“We formerly erred through ignorance.
We go wrong today through the extent of our knowledge.”
Odysseus Elytis*
Much,
we know much,
so very, very much,
and so much more,
much more
than we thought we knew
the day before.
Stacks of facts.
We know little things.
s u b a t o m i c
We know big things.
a s t r o n o m i c
And in between much more.
The weight of so much
staggers the right mind,
so much.
We stumble drunk on data
and gulp and guzzle more.
We have cut the un-cutable atom,
yet stick with Democritus’ mistake;
the wrongly given name.
The old saying:
“What you don’t know can’t hurt you”
is false, but subtract the ‘nots’ and it is true,
“What you know can hurt you.”
_______________________________________________________________________________
The Greek philosopher Democritus (460-370 bce) postulated there must be a particle so small and dense it cannot be cut any smaller. He named this particle ‘atomos‘ = ‘atom’ which in Greek means ‘un-cutable’ – [‘a’= not & ‘tomos = cut] Since then we have cut the atom.
Odysseus Elytis (1911-1996) was a Greek poet awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1979.