iblog

I can’t believe that science and the arts can ever happily co-exhist. They seem to get along initially and to respect each other, but at some point one will always trip the other up. For instance, take this breaking story, that geologists are conducting investigations and proposing a new site for the island of Ithaca, home to the mythical latecomer Odysseus.

“We can’t prove the story of the Odyssey is true, but we can test whether Homer got his geography right,” says Professor John Underhill, who is supervising the drilling operation in Kefalonia, the newly nominated site.

I wonder whether Homer cared that much about the Geography, probably about as much as he cared about the ‘facts’ of his own story. Mythology is powerful for it’s symbolism not it’s actuality and while Homer’s tale of patience and strength and this story of scientific endeavour are both highly impressive in their own right, they don’t form a happy union. If anything, their juxtaposition only serves to highlight how little the two understand each other.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 11th, 2006 at 8:51 pm and is filed under Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.