Art object as scientific device
LE / 1957
From The Immense Journey
A billion years have gone into the making of that eye; the water and the salt and the vapors of the sun have built it; things that squirmed in the tide silts have devised it. Light-year beyond light-year, deep beyond deep, the mind may rove by means of it, hanging above the bottomless and surveying impartially the state of matter in the white-dwarf suns.
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7754876e23fc3473893ea85aee5105afc0c60c80e39d55c5ebbd624958817486/IMG_0292.jpg)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9e8543fa08edd25eadf3ae961145b2511a8af60318e61f96c66cbe1160b6a10a/IMG_0295.jpg)
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LE / 1957
From The Immense Journey
A billion years have gone into the making of that eye; the water and the salt and the vapors of the sun have built it; things that squirmed in the tide silts have devised it. Light-year beyond light-year, deep beyond deep, the mind may rove by means of it, hanging above the bottomless and surveying impartially the state of matter in the white-dwarf suns.
Yet whenever I see a frog’s eye low in the water warily ogling the shoreward landscape, I always think inconsequentially of those twiddling mechanical eyes that mankind manipulates nightly from a thousand observatories. Someday, with a telescopic lens an acre in extent, we are going to see something not to out liking, some looming shape outside there across the great pond of space.
Whenever I catch a frog’s eye I am aware of this, but I do not find it depressing. I stand quite still and try hard not to move or lift a hand since it would only frighten him. And standing thus it finally comes to me that this is the most enormous extension of vision of which life is capable: the projection of itself into other lives. This is the lonely magnificent power of humanity. It is, far more than any spatial adventure, the supreme epitome of the reaching out.
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0f1a803bd44533796fb1c90f8e400518a954a66adf57a41226982dd3652a32b3/scan3_1Dsig.png)
LE / 1957
From The Immense Journey
A billion years have gone into the making of that eye; the water and the salt and the vapors of the sun have built it; things that squirmed in the tide silts have devised it. Light-year beyond light-year, deep beyond deep, the mind may rove by means of it, hanging above the bottomless and surveying impartially the state of matter in the white-dwarf suns.
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/bc00024dc8d3b1b61c73a27812a2e721704adc590e4939c9292854a8cedad2e4/Screenshot-2023-01-03-at-10.30.20.png)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0f9fa51c56f79cc90dd613ff90eadd6ec2c5c1b7a21aebc923c4570c9351ab7d/Screenshot-2023-01-03-at-10.29.40.png)