In the opening, he posits that the largest askable and largest answerable question is what do you mean by the word Universe?
His conclusion:
The twentieth century physicists,
In defining the physical universe
As consisting only of energy,
Deliberately excluded the metaphysical universe—
Because the metaphysical
Consists only of imponderables,
Whereas the physical scientists
Deal only with ponderables—
Wherefore their physical universe
Excluded for instance
All our thoughts,—
Because thoughts are weightless—
But thoughts are experiences—
Wherefore I saw
That to be adequate
To the intuitively formulated
And experience-founded controls
Of my ever bigger
Question and answer routine,
My answering definition
Of UNIVERSE
Must be one which
Embraced the combined
Metaphysical and physical
Components of UNIVERSE.
Thus my self-formulating answer emerged,
And has persisted unshattered
By any subsequent challenges
From myself or others
As:
"By universe I mean:
The aggregate of all humanity's
Consciously apprehended
And communicated
(To self or others)
Experiences."
And later I discovered that
Eddington had said "Science is:
The conscientious attempt
To set in order
The facts of Experience."
And I also discovered
That Ernst Mach said:
"Physics is:
Experience
Arranged in
Most economical order."
So I realized that
Both Eddington and Mach
Were seeking to put in order
The same "raw materials"—
I.e. Experiences—
With which to identify
Their special subsystems
Of UNIVERSE.
He then relates this to language:
Wherefore I realized that
All the words in all dictionaries
Are the consequent tools
Of all men's conscious
And conscientious attempts
To communicate
All their experiences—
Which is of course
To communicate
Universe.
There are forty-three thousand current words
In the Concise Oxford Dictionary.
We don't know who invented them!
What an enormous, anonymous inheritance!
Shakespeare used ten thousand of them
With which to formulate
His complete "works."
It would take many more volumes
Than Shakepeare's to employ
The forty-three thousand—
Logically and cogently.
