Intellectual Exploration as Geographical Exploration

My own field of physics is passing today through a phase of exuberant freedom, a phase of passionate prodigality. Sometimes as I listen to the conversation of my young colleagues at Princeton, I feel as if I am lost in a rain forest, with insects and birds and flowers growing all around me in intricate profusion, growing too abundantly for my sixty-year-old brain to comprehend. But the young people are at home in the rain forest and walk confidently along trails which to me are almost invisib...

 Organic Chemistry as a Tropical Rain Forest

Organic chemistry just now is enough to drive one mad. It gives one the impression of a primeval, tropical forest full of the most remarkable things, may well dread to enter. may well dread to enter.

 Eucalyptus Forests as Solar Energy

Sir Edward has calculated that quick-growing Indian eucalyptus trees have a yield of nine and one-quarter tons of wood an acre a year. As the wood contains 0.8 per cent of the solar energy reaching the ground in the tropics in the form of heat, Sir Edward has suggested that in theory eucalyptus forests could provide a perpetual source of fuel. He has said that by rotational tree planting and felling, a forest of twenty kilometers square would enable a wood consuming power station to provide 1...

 The Immensity of Time

How many times did the sun shine, how many times did the wind howl over the desolate tundras, over the bleak immensity of the Siberian taigas, over the brown deserts where the Earth's salt shines, over the high peaks capped with silver, over the shivering jungles, over the undulating forests of the tropics! Day after day, through infinite time, the scenery has changed in imperceptible features. Let us smile at the illusion of eternity that appears in these things, and while so many temporary ...

 Herbal Remedies from Tribes Still Involve Science

Quinine comes from an infusion of the bark of a particular tree from the Amazon rain forest. How did pre-modern people ever discover that a tea made from this tree, of all the plants in the forest, would relieve the symptoms of malaria? They must have tried every tree and every plant - roots, stems, bark, leaves - tried chewing on them, mashing them up, making an infusion. This constitutes a massive set of scientific experiments continuing over generations, experiments that moreover could not...