Modern Science

"A biologist found himself in the unlikely world of centuries-old European woodblock print art. There he discovered that many of the small imperfections in the prints could be identified and traced back to specific species of bugs that had burrowed through the surface of the original woodblock before the print was made. ... The scientist studied 3,263 wormholes visible in 473 prints made between 1462 and 1899. He found that there were two distinct sizes of holes ... "

--Katherine Harmon, "Boring Beetles: Wormholes in art trace species through time," Scientific American (February 2013), p. 22

Walt Whitman:

When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer

WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.