Verse 69
Do not despise the instrument because it is made of matter. Your eye is also equipment.
Do not despise the instrument because it is made of matter. Your eye is also equipment.
The telescope became a new organ and the old heaven grew another room.
The machine did not profane mystery; it multiplied it.
A lens says: your naked perception is not the boundary of what may be known.
A computer says the same with less poetry and more heat.
There are monks who fear technology because distraction travels through it. There are engineers who worship technology because power travels through it.
Both mistake the wire for the current.
Use the instrument. Do not become its user-profile.
Herschel looked, measured, doubted, looked again. This is a better liturgy than certainty.
Every sensor extends the senses; no sensor locates the one to whom sensation appears.
Search farther. Build better eyes. Map colder worlds.
Then turn attention toward the fact that every map appears without distance from awareness.
Science expands the known. Wisdom investigates the knower.
They need not quarrel unless priests are required.