Introduction

Summary

My goal in writing this book is not only to document Robert Frost's allusions to science, nature, and technology, but also to put them in the context of where he was living, the books he was reading, the people he knew, and the discoveries and advances of the time. I hope to reveal the depth and sophistication of Frost's scientific knowledge in a way that will be a revelation to both the scientists and the humanists in my audience. But rather than “unweave a rainbow,” as Keats once lamented, I plan to just barely tease apart its strands to insert more colors, making a combined experience of science and poetry that is richer than either one alone.

But why Robert Frost? What do snowy woods, less-traveled paths, and rural neighbors fixing a fence have to do with science? You might be surprised. Born by chance into one of the most intellectually explosive eras of human history, the famously self-taught Frost internalized the discoveries of his time and expressed them in his poetry using images and language that were both technically accurate and unmatched in artistry.

When Frost was born in San Francisco in 1874, only about half of the currently known chemical elements had been discovered, Charles Darwin's ideas on evolution were just drifting across the Atlantic, and Albert Einstein had not yet been born. The streetcars of his home town were pulled by horses, the electric light bulb was still five years away, and the first telephone prototype would not appear for another two years. But by the time Frost died in Boston in January of 1963, our perception of time and space would be upended, the structure of DNA would be solved, and our understanding of atomic structure would have world-changing consequences. Television could bring pictures into every home, trans-Atlantic flights would be routine, and man would venture into space.

The remarkable discoveries of his time were not wasted on Frost: he presents rival theories of the end of the universe in “Fire and Ice”; he ponders the consequences of unsteered evolution versus a thoughtful creator in “Design”; he questions the infallibility of instinct in “The White-Tailed Hornet”; he mocks the uniqueness of human intellect in “At Woodward's Gardens”; he disbelieves the most recent findings about the size of the universe in “Skeptic”; and he personalizes Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in “A Passing Glimpse.”