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Writer's pictureTabitha Taylor

Readings for weddings for science lovers

Updated: Sep 8

Although technically the UK is a Christian country, many people do not subscribe to a religion or if they do, they aren't particularly spiritual. For those that prefer to keep their wonder within in the realms of the physical world (vast as it is!), these readings based on science or even written by scientists, might be more fitting! I had a lot of fun choosing music for this month's radio show as well since there are so many different styles that focus on science. We start off quite classical and then move into some contemporary electronic ambient.

Quote from Neil deGrasse Tyson

We are all connected;

To each other, biologically.

To the earth, chemically.

To the rest of the universe atomically.


Sonnet—To Science By Edgar Allen Poe

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!

   Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.

Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,

   Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?

How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,

   Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering

To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,

   Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?

Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car,

   And driven the Hamadryad from the wood

To seek a shelter in some happier star?

   Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,

The Elfin from the green grass, and from me

The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?


Summer and Austin have left their apartment for a house By Romie Stott

I meant to write a poem for your wedding

about super fluids. About quantized groupings

whose singular momentum pushes up and over containers –

about transmission of heat, creation of vortices,

the creation of h/m proportions of vortices

where h is plank’s constant –

a spun bucket that holds a dozen whirlpools.

I meant to write that you were aligned together

in the same quantum state,

and could not be contained. I meant to write

a poem of matter, of transition points –

of energy that transforms liquid to gas –

of boiling water at a steady temperature

as molecules leap into vapor.

They don’t use the term latent heat anymore.

I can’t use it to say you’ve changed states.

It was a long time building, only seeming

the same, like boiling water, as you transformed

into something that rises.




“Vows” from Thinking about the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness by Tony Kushner

Conjunction, assemblage, congress, union:

Life isn’t meant to be lived alone.

A life apart is a desperate fiction.

Life is an intermediate business:

a field of light bordered by love

a sea of desire stretched between shores.

Marriage is the strength of union.

Marriage is the harmonic blend.

Marriage is the elegant dialectic of counterpoint.

Marriage is the faultless, fragile logic of ecology:

A reasonable process of give and take

unfolding through cyclical and linear time.

A wedding is the conjoining of systems in which

Neither loses its single splendour and both are completely

transformed. As, for example,

The dawn is the wedding of the Night and the Day,

and is neither, and both,

and is, in itself, the most beautiful time,

abundant artless beauty,

free and careless magnificence.


Part Three: Love XIX by Emily Dickinson

Of all the souls that stand create

I have elected one.

When sense from spirit files away,

And subterfuge is done;


When that which is and that which was

Apart, intrinsic, stand,

And this brief tragedy of flesh

Is shifted like a sand;


When figures show their royal front

And mists are carved away,—

Behold the atom I preferred

To all the lists of clay!


Scientific Romance by Tim Pratt

If starship travel from our

Earth to some far

star and back again

at velocities approaching the speed

of light made you younger than me

due to the relativistic effects

of time dilation,

I’d show up on your doorstep hoping

you’d developed a thing for older men,

and I’d ask you to show me everything you

learned to pass the timeout there in the endless void

of night.


If we were the sole survivors

of a zombie apocalypse

and you were bitten and transformed

into a walking corpseI wouldn’t even pick up my

assault shotgun,

I’d just let you take a bite

out of me, because I’d rather be

undead forever

with you

than alive alone

without you.


If I had a time machine, I’d go back

to the days of your youth

to see how you became the someone

I love so much today, and then

I’d return to the moment we first met

just so I could see my own face

when I saw your face

for the first time,

and okay,

I’d probably travel to the time

when we were a young couple

and try to get a three-waygoing. I never understood

why more time travelers don’t do

that sort of thing.


If the alien invaders come

and hover in stern judgment

over our cities, trying to decide

whether to invite us to the Galactic

Federation of Confederated

Galaxies or if instead

a little genocide is called for,

I think our love could be a powerful

argument for the continued preservation

of humanity in general, or at least,

of you and me

in particular.


If we were captives together

in an alien zoo, I’d try to make

the best of it, cultivate a streak

of xeno-exhibitionism,

waggle my eyebrows, and make jokes

about breeding in captivity.


If I became lost in

the multiverse, exploring

infinite parallel dimensions, my

only criterion for settling

down somewhere would be

whether or not I could find you:

and once I did, I’d stay there even

if it was a world ruled by giant spider-

priests, or one where killer

robots won the Civil War, or even

a world where sandwiches

were never invented, because

you’d make it the best

of all possible worlds anyway,

and plus

we could get rich

off inventing sandwiches.


If the Singularity comes

and we upload our minds into a vast

computer simulation of near-infinite

complexity and perfect resolution,

and become capable of experiencing any

fantasy, exploring worlds bound only

by our enhanced imaginations,

I’d still spend at least 10^21 processing

cycles a month just sitting

on a virtual couch with you,

watching virtual TV,

eating virtual fajitas,

holding virtual hands,

and wishing

for the real thing.


The highlighted part is the part I read in the show, but the other verses are quite charming too. Depending on how long you want your reading to be, you could choose the whole thing!




A Strange Galaxy by John Watt 

When I gaze into this realm, I see more than the dazzling array

     of golden starbursts floating in a cosmic sea of blue-green-gray,

   photoreceptors painting post-Impressionistic explosions of colors,

       fibers and dilator muscles servicing your ocular aperture.


I see distinctive melanin patterns of a truly original individual -

     a retinal scan of exceptional singularity,

   each nebula unique, every supernova peculiar,

      no quasar like any other.


I passionately absorb with one brief glance

     an infinity of nuance,

   an eternity of historical archives,

       a heaven and earth of emotional journeys.


I am reading your autobiography, the encyclopedia of you.

     I remain a student of your sclera,

   a pupil of your pupils,

       a Vincent of your irises,


going half-mad with the dizzying vastness

of the starry night within your eyes.


Often I Imagine the Earth By Dan Gerber

Often I imagine the earth

through the eyes of the atoms we’re made of—

atoms, peculiar

atoms everywhere—

no me, no you, no opinions,

no beginning, no middle, no end,

soaring together like those

ancient Chinese birds

hatched miraculously with only one wing,

helping each other fly home.


Listen back to the show on Mixcloud and look out for next month's show coming soon!

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