Science never cheers up anyone:
The truth about the human situation is just too Awful.²
If you dissect a bird to Diagram the tongue,
You have to Cut the chord articulating song—³
Our souls are being Corrupted in proportion to the
Advancement of our sciences toward Perfection.⁴
The human world is vast & strange,
And quite beyond a Ph.D.’s small range.⁵
Education is a process by which information in the
Professor’s notebook is transferred to the student’s notebook—
Without passing through either’s mind.⁶
The wise of this world shut & lock us up
In their Art & their Rationality so
We have to see through their eyes:⁷
Humanity will be Punished with
The profusion of new Jargons.⁸
Scientists are a clique of haughty Idlers,
Spoiled geniuses who lack feeling for life—
An arrogant and fundamentally Parasitic company of
Dandies & climbers in Sterile Self-Indulgence of the mind.⁹
The majority of intellectual people, do Nothing,
And are not fit for Work of any kind:
They have severe faces, talk of weighty matters—
And yet the vast majority of humanity live as savages.¹⁰
¹ Alexander Pope, Epistle II
² Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake
³ Sylvia Plath, Trio of Love Songs
⁴ Jean-Jacques Rousseau tr. unknown, Discourse on the Arts and Sciences
⁵ Langston Hughes, Ph.D.
⁶ Unknown, quoted by J. Vernon McGee in Thru the Bible
⁷ Jacob Boehme, quoted by Robert Bly in The Light Around the Body
⁸ Rae Armantrout, New Intelligence
⁹ Hermann Hesse tr. Richard & Clara Winston, Magister Ludi
¹⁰ Anton Chekhov tr. Constance Garnett, The Cherry Orchard