Lecture: "Beauty is Truth: How Poetry Enriches Science" by Dr. Tiffany Schubert

The tendency of science to reduce all of the world and life in it to predictable laws of physics is not new. And poets since William Wordsworth two hundred years ago have insisted that life ought not to be reduced.

Since the theme of this year’s Wyoming School was “Beauty is Truth: Science and the Catholic Imagination,” we looked to poets to help us inform our imaginations as we look at world around us, the heavens, and our own human nature.

The poetry we read and discussed is all available online for free. 

• Henry Vaughn, “Water-fall”
• Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur,” “Pied Beauty,” “The Windhover”
• William Wordsworth, “The World is Too Much With Us,” “The Tables Turned”
• Robert Frost, “Never Again Would Bird’s Song Be the Same”
• Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare”