There’s a lot of great music out there. I’ve had the good fortune to be part of a few bands, on and off, in my life, exposing me to some pretty music-saavy folks. I am largely grateful for the exposure to all kinds of music this has given me, crossing from Balinese gamelan to Chinese punk rock. Sometimes, science turns up in the oddest places in these genres. For instance, take Coldplay – their song, “The Scientist”, got me through the latter stages of my thesis.
I was just guessin’, At numbers and figures, Pullin’ the puzzles apart
Questions of science, Science and progress, Do not speak as loud as my heart
Tell me you love me, Come back to haunt me, Oh when I rush to the start
Runnin’ in circles, Chasin’ our tails, Comin’ back as we are
Nobody said it was easy
Aww It’s such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be so hard
I’m goin’ back to the start
Then there is my recent exploration of the band “Fountains of Wayne”. They had a song that immediately caught my attention: “Supercollider”. It’s not quite what I thought, but I do like the recurring image in the chorus:
You never know what you will find
When you go
Out of the blackness
Into the great big sky
Supercollider
Shooting inside your mind
Perhaps nobody put it quite as directly as Rush, in their song “Natural Science”:
Science, like nature
Must also be tamed
With a view towards its preservation
Given the same
State of integrity
It will surely serve us well
Art as expression –
Not as market campaigns
Will still capture our imaginations
Given the same
State of integrity
It will surely help us along
The most endangered species –
The honest man
Will still survive annihilation
Forming a world –
State of integrity
Sensitive, open, and strong
