Spacing Out on Pacific Quay

Science without conscience is the soul's perdition. Francois Rabelais, Pantagruel

It is poetry which recreates lost paradises; science and technology alone are not enough. M. François

Pacific Quay in Glasgow is a rather pacific place to space out, listen to the river, and watch the slow-flowing Kilpatrick hills melt away to the north-west. It's a place of poetry, of process and flow...

But it is also, thanks to the Science Centre and the new BBC studios, a place of science and media...

Science:  from Latin scientia "knowledge," scire "to know," related to scindere "to cut, divide," (cf. Greek skhizein "to split, rend, cleave").

Medium: substance through which something is conveyed -

Where the scientist looks out the poet looks in.

Poetry:   from Greek poesis "composition, poetry," from poein, poiein "to make or compose"

Compose: from com- "with" + poser "to place,"

The scientist: science, media

The poet: con-science...immedia...

Observer and observed are inextricably bound

conscientiously 

immediately

like wings on a gull.

'Poetry Vanquishing Science on Pacific Quay'  

[The science tower, which stands on these steps, has been fraught with problems since its inauguration and is now shabbily cordoned off with the whole area beginning to show signs of 'poetic' decay. The gulls however, having been evicted from their flotilla on the neighbouring cantin basin (the flotilla was used as a training module for the emergency services but has now been removed), have made it their new chill-out site! Note the art deco 'spinster flats' of Crathie Court (completed in 1952) in the background contrasting nicely against the 'steel barn' in front of it, the outlandish new Museum of Transport (completed in 2012) designed by Zaha Hadid].