Between Stars and Pages
Physics gives me a precise way to ask how the universe moves. Philosophy and literature give me a way to sit with the fact that I am here, briefly, to ask. This page is a running notebook for the second kind of question — favorite quotes, reading notes, and short essays kept alongside the research.
A Few Quotes to Start the Shelf
A starter set, kept here to set the tone — replace or add to these with your own favorites.
"We are a way for the cosmos to know itself."
"The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me."
"In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer."
The entry below is a sample, included to establish tone and formatting for this page. Replace it with your own essay, reading note, or reflection whenever you are ready.
On Looking Up: Astronomy as Applied Humility
An engineer learns to distrust a system he cannot take apart. An astronomer has no choice but to trust one he never will.
Every dynamical mass I have ever helped measure begins with the same quiet admission: we cannot touch the thing we are weighing. We infer a black hole from how gas and starlight move around it, the way a detective infers a person from the dent they left in a room. There is something in this method that feels less like physics and more like a discipline of attention — a willingness to take indirection seriously, because indirection is all we are given.
Philosophy asks a version of the same question about the self: how much of what we call knowing another mind is really just watching its effects and trusting the model. Literature, in turn, is the long tradition of writing those effects down carefully enough that someone else can reconstruct the orbit. Between the three — physics, philosophy, literature — I keep finding the same instrument: humility in front of what resists direct inspection, and patience enough to model it anyway.
Thinkers and Works Worth Returning To
Placeholder categories — fill each card with the philosophers, authors, or specific works that have actually shaped your thinking.
Add a Name
Note here which thinker on the nature of scientific knowledge you keep coming back to, and why.
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Note here which existentialist writer or philosopher has shaped how you think about meaning and choice.
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Note here a Vietnamese poet, novelist, or essayist whose work stays with you.
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Note here a historical figure or book on the history of astronomy that shaped how you see the field.