By Antonino Puglisi

Along our journey through Wonderverse we have showcased so many different faces of the beauty and relational character of the natural world we live in. From the intricate workings of our brains and its connection to happiness to the sophisticated mechanism of pollination of wasps and fig flowers, from the beauty behind chemical reactions to the wonder of how the universe has come to be and so much more. It has been a joyful adventure also for us involved in the preparation of the blog posts, as we shared and wrote about our ideas and work.

It has made a deep impression on me to see how what science is unveiling resonates so strongly with the perception of poets as well as that of many spiritual people in different religious traditions. Chiara Lubich, for instance, in a very profound mystical experience perceives like a presence behind all of creation and sees that all things were related to one another.¹

What poetry and spirituality make us experience is probably not just an emotional reaction in the face of nature but rather a profound intuition about the world itself and the very fabric of reality. The universe is, in fact, not only a web of elaborate and complex relationships, but also a multilayered reality.

One of my favorite paintings is Sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh. I have admired it many times at the National Gallery in London and yet I cannot be persuaded that the masterpiece is simply a sophisticated arrangement on canvas of cadmium sulfide (CdS) pigments in the crystalline structure of greenockite. Neither am I convinced that the vibrant yellow of the flowers that catches my attention is just the result of the interaction between my optical nerve and the electrons jumping from one energy level to another.

There are of course many different ways I could describe the Sunflowers and they will all be correct in some sense. A physicist will see in it a bunch a protons and electrons whirling around each other, while a chemist through a chemical analysis could determine the many different elements of the painting. We could also look at the work of art through the eyes of a botanist or a biologist and so forth. Yet, none of them could describe Sunflowers like a poem or a song would do. 

Is any of these levels more important than the others? The truth is that, in fact, each level brings us some information about the painting and that any attempt to explain it only through one level would flatten the multilayered richness that it represents.

The English poet George Herbert (1593-1633) puts it so beautifully in the following verses, suggesting that we can look at things but also look through things to discover that they point beyond themselves.

A man that looks on glass
On it may stay his eye
Or if he pleaseth, through it pass,
And then the heaven espy.’²

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¹ Lubich C., 1984 – Scritti Spirituali/2: 139. Ed. Città Nuova. Roma.

² George Herbert, The Elixir from ‘The Temple’