For the last six or so months I’ve been rewatching the James Burke documentaries Connections, The Day the Universe Changed, Connections 3. I half watched Connections 2 but it went a bit too fast for my liking.
In one of his programs he had a poem that I liked, but at the time I didn’t look up the author and now I can’t find the show it was on.
The poem was not modern, it would have at least been from the Renaissance, but for some reason my brain is telling me it might be Greek. I thought the poem was about the universe/stars, but now I can’t even remember that. I thought it was shown during one of the parts about how the planets and stars don’t revolve around the Earth, but I tried to rewatch all of those programs and haven’t seen it yet.
I’ve skimmed through both Burke’s Connections and Day the Universe Changed books but it wasn’t in there. Does anyone remember the poem or which program/episode it was in? Archive.org has all of them on there for anyone who’s interested in watching them.
Today they’d do it with green screen or CGI, but it’s so cool knowing that’s the real thing.
I imagine that when Burke turned to watch the ascent he was grinning like a maniac. I’d love to see the footage from just after the cut, where everyone is dancing around like crazy.
I was finally able to find the poem. I don’t know what it’s called, but I found the part that was in the show. It was in Connections 3, episode 7 around 30 minutes. The show at that part is about Kepler and the poem is by John Donne:
And new philosophy calls all in doubt,
The element of fire is quite put out;
The sun is lost, and th’ earth, and no man’s wit
Can well direct him where to look for it.
And freely men confess that this world’s spent,
When in the planets, and the firmament
They seek so many new; they see that this
Is crumbled out again to his atomies.
'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone;
A Google search on John Donne and “new philosophy” finds that the title is “An Anatomy of the World.” That passage is only a short excerpt of a much longer poem:
