Discern Heaven and Earth’s Beauty, Examine the Principles of All Things—Moving Words from Physics Textbooks

Discern heaven and earth’s beauty; examine the principles of all things. —Zhuangzi, All under Heaven

There is no material force without principle, nor principle without material force. —Zhu Xi

To extend knowledge through investigating things means that we must approach things and exhaustively examine their principles. —Commentary on the Great Learning

Heaven and earth possess great beauty without speaking; the four seasons have clear laws without debating. —Zhuangzi

Physicists are poets who can see the invisible. —Carl Sagan

—A short preface

1

In high school, this page in the physics textbook moved me deeply. I underlined many lines.

At university, I found a Zhihu question: “Which textbook passages have moved you?” This page was the most-upvoted answer and appeared three times among the top ten.

Some emotions, it turns out, are not monologues but a resonance shared across time and space.

High School Physics, Elective 3-1—People’s Education Press, “To Our Students”:

China is a large developing country with 1.3 billion people. However considerable its financial and material resources, dividing them among such a population gives low per-capita levels. But there is another side. If all 1.3 billion have strong scientific literacy and face opportunities and challenges with scientific spirit and methods of thought, can the Chinese people not assume unparalleled responsibility for their own development and progress, and that of all humanity?

Students, learn science well, grow in wisdom and ability, and link the realization of your own value with your country’s prosperity. Your lives will surely be full and wonderful!

A traveler once wrote this light verse after visiting Hangzhou’s West Lake:

Years ago I saw this lake in a painting,

And doubted such a lake existed on earth.

Today I have passed across its waters:

The painter still had more work to do.

If the preceding words still leave you doubtful about physics’ depth and vast influence, that is all right. Keep studying. Perhaps one day you will slap the textbook and say, “The editors still had more work to do.”

Many years after graduation, rereading this passage still moves me.

2

Another line of poetry deeply moved me.

From Gui Youguang’s A Record of the Xiangji Studio:

In the courtyard stands a loquat tree, planted by hand in the year my wife died; now it rises tall, its crown like a canopy.

We read it repeatedly during morning Chinese study. Each time, the final sentence moved me. Nature endures; human life is brief. The tree grows, time passes, but longing does not diminish. Like the dense crown, it only deepens.

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Other highly upvoted answers

1. Before Galileo, science struggled through muddy paths and barren shores, wandering for a thousand years. From Galileo onward, masters appeared in succession and classics gathered like clouds; the gates of modern science opened.

2. I once measured the heavens; now I measure the shadows. The soul flies to heaven; the body rests in earth.

—Kepler’s epitaph

3. In the preface to Book III of his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Newton declared boldly: “I now demonstrate the frame of the System of the World.”

sky, clouds, sunlight, dark, cloud - sky, nature, atmospheric mood

4. “Only then did everyone understand that even a great philosopher like Aristotle was not right about everything.” —“Two Iron Balls Land at the Same Time,” People’s Education Press primary Chinese textbook, Grade 4, second semester.

5. What never comes back? “Everything in time never comes back. Once yesterday passes, it becomes yesterday forever; you can never return to it. Your father was once as young as you, but can never return to that childhood. One day you will grow up, grow old like your grandmother, and use up all your time; like her, you will never return.” —“Racing against Time”

6. In the compulsory upper-volume Chinese textbook, “A Fire in His Heart, Warming Everyone’s Hearts”: “He [Zhang Binggui] felt once more: in our socialist motherland, only thoughts can be inferior; no work is inferior!”

7. Politics, elective compulsory volume three: anticipatory thinking looks toward the future, but the future is not a one-way, straight extension of reality; many changes are possible. (Face an uncertain future with definite effort.) Every advance of gradualness and continuity destroys itself and moves toward its opposite: leaps and discontinuities. (Our teacher interpreted this as every lazy day destroying your hardworking former self, and every hardworking day reshaping your former lazy self.)

8. The heart appears on day twenty-one; the heartbeat begins around day thirty. From then on, it never stops until death. —Chen Yuezeng, General Biology

“Which textbook passages have moved you?” Original Zhihu question: https://www.zhihu.com/question/55680501

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