Earth, Cosmos, and the Language of Scale: Why Scientists Keep Writing Poems

Science often changes a person’s relationship with scale. In Earth science, time expands until “recent” can mean thousands of years. In astronomy, distance becomes so large the brain has to borrow metaphors just to stay functional.

And that is the point: the human mind was not built to feel billions. We can calculate them. We can model them. But to feel them, we need language that behaves differently than ordinary speech. We need compression. We need image. We need poetry.

A geologist looks at a rock and sees a timeline. A planetary scientist looks at a crater and sees an ancient argument between impact and erosion. A climate scientist looks at a graph and hears an emotional chord—because what is being measured is not only a variable, but a future.

Poetry becomes a tool when the subject exceeds normal intuition. It is a way to speak honestly about immensity without pretending we are comfortable with it.

This isn’t about romanticizing science. It is about admitting something true: that wonder is not unprofessional. Wonder is often the first sign the mind is paying attention. The best researchers do not lose wonder—they learn how to discipline it.

If you work with Earth or cosmos, you have probably felt this paradox: the more you learn, the more you recognize how small your certainty is. That humility is scientific, but it is also deeply poetic.

Maybe that is why so many scientists write. Not because the equations fail—but because the equations succeed, and success creates a new question:
How do we speak, as humans, about what we now know?