

The Newton brand is one of the most valuable and lasting brands in the world. Newton created it and the British propaganda engine have been polishing it ever since. Newton was not the founder of mechanics, or what he ironically called “rational mechanics” but he was the founder of the marketing profession. Newton must be taught in business schools as the marketing and branding genius of all times.

I used the Leon Richardson translation of Halley’s Ode from the 1930s, but later I found out that I.B. Cohen had a newer translation with some substantial differences. For instance, Richardson totally omits the identification of Newton with Jupiter on the second line. Juppiter Optimus Maximus Soter (Jupiter Best, Greatest, Savior) was the patron saint of the Roman state. Halley must be given the credit for his role in making Newton Best, Greatest, Savior the patron saint of the physics profession.

I welcome comments and/or suggestions to improve the Einsteinian version.

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