religion and science

The onscreen scientist has an interesting
post comparing the Trinity and god as seen
by dante in the divine comedy to the nature of
quarks. It's an interesting insight that reminds
me of an old joke: all the scientists finally finish
climbing the mountain of truth to find all the
priests and philosophers waiting for them at
the top.

here's a photo from here in Ravenna
of a sculpture of a bench robe and book
that are supposed to represent a favorite
reading spot of Dante, just inside the old
walls by the porte of via cavour.

Dante is one of the people that permeates
northern italy. he's buried here in Ravenna,
he wrote the divine comedy in Firenze and
he was one of the motivations for the Scovegni
chapel in Padova as he placed chapel builder's father in hell for usary.

We just spent the week traveling around italy, from ravenna to padova to
venice to florence to assisi and back to Ravenna. Dante gets a mention everywhere,
rivaled only by St Francis. It would be pretty cool if he hit on a good description
of the nature of matter without any high energy experiments.