widely regarded as one of America's premier poets.
Frost is an artist who had an interest in nature
that ran far deeper than images of the bucolic
countryside, who kept abreast of the science
of his day (his favorite magazine was Scientific
American), and who found poetic expression for
the exciting and provocative concepts concerning
atoms and the proper language to describe their
behavior.
Frost's poem "A Wish to Comply" (1949) alludes to a well-known physicist (R. Millikan) and introduces readers to the epistemology and intellectual spirit of quantum physics.
Read the poem below and answer the following questions:
1. Who do you think is the speaker?
2. What is he referring to by the "Millikan mote" (line 2) and the "it" (line 1) ?
3. In this poem Frost is alluding to the nature of knowledge in science. More
specifically to the role played by bias in scientific discoveries. What lines
of the poem present a concrete image of the thin line between the
observed and the observer?
4. How is bias presented in the poem as related to the poems' title?
5. In your opinion is bias a good thing or a bad thing in Science? Defend
The poem entitled "Version" (1962) is Frost's seemingly whimsical ode to the discovery of the nuclear atom by Ernest Rutherford and his assistants Geiger and Marsden, an event of surpassing significance because it thoroughly revised our conception of matter.
6. How is Rutherford portrayed in the poem?
7. What does the "shaft" (line 3) represent?
8. What does Frost mean by The "New Departure" (line 4)
9. Why is the term "non-resistance" (line 12) ironic?
10. By ways of an unusual metaphor Frost tells us that the atom loses its
virginity. How is this illustrated in the poem (i.e. what are the elements
used in the metaphor?)
11. More than that, perhaps, science itself loses its virginity.
Using the information gathered in this activity (from the Greeks to Rutherford's findings) to write a conclusion about this statement.
