In poetry, Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965), aka T.S. Eliot, was an American-born British essayist and poet noted for thermal word usage.
The Hollow Men
In 1925, Eliot penned his “The Hollow Men” wherein the following oft-cited heat death themed segment is found: [1]
“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
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The Waste Land
In 1922, Eliot wrote his poem “The Waste Land”, in which, according to Kristen Miller, the reference to the second law is, supposedly, found. [3]
East Coker
In 1940, Eliot penned his “East Coker”, in which the following thermal word loaded segment, as cited by Steven Weinberg (1992), is found: [1]
“As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment.”
The segment "lifetime burning in every moment" seems to elude to the so-called combustion theory of existence or combustion theory of love or something along these lines.
Related
People also searched for: Ezra Pound, W.B. Yeats, George Eliot, James Joyce, and W.H. Auden, among others. (Ѻ)
References
1. (a) The Hollow Men – Wikipedia.
(b) Woods, Alan and Grant, Ted. (1995). Reason in Revolt: Marxist Philosophy and Modern Science (§2.4:Arrow of Time). Publisher.
2. (a) East Coker (poem) – Wikipedia.
(b) Weinberg, Steven. (1992). Dreams of a Final Theory: the Scientist’s Search for the Ultimate Laws of Nature (pg. 90). Random House.
3. Miller, Kristen. (2007). “From Fears of Entropy to Comfort in Chaos: Arcadia, The Waste Land, Numb3rs, and Man’s Relationship With Science” (abs), Bulletin of Science Technology Society, 27(1)81-94.
External links
● T. S. Eliot – Wikipedia.
